Harry spent the night perched in the rafters, just gazing at his sleeping godfather, he owed the idiot a swat, just like Buckbeak, the reckless prat had left him behind.
Morning came and one by one, the dwarves rose and headed for the kitchen area. They may have eyed off the food, but none of them touched a thing. When the hobbit, Bilbo, Hermione said was his name, joined the others, Buckbeak, nudged at Padfoot's tale.
Padfoot opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then… he yelped and leapt to his paws, his hackled raised and his teeth bared, only to stop and tilt his head. He shifted back into Sirius and gaped at the sight in front of him.
"Buckbeak?" He gasped.
The hippogriff squawked an angry sound and flapped his wings, doing his best to beat at Sirius with them. Sirius ducked and dodged and tried to avoid the huge wings. The sounds that the two were making, alerted the dwarves and they turned to see what they thought was a beast attacking the younger wizard and all reached for their weapons.
"Stop. Stop. Buckbeak will not hurt him, he is just angry at Black." A deep rough voice told them and when they looked, they saw a huge man enter the house, through a smaller secondary door.
"That is obvious, but why?" Bilbo asked.
"That is not my story to tell, little bunny." Beorn shook his head.
As they talked, Sirius was trying to calm an agitated hippogriff down. It wasn't until a massive panther leapt down from the rafters and joined the hippogriff, that he started to respond to Sirius' crooning words. The panther stood beside the hippogriff and huffed at them both. The hippogriff bent his neck down and with a closed beak, rifled through the panther's fur.
"Oh, so you like the kitty, but not me, huh?" Sirius chuckled, only to cut himself off when the 'kitty' leapt up and knocked him back into the hay, walloping him on the side of the head with a great paw and shifting into a familiar boy, leaning over him.
"Don't call me a 'kitty', Sirius goddamned Orion bloody Black!" Harry snarled at his godfather. "You miserable mutt! Why the hell did you not take Bellatrix seriously? She hit you with a bloody confundus, not even a NEWT level spell." With each sentence, Harry whacked Sirius on the back of the head. Then huffed and stomped over to Beorn and the others. "Hello, I'm Harry, that idiot's godson." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Sirius and Buckbeak.
"Which one?" The dwarf leader asked.
"The idiot that doesn't take things as seriously as his name would suggest." Harry shrugged.
"You're Prongs' son?" Bilbo asked. "He talked about you."
"I'm sure he did. He-"
"Harry!?" Sirius gasped.
"Oh, now he catches on. Bloody hell, Sirius, no wonder mum thought Moony was brains behind the Marauders. Dad leaves his wand in the bedroom, knowing there's a murderer hunting them and you can't even counter a simple fourth year hex." Harry ranted, throwing the dwarves a quick wink, to show that he was just tweaking Sirius' nose.
"Harry James Potter! You take that back, you know damn well, I was the best of the Marauders." Sirius stalked and went to grab his godson only for the boy to dance away from him.
"Really? So, the idea to become Animagi was yours, was it? What about the Marauders' map, that was your idea? Or the catnip in McGonagall's slippers, that was you? Or the-"
"Okay, okay, I get it. Prongs was the ideas man, Moony worked out how to do them, Wormtail kept watch and I carried them out." Sirius huffed, before tilting his head. "But I never told you about those, so who did?"
"Who do you think?" Harry smirked.
"Bloody werewolf… can't keep his mouth shut to save himself." The complaint was muttered in an affectionate voice.
"Now, why would Moony be telling me that? No. Not Moony. He didn't tell me. McGonagall told me." Harry's voice was filled with supressed laughter.
"McGonagall?! How'd she know?" Sirius demanded.
"Siri, she's been the head of Gryffindor for decades, do you really think a bunch of half-assed second-years were going to pull a robe over her head?" Harry just gave him a 'say what, now?', look.
"…huh…" Sirius frowned in thought. "Oh, bloody bollocks, she knew. Every time we left the tower, she knew. That sneaky, conniving, secret-keeping, bloody cat!" Sirius spat the last word out.
"Language, Mr Black. Five points and detention with Professor Lupin, starting in one hour." A woman's sharp voice snapped Sirius from his rant and had him standing at attention.
"Yes, Professor." He responded automatically, before realising who had spoken and how he'd reacted. He spluttered and smacked at a laughing Harry. "You shut up, Potter. You try not reacting, when she speaks like that."
"Ha, I'll have you know that I only ever received a single detention from Professor McGonagall, Snape was usually the one to have that privilege." Harry stuck his tongue at Sirius.
"Typical of Snivellus." Sirius sneered the derogatory nickname.
"That is quite enough, Sirius." Harry smacked his hand down on the table making Sirius jump. "You are not eight-years old anymore, you are thirty-eight, old enough to let go of petty disputes. Severus Snape lived as a double agent for twenty years, Sirius, that alone earnt him the right to be treated with respect."
"But…"
"No, buts." Harry shook his head. "I saw his memories, Siri, he lay dying, bleeding to death from the same snake that nearly killed Mr Weasley, but he was still trying to help us defeat old snakeface."
"Huh." Sirius grunted. "So, he died?"
"No, but everyone back there, thinks so."
"I don't… I don't understand…" Sirius frowned.
"Things got… bad after the DoM. Dumbledore went hunting horcruxes and-"
"Horcruxes!?" Sirius squawked. "Who the bloody hell made- Oh, tell me he didn't? Please, tell me he didn't? That was what we were protecting in the DoM?"
"No, that was the prophecy orb. And yes, snakeface made horcruxes, seven of the blasted things." Harry noticed that the dwarves were now pretty much ignoring he and Sirius and had gotten to talking with Beorn and McGonagall.
"Seven?! Oh, Harry…"
"Hang on, it gets worse." Harry started, only for Sirius to grab him and hug him tight.
"Worse? I can't cope with worse." Sirius whined into Harry's hair.
"Too, bad, we had to. Dumbledore found one of snakeface's horcruxes and the idiot picked it up." Harry sighed. "He knew better, but he let his desire for what it was in, affect his judgement. And it cursed him, a withering curse. Snape managed to stunt the progression, but he couldn't eliminate it. Then Dumbledore turned around and ordered Snape to kill him, not then, but when it was most likely to secure Snape in snakeface's favour."
"Well, shite…" Sirius muttered.
"Yeah, only problem was, he didn't tell anyone, so we all thought that Snape had actually murdered him."
Sirius closed his eyes in disbelief. "Probably a good thing I wasn't there, then."
"Definitely." Harry nodded. "After that, we had Bill and Fleur's wedding being gate-crashed by the Death-Eater and Hermione, Ron and me going on the lam. Oh, and Moony married Tonks and had a kid. Tonks died in the big battle at Hogwarts just a few weeks ago."
"Moony… did what…?" Sirius asked in shock.
"He married Tonks. Realised it was a mistake, the day she told him she was pregnant, Teddy was born in April, poor little bugger was less than a month old when he lost his mum and so very nearly lost his dad."
"Remus survived?" Sirius brightened up.
"Of course, he did." Harry just shook his head.
"Oh, thank the gods."
"We did it, we got all the horcruxes… you know, it's funny, Dumbledore gave me the task of destroying them, but all up? Including the one in the Chamber of Secrets? I only killed two. The diary snakeface was using to control Ginny that year. And the diadem of Ravenclaw. "
"What were the others?"
"There was the diary, I got that in second year. A ring, that was what cursed Dumbledore. A locket, it would have saved us a shit-load of hunting if we'd thought to ask Kreacher, Regulus gave him the task of destroying and he'd spent the past twenty years trying to fulfil his master's last order. Ron got that one, damn-near cut it in half. Then there was a cup, we think it belonged to Hufflepuff, but no-one's quite sure. Hermione stabbed it with a basilisk fang, while McGonagall was emptying Hogwarts of students. The diadem we found in the Room of Requirement, that I stabbed with another fang and then kicked it into a ball of fiendfyre. Neville got snakeface's snake, she was after Ron and Hermione. And… me…" Harry sighed.
"What?" Sirius' voice and face went blank.
"I was a Horcruxe. Dumbledore knew, but he never told me, he left it for Snape. I had to die for Voldemort to be destroyed." Harry whispered, even now, it still hurt that Dumbledore would keep that from him. "I went to him and I let him cast a Killing Curse at me. That's what Dumbledore hoped I would do, it put me in a unique position. I'd been hit with a Killing Curse, but I had more than just one soul in my body, the other piece might have been smaller, but it was still there. It was also unstable, which allowed me a choice. I could go on, be with mum and dad, or I could go back and end snakeface's reign. And that's what I did. I didn't kill him, not really, what I did was turn his spell back on him." Harry ended on a whisper.
"Oh, Harry…" Sirius pressed his face into Harry hair again.
"Then Kingsley found us… The Minister had been under the imperius and had been killed at Hogwarts."
"Mordred's Law?" Sirius asked.
"Yep. I was the only Class One warrant."
"What did you do to deserve that?"
"Snakeface controlled the Ministry." Harry's mouth twisted up at one side.
"So, nothing really."
"Does breaking into Gringotts count?" Harry asked rhetorically. "I was tried under Mordred's Law and convicted. They let me choose my sentence, Life Imprisonment, Life in Exile with my core and memories bound, or The Veil. I chose the Veil."
"Oh, Harry…" Sirius whispered.
"Thank god for Hermione, huh? She organised everything. My finances, a trunk, clothes, weapons, wands, food… everything. She'd put pocket-spaces in an expanded capacity trunk. The one thing she didn't tell me was that she also put a good chunk of Hogwarts in that same trunk." Harry huffed.
"She what?" Sirius leant back and frowned at his godson.
"She stashed thirty-plus people in a pocket-space in my trunk. I only found out about them… what… two, two-and-a-half weeks ago. We've built a nice little village down near the stream." Harry pointed in the general direction of Hogwarts valley.
"Thirty people? Hermione put thirty people in a trunk?" Sirius repeated.
"Seventy-four eggs of differing species, forty-eight bowtruckles in three branches, thirty-three people, twenty-two hippogriffs, eighteen owls, sixteen unicorns, eleven kneazles in kitten, six fairies, two nests, and a good bloody chunk of Hogwarts." Harry agreed brightly.
"Oh, hell…"
"Yep. Now, introduce your new friends and then you have detention." Harry hugged Sirius and pushed himself out of the older man's arms. "Come on."
"Oh, sure, intro- What? I have what?" Sirius spluttered.
"You heard the Headmistress, you have detention and I have CoMC with Charlie Weasley." Harry kept walking.
"Harry, I'm thirty-eight, I've been out of Hogwarts for twenty years, I don't do detentions, anymore."
"Yes, you do." Both Harry and McGonagall replied.
Sirius looked from one to the other. "Really?" He whined. "You're really going to make me do detention?"
"Yes." McGonagall nodded. "Bellatrix Lestrange was no match for you, and you let her take you down with a fourth-year spell, clearly you need to refresh your education."
Sirius sighed. "Yes, Professor McGonagall."
"Good lad. Introductions, if you please, Mr Black." McGonagall gave him a small smile.
"Yes, Professor." He repeated. "Gentlemen, if you would be so kind as to give a wave when I say your name, because Merlin knows, I don't have half of you right, I'm sure." Each of the dwarves nodded. "Excellent. Bilbo Baggins is the Baggins of Bag End." Bilbo stood and gave a slight bow. "The leader of this Company is Thorin Oakenshield." Thorin stayed seated but bowed his head and shoulders, slightly. "His nephews, Fíli and Kíli, watch out for them, they're like the twins." The two lads shook their fists at him, playfully. "Thorin's cousins Dwalin, Balin, Oín and Gloín." The four responded with shallow bows. "The brothers Ri, Dori, Nori and Ori." The three were on the far side of the table and simply bowed their head and shoulders. "Bifur, Bofur and Bombur. As far as I can figure, they're cousins." The three grinned and waved happily. "And the last of their number is Gandalf the Grey, he says he's a wizard, but I've yet to see any sign of it, other than his Dumbledore-like taste in clothes." Gandalf wore an odd express, it looked a cross between startled and offended, but Sirius ignored him. "Gentlemen, I have the great privilege to introduce my godson, Harry Potter, and one of the greatest transfiguration Masters that Hogwarts has ever seen, Professor Minerva McGonagall." The respect and affection that Sirius had for these two people clearly showed in his voice.
"And your current host is Beorn Changeling, Master of the Beornings." Harry added, gesturing to Beorn, as he stood by the stove. "The only rule for staying in the Beornings is no hunting on Beorn's land. Outside his borders is fair game, but not inside." Most of the dwarves didn't look too pleased about that, so Harry added. "You can eat meat, just don't cook it in Beorn's house. If you'd like, you're all welcome to come down to Hogwarts valley, we've plenty of space with decent beds and bathrooms aplenty. Plus, Bill was talking about a spit roast, the Weasley boys do like their food."
"Holdover of having Molly for a mother, I'll bet." Sirius added.
"Molly of the heavenly chocolate cake?" Bilbo asked.
"That'd be the one." Harry grinned. "Her food was… hmm…" He closed his eyes in a semblance of bliss, earning him a laugh from a few dwarves. "Bill's wife, Fleur, tricked the recipe out of Molly, and hers is just as good."
"Bill is a lucky man, then." Sirius smirked.
"With a veela for a wife? Of course, he's lucky."
"A veela?" Asked the redheaded dwarf, pulling out a notebook and pencil.
"Yeah, they're… well they're only part-human, but they're stunningly beautiful as women, they don't hand down the veela traits to their sons. It stays dormant in males and only comes out in their female descendants. Hmm... Hermione had better be careful." Harry answered.
"Why, Hermione?" Sirius frowned and asked McGonagall quietly.
"Hermione and Draco are courting, and his paternal great-grandmother was a veela." McGonagall replied.
"Hermione and Draco? Draco Malfoy? Harry brought a Malfoy?" Sirius spluttered.
"Technically, Hermione did. Lucius was using the cruciatus on Narcissa and Draco, almost every day. All because they left the battle and Lucius had to choose between his lord and his wife, who'd already chosen her son over her husband." Harry explained.
"Ooh, Lucius is such a prick." Sirius sneered.
"Agreed." Harry nodded. "That's why Hermione offered them the chance to come with her. They emptied the Malfoy vaults, released the house-elves and took anything that was worth selling and left him with an empty house and an almost empty vault. I believe something was said, about leaving a few κnuts behind."
"Remind me never to piss Hermione off." Sirius grimaced.
"Oh, that wasn't Hermione, that was all Draco and Narcissa. Draco said he also emptied Lucius dungeons, too, had the victims treated and sent to muggle hospitals." Harry grinned.
"Ah…" Sirius didn't know what to say.
"Don't worry about it, Siri, they're still Slytherins, they're just our Slytherins. Now… You have detention with our Charms Professor and the rest of us could use some breakfast. What's say we get out of Beorn's space and head down to the Hogwarts pavilion?" Harry suggested.
An hour later Sirius had been dragged off by the ear, by a muttering Remus who had a laughing Teddy in his arms. The rest of the Company very deliberately took their cues from the valley's residents and ignored the squawking and spluttering wizard.
Gandalf was getting a short/sharp lesson in magic… from a pair of third year students. Natalie and Dennis were talking about their charms and DADA lessons and how Remus and Frank were teaching them how to use various different charms as both defensive and offensive. Gandalf of course, commented that magic couldn't be used in more than one manner. Natalie, sweet little Natalie… tore into him and proceeded to explain the four different spell types and how almost any spell had both defensive and offensive uses. She used augamenti as an example, the water conjuration spell could be used to fill a jug to drink from or it could be used in conjunction with a containment spell, to drown someone. Dennis piped up that a tickling jinx could make a person laugh and brighten their day, but if overpowered or left on a person for minutes at a time, would cause nerve damage or make them pass out for lack of oxygen. Natalie added that summoning charm could summon a book from across the room or it could summon a person's heart. Colin offered a sleeping charm, saying that it could sooth a frightened child or sedate the person struggling under Natalie's augamenti.
Gandalf replied that magic shouldn't be used just willy-nilly, only to have Padma bluntly inform him that magic was a part of them, if they didn't use it, it would use them, that was commonly known as accidental magic and until they were through the worst of puberty, accidental magic would happen any time they were highly emotional, so his comment was just plain irresponsible as far as young witches and wizards go.
Harry tuned them out after a few minutes and turned his attention to the dwarves. Just in time to hear Bofur mention dragons.
"Dragons?" Harry asked. "What was that, about dragons?"
"Smaug, the chief-est calamity of our age." Bofur replied, cheerfully.
"Yes, yes, I got that, but what about dragons?" Harry waved off the first half of his own comment.
"Ah… Harry? Smaug is a dragon." Dean told his former dormmate.
"What?! Nobody said anything about a dragon. Hermione! Hermione! You never said anything about a dragon!" Harry nearly yelled. "No, no, no. I didn't sign up for another dragon." Harry shook his head frantically.
"Well, isn't that just too bad, Harry? You're the only one of us with any dragon-related combat experience." Hermione replied tartly.
"But what about Charlie? And… and Bill? Hell, what about Fleur? She did the first task, too."
"Oh, there's no doubt, Charlie's got more dragon experience than the lot of us put together, and Bill's got plenty in regard to astral dragons, but no, Harry. When it comes to actual fight or flight against a dragon, you and Fleur are our only experience and she had less than five minutes in the arena, but you had a couple of minutes in the arena and then were flying against it for another fifteen minutes. Plus, the time with the Gringotts dragon. Between you, Fleur, Charlie and Bill, surely we can come up with something." Hermione explained her reasoning.
Harry glared at Hermione, his mind ticking over. "Who knows the most about this dragon, Hermione, you or Thorin or Gandalf?"
"Um… I don't know." Hermione admitted.
"Right, you take notes, please. Thorin, tell me about the dragon, please?"
"It's a-" Bofur started, only to have Harry silence him with a flick of a wand and a sharp look.
"You… are not Thorin, shut up. Thorin, please?"
"Smaug is the last of the great fire drakes, he's approximately… and I say approximately because, while I saw him, that sight was filled with smoke and fire. Gauging his size was not easy, those of us that survived, conferred and together we estimated that he was somewhere around two-hundred feet long and about forty foot to the top of the shoulder. His head, I shall never forget, it's length was at least four times my height." He closed his eyes in thought. "His body was long and slender, his tail was the length of his head, neck and body, put together. He used the claws of his wings to walk upon, like they were feet. And his chest would glow as he drew breath for fire." His eyes opened and he looked at Harry. "More than that? I cannot say."
"Charlie?" Harry asked. "What's the closest comparison?"
"Cripes, Harry, that's huge." Charlie groaned. "The Ironbelly is the biggest I know of and they only get to six tonnes. Gringotts use Ironbellies to guard the more affluent vaults. I'd say, given the dimensions that Thorin provided and that fact that the beastie flies, it's likely to weigh somewhere about thirty-forty tonnes. Let's say half-a-dozen times the size of an Ironbelly."
"Bugger." Harry dropped his head to the table and knocked it against the surface a few times before looking up. "Gandalf? How resistant to magic is Smaug?"
"Resistant? In what way?" The grey wizard tilted his head in confusion.
"Stunning charms. Cutting curses. Confundus hexes. Blasting hexes. He breathes fire, what about an augamenti down his throat? Ice conjuration. Gouging spells. Is he impervious to them?" Harry rattled off a few different types of offensive spells.
"I… I have no idea…" The old wizard blinked and stammered.
"Right. Well, we can work around that, I suppose." Harry huffed. "Oh, Gandalf, Beorn wanted a word with you. Something about a necromancer at Dol Guldur and tombs of Rhudaur, he said. You'd best go and talk to him." He waved a hand to dismiss the wizard.
"What else did he say?" Gandalf leant forward.
"To me? Nothing. Said it was white council business." Harry shrugged.
"I see. In that case…? By you leave, ladies, I shall depart." Gandalf nodded to Narcissa and McGonagall and left the pavilion, hurrying back to Beorn's Hall.
"Severus? Would you follow him? I don't trust him to tell us the entire story, he's too like Dumbledore." Harry requested.
"Certainly. May I ask that Justin join me? We both share the same form, that of an eagle owl, albeit mine is considerably darker." The potions master said.
"That's up to Justin." Harry replied. "If he wants to, sure." Justin gave Harry a grin and followed his adopted Uncle. "I'd like everyone to write up a list of offensive spells that we can try on the dragon. Charlie, Bill, you two get together with Hermione and create a series of briefing memories for us, on some of the harder jobs you've had, please. Fleur, if you could give your memory of the first task? We've got a little bit leeway timewise, so let's use it well. Okay?"
"We don't have much time." Thorin corrected. "We have to be in place on Durin's Day to gain access to a secret passage into the mountain."
"When's that?"
"Durin's Day is the first day of the last moon of Autumn, when both the sun and the moon are seen together in the sky. This year that falls upon the 19th of October." Thorin answered.
"Well, today's only the 21st of July, we've got more time than I thought." Harry nodded a pleased little smile on his face.
"But we still have some three-hundred-and-fifty miles to go." Kíli objected.
"And Mirkwood to get through." Fíli added.
"Thranduil will not willingly allow us passage." Thorin warned.
"Oh, that's not really that much of an issue. We figured we'd just fly." Harry shrugged.