Disclaimer: All things Ats, BtVS, and Harry Potter belong to their respective owners, Joss Whedon and JK Rowling. However, the plot is mine as far as I can tell, so please ask if you want to use it.
Harry Potter and the Dursleys were sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner. He had been back on Privet Drive for exactly one week and so far he was not having a good summer. His family, and he used that term as loosely as possible, had been sufficiently terrified when Moody threatened them at the train station, so he was allowed to keep his school things in his room and send letters with Hedwig, not to mention he was getting a decent amount of food for once. Unfortunately, these small luxuries had cost him quite a bit. He was not allowed to go out at all unless someone was with him, and as none of the Dursleys wanted to spend any more time with him than was absolutely necessary he had not left the house since he had returned from Hogwarts.
Also, Uncle Vernon had apparently decided that Aunt Petunia had too much to do even though she didn't have a job and spent at least four hours a day spying on the neighbors, so now Harry had taken on most of the housework as well. Every day he was responsible for cleaning not only his room, but Dudley's as well. He was in charge of making sure that both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms shone at all times, and he had to cook all three meals every day and clean up after them too. He had considered complaining to the Order, but had decided that since he had to be here anyway he might as well just deal with it, as having to deal with wizards in his house would probably just make Uncle Vernon angrier. However, dinner tonight was seriously testing his resolve.
"I've decided you will do all the vacuuming, boy. That machine is heavy, and your Aunt Petunia just should not have to work that hard. So you'll start that tomorrow."
"Yes, Uncle Vernon," Harry muttered through clenched teeth.
"Vernon dear, I think he should do the dusting as well. After all, my allergies have been bothering me lately, and the dust doesn't seem to affect him at all." Petunia let out a very obviously fake sneeze and then smiled sickeningly at her husband.
"An excellent point, Petunia, darling, an excellent point indeed. You're to start the dusting tomorrow as well, boy."
"Yes, sir," Harry said, having to work very hard to keep his temper in check now.
"Oh, and boy?"
"Yes, Aunt Petunia?"
"You'll need to clean the bathrooms tomorrow."
"But I just cleaned them today!" Harry cried, and then quickly added, "Ma'am," after seeing a furious look cross his uncle's face.
"We're aware of that, however, you did a positively shocking job of it. Honestly, one would think that at some point during the nine months you are at that school every year they would teach you something as simple as cleaning a bathroom."
"I don't know why you're surprised, Vernon, dear. After all, you saw the people with the boy at the train station. That one man, what was his name, Reggie, Regis? Something like that anyway. The state of his clothing! Honestly, you'd think a grown man would be ashamed to leave the house looking as threadbare as he did that day. I was humiliated just to be seen talking to him, even if it was only by THOSE people."
That was enough. Harry was about to yell at them for insulting Professor Lupin as even a fool could see he was ten times the person any of them would ever be, when something happened that made him forget the entire conversation had ever happened.
A loud pop sounded and suddenly there was a very shocked looking young woman lying in the middle of the table being stared at by three very shocked looking Dursleys. Vernon stared at her, his mouth opening and closing several times and saying, "Wha, Wha, What?"
"The phrase you're looking for is, 'What in the hell just happened?'" the woman said, sliding off the table. She craned her head around to look at the state of her clothes where she had landed and grimaced. "Ugh. I love broccoli as much as the next girl, but I never wanted to WEAR it." She turned to Harry then and smiled, causing him to blush and say, "Er, Hi. I'm,"
"Harry, I know. Do you really think I came all this way for them?" she waved a hand dismissively in the general direction of the Dursleys and grinned again, this time sticking her hand out for Harry to shake. "I'm Cordelia Chase, your new guardian. I'll explain more after I get cleaned up. Would you please show me where the bathroom is?"
Petunia found her voice then. "Absolutely not. I will not have one of you, you PEOPLE using my bathroom!"
"Oh, boy. I can tell already that my issues with you are well founded. Poor Harry, growing up with 'you people,'"
Petunia let out a strangled gasp when Cordelia's food covered backside plopped into one of her immaculate chairs, but after a glare from the strange woman, she didn't say anything.
"Everybody sit down, you too Harry. You and I are going to have a little chat with Family Dearest here."
Harry had absolutely no idea why he did what she asked, but he did. He was intrigued by this woman, and even though a large part of him was screaming that he should know better than to trust strangers by now, he wanted to get to know her. Then, with a flash of annoyance, Harry realized she was probably just someone the Order had assigned to watch him without telling him, like they had with Mundungus Fletcher last year. That made sense, it would explain how she knew so much about him. Although that didn't explain why she had (apparently) fallen out of the ceiling.
"All right, first of all, the introductions. As I said, I'm Cordelia Chase. I know who you three are. Now, there's someone else I'd like you to meet. This is Harry Potter. That's right, he has a name, it isn't Boy, You There, and it most definitely is NOT Harry-rella. So stop treating him like a maid. Do your own vacuuming, room cleaning, and dusting. Pfft. Allergies. Ever heard of a surgeon's mask? That'll keep you from dealing with dust too, you know." Then with a quick glance at Petunia's neck she added a quick, "Giraffe woman," under her breath. Harry heard her and let out a snort of laughter before he could stop himself.
"How dare you, you little tart!" Vernon exploded.
With that Cordelia lifted her feet from the floor and rolled them around in the meat loaf before slamming them down, standing up, and proceeding to stomp around the room until the entire floor was covered in mush and Aunt Petunia was practically sobbing.
"I dare because someone has to. If it were up to me, you two would be in jail, Fat Albert there would be in Juvy Hall, and Harry would be living with the Weasleys, or maybe Professor Lupin. By the way, while it's not something I support, the scruffy look is in now, so no more insulting his fashion sense. As if you should be talking anyway. Now, let's get a few things straight. I'm staying here until Dumbledore says Harry can leave for the summer, like it or not. If you do anything to him, even once, that I do not approve of, I will happily flood every room in this place until all your nice expensive carpet is your nice, cheap indoor swimming pool. Not to mention inform each and every one of your neighbors where Harry really goes to school." She smiled at the Dursleys then, but this time it was not the pretty, kind smile she had given Harry when she first arrived, but a cold, somewhat frightening one.
She turned to Harry then and said, "Lead the way to the bathroom, Boy Wonder, and then I'll explain what's going on." With that she swept out of the room, Harry following close behind. He couldn't help but laugh when she "accidentally" fell onto the sofa in the living room and rolled around until most of the food that had been left on her clothing now covered the once white fabric. "Oh, no," she said loudly. "My dirty self seems to have fallen on the couch and now I can't get up."
As Cordelia cleaned all of the food off of her clothes Harry tried to think of something to say. The best thing he could come up with was, "Would you really flood the house like you said?"
"Absolutely. Normally I wound with words only, but after everything those horrible people have done to you, I couldn't resist a little fun."
"Everything? What all did Dumbledore tell you when he sent you here?"
"I've never even met Dumbledore. Someone else sent me."
Harry was speechless. She had seemed so nice. To him at least. She couldn't, COULDN'T be working with Voldemort. Then, as if she had read his mind she said, "Don't worry. Voldemort didn't send me either. The Powers That Be did. I'm what's known as an In-the-Flesher, although I'm trying to think of a new name 'cause that one's just stupid. I'm sort of like a guardian angel, except you can see me and I'm corporeal."
Harry couldn't help it. He laughed out loud. The poor woman was obviously crazy. She was a witch, that much was obvious. She must have escaped from St. Mungos somehow and apparated here. That explained why she had appeared from out of nowhere in the middle of the table with that loud pop. She probably read about him in the Daily Prophet, or maybe the Quibbler, and decided to go looking for the famous Boy-Who-Lived. He laid a hand on her shoulder and said in what he hoped was a comforting voice, "Now Cordelia, everything's going to be all right. You're safe. Why don't you wait right here while I go fetch Hedwig. I'll send a letter to St. Mungos and we'll have you back in your very own bed in no time at all."
Now she looked annoyed. "I don't need to go to the hospital. I'm your ITf, sent by the PTBs."
Harry decided it was probably best to humor her until he could get a letter to the hospital without her knowing. After all, she had to sleep sometime. So he smiled at her, "Of course you are. I bet you can even prove it."
"Of course I can," Cordelia snapped. This was going to be harder than she thought. She'd only been here about an hour and he thought she was crazy. "If I'm not who I say I am, then how do I know so much about you? How did I know that the Lazeleys wanted you to do all their housework?"
"Everyone in the wizarding world knows stuff about me from reading the Prophet. As for knowing about the cleaning, I don't know, maybe you were listening before you fell on the table. Maybe you silenced the pop when you first got here, listened for a while, tried to apparate again, messed up, and landed on the table."
She stared at him for a moment, taking all of that in, and then laughed. "You must have spent too much time with Moody, both of them, because that was the most paranoid thing I've ever heard. You're right though, I could have done that, if I was a witch. I'm not though. Just a seer, with a little extra oomph. What I told you was true, and I CAN prove it. I know things about you that you've only told your closest friends."
Harry was getting angry now. This was ridiculous. The woman was saying she knew him better than he knew himself, and he didn't like it one bit. He was still tempted to owl the hospital like he'd originally planned but at this point he wanted to prove to this woman himself that she was nothing more than a nutcase. "Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Like your first word wasn't Mama, or Da Da. It was Prongs. You said it one night, after you had a nightmare. You woke up screaming and when Petunia finally got you back to sleep you had a dream about a stag coming and carrying you away in its antlers to your mother. Like that stag was your Dad in his animagus form. He was unregistered, like Sirius, and Peter. I know the real story about Sirius Black. I believe it too. I know about the sorting hat almost putting you in Slytherin. I know about 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.' And I know about the prophecy."
"How, how. How?"
Cordelia smiled. "Glad to see I'm making an impression. Before the PTBs assigned me to your case they showed me your life so I would care about you, and it would be easier to talk me into coming to you instead of staying and watching over my friends. First lesson about the Higher Powers, Harry: they're manipulative little bastards . Trust me when I say I know you better than anyone in the world does, except MAYBE you. The PTBs know you're going to kill Voldemort and I'm here to help you to the best of my ability."
Harry's mind was whirling a mind a minute and he was trying very hard to grasp any of what she'd just said. So he grasped at the one thing that made even a little sense. "The prophecy doesn't say I'm going to kill Voldemort. It says one of us has got to kill each other. He could kill me."
"No, he can't. Well, he could, but I absolutely refuse to let it turn out that way. He's evil. He must die. You've got to make up your mind that when the final showdown comes it's going to go your way. In my experience, believing a prophecy has more to do with what happens than the actual prophecy. I'd give you my full prophecy lecture, but I don't feel like it now. Remind me later."
"I think I might believe you now. I don't know why exactly, but I do."
"Good, and I'll tell you more later, to make you really understand, but right now it's getting late and we need to get some stuff if I'm going to stay here. I'll need an air mattress, since there's no guest room. The PTBs didn't give me any other clothes either, so I'll need some of those. We might as well get you some that actually fit as well, since we're shopping anyway. Ooh, I feel giddy. I haven't been shopping in way too long."
They headed downstairs again and Cordelia told the Dursleys of their plans.
"Absolutely not! You are not staying in my house, girl," Vernon thundered.
"What in the hell do you have against names, Dursley? I. Am. Cor. Del. Ia. And I believe we all ready established that I'm staying here until Dumbledore says Harry can leave. Now, we are going shopping. Harry needs new clothes."
"We're not spending any more of our hard-earned money on that little brat. Not to mention, he isn't allowed to go out alone."
"One more warning, and then I start flooding rooms. His name is Harry. Don't you worry your tiny little brain about money. The people who sent me gave me plenty to take care of both of us. And he won't be alone, I'll be with him, and believe me when I say, I can take care of both of us. Besides, I wasn't asking your permission, I was just trying to be polite. I won't do it again."
Cordelia turned on her heel, grabbed Harry, and marched towards the door. She was reaching for the handle when it flew open and Dumbledore burst into the room followed by Kingsley Shacklebolt, a guilty looking Mundungus Fletcher, Tonks, and a very worried Remus Lupin. The group skidded to a shocked halt when they saw Cordelia and Harry standing there. She still had him by the arm and was scowling angrily while he was looking at her with an admiring grin.
Thanks to WhiteWolf3, immortalwizardpirateelfe-fan, sibling, Story Book, Ped, Dehlia, Damia- Queen of the Gypsi's, Lel, spacecatdet, and Sera for taking the time to review my baby here. You made my day, as well as inspired me to get the chapter to you a day or two earlier than planned. I appreciate it!
Next chapter: The last of the explainy chapters for a while. Harry has to do some fast talking to keep his new friend from being hauled off to Azkaban, Dumbledore finds himself fighting for the right to be in charge of Harry with the strange American woman, and Remus gets a shock when Cordelia explodes at the Dursleys on his behalf.