Premature Exit
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: I have noticed that over the past few days that I have developed an absurd need to get my calculator out whilst reading a fanfiction and divide the number of reviews they have received by the amount of chapters and work out their average amount of reviews per chapter. There was no reason to tell you that, but I did, so there :P I have about a day and any spare time I can find to finish this, so it would be nice if you could inspire me to write with a review ;) I would also like to thank Shadow of the black abyss and MachiavellianOrange for their reviews on the last chapter.
Chapter 8
Only a few seconds had passed since James had suggested the possibility of Merlin knowing a way out of the plane he was currently residing in. In all truth, Harry was not sure how to separate the fact and the fiction when it came down to this wizard, but he had never been more interested in knowing. All sorts of possibilities flashed through his head, some slightly insane whilst other more realistic.
"Harry, I can't promise anything," James voice sounded a little distant, it did not matter. He was sure that now he would definitely get home in some way, some how, because if he hadn't believed that anything was possible before, he certainly did now.
"Tell me about Merlin," Harry said interestedly, he was rather intrigued. He couldn't remember much from history of magic, just that he had stayed awake during it, which had to mean something. If he tried to hard to look back into his memory he could remember playing noughts and crosses with Ron whilst Hermione took notes and tutted loudly in the background. He wasn't sure what had actually been said, though.
James looked as he had not been expecting this, and seemed a little uncomfortable. He adjusted his glasses before speaking.
"I don't actually know that much…" he looked as if he was thinking hard for a moment, "I believe when we were covering Merlin in history of magic Sirius and I were plotting a rather gruesome revenge on Severus Snape. Lily caught us and the plan never got carried out, much to our dismay."
Harry wanted him to continue on, surely James knew a lot more than what he had just said otherwise he would not have come to the conclusion that Merlin would be able to help them. James noticed this.
"We've heard a lot about him since we've been, er, here though," he said hurriedly, "but I expect Lily would do more. She took divination, what a waste of time that was, and he was a seer, you know."
Harry raised his eyebrows and his expectations of this legendary figure were momentarily lowered. Then he remembered the prophecy and the sad truth that seeing the future was very real providing you weren't someone like Trelawney. He was also a little surprised at his mother; maybe she had just made the same mistake he had by taking the damned class in the first place. James nodded at the look on Harry's face.
"That's what I thought," he said, grinning. "I think Sirius is chasing birds in the garden, so we could go and ask her now, if you'd like," then he jumped up from his chair as though he had just noticed that it was covered in Snape's hair grease. "I daresay she's a little bit miffed about me taking this chair, though," he said, patting it. Harry remembered the shriek he'd heard downstairs as James had summoned the chair and smiled.
"Sirius is chasing birds?" Harry asked, thinking over what his father had just told him. James shrugged in a gesture that said 'no idea'.
"He's always thought it was fun since the first time he transformed," he said, "none of the rest of us could quite figure out why."
Harry realised that by 'us' James was referring to the rest of the marauders, Lupin, Pettigrew and himself. He felt a strange pang of anger at the thought of Wormtail's name. He didn't deserve to be spoken of by anyone. If it weren't for Wormtail, who knew how different his life would be? Maybe he'd have a home like this in the material plane, maybe, in fact, probably; they'd have a spare room for Sirius and a garden where the black dog could proudly chase away any real birds. Harry knew there was no point in wondering, he was already lucky enough to have got so close to this.
Harry walked downstairs with his father after a long and somewhat comforting talk. Indeed, he could here a dog barking happily and the sound of so many birds songs getting stopped and the rushing sound of wings. Unlike in the real world, however, these fake birds were part of an illusion and could not escape, therefore they just bounced helplessly back as they flew to the air and were forced to take refuge in the higher branches of the trees. Sirius the dog sounded very happy about this, and there was a sound of claws scraping a tree trunk.
His mother was sitting at the table with her nose in what looked like a very long and extremely tedious book. Harry could tell this simply by the front cover 'Gardening charms to truly entrance by Jeanette J. Lovell.' She looked up at the sound of footsteps, and reluctantly put the book down as she saw them.
"Harry," she said, "are you feeling better?" Harry nodded his head, but found he could not smile. How very strange. She gazed at him with thoughtful looking eyes before she turned to her husband.
"Lily? Harry was wondering about how he could get home," James began, he pulled out another chair to sit next to her and Harry felt oddly like a spectator. Lily bit her lip and looked directly at James.
"Oh," she mumbled.
"And I was thinking that-" he continued before being cut off by Lily, whom must have realised what he was about to say.
"-that Merlin would be able to help us," she said, fiddling with a lock of red hair.
She seemed very falsely bright about everything as she discussed it with James and Harry. Since being in this realm Harry had grown accustomed to the way nothing was real, but his parents had always been honest and true to themselves. Although Harry had only known his mother a few days, it was a startling change of character. He could tell that inside she was missing him already. Maybe she had been expecting this, therefore coming to the same conclusion as James had. Maybe she was still cursing the day Wormtail betrayed them and her baby boy had been ripped away from her. He didn't know. Looking at her point of view, Harry did feel sorry for her, and almost guilty. In an ideal world, he would be able to find a way to merge the two planes together and still be with his parents, but that would not happen. It was more of a dream. A wish.
However, she did know a lot about the powerful wizard and seer, Merlin. Partly from divination and history of magic, and partly, she confirmed, from the very many stories she'd read as a little girl living in a world oblivious to magic. She suggested maybe getting Harry a book to read about him, although this may have been an attempt at a joke. Harry knew now that if they were to help him out of here, his parents would have to return to the spiritual plane, in doing that, all of their lovely illusion work in this plane would be erased. There was no actual guarantee they'd be able to find him soon, or even convince him to aid their situation, because even in death he was a very busy man. James had explained that their were billions upon billions of dead wizards (although Harry could have guessed this himself) and finding one person in particular would certainly be hard. Especially when they could never be certain what plane he would be residing in. Harry had been warned that his parents might be gone for a very long time, but they both promised to come back.
Sirius was less than pleased, not that they were going or even because the bird illusions would disappear, but mainly because he 'never got told anything.' He dropped this childish reason after realising how ridiculous it sounded and wished Harry's parents the best of luck.
"You better be quick, Prongs, I might have to resort to eating my godson if I get too hungry." Harry was very glad that neither of them could feel hunger, because he hadn't been entirely sure if Sirius was joking- he had been half dog at the time and his voice was rather gruff.
Overall, Harry was surprised at how they handled everything. Both Lily and James knew and appreciated that Harry was old enough to know what he wanted and make his own decisions. Harry felt a little bad at having them chase around looking for a wizard while he was sitting in cloudy mist basically doing nothing. Lily had insisted that neither Harry nor Sirius were to attempt to follow them, because if a living mortal were to enter the spiritual plane they would effectively die. Then anything they did would be in vain, because there was no way to bring the dead back to life. Harry was sure he heard an element of sadness in her voice when she said this.
He was not sure how he was feeling now. The initial excitement was gone, now he was more worried and slightly angry at being forced to make an inevitable decision. Now there was a sort of hollowness to everything, when Lily very politely told him to go to bed and get some form of sleep because he'd feel better, Harry obliged, but didn't feel as if he was connecting to her at all as he had before. Harry knew he wouldn't feel better -he never felt any different, but he wanted to keep her happy. After all, she'd been through a lot.
He was lying in bed awake now, in fact, but he could hear voices downstairs, what they were saying were muffled, perhaps it was Sirius' snoring in the next room. Nevertheless, Harry could not tell what they were saying, he suddenly felt very curious. He didn't know what his parents would be talking about at this time of night (well, an illusion of night) to be honest, as hard as he'd tried, he still did not know them as well as he'd like. Now he was sure that he never would, and he'd have to accept that.
Still, when they did not stop curiosity took its toll. Harry decided to be pretending to get a glass of water and he tiptoed down the stairs, trying not to wake Sirius up. It occurred to him that he had his wand and if he really wanted to he could probably summon it, after all the ministry could not warn against it where he was, but he hoped his parents would think he was tired and forgot.
He could hear a woman's voice. Lily's. She sounded desperately upset, and a man's voice, James, comforting her.
"And all I'm thinking about is myself," she cried, "when I should be thinking about my son, I thinking about how hard it will be to let him go a second time."
"Shhh. You'll wake him up, you're not being selfish…it's hard, I know-"
"But we've never been there for him before and-"
"Which is why it's important we are now."
A silence.
"Do you remember when we first heard about the prophecy?" Lily asked, so quietly Harry had to strain his ears on the stair.
"Yes…yes, I do," James replied slowly, clearly wondering where this was going.
"You remember…" she choked, "we promised we'd never let Voldemort get our son before he was able to defend himself, we promised we'd always be there for him, no matter what, we promised…we promised Harry, James - and we broke that promise!"
Another silence.
"Harry, you can come in," said James' voice after a few minutes, there was a quiet gasp from Lily. Harry cursed himself, how stupid had he been to forget yet again that his parents were able to see through their illusions? How would they feel about Harry listening in on such a private moment, he had wanted to go back upstairs before this, but found his legs could not move. They did now, though.
Harry felt mad at himself being so nosy as he walked through into the living room where he had heard his parents talking. He saw Lily, a face he had already put together with brave and strong, with tears streaking down her face. Even talking about the prophecy, Lily had always refrained from crying whenever Harry had been there. She rushed towards Harry and gave him a hug that was so strong an onlooker might have thought she was trying to strangle him.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, "this wasn't supposed to happen."
"We're sorry for everything," James said.
Harry did not understand what they had to be sorry for. They had done nothing that they should feel sorry. Everything, everything was down to Voldemort, and if either of them thought he blamed them they were wrong. Everything that had happened they had not been in a position to prevent. Lily let go of Harry, no longer crying, but her eyes puffy and red.
"Mum, Dad," he wasn't even aware that he was planning on saying that for the first time until the words had come out of his mouth, "you haven't got anything to be sorry for."
Mushy? I got to the end of that forgetting about my no-mushy rule, so I thought, oh well. In fact, in order for my story to work, it had to happen, so I'm sorry for all you mush-haters out there (I personally love it!) If I'm correct, I believe this is the longest chapter so far - go me! Although I know it's not really that long, I am incapable of writing long chapters, especially when I have a time limit to get a story finished. I hope you liked it, anyways, and please, please leave me a review, even if you didn't. It means so much to me.
MachiavellianOrange: Firstly, I thank you for your great reviews, and secondly, I answer questions :P 1) I must say, it's interesting that you ask about the…er…lavatory situation. Harry and Sirius do not need to eat, and therefore that problem does not arise - however, if it were to, you must remember that the illusions are very, very realistic. Everything functions like an actual home. 2) Harry and Sirius aren't in the spiritual plane, they would have to die to get there (sorry if I made that unclear) instead, they are in another plane. But what you are saying is right; they are there in soul and body and must keep their bodies in good order, which brings us to… 3)Your theories are right, very well done, I have other ideas as well as that one though (I'm not entirely sure how this ends, so you'll have to stick with me) 4) Or actually, this was asked before three but three was kind of mixed with two. Lily and James can't get back to the world of the living simply because they are already dead and their souls and bodies have parted, meaning they cannot get back. I would actually hate to see them back as well, that's been done far too much. (Although, maybe my story has been done too much as well, but I can't remember coming across anyone with the same idea…)
Thanks for keeping me on my toes, anyway. It's great when reviewers ask question that I can answer, I feel like JK :P
