--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry Potter and the Eyes of Truth

Written by: Maudlin

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and company belong to J.K. Rowling. I have merely stolen them, locked them in my mind, and am controlling their every move.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Two

Dinning with the Dursleys

A constant scratching sound, caused from the rapid movements of a fine tip quill on parchment, resonated throughout the spare bedroom of Dudley Dursley where young Harry was unconcernedly rushing to finish one of his many essays for Potion class. With the rate this essay was progressing, his professor was sure to give him an earful—once again—about responsibility and dedication to the future of his career. It wasn't that Harry did not want to complete his homework; it was just that potions bored Harry beyond an imaginable point. That and the fact that his uncle was busily yelling up the stairwell for Harry to come and cook his lunch. Muggles were such tiresome beings.

"HARRY POTTER!"

Harry sighed, gave up, and rolled the unfinished assignment into a tight, neat cylinder, taking his time of course. He took his glasses from his eyes and rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

"I GIVE YOU A HOME, FOOD, AND CLOTHES OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART AND YOU CAN'T EVEN COOK ONE BLIMEY MEAL! YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN AN UNGRANTFUL ORPHAN!"

He slipped off his bed and strolled over to his school trunk. He flipped the switch and placed his books, parchment, and quill inside. From the chest, he took his wand and stuck it in his back pocket, hiding it underneath the folds of his hand-me-down cotton shirt.

"DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!"

The adolescent meandered towards the door, in no apparent hurry, and laughing the entire time at his uncle's antics. He had heard the same insults and threats repeatedly for almost sixteen years and they no longer fazed him. Rather, they were merely jokes to him.

"THAT'S IT! I'M COMING UP YOU UNGRATEFU--"

The door swung open right as Vernon's hand reached up to knock on the wooden surface. Vernon stood purple-faced, glowering in anger at his nephew who was, in return, glowering at him with as much indifference as Vernon was with purple rage. He took a deep breath and composed himself, inquiring through heaving breaths, "What took you so long, boy?"

"I was planning world domination where the wizarding world would take command of you boring muggles and turn you all into slaves. My first plan of action would be to wipe out you and your entire snobby family," Harry grumbled, off-handedly.

His uncle grunted and responded, ignoring completely what Harry had just said, "Don't give me any of your lip. Petunia and I have been calling you for an hour to prepare lunch. The Grants will be here in less than an hour." He turned at stumbled down the stairs muttering to aloud, "I told her it was a bad idea. A waste of blimey time, if you ask me."

Harry chuckled and dug his hands into his front pockets and closed the door behind him, following after his uncle into the kitchen. He spent a good half hour cooking a simple meal of bangers and mash, upon request of his porky cousin, and boiling quick pot of warm tea. In order to impress the guests, Harry was instructed to set the table with the finest porcelain cutlery and a fresh bouquet of flowers plucked from the very greenhouse in the backyard. Petunia was busying herself with rushing around the kitchen, dining room, and adjoining living room cleaning up every single one of the invisible messes and spraying strong fragrances into the air making everything end up smelling worse than it did beforehand. Vernon was brushing up Dudley's poor etiquette and tightening each other's ties, straightening their hair, and keeping up with the score of the game show on the miniature television in the dining room. The Dursleys were each dressed up in their best dress clothes and were prepared to impress and dazzle the neighbors. While Harry was covered from head to toe in grease after a mishap dealing with Dudley and a jar of week old meat residue from underneath the sink and he was certainly not dressed to impress.

As the doorbell rang throughout the house, Vernon dragged Harry into the hall and proceeded to lecture him. He gruffly growled lowly, "I want you to stay out of sight, boy. Do not make this a repeat of last time or I'll lock all of your belongings in the cupboard. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Harry frowned, wincing at the reminder of his little adventure with a certain house-elf named Dobby. "I promise I'll keep out of sight."

Vernon looked him up and down, wrinkled his nose, quipping, "Go change into something decent. You smell like rotting eggs." He turned and walked to the door. Harry lifted his wrist to his nose and took a large whiff and twitched, making a guttural noise before rushing up to his room to, gladly, change.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry had tried. He had tried very hard to keep himself in his room to avoid seeing his aunt and uncle and to avoid being seen himself, but his stomach was angrily protesting the lack of food inside its cavity. So he had quietly snuck out of his room, avoided the squeaky floorboards along the way, and crept into the kitchen. He kept a watch out of the corner of his eye for any sudden movement at the table. The Dursleys were seemingly enjoying themselves, except that Dudley looked rather down about something, and Harry couldn't tell whether or not the Grants were, seeing as all that he could see was the back of their identical bushy brown heads. Elizabeth was the shortest, talkative one, and Harry could hear her rambling about something that he couldn't quite understand. Then there was a taller girl sitting beside Elizabeth, who he guessed was Emma, and then there was an even taller figure with shorter hair who he figured was their father.

Ignoring them, Harry went about rummaging through the refrigerator, that is, before a bucket of margarine found itself toppling down onto Harry's exposed head. He of course yelped and everyone's attention quickly snapped to stare at the boy with questioning eyes. Vernon and Elizabeth were the first to rise from the table. Vernon jerked at the sight of Elizabeth walking over to the floored Harry.

She reached her hand out, exclaiming, "Howdy Harry! What are you doing sneaking around in the fridge? Shouldn't you be eating at the table with everyone else? I was just telling my Papa about you again. Your aunt told us that you didn't live here, but here you are, sprawled across the floor. Come and eat with us, Harry." Elizabeth flashed a toothy, childish smile waiting for him to get up and/or answer.

Harry stood up on his own and looked up, worriedly at his uncle. Vernon grimaced, but put on a fake smile as he forced a friendly invitation, "I didn't know you were back from probation so soon, Harry. Come one and eat with us, nephew." Harry fumed at the insult from the obese man, but obligingly walked back to the table with Elizabeth and pulled up a chair between the eccentric girl and his cousin.

"Why were you at probation, Harry? You don't strike me as a guy to do something so bad to deserve probation or to even do anything bad at all," Elizabeth innocently asked.

He faltered, looked up at Vernon, and lied, "I…got busted for stealing a pair of tennis shoes." Vernon nodded approvingly, but Elizabeth looked at him excitingly.

"So you're a bad boy?" She fell into another one of her giggly fits.

Everyone at the table stared at her in disbelief, but basically ignored her. After a minute of listening to her laugh, her father cleared his throat, "Eliza, that's quite enough." She calmed down some and shifted into silent tremors instead. Her father leaned in across the table to take a good look at Harry before he smiled and introduced myself, "Hello, Harry. My name's Henry. Eliza here has spent the entirety of the past day talking nonstop about you."

Harry smiled and the two preformed an awkward handshake as Harry joked, "I hope it was all good talk. It's nice to meet you, Henry."

Henry brought back his arm and chuckled, "So, where do you go to school, Harry?"

"St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys," Harry routinely answered without even batting an eye. He looked away from Henry and caught a quick glance of Emma staring at him with curiosity. They momentarily locked eyes—green on hazel.

"That's quite a rough sounding school," she observed.

He nodded, "They beat me at least five times a day with the thickest, longest switch that they can find." All he had to do was keep up the façade and his uncle would not pay much attention to his earlier tumble. Vernon did not look too pleased that the conversation was focused only on Harry, but there was a touch of pleasure of watching Harry constantly insult himself.

"Five times, huh," Emma said. Harry nodded again before Emma said, "If you're such a trouble-maker, why are you living in Little Whining? I would think that the neighbors would be uncomfortable with someone like you living here."

He stared at her, starting to seethe inside, but then he noticed the twinkle in her eye. It was the same twinkle that his favorite headmaster would get whenever he was playing some sort of mysterious trick. Catching on, Harry smirked, "You see, luv, my dear Uncle Vernon was so kind as to not send me away. It's because he loves me so very much, has a big heart he does."

"Well, I wouldn't put up with a dodgy teenager. You're lucky to have such kind people as the Dursleys to open up their home to you," Emma continually sneered, teasing him.

Elizabeth tugged on her sister's arm and whispered, "What does dodgy mean?"

"I guess you could say that it means a sneaky fellow, like Harry here. You just can't trust him," she answered, motioning at the boy, not even trying to lower her voice unlike her sister.

"Then why can't Englishmen just say that? Why do they have to use such funny words?" Elizabeth made a disgusted face, still whispering, "And what do you mean by saying Harry can't be trusted? He's the kindest, pretty, caring boy that I have ever met. Don't you dare say anything disrespectful about my Harry!"

At that time, porky Dudley jumped into the conversation, yelling at Harry with a red face, "Harry you lied about Elizabeth. She doesn't like me! She likes you! She's not that pretty and she's only eleven-years-old." Elizabeth harrumphed and glared at him. Harry couldn't help himself and neither could Emma. The two busted out laughing at the not-so-different expressions of the other two. Elizabeth and Dudley grumbled to themselves and dropped the conversation.

"Harry," Henry broke the silence, "you look like a hard-working boy. What do you think about working for me? I have a lot of boxes that I need unpacking and I could use and extra set of hands. That is, if your aunt and uncle don't mind."

Harry looked over at the aforementioned aunt and uncle. Vernon and Petunia were defeated and everyone knew it; especially the Grants. It would seem rude if Vernon was to turn down the new neighbor and they wanted to do anything but make a bad impression. Vernon smiled with false merriment, "Of course he can. But I warn you, the boy can be rather dull and aggressive at times. He'll put up a fight if he wants to."

Henry shrugged, "I'm sure a ten pound payment each day will keep him in line."

"There's no need to pay him. He needs the discipline," Vernon quickly protested.

"It's no trouble at all. You may call it bribery, but I know that it works very well with kids. You can get them to clean just about anything if you pay them," Henry Grant chuckled contentedly.

"If you think that that's what will keep him in line, I can't protest," Vernon gave in, before quickly adding, "It may even keep him from robbing banks."

"So he robs banks as well?" Henry stated, as if unaffected, "I suppose I'm going to have to break him of that habit." Vernon nodded, profusely sweating. "It's settled then!"

Harry had watched all this and he couldn't help but to look at the neighbor with wonder in his eyes. Why was this man helping him? Harry was immensely confused and, apparently, so was Dudley who had drawn together his bushy eyebrows and asked, "What about me?"

Henry politely apologized, "I'm sorry, but it's a lot of work and I'm afraid that I just don't have enough chocolate to go around." The Dursleys and Harry all gaped at him. No one, other than wizards, had ever forwardly snubbed Dudley to his face.

The rest of the meal went by without much happening, and the Grants left around three bidding good-bye to the Dursleys and a cheerful "see you later" to Harry. Once they had left, Vernon sat Harry down for a long talk that wasted a good portion of the afternoon and repaired Dudley's hurt pride for nothing cheered him up more than watching Harry being reprimanded. Harry paid no attention to either of them, merely nodding or his head when called for. By seven, Harry had been able to weasel out of the living room and escape to his bedroom, locking the door, and leaving the Dursleys to cook their own dinner.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry was once again attempting to complete his Potions' assignment when Hedwig swooped in through his always-open window. She came to rest on Harry's ready arm with two letters strapped to her leg.

The first one he read from was Ron and was rather short compared to the letter he had received the night before. It read:

Harry,

Mum is pregnant. She and my dad are happy, but I'm not. I don't need any more brothers or sisters. I guess I'd want a brother, though. So I could pick on him like all my bloody brothers did to me.

Sorry about the ruddy muggles.

--Ron

The second letter was in much neater handwriting that Harry immediately recognized as Hermione's. Harry looked at Hedwig and asked her, "Did you fly all the way to Hermione's, too?" She cooed, preening her feathers, and ignoring him. He shrugged her off and quickly read the note.

Dear Harry,

Hedwig came knocking on my window at six in the morning and wouldn't leave until I wrote you a letter. She's a good owl. She just wants to make sure that you get letters from your friends. I feel just horrible that I haven't written you yet. We've been out of school for a week and I haven't yet lifted a quill for anything other than homework. I should write you without having an owl force me to. I'm sorry Harry. In other news, have you heard the news? Ron's mother is pregnant. I can't wait. I just adore children.

Love,

--Hermione

It always seemed as if Hedwig was the one to hold together his friendship with everyone. As of late, her efforts didn't seem to be worth it anymore. Harry knew that his friendship was very important to Ron and Hermione, but, with his separation from the wizarding world, Harry couldn't help but feel distanced from them. A surge of depressive loneliness swept through Harry and he decided to wait until tomorrow to write back to them. He dressed into his nightclothes, laid down, and was out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author's Note: Thank you to all those who reviewed my first chapter. This is the quickest time I've ever updated and it's just for you, my reviewers. Anyway, I realize that Molly's pregnancy is rather…sudden, but I swear it will have some significance later on in the story. I'll try to keep my story from dying, but I can't guarantee that I wil..