Chapter Summary: Harri and Co establish themselves in their new home, both so similar yet so different than their own.
AN: Rowena: Hey y'all, long time no see. Blame life, it's a bitch. And I never promised regular updates for this fic, so I have no guilt about taking so long. I and Aeroza will have more to say in the end notes, so without further ado, enjoy!
When Harriet opened her eyes, she found herself looking up at a tarp ceiling and laying in a bed, indicating she was in one of the wizarding tents they had packed for the trip. She was once again so grateful for the eye correction potions she'd taken the year before to fix her sight, as she didn't have to scramble for her glasses as she sat up. Or at least attempted to, except Hermione was by her side and pressing on her shoulder so she'd not move too fast.
"Easy, Harri. You've been asleep for at least twelve hours, we don't need you getting dizzy. Remus!" She called through the doorway. "She's awake!"
Remus entered the room, and sighed with relief upon seeing her. "You worried us, Spitfire. Everyone else woke up a couple hours ago. Did Hermione tell you not to move?"
"She did." And Harri was starting to understand why, as she realized her whole body felt numb, aside from a minor prickling in her fingers and toes. Hermione maneuvered her to a seated position with pillows, and Harri asked "Is everyone alright?"
"We're all fine. Sirius is grabbing dinner and some more information, but we did some scouting around earlier. We're still on Earth, in a town called Tranquility, Nevada, USA. The date is July 7th, 2006."
"We skipped over ten years!?" Harri asked, shocked at the thought.
"I know, we reacted about the same. There also doesn't seem to be a magical society here, as no one has contacted us regarding underaged or prohibited magic."
"We should still keep a low profile about magic though," Hermione cautioned. "Just because there's no authorities to enforce it doesn't mean it's not a good idea."
"You're no fun, Hermione," Harri teased, then looked back at Remus. "What's our next move?"
"We're currently in an abandoned warehouse, but the plan is after we eat we'll get a hotel," Remus said. "We've also been working on our cover story. What we've come up with so far is that Sirius is your father, while Hermione and Neville are your cousins by his brother, Luna is my daughter and Ron and Ginny are my sister's kids. Our families were all good friends, and there was a series of family tragedies that had us decide to move to America for a new start. Once we sort out our documentation, we'll look for a house, then figure out work for Sirius and I, and school for you kids."
Harri nodded, as it sounded like a good plan. It got the most important things out of the way, and it took away the explanation of why a bunch of unrelated teens were with two unrelated adults. And thinking of Sirius as her dad… it brought a small grin to her face, as did the fact she could feel and wiggle her toes again."
"Seems you're healing faster than the rest of us," Remus commented. "It took me and Sirius twenty minutes to be able to do that."
"Maybe you're just old," Harri teased, as Hermione went out to tell the others Harri was awake and recovering fast.
A half hour later, Harri was able to move without any tingling or pain, and Remus ran another scan that confirmed she was fine, so they walked into the living room, where Sirius was dropping McDonalds bags on the coffee table. When he sat on the couch, she sat next to him.
"So, I hear you're my dad now?" she asked.
"If you want, Stormcloud," Sirius said. "We haven't made anything official yet, so we can claim that Hermione is my daughter and you and Neville are twins- Omph!" He was cut off by Harri wrapping her arms around his middle.
"You've been like a dad to me this whole past year, and I'm sure Mum and Dad would have no objections to you taking the title officially."
Sirius smiled and hugged Harri back, tears pricking his eyes, then he sat back up. "Well, all of you eat up, we've got a lot to get done in the next few days."
The teens listened and fell onto the bags of fast food. With the exception of Hermione and Remus, none of them had ever had the greasy wonder of McDonalds before, and were all surprised and impressed by how good it tasted. It was also rather funny to watch Harri chow down on three Big N Tasty burgers, as most would not expect the skinny girl to be able to eat so much.
While eating, they also had to sort out a problem Remus and Sirius had discovered while out. Remus picked up a bag of books and once the food bags were moved, placed them on the table. There were six in total, and all had a boy on the cover with black hair, green eyes and a lightning bolt scar, and the title Harry Potter.
"The last book of the series was released last year, and the author is working on the last one," Remus explained.
"What are these?" Hermione asked, picking up one with the full title 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'.
"From what we gathered, they're stories if Harri had been born as a boy," Sirius said. "Each one seems to cover a year of Hogwarts, are named after something important to each year and they were written by a woman named JK Rowling."
"But we went after the Philosopher's Stone, not the 'Sorcerer's' one," Ron commented, looking over Hermione's shoulder at the book.
"And that looks nothing like me or Ron," Ginny added, pointing to the redheads on the back cover of 'Chamber of Secrets'.
"It seems as far as this world knows, these are works of fiction," Remus said. "So, they likely won't entirely match the events as we remember them, even without taking into account that our Harri is a girl.
"There's also movies," Sirius added. "The fourth one - Goblet of Fire - came out last fall."
"We'll need to watch them as soon as possible," Luna said, her voice taking the distant tone that meant she was having a vision, even as she looked down at the thickest of the books, 'Order of the Phoenix'. "And find a good mind healer, for all of us, long before then."
"Good to know, Luna. Thank you." Remus placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.
"So I'm guessing we can't use our actual names, can we?" Neville asked, turning over 'Half-Blood Prince' in his hands. "I mean, since we want to keep our magic under wraps for now, right?"
"People would recognize my scar though," Harri said, finally snapping out of the daze seeing the books put her in. "It seems the most prominent feature of… the other Harry."
"Your bangs and some makeup will cover it for the moment," Sirius said. "And once we're settled I'll see about making you some rune charms to help hide it. Probably a couple different ones, so you aren't wearing the same necklace or earrings every day."
"As for names," Remus said, "I think we can get away with using our first names, but we'll need to change most of our last names." He thought for a moment. "You four could probably get away with being Blacks," he nodded towards Harri, Sirius, Hermione and Neville. "Laugh off the odd coincidence of Sirius's name and most won't think twice about it."
"What about everyone else?" Hermione asked.
"Papa Remus and I will take one name, and Ron and Ginny another," Luna said. "Maybe something with the same starting letters, but reversed?"
"Or maybe steal the names of the actors playing us in those movies," Ginny suggested. "They've got our identities, only fair we take part of them back."
"Let's eat before we brainstorm some more," Sirius said. "We get better ideas when we're fed."
They did eat, and when they had finished, they decided that Remus and Luna would take the last name Lewis, while Ron and Ginny would be Wrights. After that, they worked on other little details until it got late, and then they all went to bed.
The next day, they got to work establishing themselves in their new world. Remus and Sirius used some spellwork to forge documents solidifying their cover story, then with some minor confusing of officials, they got it expedited, and when they left the appropriate bureau, Sirius, Harriet, Hermione, and Neville Black, Remus and Luna Lewis, and Ronald and Ginny Wright were dual British-American citizens.
Afterwards, they stopped by a newspaper stand and grabbed a bunch of housing listings before checking into a nearby hotel. They got a three room suite, so they could all stay together, and spread out through the main room to look through the listings.
An hour into this task, Ginny gave an excited shout. "I think I found something!" She spread the magazine on the coffee table in front of her, the other gathering around.
It was two listings, side by side, for neighboring houses. One was a two story, four bedroom, three-and-two-half bath with a half-finished basement and backyard shed, the other a two story three bedroom, three bath, with a finished basement and an inground pool. There were ten foot privacy fences around the outside of both properties, but only a four foot one with a gate in the middle on the side facing each other. As well, each house had their own two car garages, and all in all would be plenty of room for six teens and two adults.
"I think you struck gold, Ginny," Remus said, smiling. "Sirius and I can make the offer on the houses, and once the sale is settled, we'll move in."
"And we've got three weeks until the full moon, so we'll have plenty of time to set up a warded room or find an isolated cabin to spend it in," Sirius added.
"And while you do that, I'll help everyone figure out where we need to pick up in muggle education so we don't stand out too much," Hermione said, closing her housing listing.
"Do we have to, 'Mione?" Ron whined, and ducked when she went to swat him and started a lecture on the importance of education, while the others laughed.
Hermione's task kept the six teens busy for the week it took to close out the sale on both houses, as she dragged them to bookstores and electronics stores to get textbooks and computers, as well as TVs, video/DVD players, and game consoles as perked their interests. She was hopeful that, with some hard work, she could get them up to a high school level non-magical education within a year.
At the same time, Remus and Sirius worked on solidifying their presence in this world, opening bank accounts and making contacts with needed people, like a lawyer and the realtors. They also bought a van, just barely big enough to seat everyone, so they could actually drive around (a skill that Remus thankfully had, even if he had to get used to driving on the right side of the road).
Once the houses were closed on, Sirius, Remus and Hermione went over in the middle of the night and laid down wardstones, at the primary and secondary cardinal directions of the on the borders of the property. Due to the fact they were the only magicals of this world (as far as they knew), the wards were not as extensive as they might have been. Mainly, they set down anti-ill intent wards and a variant of a Notice-Me-Not ward that wouldn't make people completely ignore the house or its occupants, but if the neighbors saw any odd lights or heard strange shouts, they would just assume it was typical teenage antics and move on. Sirius and Remus also put in two connecting doors in each house, one per floor disguised as closets, so they could just walk across instead of having to go in and out of the houses.
Once those were set, the next day the travelers moved into the houses. And both were just as advertised in the listing.
The three bedroom house, decided to be the guys' house, opened from a covered front porch into an open-floor foyer, dining room, great room, and kitchen, with the master bedroom suite to the right, which Sirius and Remus took. Off the kitchen was a short hall that led to the half-bath, the garage, and a mudroom that led out to the backyard's deck, which in turn led to the pool, as well as the stairs up to the second story. Right at the top of the stairs was a bedroom with an ensuite, then a second bedroom and bathroom down the hall. The second bedroom had an attic storage space that, with some renovations, could make an excellent greenhouse, and so Neville claimed that for his room, giving Ron the other room. Next to Ron's room was also an additional room over the two car garage that served well as a dueling room. Back downstairs, the stairs down to the finished basement were also in the kitchen, and the layout was such that Sirius immediately declared it to be a recreation area, and already had plans on what to put down there.
The four bedroom house, decided to be the girls', had a less open and almost mirrored plan, with the foyer being closed with the dining room to the right and the great room straight ahead. The master suite was on the left, and Hermione, Ginny and Luna insisted Harri take it, despite her protests. To the right of the great room was the kitchen, which connected to the dining room by a short hall holding a butler's pantry and the garage and laundry via a mudroom, which also held the half-bath. In the middle of this was the stairs, an open staircase up to the second floor and a closed one down to the unfinished basement. On the second floor, the stairs gave an overlook to the vaulted great room, and stopped directly in front of one of the bedrooms. It and the one next to it shared an ensuite bathroom, while the bedroom around the corner from the stairs had its own private ensuite. After some discussion, Hermione took the private ensuite bedroom while Ginny and Luna took the shared ones. There was also an attic space, which Hermione's first instinct was to turn it into a library. No one argued with her about it, so all the book trunks were set in there for the time being.
They spent that first day in the houses cleaning, which even with magic took a while to get done, and when they did finish, they started on furniture, though only enough to furnish their rooms and the main floors of both houses. Then Sirius and Remus called it a good days work, and they ordered pizza, having a small part to celebrate their move.
Later that night, hours after everyone had gone to bed, Harri awoke to the feeling of cold breath on her face. She opened her eyes, and froze stiff at seeing a woman laying in bed next to her, their faces close, and smirking. When she saw Harri was awake, the smirk turned into a sharp-toothed grin.
"Hello Harri Potter. It's nice to finally meet you."
Harri jerked away from the woman, hard enough that she would have fallen off the other side of the bed, if not for the woman catching her arm and pulling her back on it.
"Oh, Hades, you mortals spook so easily. It's kind of adorable." The woman laughed, and Harri scooted up to sit at the head of the bed away from her, hand reaching for her wand.
Now that she could see the woman properly, she could see she was not too much older than Harri, definitely no older than twenty, with pale hair and skin that seemed to glow faintly in the moonlight coming from the window. In contrast, her angular eyes were like black pits, and she wore lipstick and a grecian dress almost the same color, with flowy elbow length split sleeves, and a silver brooch of a line inside a circle inside a triangle pinned to the cinched empire waist.
"Who are you!?" Harri asked, ignoring the burdening of her cheeks as her hindbrain realized both how attractive the woman was and how close together they had been laying moments ago. "How did you get in my room?"
The woman gave a slight laugh as she shifted to stand on the bed, looming over Harri with hands on her hips, a glint in her eyes and still wearing that grin. "I've been here ever since you dragged me when you left your old world for this one. Thank you for that, it was as boring as a senile old man."
"Wh-what are you talking about? Who are you?" Harri was half a second away from hexing the woman and dashing for the connecting door. She'd make sure to be loud too, to warn the other girls so they could get out.
"I am the one you should fear, and the one you can't run from," the woman said. "I am the harvester of souls, and the one who would easily take you away - if I get paid to. I am the Grim Reaper: Melinoe Kira!" She spread out her arms, and lightning flashed twice in the window, as if to add dramatic effect to the statement.
Harri blinked, then jumped off the bed away from Melinoe. "Look, whoever you are, stay back, and get out of here, cause I'm not in the mood to be-" The room's temperature instantly dropped without warning and Harri froze in place as the woman glowered at her, her shadow growing behind her until it seemed to overtake the room.
The woman's eyes seemed to burn as her voice gained an echo as she spoke. "Do you doubt me? I told you who I was, Mortal. And if you won't take things seriously-" she lowered an arm, closing her hand with a sickening crack and when she opened it, a ball of raw magic, dark and chaotic and denser than anything Harri had ever seen or felt before, was seen easily, "Then I can imagine you won't like my response to that."
Harri gulped and hastily shook her head. Melinoe dismissed the ball, and in an instant the room went back to how it was before, while the Reaper grinned at her. "Alright then. Now that I have your attention, Mortal-"
"It's Harri," Harri interrupted, which was probably not the best thing, but she'd been tired of being called things other than her name for close to a year now, and she wasn't going to let even a powerful being like Melinoe get away with it.
Luckily, Melinoe just blinked a few times, then shrugged and carried on. "Alright, Harri then. Now, as I was saying, I have a bone to pick with you about some things." She sat at the foot of the bed and patted the covers next to her. "Sit down, it's gonna be a long story."
Harri was suspicious, but slowly made her way back to the bed, sitting up by the headboard once more, and keeping her wand in hand.
Once she was settled, Melinoe started on her tale. "Alright, so, I won't go into the whole spiel- mainly cause it no longer matters to you, but basically, most if not all of the gods of various pantheons and mythos existed back in your old world. Sometimes they were one god with different names across cultures, other times they only existed in one. Regardless, they were real, and they'd sometimes recruit mortals to help them out."
"Way way back in the day, I was a normal Greek peasant girl who had some magic, and then I died. How is unimportant, just that I did. When I died, Thanatos and Hekate, God of Death and Goddess of Magic, took a liking to me, and decided to recruit me as a Grim Reaper. I lost my old name when I died, so I took the name Melinoe to replace it, and in turn, inspired the goddess of the same name- that was a trip to learn, and after spending some reaping in Japan, I took Kira as my last name.
"Now, as a Reaper, I'm not bound by the mortal passage of time. Each Reaper is given a list of souls they have to reap, and those souls aren't always in chronological order. So, each Reaper has an hourglass that lets us bounce around the timeline." Melinoe held up a hand and a shadowy hourglass appeared hovering over it. It almost reminded Harri of a Time-Turner in design.
"Yes, the idea for a Time-Turner was copied from this one. The dude who made it had a near-death experience. Anyway, once a Reaper completes their list, they in turn also die, so there's only a few hundred of us left, which keeps us busy. Now, I was there in the Death Chamber cause I was supposed to collect part of a soul, one you know very well: Tom Riddle. But-"
"Wait, there was a horcrux in the Death Chamber?" Harri interrupted. "Where?"
Melinoe gave her a look like she was stupid. "Um, it was you, dummy. Your scar." Melinoe tapped her forehead, and Harri instinctively reached up for hers.
"But- how?"
Melinoe shrugged. "Beats me. Best I can guess is part of his soul broke off when he tried to kill you as a baby and latched on for some reason. Either way, his soul was on my list, so I had to be there to collect the piece in you. Should have been an easy grab, since jumping through the Veil normally kills all evil. But something messed up, and instead of scraping up some nasty rotten soul off the floor on the other side, I got sucked in with you guys. I would have been stuck in the Veil too, but luckily I managed to latch onto your soul, and got flung out with you guys. Well, if by 'with', you mean 'halfway across the ocean'. Took me this long to get back to you so I could explain it all."
Harri sat there, blinking as she tried to process everything. She thought she managed to wrap her head around the most important parts: Melinoe was a Grim Reaper, who had gotten dragged along when they jumped through the Veil and was "bonded" to Harri, whatever that meant.
"What happened to the horcrux?" Harri asked. "Is it still in me?"
"Pfft, no, don't worry about it." Melinoe twisted her wrist, and the shadow time-turner was replaced with a marble that looked like it held black smoke. "I sucked it out when I latched on. Now little Tom is stuck in this." She held it out to Harri. "I'd put that away for safekeeping. I don't think he'll be able to do anything if that breaks and he gets free, but better safe than sorry, yah?"
Harri took the marble, and felt her hackles rise at the same time as her Slytherin magic rose up, smooth scale brushing against the dark mist. She placed the marble in her nightstand drawer, and promised to look into a box for it soon.
That taken care of, she turned back to Melinoe. "So what does you being 'bonded' to me mean?"
Melinoe leaned back on her hands. "Basically? I can't leave you. Well, I can leave your company, I'm not stuck with you twenty-four-seven, but I can't go back to our old world unless you do - which, that's not gonna happen - or until you die." She punched her fists in the air. "Which means that I get an extended vacation, and Bob can't say shit about it!"
"Bob?" Harri asked.
"Bob the Reaper. He's one of the residential ones for this world, but he'll also pass messages across the universes, and he's a dick. His real name is something long and alien that I can never remember, so I just call him Bob." She cackled and drew her hands towards her chest as her legs kicked with glee. "He turns practically emerald every time, it's hilarious."
"I… see…" Harri shook her head. "So, since you're telling me this, I assume you're just going to be popping in and out every once in a while?"
"Naturally." Melinoe grinned at her, all sharp teeth again. "I may be popping in front of others that may pique my interest now and then, but you're stuck with me until your official death. And just so I am clear: I can and will come and go as I please, and if I appear randomly in the middle of anything, tough. And I suggest you hold your tongue for now about me until things settle down a bit, as I plan to only allow you to see me for a while, until I decide otherwise. Though that doesn't mean I won't be making my own fun with them either."
As if to prove her point, she twisted her hand, and a chocolate ice cream cone appeared in it, which she quickly swallowed in one bite, licking away the small bit that got on her lips with a forked tongue. Then she leaned over and booped Harri on the nose. "See you later, Harri Potter."
With that, she poofed into a large cloud of smoke, which Harri waved away, trying not to breathe it in, and she swore she could hear Melinoe's laughter echo in the distance.
She stared at the spot where the Reaper had been sitting, then sighed and fell back onto the bed, staring up at her ceiling. And she'd thought this new life was a chance for normalcy, for once.
"What even is normal anymore?" She asked no one, then decided to get back to sleep. Maybe in the morning she'd forget it all and think it was all a dream.
Aeroza AN: Well I thought it was fun, especially what we all now know why the Veil of Death really is. But now we have to see in the next chapter as to what will occur that the revealing of Reapers, and the future for the Harri Gang themselves, might happen?
Anyways, I still want to thank Rowena for letting me work with her on this story, and plan to do so. And if you could, please check our other works we have as well as for mine, well, I had to solo them all lol (with the exception of being aided for correction or ideas at times with Rowana, and a few others, but it's all me on my end). And I would also like to credit Rowana for all her hard work into her own stories as well.
So all in all, ty for being patient with us in this story, and you can expect more whenever we think the next chapters are ready.
Rowena AN: Indeed, how will having a Reaper who doesn't seem to play by the rules running around affect the lives of Harri and her friends? Who will they meet and befriend in Tranquility? Find out in the next chapter of Harri Potter and the Living Metal!
And yes, if you like this work, please check out Aeroza's and my other works.
EDIT 12/27/2021: Changed the date of the Travelers' arrival from 2005 to 2006, and adjusted their preparations accordingly to match the lunar calendar.
We'll see you all next time, don't know what time, but same Bot-channel!