Harry Potter and the Emerald raindrop
AkashaWinters
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potterverse. Anyone who doesn't know that should be exiled to Mars. I only make exceptions for poor people in remote corners the world who cannot read and don't have the money to buy the over priced 1,000 page books. I'm not making any money from my poor attempt at fanfiction. Also for this page, Joan Aiken wrote A Necklace of Raindrops and I do not own any of the rights.
Chapter 4The Knight, his Horse and the Stable Lad
Harry woke to the feeling of sunshine on his face. He felt warm and comfortable and had no intention of getting up. That was until he heard a tapping on the window next to him. Slowly Harry opened his eyes, as the tapping became more insistent. Harry sat up and stretched as he looked as the window behind him and smiled when he was met with the site of Hedwig. He opened the window and let her fly in.
"Hey girl got bored of the Burrow did you?" Hedwig pecked his hand and stuck out her leg. Harry untied the letter to find it was from Ron and Hermione.
Dear Harry,
Remus recently told us that you are staying with the Dursley's in Scotland for a week, I'm sure you're enjoying yourself there, from what Remus said your staying in a 14th Century Manor, how exciting! (Harry smiled at the idea of Hermione jumping up and down with excitement over an old building, even if it was a really nice old building.) We understand that Hedwig is supposed to be staying with us at the Burrow, but she was very uncomfortable staying with Pig who seems to be driving her up the wall. So we decided to send her to you, I'm sure she can find somewhere warm to stay near you.
Here the writing changed as Ron continued the letter
A lot has been happening recently, of course we can't tell you about it, (what a surprise!) but everyone's safe and well. Hope your enjoying yourself mate! You'll only have a week left to spend with the Dursley's when you come back, we asked Mum if you could come over for the last week but Dumbledore won't allow it, blood ties and whatever, (Harry growled, sometimes he REALLY hated Dumbledore!) really sorry mate. We'll see you at platform nine and three quarters on September the first.
Love from
Ron and Hermione
P.S. We have a Surprise for you, but we'll tell you on the train! (They've Finally got together, it took them long enough!)
Harry put the letter aside and let Hedwig out the window. It was fairly early still, yet it was very sunny and warm. Harry smiled and went to his wardrobe to find something to change into.
When he was dressed he quietly opened his door, not forgetting his wand (so he may be turning into Moody, but better safe than sorry), and exited his room and made his way from the flight of stairs that led down to the floor with the reception room. As he walked past Dudley's room he could hear heavy snoring, telling him that he had predicted correctly that the Dursley's were still asleep. On his way down to the reception room he passed a large grandfather clock in the hallway telling him it was almost eight O'clock.
After a quick breakfast of Toast with jam, bacon and orange juice, Harry decided he would explore the rest of the Manor and grounds. From what he could remember from the night before, he was now on the second floor. Exiting the reception room, Harry crossed the hallway and entered what appeared to be the upper floor of a library. Shelves surrounded the walls with a table in one corner and a fireplace in another. The whole room seemed to be like a balcony; there was a large gap in the centre with a railing around it and Harry could see all the way down to the ground floor when he peered over the barrier. This library was only slightly smaller than the one in Hogwarts, Harry thought. He looked up; the ceiling was solid above him. That must be the visitor library he remembered form the night before. Leaving the library Harry wandered down the hall to the only set of doors left. Pulling them open, he ascended some steps then gasped in surprise. He was looking at a swimming pool. A swimming pool! It was huge, with a walk way all around and an island with a table and palm trees in the middle. Windows surrounded the whole room it was almost as if you were outside, only very high up. The water was completely still and very blue, Harry smiled; wait 'till Ron hears about this.
Deciding to leave the pool for a later date, and thanking his aunt for making him pack an old pair of shorts to use as swimming trunks, Harry left the pool and made his way down to the first floor. Here, Harry discovered the upper level of a lounge, like the library it had a balcony section, only in one corner, so you could look down into the lounge area below. Harry suddenly wondered where Sir Michael and Lady Caroline were, he hoped he wasn't intruding, but it was all open and no one was about. Harry entered the hallway again, ignoring the room opposite him, as he already knew this to be the library, Harry continued down the hallway the suddenly stopped when he noticed the blue rope loosely hanging across the hallway clipped to gold poles on either side of the hall. Harry took the hint, so that was where the residents where Harry thought glancing over the doors ahead. Retreating back to the stairs Harry descended once again until he finally reached the ground floor.
On his left was the lower lounge he had seen from the balcony and on his right the bottom of the library ignoring those rooms he continued on. The left wall had no doors on it here and Harry could only guess this was a private room and could only be entered by one of the resident's private rooms. Ahead of him where those intricately carved oak doors, which the Butler had told him, was the entrance to the Dinning hall.
Harry hesitated, would Sir Michael and his wife be having breakfast in there? Too curious to turn back Harry cracked a door open. The room was huge with a table almost as big as one of the house tables, across the room was a pair of doors, which presumably led to the gardens. He could see that there were two people in the room, both were sitting at the nearest and of the enormous table with their backs to him.
The Man, who was nearest to him seemed very tall, even though he was sitting down, he had black hair and was wearing a dark purple suit, Harry cringed remembering Professor Cardiné's choice of clothes. His wife was mostly obscured from Harry's sight, but she seemed to be wearing some sort of white dress with purple flowers on that matched her husband's suit. There really were a perfect match for the Dursley's, Harry thought.
Gently closing the door so he would not be noticed, Harry turned to the final door and pulled one of its double oak doors opened Harry froze. It was a huge kitchen and there was movement everywhere, it was almost like the kitchen at Hogwarts, only smaller, without magic and with Human staff instead of Houselves. Not all of the staff were cooks and few seemed to be cooking at the moment, every so often Harry would see a maid disappear and reappear with washing from a room Harry could only guess housed the washing machines. Next to that was some kinds of food storage room were servants were unpacking food and storing them away ready for the guests tomorrow.
"Can I help you Mister?" Harry jumped at the question that had come from his right. A friendly middle-aged woman was standing next to him holding some cleaning equipment.
"Um, I was looking for the backdoor." Harry told her a little overwhelmed by the movement in the room. The lady smiled at him.
"Straight across," she gestured to a pair of doors on the opposite side of the kitchen. "If you follow the path round to your left you'll come the back gardens. Don't get lost." She gave him a wink and left to continue with her work.
After an hour or so of exploring perfectly kept gardens with magnificent water features and getting lost more than once in a maze, Harry made his way onto the gravel road that divided the gardens into two and gazed up at the manor, he wondered weather the Dursley's were up yet, he had no watch on so had no idea what the time was but he knew it was still fairly early maybe half nine at the latest. Behind him stood the small group of trees that separated the formal gardens from the stables and fields they had passes through on their way to the manor. Harry could only presume that Sir Michael owned the stables as well as the land around them, the grounds were connected after all. Harry wondered if he would be welcome there, the butler had said he was welcome to explore the grounds, deciding this invitation also extended to the stables, Harry made his way to the group of trees ahead.
Harry rounded the corner and arrived at the stables, the buildings seemed to be a lot bigger in daylight and there were more of them too. Harry opened the gate that had not been shut the night before and walked into the yard, remembering to close the gate behind him. Harry noted, that unlike last night there were horses in the stalls and people were walking around the yard. There was a room filled with leather saddles, brooms buckets and other equipment Harry didn't recognise next to him, on his left on his left were some stalls with horses in them and across from his were more stalls with horses, the whole thing was like a very large square. A boy about Harry's age in a tatty old t-shirt and fairly dirty riding trousers and leather boots approached Harry.
"You got a ride next? You look a little lost, I can find out for you." The boy said kindly, he had brown messy hair, not unlike Harry's and blue eyes.
"Oh, no. I'm staying at the manor this week, I was just looking around." Harry told him, Harry looked at the boy more closely, all the other workers here where wearing blue t-shits with logos telling you they were working at "Great North Manor Stables", but the boy was not wearing the uniform, yet he seemed to be working here, maybe he was only working for the summer.
"In that case your welcome to come and ride for free, as long as we have a free horse." The boy told him. Harry was a little shocked, he had only ridden a horse once, when Dudley had been taken horse ridding (when he was still light enough to ride one), Dudley had wanted to see Harry fall off and had ordered his uncle and aunt to book Harry a session, to Dudley's disappointment, Harry had been fairly good and failed to fall off, which of course earned him a punch later. Apart from that, Harry had not ridden since, with the exception of the Theastrals and a Hippogriff.
"Oh, I can't ride." Harry quickly told him, "I was just having a look around, I don't have that much to do."
"Well you can always help me." The boy told him smiling, "don't worry you won't have to muck out stables or anything, you're a guest, besides that's what the Stable workers are for."
"Your not a stable worker?" Harry asked confused.
"No. I'm with the gypsy's. Mr Wood lets us stay on his land as long as we don't cause any fuss and he's asked me to sort a few of his horses. My name's Jacob," He said.
"Harry," Harry replied with a warm smile, he was beginning to like this boy. Jacob gestured for Harry to follow him. He pointed to the stalls on their right.
"Those are the private stalls," he explained. "They house the horses that are ridden by Mr and Mrs Wood; they're also ridden by some of the workers but not the people who come here to ride." He pointed o the first horse, a beautiful white horse with a really long mane. This is Apollo; he's an Arab dressage horse, won quite a lot of things." Harry copied what Jacob did and rubbed the horse's nose, then they moved on.
"This is Ysabella, Bella for short, she's a Lusitano, Mrs Wood rides her, and she's quite good at dressage." Harry gave this horse's nose a rub too, if whickered at him and rubbed him back. "She likes you!" Harry decided he liked the orangey-yellow coloured horse too. Harry noticed that the other two stables were empty.
"That's Maddy's stable next to Bella's, but she's being schooled at the moment." Harry had no idea what this was, but nodded in agreement. "And that's Pasco's stall but he doesn't like closes spaces, he's till half wild so we keep him in an indoor paddock during the day. He's a Mustang, that's the one Mr Woods asked me to train." Harry had heard of the name Mustang, but he thought it was a type of car, shrugged and followed Jacob.
"You wanna go meet him?" Jacob asked brightly. Harry couldn't help smiling, Jacob's smile lit up his eyes and made him look so enthusiastic.
"Sure," he replied.
"This way."
Jacob and Harry walked towards the left of the yard where there was a gap between the tack room and the other stables. It led into a large covered hall made of white stone. On the left were small straw covered spaces that held horses, each separated by a low stone partitions and tied to a sliding rope. Workers were grooming the horses and putting saddles onto them. On his right there were two large indoor rooms with sand on the floors and stalls in the corners, there were wooden fences with gates to stop horses getting out. The first room was empty but in the second a grey-brown horse was walking around.
"This is Pasco's Paddock. "Jacob explained opening the fence and letting himself in. "Stay here, I'll just go get him." Jacob slowly approached the horse, which seemed fairly nervous. He had a long rope in own hand and was slowly reaching out for the horse's head harness and clipped the end of the rope to it.
"Good boy," Jacob told him, gently rubbing the horse's neck.
Jacob took the horse out of the paddock and into and school a the end of the Hall, Harry knew it was called a school because it had the name "East Indoor School" written on a white plastic board attached to the wooden fence, opposite it was another school marked "West Indoor School", well that seemed logical, thought Harry. All this new information was rather overwhelming, but Jacob was making Harry feel welcome and he decided he rather liked the boy.
Jacob made the horse walk round them in a large circle and then trot and then change direction, While explaining to Harry what he was doing. "You see, because he's still half wild he doesn't understand normal signals and he's not used to being around people and different horses. He's fairly used to me now, but he'll throw a right strop if anyone else tries to handle him, so I'm trying to get him used to other people. He seems to like you, normally he's not too happy with other people, you see horses are very sensitive creatures they can sense emotions and feelings, though most people don't understand that. Horses are very magical creatures.
Harry thought about what Jacob had said. He was right, horses were magical, of all the non-magical creatures out there, horses were related to the most magical creatures, there were theatrals, unicorns, and hippogriffs and there were probably more. Hippogriffs were very sensitive to emotions as well.
"Just like hippogriffs." Harry said absently. Jacob gave him a knowing look.
"Yer, just like hippogriffs." He said smiling. Finally, Jacob let Pasco come to a halt and took him back to his paddock. Harry had been mulling over what Jacob had said, it was as if Jacob had know about hippogriffs, Harry wondered if maybe Jacob was a wizard, but if he was, he didn't go to Hogwarts. Maybe he was home schooled? Then Harry remembered what Jacob had said about him being a Gypsy and Harry began to wonder if gypsies were magical. Not the loud-mouthed travellers, but the traditional gypsy's that worked wonders with horses, as Jacob seemed to do and rode round in brightly painted wooden wagons, if there really were any left.
"Jacob, have you ever heard of a place called Hogwarts?" Harry asked, knowing he could just tell him is was some village somewhere if he hadn't.
"Course I have," Jacob said smiling, and then asked Harry quietly "you're a wizard aren't you?"
"Yes," Harry replied. "Are you?"
"No. I'm a gypsy." Jacob replied his smile widening as if this explained everything.
"I didn't know gypsy's were magical." Harry replied surprised.
"Well, most wizards don't like us, you see. So I don't expect people talk about us much. Besides we're more like sorcerers than wizards, we don't use wands we use natural magic, which is why we're good with horses, we get on well. We're mostly not as powerful as wizards either or at least, that's what they like to think" Jacob explained.
"Why don't wizards like you?" Harry asked slightly confused.
"They don't understand how our magic works and because of that they're afraid of us, not all wizards mind you, just most. We keep to ourselves mostly, we travel about and look out for our own". As Jacob and Harry walked back towards the Yard where horses were being fed, he thought about what Jacob had said, surely such a stereotype could not have befallen the gypsies simply because the wizarding world didn't understand their magic, Harry was sure that there was more to it, but new when to drop a subject, he'd ask Hermione when he next saw her.
"It's lunchtime." He told Harry. "Would you like to come meet the rest of my family?" Harry smiled and nodded.
Slightly longer than the last chapters, but getting more interesting!Next Chapter…. Meet the Neighbours. We will meet Jacob's "family" and Harry and the Dursley's will have dinner with their hosts.