Author's Note:
And here it is!
The first incarnation of the Prisoner of Azkaban!
I'm actually kind of excited for this one, because no one's read anything about it yet. It's totally new material regardless of how many of the previous incarnations of the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher's, this time around) or Chamber of Secrets people have read.
That said, there are a couple things I should probably warn some people about, though by this point I really think you should all already know about most of them.
First, though the rest of the stories have all had an element of material that wasn't in the books, I spent less time flipping through the Prisoner of Azkaban in this story than I've done in the previous two and this one will start to seriously deviate from the books themselves. The basics will, of course, still be there, but for the most part, the details will begin to veer away from canon.
Second, though it will be mentioned less in the second half of the story than the first, there are mentions of torture in this story, complete with rather detailed descriptions of it. I'll obviously be posting a warning for the chapter, but an additional heads-up can't hurt anyone.
Thirdly, I work hard for my money and have no intention of giving it up to some lawyer. I don't own a thing in the Harry Potter universe, but I do own the Valerians (not the name, apparently that showed up in a movie over the last decade or so. It was a surprise to me when I heard about it, but I don't own that either, apparently).
And finally.
The usual.
I write because I enjoy it. That doesn't mean that I feel I'm a 'professional' or that I'm great at it. I'm also human and make mistakes, though I try very hard to catch them before posting.
Having said all that, I expect, as do all people who post on this website, a modicum of respect for being brave enough to put anything out for people to see, read, and judge. Keep your negative comments - constructive criticism aside - to yourselves, but feel free to heap positivity on those who put themselves out there like this, be it me or someone else. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there like this and everyone should be commended for that.
Now.
The first of twenty-three chapters in
Harry Potter, the Valerians, and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Chapter One: A Better Birthday
Harry gets birthday presents from his friends, while Tarana and Petunia plan for the arrival of Marge Dursley, Vernon's sister. Tarana and Harry reach out to a potential ally for a new player at the Dursleys'.
Harry Potter, wizard-in-training, startled awake from a warm dream to a screech from his window.
At the foot of his bed, his guardian, laid out on the largest bed the local pet store had in stock - and wasn't that a trip, getting the Queen of Valeria a dog bed - grumbled, highly displeased.
Harry couldn't exactly blame her, given that it was currently five after twelve in the morning.
"Someone better be dying, to send a screech owl to a child's house at midnight," Tarana growled, low and threatening. "And if they're not, they will be shortly."
Harry, who had heard Tarana in almost every level of threatening that could possibly come from the definition over the years, was sure she was mostly teasing.
Mostly.
There was an angry tap on his window, more familiar and infinitely more welcome.
"Hedwig's home," he whispered, easing himself carefully out of bed and turning on the lamp, shade slightly scrunched where his cousin, an obese thirteen-year-old as of the end of June, had sat on it.
How the lamp had survived, Harry wasn't sure.
Given the screech that had woken he and his guardian, he was surprised the rest of the house wasn't awake and making it very known what they thought of Harry and his 'wizardry' - though the word his uncle was most fond of was 'freakishness' and that had nearly ended Tarana's cooperativeness before it had even truly begun.
Harry, for all that he was attending one of the best wizarding schools in the world, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, lived with the most magic-phobic muggles - that is, non-magical people - in all of England, his maternal relatives, the Dursleys.
As he slowly eased the window open and stepped aside, he gave the snowy owl sitting on the sill the same warning he always did.
"Stay quiet, Hedge," he murmured. "The Dursleys are sleeping."
Hedwig fluttered her wings, appearing very offended that Harry thought she needed the reminder, and glided to the desk, where she dropped her package before shuffling onto her cage, which doubled as her perch in Harry's small bedroom.
After her, was another familiar owl, this one an eagle owl that was every bit as pompous as his owner.
"Hey there, Archimedes," Harry murmured, offering his wrist for the owl to settle on.
Only once, last summer, had Archimedes attempted to shunt Hedwig off the 'perch'. It had been loud, and vicious, and had ended with feathers all over Harry's floor, three days without supper, and three death threats to his Uncle Vernon.
Archimedes hadn't tried it again, but Harry felt bad for the owl. It wasn't his fault that his owner, Draco Malfoy, was raised a pureblood - a witch or wizard with no muggles in their line for several generations - snob and it affected most of his belongings.
The owl settled on Harry's wrist, but the boy wasn't going to be able to hold him there long.
For all that Draco claimed not to believe in owls as pets, he certainly gave Archimedes enough liberties with treats and frozen - and likely not frozen - mice.
Harry is startled, however, when Archimedes isn't the last, or even second to last, owl to soar through his window.
Only one other is familiar to him, ancient and grey, Errol, the family owl of another of his friends, Ron Weasley, successfully makes it into the room, but somersaults and, by some sort of miracle, manages to land on the bed and not the floor, preventing what was likely a merciful snapping of the neck.
Tarana rolled her neck back to watch the acrobatics and sighed when the owl lay there, either stunned or unconscious, but still breathing. "That poor creature should have been put out of his misery years ago," she said, shaking her head. "And before you ask, no, you will not be opening them before dawn."
Harry squints at her, confused and still missing the Bond he'd had with her a little over a year ago.
Tarana's blue eyes softened as she watched him. "Happy Birthday, Harry," she told him. "I believe your friends wanted to make sure you enjoyed it this year, given the, ah, circumstances, surrounding your last one."
The Queen averted her eyes and Harry felt his stomach roll, even after a year.
His last birthday, and probably the reason that the day had rolled right over his head, had resulted in the death, temporary though it turned out to be, of Tarana, who had her throat ripped out by the-then-brainwashed King of Valeria, Arcana.
In the last month and a half, Harry'd had exactly nine nightmares of the event, and yes, he was keeping count.
"I forgot," he whispered. "Or maybe…I didn't want to think about it?"
"Understandable," Tarana assured him. "And I am sorry, cub. I didn't mean to cause you such pain."
"I know," Harry said, which was as close as he'd managed to get to an acceptance of her repeated apologies since the first one at the beginning of June, when the two were reunited in the middle of a bloody fight against a nine-hundred-year-old basilisk, a giant snake with the ability to kill with its gaze.
While Harry was depressing himself, Archimedes clenched his claws around Harry's wrist, drawing the newly thirteen-year-old out of his thoughts.
Harry raised his wrist to his shoulder and Archimedes, though he fluttered his wings as though offended, obediently stepped off Harry's wrist, freeing it to unwrap the parcel around Errol's leg and to gently urge the old owl upward and onto Harry's pillow for the moment.
Errol hooted quietly in thanks, hunkering down into the soft pillow as though nesting.
Once he was sure that Errol wasn't going to suffocate in his sheets, Harry pulled the parcel from Archimedes' beak.
"The desk, Harry," Tarana told him, amused, when the teen tried to put the gifts on his bedside table, where he might be able to sneak a peek into the cards if nothing else.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Come on, Tarana, it's my birthday!"
"And it will be your birthday when the sun is up, too," she told him. "Settle your guests in for the evening and return to bed. And keep the godforsaken screech owl quiet."
Harry turned back to his room and found the screech owl in question had made itself comfortable on the footboard of his bed, while a simple barn owl was sitting, patiently, on the windowsill. It didn't appear to be planning to stay as the others did, so Harry grabbed a couple of treats and went to it first.
In its beak was a familiar, thick, envelope.
Written in green ink was the, even now, eerily specific address for his residence, which alone was evidence enough that it had come from Hogwarts, the wax seal on the back, an 'H' with four, minuscule animals around it and a banner beneath it, not necessary.
Harry's smile said enough, as he took the letter and exchanged it for the palmful of treats.
"Tomorrow," Tarana told him again.
"But this one isn't a birthday present!" Harry argued.
"No," Tarana said simply.
Harry rolled his eyes but took a couple of steps to toss it onto his desk.
As soon as he moved away, the barn owl was winging out the window again.
The screech owl was unfamiliar and had dropped its package, almost as large as the one that Hedwig had brought him, on the ground only inches away from where Tarana was lounging, watching.
Obviously, the owl had no self-preservation, and Tarana was rapidly losing what little patience she had with it.
Harry quickly picked it up and added it to the pile on the desk and took stock of the owlery his bedroom had become in the last ten minutes.
"Seems like you've given away your bed and your pillow," Tarana told him.
Harry scowled at her, before pulling the blanket folded at the end of the bed off it and folding it until it would fit on his bedside table.
Moving the few odds and ends on it to the desk, Harry laid the blanket on it, smoothing it of any wrinkles.
Before he'd even stepped back, the screech owl had taken over most of it.
With a scowl, Harry nudged it over. "You don't get to be a brat," he told it. "You could have gotten me quietly killed with all that racket."
The screech owl, in addition to having no self-preservation, was also clearly an idiot, because as soon as Harry had turned to pick Errol up, the screech owl moved back to the center of the blanket.
Harry glanced at Archimedes on his shoulder.
"A little help?"
The eagle owl had clearly never had a request it was happier to fulfill.
Launching himself into the air, circled the bedroom, and swooped down on the idiot.
It flung itself into the air to avoid the larger owl, screeching.
Harry and Tarana froze, waiting for the bellow that signaled Vernon being roused against his will.
"If you have any sense of wanting to avoid being roasted," Tarana rumbled quietly when it became clear that the Dursleys, somehow, had slept through that racket too. "You will shut. Up."
Harry dropped Errol onto the left half of the blanket, leaving the right for the screech owl, then turned to open the top drawer of his desk, pulling it out entirely and setting it on the desktop.
The year before, Harry's entire contact with the wizarding world had been through Draco and Archimedes, the rest of his friends' letters being stopped in transit by, who it eventually turned out to be, one of the Malfoy house elves, Dobby, on the orders of either Draco's uncle, Nathaniel, or his cousin, and year mate, Katelyn. Because of the amount of time Archimedes had been spending going back and forth between Malfoy Manor somewhere in Wiltshire and the Dursley home in Surrey, Harry had converted the drawer into a makeshift nest, which he could hide whenever the eagle owl wasn't at the house.
Archimedes even had two saucers, taken from his aunt's least used china set, to serve as bowls during his stay, which were washed and hidden away in the drawer.
Currently, the eagle owl barely waited for Harry to pull the two saucers out of the drawer before he was settling himself comfortably - with a fair amount of sass if Harry could consider an owl capable of it - and pecking at the empty saucers now outside the drawer.
Harry clicked his tongue reproachfully. "Just because Draco lets you get away with pitiful manners like that," he reprimanded.
Archimedes clicked his beak at the human, demanding immediate food and water.
Hedwig puffed herself up, not at all pleased with their guests, and hooted imperiously at Tarana.
Tarana snorted. "I don't know what you expect me to do," she told the owl. "He's Fallen's problem child."
Harry snickered quietly.
It was hard to consider the no-nonsense General of Valeria's Army, and general grump, as having a problem child.
Hedwig, if possible, puffed herself up even more and turned her baleful look on Archimedes.
"I'm going to tell Fallen that Archimedes listens more to Hedwig than he does to him," Harry told Tarana gleefully, watching Archimedes shrink into his makeshift nest.
"You best be sure we're all in the room, boy," Tarana warned him, smirking. "That's a reaction none of us will want to miss."
Still grinning, Harry idly picked through the pile of gifts, but as the bottom of the pile approached, it slipped off his face.
"There's still nothing from Blaise," he told her worriedly, looking down at her.
Tarana sighed, turning away from him.
"It's not surprising," she told him. "Given the tension at home, it isn't likely that we'll be hearing from him before the start of school."
Harry sneered, an unfamiliar expression on his face. "Understatement," he spat hatefully to no one in particular.
And it was.
To call the homelife of Blaise Zabini 'tense' was like calling the sun 'a bit of light'. It didn't nearly encompass all that it actually was.
Desmond Zabini, the fifth-eighth-sixth - Harry couldn't remember, just that Blaise's mom had a lot of husbands before she'd settled with Desmond - husband to marry into the Zabini name and fortune, had been rumored to have killed Blaise's mother, and was more-than-a-rumor beating his stepson like a bongo drum, to coin the phrase of Ron's brother, Fred.
"To bed, Harry," Tarana told the boy, ignoring the comment for the truth that it was. "The sooner you sleep, the sooner you'll wake and be able to open those."
Harry looked out the window, as though expecting to see something from Blaise, or the Mansion in the Moors, before he climbed back into bed and turned the lamp off.
XX
In the darkness, Tarana waited until her charge's breathing had evened out again before she rolled to her paws, her dark from stretching and shifting in the dark shadows cast by the now, and still, open window.
The moonlight slipped over her form like a robe, the breeze slipping through her fur like a caress.
She was approaching the size and bulk that she'd been before her death and resurrection, but the recovery was slow going now that she was away from her hicari, the castor of the spell, and she hated every moment of it. It had been a long time since she'd been as uncomfortable in her flesh, new or old, as she was now.
Approaching the window, she braced her front paws on the sill looked outside, though the window didn't face the direction she wished it did, and even if it had the distance between Surrey and the Moors was too great.
'Yoko,' she said with the instinctive telepathically her kind was so known for, so as not to wake her sleeping charge, 'what's happening there?'
She closed her eyes as she said it.
Great though the telepathy of the Valerians was, that message would never have made it to the end of the block, let alone to the Moors.
Please. She sent into the Ether. Be safe, my friend.
She had a horrible feeling churning in her gut.
XX
Despite his late-night visitors, Harry was, somehow, awake before Tarana, an occurrence the teen could count on one hand.
It didn't last, of course, by the time he had climbed out of bed, grabbed the pile of gifts off the desk, and returned to his bed with them, the panther was watching him with narrow blue eyes.
"I wish I could say I was surprised," she murmured affectionately, before stretching to her paws and sitting at the side of the bed, so she could watch Harry unwrap his gifts.
"You said when the sun was up," Harry pointed out, tearing into the birthday card from Draco.
He wasn't surprised to find the blonde's neat calligraphy filling up almost the entire blank inner side of the card, warning him that he'd better see Harry putting his gift to good use.
Tearing into the present, Harry immediately ran his fingers over the leather-bound cover, his fingers finding the neat 'H.J.P.' that had been burned into the lower right corner.
As beautiful as it was though, he immediately had mixed feelings about it.
Though it was a different color and size, it was very similar to the leather-bound diary that had caused a great deal of drama, fear, and trauma the year before, by releasing a younger Voldemort, the dark wizard responsible for the murder of his parents, and allowing him to open the Chamber of Secrets.
He held it tentatively out to Tarana. "Is it safe?" he asked her.
Tarana gave him a dry look. "Given what the diary was responsible for," she said, following his train of thought even though they weren't Bonded yet (or was it again?). "Do you honestly think Fallen hasn't had it thoroughly checked?"
Harry smiled, though it wasn't much of one, more a twist of his lips.
It became more real as he opened the front cover, which flipped up instead of to the side as it appeared to.
"It's a sketchbook!" he breathed, flipping the blank pages as though something would magically appear on them.
The back cover of the book had a list of enchantments, and their basic functions regarding the sketchbook, written in crisp black ink. There were artistic swirls in a variety of colors to add substance and vibrancy to the 'page'.
"It has three hundred pages packed in here!" Harry cried, flipping through the pages again. It still didn't seem like three hundred blank pages of drawing paper.
Tarana tilted her head, watching her charge's enthusiasm with an indulgent smile.
"It must have cost him a fortune," Harry breathed, flipping the book closed again and running his fingers over his initials.
Tarana smirked.
The Malfoy family was among the richest and most influential of the English Wizarding Community.
A 'fortune' was rather negotiable.
"Don't break out your pencils just yet, cub," Tarana told him, "you have other friends with other gifts."
Harry needed to physically shake himself to stop staring at the expensive gift his best friend had gotten him.
Tarana very politely didn't mention the sappy smile on the teen's face.
XX
Errol's small package was next, the card a lot nicer than Draco's, without a demand in sight.
It did contain a newspaper article, clearly cut from the wizarding paper, the Daily Prophet, because everyone in the picture was cheerfully waving at him. Set before a pyramid, nine people stood. Off to the side, as though attempting to avoid the picture entirely, sat the Valerian King.
A massive black and white tiger in life, the picture simply didn't seem to do Arcana any justice.
Harry remembered the tiger stepping through the massive stone doors of the Chamber of Secrets, finally free after ten years of being brainwashed to attack his family and Kin, and decided that that moment would have made a better photograph of the Valerian King.
Harry skimmed over the article under the photograph, which mentioned that the Weasley patriarch, Arthur, had won the Prophet's grand prize of over 1500 galleons, a chunk of it was going toward a trip, a trip they were likely on given the date of the article, to Egypt, where they'd visit Bill Weasley.
Harry looked up at Tarana. "Do you think they're telling him about Ron and Arcana?" he asked her.
Tarana read the article thoughtfully. "It's possible," she told him. "I don't know much about Bill, he was too young during the war to have had much contact with us, though Molly sang his praises the few times I dealt with her. Given that neither of her older brothers had children, Arcana did fall to Bill as Molly's eldest."
"But it's not like Bill would have expected to get Arcana, right?" Harry asked. "I mean, he was Dark's Thrall for so long…."
Dark was Arcana's younger brother, and, as far as Harry had ever heard, the Traitor of Valeria, not only because he'd turned on his people and waged war against them, but because he had somehow triggered a planet or plane-wide destruction of Valeria itself, leaving only a handful of Valerians to return, resurrected through some forbidden ritual of the Royal Family's.
Though it was rare, apparently, for Valerians to have an Element (which was funny because every Valerian, Traitor, or otherwise, that Harry had met thus far had one), it was far more common for them to have Talents.
Dark's Talent was Mind Manipulation, essentially brainwashing, and he'd had Arcana under it for over a decade.
Tarana, oblivious to Harry's thoughts, shrugged. "As I said, I can't say. I agree, however, that it's not likely that Bill will hold much of a grudge that Ron is now Bonded to him, as dangerous as it had been at the time."
With Ron being the only exceptions, most of the Valerians lived with and raised, in a hands-on manner, their future charges, allowing them to bond less physically and more emotionally, and easing the final stage of the Bonding, the Bleeding, which solidified that ethereal bond and activated those that slumbered in the Bonded's bloodlines, tying the Valerian in question to that bloodline.
Until the confrontation in the Chamber of Secrets, Ron and Arcana's only bonding experiences had been attempts on Ron's life, not exactly a healthy foundation for any kind of partnership.
Harry, and apparently Draco, had been hammered with owls for the first couple weeks of their holiday, as Ron struggled to come to terms with the bond he'd never expected to receive and didn't know how to use.
Shaking the melancholy thoughts away, Harry looked at the photograph again. "Fifteen hundred galleons is a lot of money," he said, smiling.
Tarana smiled as well. "Mm," she hummed. "It's about time some good karma came to that family."
Harry grinned.
The Weasleys were one of the nicest families he'd ever met, but they financially struggled with five kids and themselves.
Tarana had, apparently by accident, revealed that the Weasley family had been required to pay reparations to families that had been attacked by Arcana over the twelve, almost thirteen, years that he'd served as Dark's Thrall because Molly was the only member of the Prewitt family, the family Arcana was Bound to, still alive.
She was absolutely right.
The Weasleys deserved every galleon.
Finally putting the article and the card off to the side, Harry plucked the note out of the bindings around the gift Ron had sent him.
XX
Happy Birthday!
Sorry I didn't write. Arcana warned us that a trip this long might be the last one that Errol made, so I wanted to make it special.
XX
Tarana interrupted Harry's recitation with a low rumble.
"What's so 'special' about a dead owl at midnight, Weasley?"
XX
It's amazing here in Egypt. Bill's taken us around all the tombs and you wouldn't believe the curses those old Egyptians put on them. Mum wouldn't let Ginny come in the last one. There were all these mutant skeletons in there, of Muggles who'd broken in and grown extra heads and stuff.
We couldn't believe it when Dad won the Daily Prophet Draw. Fifteen hundred galleons! A lot of it's gone on this trip, but they're going to buy me a new wand for next year.
XX
There was another rumble from Tarana that Harry ignored entirely.
Ron's wand had broken the year before when the two of them had flown Ron's dad's flying car to Hogwarts and crashed it into a tree on the grounds.
They'd only been flying it because the barrier onto the train platform had closed and, so soon after Tarana's death, Harry had suffered from his worst panic attack ever.
As far as Harry was concerned, if Tarana hadn't begged for Arcana to kill her on the Dursley's front lawn a year ago, such foolishness - and he could admit it was foolishness - would never have happened.
XX
Bill's been real good about the whole Arcana thing. Guess it's cause he didn't really expect to ever be Bonded to him in the first place.
We'll be back about a week before term starts and going up to London to get my wand and our new books. Any chance you and the rest can meet us there?
Don't let the muggles get you down!
Try and come to London.
P.S. Percy's Head Boy. He got the letter last week.
XX
Harry took another look at the photograph and, sure enough, pinned to the jaunty fez on his head was the silver Head Boy badge.
In his seventh and final year at Hogwarts, Percy was one of two Weasleys at Hogwarts that Harry simply wasn't close to, the other being the only girl, Ginny, though that was because she avoided him on the grounds of having been sort-of possessed by Voldemort the year before.
Drawn to her by his thoughts, Harry found Ginny, tucked between the Twins, Fred and George, with a smile on her face.
"She's as resilient as the rest of you," Tarana noted, almost proudly, and Harry nodded.
He wasn't sure he'd be able to simply bounce back after months of occasional possession and almost a year of mental and emotional manipulation.
Putting the photograph and letter off to one side, away from the torn paper from Draco's gift, Harry finally tore into his gift from Ron
It looked like a miniature glass spinning top, and it stayed upright on its point even with the ridges of his palm.
Tarana tilted her head.
"There's another note," Harry told her, putting the thing on his lap. "It's a Pocket Sneakoscope." He looked up at Tarana. "Sneakoscope?"
"They come in a variety of sizes, though this is the smallest I've ever seen one. It will make an unholy racket and spin when you're around someone untrustworthy."
Harry nodded, pulling the note out of the wrapper remains and gave it another once over, snorting at the part where Fred and George put beetles in their brother's soup
The Weasley Twins, Fred and George, were among the most creative students in Gryffindor Tower, and renowned pranksters. They were probably some of the few that were equally loved and hated no matter what House at Hogwarts you belonged to.
XX
Putting the Sneakoscope on his bedside table so it wouldn't get lost, Harry pulled the largest package out of the pile. It was different from the others because it was wrapped in bright, muggle paper that had 'Happy Birthday' written all over in almost chalk-like letters.
He assumed it came from Hermione Granger, the only other muggle-raised witch in his circle of friends other than himself.
There was an envelope taped to the front of the package that Harry needed to struggle to remove. Hermione had used so much tape Harry nearly risked going down to the kitchen and grabbing a knife, the reaction of his relatives be damned, before his fingernail caught the edge of one of the corners and he was able to pry it up.
The envelope contained another birthday card and another letter.
XX
I'm on holiday in France at the moment and I didn't know how I was going to send this to you - what if they'd opened it at customs? - but then Hedwig turned up! I think she wanted to make sure you got something for your birthday for a change.
XX
Harry and Tarana looked at Hedwig, who paused in her grooming under their attention and raised her head, watching them in return as though to say 'what?'.
"Thanks, Hedwig," Harry said, smiling sappily at her.
No matter what Draco said about owls not being more than mail carriers, Hedwig was precious to him and, he thought, their relationship was strong.
Hedwig shifted, wings fluttering as she settled.
Tarana chuckled. "You truly are a remarkable find, friend," she told the owl, causing Archimedes to make a noise of discontent.
Hedwig's head snapped to the other owl and she clicked her beak furiously at him.
Harry shook his head, leaving the two to their 'argument' and turning back to Hermione's letter.
XX
I bought your present by owl-order; there was an advertisement in the Daily Prophet (I've been getting it delivered; it's so good to keep up with what's going on in the wizarding world). Did you see that picture of Ron and his family a week ago? I bet he's learning loads. I'm really jealous - the ancient Egyptians were fascinating.
XX
Harry snorted.
"I don't think anything Ron comes back knowing is going to fascinate Hermione," he told Tarana.
"Don't fault her," Tarana rebuked gently. "She is a powerful witch, but she doesn't have much beyond her knowledge that can endear her to you boys. She is an outsider and some of you have made it very well known. She feels driven to keep learning to keep your collective interest and friendship."
Harry frowned, thinking back to try and pinpoint if the behavior Tarana mentioned had ever come from him, but he could only think of Ron and Draco.
Ron had disliked her because she was a know-it-all and felt the need to rub it in everyone's faces.
Draco, who had been raised on the topic of blood superiority, greatly disliked her because she was muggle-born, born to two muggle parents without a drop of magical blood in their veins. Over the last couple of years, he seemed to have become a bit more tolerable of her, but there were moments where, whether he meant it to or not, his 'inner pureblood' shone through.
"Have I-"
"You occasionally take her for granted," Tarana admitted, though she had only a year's worth of memories to make that distinction from, given that she had been reconnecting with Arcana all of the last school year. "Though you are better than others about remembering that she's as confused as you are in this new world, despite her book knowledge."
Harry nodded slowly, turning back to the letter.
XX
There's some interesting local history of witchcraft here, too. I've rewritten my whole History of Magic essay to include some of the things I've found out. I hope it's not too long-it's two rolls of parchment more than Professor Binns asked for.
XX
Harry grimaced and glanced in the direction of his desk, where, now that it wasn't covered in the pile of birthday gifts, his nearly completed History of Magic essay lie.
"Three rolls of parchment!" he said, shaking his head. "I barely managed to finish the one he asked for!"
Tarana snickered.
XX
Ron says he's going to be in London in the last week of the holidays. Can you make it? I know you've been reconnecting with Tarana this summer, so if not, I'll see you on the Hogwarts Express on September first!
XX
Harry fiddled with the letter before putting it aside with Ron's and standing the birthday card up beside it.
He and Tarana had been reconnecting over the last few weeks, but it was more in a verbal way than what Hermione was implying. Tarana shared her trip with Arcana and Harry told her the gory and gritty details of what she'd missed at Hogwarts during that time.
It hadn't all been easy.
As far as Harry had been, and in the darkest parts of his mind, still was, concerned, Tarana had let him watch her die, and then proceeded to trade him for Arcana, all but forgetting about him in the process. Many of the things she told him that she and Arcana had accomplished over those long months while he and the others had been struggling in a school terrorized by the Heir of Slytherin and his basilisk, had been tainted by those thoughts and the still present feeling of abandonment.
"Do you think you'll be ready by the time we go back to Hogwarts?" Harry asked, not looking at the panther.
"Given the progress I've made, I think we'll be cutting it very close," Tarana told him, "but I imagine we'll be two weeks in and, as we are both already familiar with the Bond, it should stabilize quickly."
Harry smiled, but it was a twisted thing.
He desperately wanted the Bond with Tarana back, preferably as it had been before her death, hence why they were waiting for Tarana to finish reweaving the spells and ties that had linked her to the Potter family, the same links and ties that gave the Bond depth and power. The problem was, he wasn't sure if he wanted to be able to feel her remorse over what she had done, any more than he wanted her to feel his resentment, hurt, and anger at it.
Feeling the true depth of her guilt, he was sure, was going to make it very difficult, or nearly impossible to stay angry at her and he rather liked being angry about it, even months after finding out about it, because it meant he didn't have to feel the hurt that, despite his faith in her and the level of grief he had suffered from, she'd still chosen Arcana to return to, even though Arcana had been the one to kill her.
Tarana must have, even without their bond, been able to sense his shift in emotion, because she called his name softly. "Hermione's gift won't open itself, cub," she told him.
Taking a deep breath, Harry let the very first thing he'd learned at the Dursleys, the ability to swallow what he was feeling and shove into a dark corner where no one can see it, rise up and take away his growing anger and resentment.
He didn't want Tarana to see, smell, or whatever that.
Peeling the paper off the gift, Harry, given Hermione's history, was prepared to find a book beneath the muggle wrapping.
Instead, a sleek black leather case, with silver words stamped across it, quickly revealed itself.
"A broomstick servicing kit," Tarana said, smiling. "A more apt present for you, I couldn't imagine."
Ignoring her, Harry eagerly unzipped the case and flipped the lid open, picking through the contents with more enthusiasm than he'd shown pretty much any other gift, though Draco's sketchpad was a close second.
Like his father, Harry was practically born to be in the air. He was the youngest seeker, a position of the popular wizarding sport, quidditch, in a century to be chosen at Hogwarts, and his skill there was almost unrivaled, even by the older students. He was certainly more at home in the air than he ever had been on the ground.
His most prized possession, having once been a collection of sketches and makeshift sketchpads that, even now, were currently hidden beneath a collection of loose floorboards beneath the bed, was currently resting in a place of honor above the bed, on a shelf that had once held Dudley's multitude of broken or abandoned toys. A Nimbus Two Thousand racing broom.
Tarana rested her head on the edge of the bed and watched her charge, soaking up the happiness he radiated and planning for the moment she could truly bask in that feeling again.
XX
There was movement from the master bedroom by the time Harry put aside the servicing kit and moved onto the next gift, the one from the screech owl.
He frowned as he handled it because written in green ink in a messy scrawl, was a Happy Birthday wish from Rubeus Hagrid, the gamekeeper at Hogwarts.
Hagrid had been the one sent to retrieve him when the Dursleys had fled the Hogwarts acceptance letters around Harry's eleventh birthday, trying to outrun the wizarding world they hated and wanted their nephew to have no part of.
Tarana had been left behind as well, though Harry hadn't known that yet, and it had been quite the confrontation between the half-giant and the panther, made even worse when Vernon had attempted to control the situation and he and Harry's aunt, Petunia, had nearly been mauled by Tarana for badmouthing Harry's parents one too many times.
Despite that link between Harry and Hagrid, however, Harry wouldn't really consider them friends. Harry kept in relatively close contact with Hagrid, not through his own choice, but because Blaise was close friends with him, and getting a gift from him felt a little odd.
XX
Happy Birthday!
Think you might find this useful for next year.
Won't say no more here. Tell you when I see you.
Hope the Muggles are treating you right.
XX
He looked at Tarana, who had raised her head and was eyeing it with a similar sense of trepidation to Harry's own.
Reaching out, he tightly gripped what was quickly apparent to be the first layer of brown paper and pulled it free quickly.
There was a heartbeat, where neither Harry nor Tarana moved, waiting for something to happen, but there was nothing.
Harry reached out for the package to pull off another layer and the package quivered and snapped.
Tarana was quickly on her paws, fixated on the package.
"What did he send you?" she rumbled quietly.
Harry swallowed nervously and edged away from the package a little more.
Hagrid wouldn't send him anything dangerous on purpose, but Hagrid, as a half-giant, had a very different definition of what constituted danger than normal people did.
Just in the two years that Harry had known him, Hagrid had bought a cerberus from some guy in a pub, befriended giant spiders, and snuck an illegal dragon onto Hogwarts grounds and into his cabin.
Grabbing one of his drawing pencils from the bedside table, Harry poked the package again.
It snapped again and quivered so hard that it moved a bit on the bed.
Swallowing again, Harry scrambled off his bed entirely, pressing his body against Tarana's for a moment, before pulling away and reaching over to get a good grip on the paper and pulling.
The paper came free with a sharp tearing sound, but Harry was pulling away and pressing against his wall before the book inside finished coming to life.
Harry could read the title, The Monster Book of Monsters, only because the thing suddenly flipped onto its edge and scuttled along the bed like a demented crab or something.
Tarana paced with it as it flopped off the bed and scampered its way toward open space, snapping at her when she got too close.
She pulled her paw back, offended, before she reared slightly and pinned it on its front cover with both her front paws.
With the book no longer a threat - and spirits what was his life! - Harry quickly moved to his chest of drawers and pulled out a leather belt.
Tarana lowered her muzzle between her paws to growl low at the quivering and struggling book as Harry approached them, and the thing went blessedly still for a moment, allowing Tarana to release it and allow Harry to wrap the book in the belt, pinning it again as he tightened and buckled the belt.
"If this book goes after you, I will set it on fire," Tarana warned Harry. "What use could that thing possibly have in the upcoming school year?"
Harry didn't say a word, opening his school trunk and dropping the book inside.
He knew Tarana well enough to know that if the book went after Harry, she wasn't going to stop at the book.
She'd killed who knew how many owls one Valentine's Day simply because they had swarmed Harry in their eagerness to deliver love letters and cards to him.
Harry hadn't been upset when she did it then, and he wasn't sure how he felt about her possibly going after Hagrid now. The half-giant was, after all, rather naïve.
XX
As Harry had thought the night before, the barn owl had delivered Harry's Hogwarts supply letter.
Inside was a list of books and other supplies that he would need for his classes this year.
Additionally, however, there was a page behind it that usually wasn't among the list.
It was a note from Professor McGonagall, the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts, Transfiguration Professor, and Head of Gryffindor House - Harry's House.
Brow furrowing, he put aside the list of supplies and read the extra note.
XX
Please note that the new school year will begin on September the first. The Hogwarts Express will leave from King's Cross station, platform nine and three-quarters, at eleven o'clock.
Third years are permitted to visit the village of Hogsmeade on certain weekends. Please give the enclosed permission form to your parent or guardian to sign.
A list of books for next year is enclosed.
XX
Behind the note from McGonagall, was the permission form she mentioned, and he frowned at it.
He was well aware of what Hogsmeade was, as it was the closest village, wizarding or otherwise, to Hogwarts and was where the station the Hogwarts Express stopped to pick up and drop off students to the school.
Beyond that, however, he had never actually set foot in the village.
Harry rubbed the corner of the parchment fretfully and sighed, tossing it among the ripped wrapping to be thrown out.
"They'll never let me go," he told Tarana, shrugging when she looked at him questioningly.
Tarana dragged herself up to put a paw on the pile, preventing Harry from collecting the trash.
"Your aunt has been reasonable since you returned to school, Harry," she reminded him. "I truly believe that she is trying. It certainly can't hurt to ask her, can it?"
Harry eyed the note from McGonagall. "Could you sign it?" he asked hopefully. "You said that the wizarding world would see you as my guardian, right? You could give me permission to go!"
"That only applies when we're bonded," Tarana told him, though she tilted her head thoughtfully. "Which by the time we get to Hogwarts we should be. Regardless, we'll revisit the topic after you've spoken to your aunt about it."
Harry rolled his eyes.
True, his Aunt Petunia had been less hostile to him over the holidays, probably because she was the only one who remembered that Tarana had died the summer before, his uncle and cousin having their minds wiped so that Tarana could return without incident.
Since Harry had taken a chance the day he'd returned to the Dursleys and thanked his aunt for trying to comfort him, in her own way, after Tarana had died and left him with an ever increasingly hostile uncle, she had been less hateful toward him this summer.
Tarana had, repeatedly, been pushing Harry to spend more time treating his aunt like an authority figure and less like someone he shared space with and it was confusing Harry because his aunt clearly wanted it some days and resented his presence others, with no explanation coming from Tarana for her hot-and-cold behavior.
Pulling the permission form from the trash pile and adding it to the letters on his bedside table, Harry eyed the mess he'd made of his bed.
"Go on," Tarana told him. "Shower. The mess will be here for you to clean when you return."
XX
Petunia waited until the shower was running before she slipped the plastic container from the top of the fridge and made her way up to her nephew's room.
Nervously opening the door, she found, as she'd hoped, only Tarana in the room.
"Good morning, Petunia," Tarana greeted.
Petunia bowed slightly, hands shaking around the container in her hands.
"For Harry?" Tarana asked.
Petunia nodded
"I must say, this terror you have of his rejection is refreshing," Tarana said, watching the mortal pull the plastic cover off the container, pull a candle from her apron pocket, and gently put it in the center of the frosting on the cupcake.
Petunia flinched at her words.
"Fret not, Petunia," Tarana assured her. "I've been pressing Harry into spending more time with you and I would certainly not be doing so if I didn't believe you both need this. He is as much his mother's son as he is his father's, and the two of you are each other's last links to that connection. But you've figured that out already, haven't you?"
Petunia's lip quivered. "Everything we did to him," she whispered. "Everything we said and told him," she shook her head.
"And he still, somehow, finds it in him to care about your worthless hide," Tarana smirked. "Of course he does. He is Lily's son."
Petunia made a choked-off sound.
"I used to speak with her," Tarana told her. "During her pregnancy, James often asked me to remain with her as additional protection and I was her only social source. She told me a great deal. About her family, about her friends. About her regrets."
Petunia closed her eyes. "I miss her."
"As she did you," Tarana told her. "I think she will be pleased that you are thinking of her son on his birthday."
Petunia bit her lip as the unspoken 'about time' floated in the air around them. She wrung her hands together and Tarana narrowed her eyes on the muggle.
"Did you need anything else?"
"Marge," Petunia said shakily, before clenching her hands in her apron and straightening. "Marge will be coming in a little over a week."
"I will not be leaving the house again," Tarana told her bluntly.
Petunia grimaced but couldn't exactly blame the queen.
The last time she'd left Harry completely in the Dursleys' care, she'd been killed protecting them.
"I know," Petunia told her. "But he won't let you stay."
Tarana narrowed her eyes on the woman.
Given her newly fearful nature of leaving Harry alone, Tarana spent a great deal of time listening to the Dursleys while Harry worked on his homework, and what she'd overheard wasn't pleasing.
Vernon was consistently angry about the dual, hated, presence in his home, and made it very well known to his wife.
Loudly and at length.
Petunia had, once upon a time, been able to exert a certain level of influence over her husband, keeping him from treating Harry in ways that would end with him on the end of Tarana's fangs and claws.
Now it seemed like whenever she tried, she became a sympathizer.
A target.
Tarana had begun to exert a new level of influence over the man herself, using her Talent, Dream Walking, to slip into his dreams and warn him against getting violent with anyone in the household, because she was watching, waiting for him to make a move.
It was his fear of Tarana, the panther feared, and not his love of his wife and son, that had prevented him from turning the full brunt of his rage on his family.
"I can take measures to ensure that Marge does not find out I'm here," Tarana told Petunia after several minutes of silence. "However, if I do so, neither you nor your husband are allowed to complain about how I do so."
Petunia hesitated.
It was clear that she wanted to ask for more information about the plan Tarana was clearly piecing together before she agreed to support it.
There was a greater part of her, however, that didn't want to know, because knowing meant collaborating.
Knowing meant choosing.
The bathroom door down the hall opened and she could hear Harry flipping off the various lights and switches.
"Of course," Petunia breathed, turning to leave and coming up short when Harry appeared in the doorway.
Harry's gaze darted between his aunt and the mess on his bed.
"Morning, Aunt Petunia," he said nervously.
"Happy Birthday, Harry," Petunia said, voice strained.
Harry blinked familiar green eyes at the woman, and she nearly cried at the startled surprise in them.
She had done that to the boy, made him doubt that his birthday was something to celebrate. That it was something they even remembered.
She watched as his eyes darted past her, probably to Tarana, but remembered the cupcake when his eyes lit up.
"Thank you, Aunt Petunia," he said, dropping his clothes into the hamper beside the desk and reaching for his gift.
"Harry," Tarana said, a gentle reprimand. "Your room is still in shambles following your gift opening this morning. Clean the mess first. Then you can have your birthday cupcake."
Harry frowned and sighed, very much like a put-out teenager, Petunia noted, but did step away from the desk to clean the paper and tape from the bed.
Petunia fled as soon as Harry's attention was no longer on her.
XX
Tarana waited until Harry was peeling the paper off the bottom of the cupcake before getting to her paws and stretching.
"Harry," she said. "There's someone I need you to write a formal request to."
Harry blinked at her through a mouthful of chocolate cake and frosting.
"Oh?" he asked, wincing when Tarana eyed him in displeasure and swallowed before he spoke again. "Who are you writing to?"
"Not I, child," Tarana told him. "You."
Harry stared, slack-jawed, at her when she told him who exactly he would be writing to.
