The Discovery

"The Road Not Taken"
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Robert Frost

When she woke up the next morning in the guest room, Grace was surprised to see that her hair was still relatively nice looking. It hadn't tangled or frizzed or done any of the things her hair normally did. Maybe there was something to be said for blow-dryers after all …

No, Grace told herself sharply. Stop thinking like that. Grammy didn't like them, that should be good enough for you.

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After breakfast the family went their separate ways, Mr. Dursley to work, Mrs. Dursley out to her weekly bridge game, Dudley to meet with the rest of his friends, Sarah to her day camp, and Harry back up to his room.

Grace was left alone. She had nothing to do, nowhere to go …

So she sat in the living room, thinking. About the hard stuff. The stuff that makes your brain hurt.

About who she was.

She had always gotten into trouble at 137 Derkhall Lane. She was always rigging up devices that dumped water on the first person to open a door, always writing strange notes to people, always stuffing fake snakes and things into someone's trunk.

She hadn't done any of that here. At Derkhall Lane, she had been the troublemaker. Here she was … nothing to do, nowhere to go, no identity.

Grace sighed … this was going to be a long day.

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Grace made herself a sandwich for lunch and took it into the living room. She was feeling rebellious. As long as she didn't make crumbs, no one would ever know … right?

She sat on the couch, turned on the TV, and flipped through the channels … boring, boring, GROSS, boring … Her attention turned to a small, unused black cabinet in the corner of the room. No one seemed to pay any attention to what was in there …

She jumped off the couch, ignoring the voice inside her head that told her to stay. Grace tugged at the cabinet door, and it opened with a musty smell. It seemed she had been right. No one had bothered to look in there in years.

The cabinet was filled with old photos. Grace shifted through some of them, until she came to one and stopped, staring at it, hardly daring to believe her eyes.

Dudley. In a bathing suit. With … with a pig's tail drawn on …

She collapsed into giggles. Laughing hysterically, she flipped through the next few photographs. They were all pictures of a younger Dudley in a bathing suit, with pig accessories drawn on … she couldn't help laughing, he just looked so … so natural with them …

"What are you doing in there?"

Grace looked up, her eyes widening. She hadn't realized how much noise she'd been making. Harry was towering over her, glaring down harshly.

"Don't you touch those," he snarled, grabbing the pictures out of her hand.

Grace grinned up at him. "Oh come on, even you thought it was funny."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." She grinned infuriatingly up at the older boy. Harry made an impatient noise.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you'd have been in if one of the Dursleys had seen you with these?"

"No. But they are funny, aren't they?"

Harry looked for a moment as if he was trying not to laugh. He tried to stop himself, but eventually a grin escaped, almost identical to the one on Grace's face.

"Oh, all right, so it is funny."

Grace grabbed the photos back. "How'd that stuff get on there?"

"I drew it."

She almost dropped the pictures. "You WHAT!"

"I drew the pig ears and tail and things. A couple weeks ago."

Grace looked up at him, impressed. "Wow. Why?"

"Felt like it."

The two of them put the photos back into the cabinet and then shut it tight. "And you can't tell anyone about this, understand?" Harry said sharply.

"Sure," Grace said.

Harry stood still for a moment, looking down at her, contemplating. Then he said, "I'm hungry. You want to get some lunch?"

"Yeah." Grace picked up her forgotten sandwich and followed Harry into the kitchen.

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Several minutes later, both of them were settled at the kitchen table with three peanut-butter sandwiches apiece. They didn't do much talking. Grace still thought Harry looked kind of … sad.

Finally, she voiced a question that had been bothering her for a while. "Your last name's Potter, right?"

Harry looked surprised. "Yeah, didn't you know?"

"I thought you guys were all one family … and then a few weeks ago one of Dudley's friends called you 'Potter …'"

"Harry Dursley? You actually thought my name was Harry Dursley?"

"Yeah, I thought it was kind of stupid, but you never know …"
Harry threw back his head and laughed.

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That meeting had brought Grace so much closer to Harry. Until then he had seemed so cold, so distant, so removed from everything and everyone, as if he walked a different path from the rest of them. Grace was suddenly reminded of a poem her teacher had read once to the class last
year, "The Road Not Taken." The poet had been an American, but still …

Harry had seemed, before today, to have chosen a different path to walk down. And there was still something sad and strange about him, but after that afternoon, Grace began to see him more as a person, more human. He laughed more, he talked more, he did all of the normal things, but there was still something stiff in his laugh, in his voice, that said "I don't belong here."

It was this difference she had sensed that led Grace into Harry's room early next morning while he was taking his shower. She wanted more than anything to discover his secret.

Grace quickly pulled her hair back and set to work; she knew
she only had a few minutes before he got out of the bathroom. She pushed open the door and was shocked at the state of his room. The bed was unmade and there was a mess of books and papers on the floor. She hadn't thought Mrs. Dursley, a certified neat freak, would stand for anything like this in her perfectly cleaned house.

Trying to ignore the mess, Grace sifted through a huge stack of thick, yellow paper on his desk. She glanced quickly at each paper before carefully placing it aside. She had almost finished going through all the papers on the desk when something caught her eye.

It seemed to be a letter:

"…Here's something to make you laugh. This morning I drew pig tails, ears, and noses on Dudley in some old photos I found. He actually looks quite handsome. I think you would have laughed if you had seen them.

"A pig in a wig if there ever was one. Hah!

'Serves him right, he was picking on a bunch of little kids yesterday. Saw him out the window. Like Malfoy, only Malfoy's worse because he can use magic."

"What do you think you're doing in here?"

Grace looked up, pure terror on her face. Harry was standing in the open doorway, seething with anger. His wet hair was slowly dripping water onto his t-shirt.

"Who's Malfoy?" she asked.

"What? Give that back!"

He lunged at her. Grace danced out of his way, then sprinted out of the room and downstairs. "Who's Malfoy?" she called over her shoulder.

Harry took the stairs three at a time, then catapulted over the banister. She shrieked and fled to the kitchen.

"GIVE THAT BACK!"

"Tell me who Malfoy is and I will!"

"What is going on down here?" A new voice had joined the argument – Mr. Dursley.

Grace jumped up onto one of the kitchen chairs and stuck her tongue out at Harry. He gave a cry and jumped towards her, nearly knocking her down. Grace shrieked as the chair fell over.

Grace looked around her, panting. She was under the table. She could hear Harry's footsteps dancing around on top of the table.

"Get out of here and give me back my letter."

"Not until you tell me how you know Malfoy."

"Get off that table right this instant!"

Harry paid no attention to his uncle. "COME ON!" he screamed down at her.

Grace waited another half a second, then darted out from under the table and made her way back into the living room, Harry hot on her trail. Mr. Dursley followed the two of them, bellowing loudly. She could hear Sarah crying upstairs.

"Come and get it, Potter!" she teased, sticking out her tongue from where she stood – on top of the coffee table. Harry leaped over the couch in one bound. Grace screamed again and took off.

She ran back through the kitchen and out the back door. She shivered. She was wearing just her pajamas and slippers, and it was cold outside. She saw Harry lurking in the kitchen, just in front of the open door.

"Come on, then, Potter. If you want your letter come and get it!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. She saw Mrs. Dursley's frightened face in an upstairs window, but she didn't care what the neighbors thought.

"Don't be an idiot," he snapped from the doorway. "Get back in the house."

"Tell me who Malfoy is."

Mr. Dursley appeared in the doorway as well. "Get back in the house this instant!" he hissed. "Before the neighbors see you."

"I don't care what the neighbors think," Grace cried bravely. "I want to know who Malfoy is!"

"Will you come back inside if I promise to tell you?" This came from Harry, whose voice was muffled, since he was standing beside his uncle.

Grace considered a moment. A biting cold wind finally changed her mind. "All right," she said with as much grace and elegance as she could manage, and stalked serenely back into the house.

Mr. Dursley moved aside to let her in. Harry was standing behind him, he hand outstretched. With a smirk, Grace dropped the thick paper into his hand.

"Well?" she said expectantly.

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AN: How was that? Next chapter will be (of course) Harry's explanation of Malfoy and an even bigger discovery will come the chapter after that.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this story belongs to me except Grace, Sarah, 137 Derkhall Lane, and Grace's story. I was just having fun with JK Rowling's creations! The poem is the very famous "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.