Chapter 4: An unforgettable August 15th
Disclaimer: All characters belongs to J. K. Rowling
Note: For those who have doubts, the battle of Hogwarts took place in May the 2nd (1998 according to the author's chronology), and this fic begins on July 31 (Harry's birthday) of that same year.
4 – An unforgettable August 15th
Ten days later Harry entered his house tired, sweating and with his legs aching. It was already a habit for him to run an hour every day early in the morning through the beautiful neighborhood located at the slope of the mountains, which rose between the Mediterranean coast of Toulon and the rest of France. At first, a few months ago, he could barely hold his march for half an hour because his physical condition had never been so good, not even in his Quidditch's seeker days.
Now he was no longer out of breath, and he could really say that he enjoyed the exercise immensely. He felt healthy and loved to walk the streets ("chemin" or "rue" as they called them there) winding through beautiful neighborhoods of houses or woods before getting lost on the slopes of the surrounding mountains. Between abdominal exercises (three times a week) and his bicycle rides to downtown Toulon, Harry was sure he'd never been in better shape.
He knew that in the last few weeks he had filled his life with activities and projects to keep his head busy. And he was sure that it was resulting because the sadness and melancholy that had wrapped him since he had left England were giving way to his new life, a life to which he tried to give meaning and direction. He knew that the more than three months that had passed since his arrival in France were not enough, but he sensed that the heavy rock that crushed him against the ground was lightening his weight little by little, and with that he could start to stand up and recover.
In addition to running, Harry loved his two or three weekly bike rides to Toulon. It was a few miles, but he enjoyed it a lot. It was an excellent exercise for his whole body, but he did it mainly because Toulon was an important city and he did his shopping there, since in his neighborhood, La Valette-du-Var, there were no supermarkets or grocery stores or supplies whatsoever.
But in addition to keeping his head busy, all his activities and projects had also arisen as an unconscious reaction of his own to escape from the quasi-abandonment in which he was immersed. Harry was always an active guy full of worries and problems, of bitter enemies and incredible adventures. Surprisingly he found himself one morning putting on a pair of snickers to run out and clear his mind, projecting plans and activities mentally as he jogged for the first time down the street of his house to escape the loneliness of his life. And so, he discovered that his neighbors were friendly and used to greet him every time he passed by them (something unthinkable when he lived with his uncles on Privet Drive) regardless of his scar or past. In fact, every Friday night he started hanging out with some neighbors in the house next door to play Poker, which was boring compared to Ron's exploding snap cards, but he had to recognize that he enjoyed the company of his new "friends"; they tried very hard to speak in English in his presence, something Harry appreciated too much.
Just the day before he had gone to his neighbor Alain's house for his weekly Poker game, and he could still hear his laughter and the other four friends sitting around the green cloth table when Alain asked him the same question for the thousandth time:
"Someday you will tell us the story of that strange scar, Jean?"
Harry smiled, not only because he was not yet used to being called Jean but because he could easily imagine their reaction if he told them the truth: that he was a wizard, that a dark mental wizard named Tom Riddle a.k.a. Voldemort had caused it by casting a killing curse at him, and that this same scar was nothing less than a kind of antenna receiving the emotions of the aforementioned sorcerer.
Unable to bear it any longer, he burst out laughing as he imagined the confused faces of his neighbors.
After taking a bath and getting dressed, he sat at the kitchenette-style table with a cup of nice and hot British tea and a couple of bananas. Once the laughter turned into a smile, Harry went into the living room and opened the windows. The house filled with the warm rays of the morning sunshine, illuminating the white walls and the few pieces of furniture it had: a small round table for four people, a wide library with few books but many decorations (Harry had developed a hobby for collecting souvenirs of the places he visited), very comfortable brown leather armchairs, a small coffee-table next to the armchairs where the french magic newspaper was, and a piece of furniture for television and video player. He didn't need more than that, in fact the library always seemed too big to him. The rest of the house was also sparsely furnished, but Harry liked it that way. The upper floor had two rooms and a bathroom, equipped with the minimum necessary, but the view there was priceless: both from one room and the other you could see the slopes of the nearby mountains and the houses in the neighborhood lost between the treetops. The exterior of the house was also simple yet pleasant, with white walls and red tile roofs, but best of all was its location, surrounded by beautiful tress and the last on the street that ended abruptly on the steep slope of a mountain.
That same morning before running he had decided to go to Gap to send a couple of letters to Hermione and the Weasleys again. He took the backpack from the dining room table and put the wand and newspaper into it. He didn't know what he was carrying this last one for, as it had been edited several days ago and he had found nothing to do with "his" world except for some familiar photographs. Hopefully, he thought, Mr. Laffitte would have a more recent copie.
"Well, here we go again." Harry sighed, closing his eyes and concentrating on the hillside outside Gap. After a few seconds inside a dark suffocating tunnel, he felt his feet in the grass and when he opened his eyes he discovered the beautiful and quiet village a few kilometers down the hillside.
"Yes, I did it," shouted Harry, laughing openly and extending his arms to the sky. "Dedicated to you, Twycross!" he shouted this time, aiming his index finger towards who knows where. As he took the first step, he stumbled with a loose rock and fell to his knees to the ground, burying his hands in a heap of fresh, stinking manure.
***HP***
Harry reached the village rather less euphoric than when he had realized that he had a precise apparition at first attempt (the slope of that very hill he had reached), because he had nothing to clean himself and had walked a long way to find a small, shallow puddle of water to wash the greenish pestilence grass.
The day was beautiful and the sun was already halfway between the horizon and the zenith. The cool morning breeze was still blowing, and the scents of the town Harry liked so much put him in a good mood. As he walked down an alley leading to the small square he realized that he did not remember so many quiet months.
Once there, Harry smiled. He saw a lot of people walking around the square, touring the regional souvenir and grocery stores. Most of them seemed to be locals, but others stood out notably thanks to their cameras hanging from their necks and their shopping bags. Some were eating french breakfasts at the tables, served by the only waiter at the only restaurant in the area. His stomach rumbled as he passed by and saw the croissants, jams and steaming cups of coffee, and he decided that he would have a second Ron-style breakfast after sending the letters and getting a more recent copy of the newspaper "La Provence Matin".
It was still early, so before going to send the letters he toured some stores hoping to find one that sold butterbeer or pumpkin juice. However, he was unlucky and went to Mr. Laffitte's store to send his owls.
After entering the shop and exchanging the usual greetings, the old man smiled and winked at him as he made his way to the back. Smiling at the gentleman's gestures which were the same every time he went there, he followed him and deliberately looked for a newspaper in the darkness of the corridor. He could see one on the same table as before, and wished that Laffitte could give it to him.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Martans, but I don't have your favorite owl available today." He said when Harry arrived at the place where used to rest the white owl.
"Has anything happened to Chantelle?"
"Oh, no! It was sent by a couple of people a few minutes ago. Strange people, yes..." said to himself, though Harry could hear him. He went to the cages and a few seconds later he came back with a brown owl in his hand, called Claudette.
"Thank you, that'll be enough." Harry replied. Laffitte handed him some blank sheets of paper and a pen, and he began to return to the store when he turned around and said:
"Oh, Monsieur Martans, I forgot. A man and a woman walked into the store yesterday, showed me a photograph of you and asked me if I knew you. Don't worry, I told them I'd never seen you before." That said, he patted him on the shoulder and went to the front of the store.
Harry stood in the same place for a few seconds, considering what the old owner had told him, and whether they were related to the two strangers he had mentioned before. He found it strange that someone would look for him in that place.
Still thinking about it, he went to the ramshackle table where he always wrote his letters. He began to write the first one to the Weasley's, and as he was about to finish it he heard a noise from the store, followed by a couple of apparently fragile objects that exploded as they fell to the floor. Harry turned and saw nothing, and wondering if Laffitte had an accident he looked for his backpack to grab his wand, but didn´t find it. And just a few seconds later a chill ran through his body, anticipating a hoarse, muffled voice that sounded behind him.
"Turn around, Potter."
It took Harry a few seconds to react. No one had called him Potter for more than three months, and that raspy, hoarse voice seemed naturally English and remotely familiar. Carefully, he turned and saw two tall men in black cloaks aiming their wands at him.
"At last. I have to admit it was hard to find you."
Harry reasoned quickly and desperately. He didn't know either of them, and he didn't understand how the hell they found him or why they wanted him. He instinctively put his hand into the back pocket of his pants but remembered that his wand was in the backpack he had left on the counter at the front of the store.
"Don't you have your wand with you? What an idiot, this will be very easy!" said the other, with a sinister smile full of cynicism. The one who had spoken first also laughed, and added:
"I still don't understand how you escaped so many times from the Dark Lord." he said with a gesture of fury and coldness on his frightening face.
The other nodded in anger, and added:
"When our Lord returns again he will know that we..."
"Voldemort is dead! He will never come back! Are you idiots? He'll never come back again!" shouted Harry, unable to contain his anger at the stupidity of those followers, wishing Laffitte to listen. He knew this could happen from the very beginning and no one believed him, calling him paranoid at least: that the death-eaters were going to keep believing that their master would return again from the death.
"Shut the fuck up!" Rugged the one on the right. "Don't you dare to call him like that!"
Harry couldn't believe this. He had defeated Voldemort and survived twice the Avada Kedavra, but at the end he would be killed by two poor lackeys caught without his wand, although lately his magic was failing. Harry swallowed and with his nerves on edge he waited; he could do nothing.
"Kill him once Petters, and let's get out of here before..."
Suddenly, the two Voldemort followers were expelled by a red burst that threw them face down and unconscious practically over his feet. And as he looked up he opened his eyes with infinite surprise.
Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. Harry couldn't believe what he was seeing, his mind was stunned and he couldn't find an explanation for the situation.
It was already incomprehensible (and frustrating) to him that two supposed death-eaters managed to find him, and now seeing Bill and Fleur standing there was even more impossible for him. How had they located him? He had been careful not to reveal details in the letters. Perhaps they had tracked down the owls...
"Hello Hagy!" said Fleur, apparently as surprised as he was. Bill's wife was still as beautiful as ever, her blond hair shone under the rays of the sun giving her a shiny aura. But Bill seemed serious and worried.
"Where´s your wand, Harry?" asked the oldest of the Weasley, with the scars on his face barely visible thanks to the glow that came from the girl part Veela.
"Well..." Started, still unable to react. "It's inside my backpack, in the front of the store. Could you stop aiming your wands at me?"
Instantly, they both lowered their wands. Fleur kept smiling warmly at him, she seemed sincerely happy to see Harry. Bill, on the other hand, kept his eyebrows frowned.
"Why don't you have the wand with you, Harry?" he insisted.
The boy pretended to answer, but sighed and lowered his eyes to watch the stunned wizards. He didn't want to tell them that he didn't think it was necessary to carry the wand everywhere, or that he didn't think there was in danger in Gap. Nor did he want to tell them (not for the moment) that his magic was no longer the same as before.
Harry turned one of them over with his foot, and looked at his face with a pair of thick scars and a crooked nose. He did not recognize him, though his hoarse voice had sounded vaguely familiar. Disgusted, he looked up and looked at his rescuers with a timid smile. He was pleased to see them, but still doubted.
"Thank you, you saved my life. They wanted to kill me."
"You´re welcome, Harry," Bill replied, now smiling for the first time.
"How the hell did you both find me?" asked Harry, unable to contain himself any longer.
"Not now." Fleur said, interrupting Bill's explanation. "We must go. We don't know if there are othegs here."
Bill nodded, and with a wave of his wand he immobilized the wizards with thick ropes. Soon, they went to the front of the store, and there Harry saw Mr. Laffitte lying on the floor with his eyes open, over lots of small boxes and surrounded by pieces of glass and broken plates.
"Mr. Laffitte," moaned Harry, lunging at his body. He grabbed his head with his hands in desperation, unwilling to believe what he was seeing.
"He's dead, Harry. He was murdered with a killing curse."
Harry couldn't believe it. Not again. Another person died because of him, just because he had the misfortune to be near him. He felt an outbreak of anger and helplessness through his throat. It was like a curse that haunted him and did not abandon him, not even that far from the English magical community. He really appreciated Mr. Laffitte, and now he was there, lying lifeless with his gray scrambled hair. A few minutes before he had spoken to him, and now his eyes were lifeless, staring at the ceiling.
"He told me that two strangers had sent an owl earlier today." Harry whispered. He remembered what Laffitte had told him in the back when he was looking for the white owl.
"What?" Bill asked getting closer, as he had not been able to hear it well.
"He told me that two strangers had sent an owl minutes before I arrived."
Bill looked up and looked at Fleur, who immediately worried.
"Was it them, Harry? Laffitte told you if it was them?"
"I don't know!" He replied, his eyes glazed and a knot in his throat that wouldn't let him breathe.
"I will sent an owl to my fatheg. He works in the Fgench Ministry, he will know what to do."
"Hurry up." Bill told her.
After Fleur went to the back, Harry looked at Bill.
"What will we do with him? We can't leave him here!"
"The French Ministry will take care of it. Yes, they helped us locate you." Bill concluded before Harry's perplexed gaze. "If that's what I think, those two will have warned someone else. So this place is no longer safe for you."
Annoyance. Anger. Unbelief. All that was Harry's feeling at the time. He thought they would never leave him alone, not even with Voldemort dead.
A few minutes later, Fleur appeared behind the two of them. "That's it. I have wgitten to them about Laffitte and the two death-eatgs. They will come here soon."
"Where are we going? To the hotel in Toulon?" Bill asked looking at his wife, but Harry shook his head.
"No. To my house." He got up, took the backpack and remembered the newspaper. When he returned, he took his wand.
"Take my hands."
***HP***
A few seconds later the three appeared in the neighborhood of Harry's house in La Valette-du-Var, but at the end of the street. A few more meters and they would have ended up inside the mountain slope.
"It could have been worse, believe me." Harry said as he saw the puzzled faces of the two of them. He start a quick walk down the street, and Bill and Fleur shrugged and followed him. He could see his house from there about two hundred meters away.
"Wow Hagy! This is where you live? It's beautiful!" The girl marveled at the scenery down the street. From there the whole neighborhood was visible, with its beautiful houses surrounded by trees between the surrounding mountains. And in the background the silhouette of Toulon, over the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.
As he walked downhill, Harry heard Bill say something about the sun, to which Fleur replied in his characteristic haughty voice:
"Ha! You British don't know sunny days!" And raising his voice she added: "Conggatulations Hagy! You choose right!"
Despite the frustration and the anguish, Harry allowed himself a slight smile; he liked to live there, he had undoubtedly chosen well.
A boy on a small bicycle approached them, whom Harry recognized as the son of one of his poker buddies.
"Bon jour Monsieur Martans!" He greeted, and then asked him something in French that he couldn't understand. Harry stopped his march to answer him.
"Bon jour Michael. Pardon? He asked him, although he knew he would not understand the question. Luckily Fleur approached him and answered in French, to which the boy nodded with a bright smile and pedaled off.
"What was that?" Bill asked ahead of Harry.
"Ze boy asked how we got here, because he saw us appearing suddenly up there. I told him that we had gone to exploge and we had come out of the tgees."
"I thought you told him you wanted to be his girlfriend, because of his smile." Bill said laughing.
"The kids are a little more sensitive to my Veela part, Bill."
A few minutes later, the three of them were sitting at the kitchen table, after walking around the house and congratulating Harry again because they thought it was a very pretty place.
"Well? How did you find me?" Questioned Harry. Fleur got up as if she had springs in her butt, saying that she would make some tea.
"I'll tell you, but first let me ask you why you left England, and why you came to the south of France." Ask Bill.
"Haven't you spoken to Ron?" asked Harry incredulously. "Haven't you read the letters I sent to the Burrow?"
"I've been with Ron several times but he never told me why you left, Harry." Bill replied, leaning his back on the back of the chair. "And we still live at Shell Cottage, I guess you'll remember. So I didn't read the letters you sent, although my mother has told me a couple times that you were fine."
"She misses you Harry's, and so do the others. She didn't like it at all when she found out you were gone." Bill added. If there was anyone he didn't want to let down, it was Mrs. Weasley, whom he loved almost like a mother.
Bill proceeded with a sigh at Harry's silence.
"Ginny was very sad. Ron not so much, but he looked very nervous and used to lose his temper for anything. No one understood or understands why you left so suddenly, and why did you come to... what's the name of this place?"
"La-Valette-du-Var, close to Toulon."
"Oh, it was pretty close, wasn't it Fleur?" Said Bill smiling and looking at his wife, making her smile; she was still at the kitchen.
Bill looked at Harry´s confusion, laughed eagerly and went on.
"In one of the last letters you sent to the Burrow you tell my mother not to worry about your alimentation as you did your shopping with your bicycle at a place called Intermarché Lorience! Once she told us, Fleur didn't have much trouble finding out that it was a supermarket in Toulon!" Bill completed, laughing out loud.
Harry looked down at the table, noticing how his face had blushed from the embarrassment of such mistake. Writing was definitely not for him.
"Anyway," continued Bill after he stopped laughing. "We told Fleur's father, who works at the French Ministry of Magic, that we were looking for you and we thought you were in Toulon. Through an excellent contact that he has in the Internal Investigation Office of the Ministry he told us that in a few days he would let us know if he had any news. Of course we wanted to give him a picture of you, but he told us it wasn't necessary because the Ministry knew who you were".
"So while we waited for his answer we decided to go to Toulon. We've been there for two weeks."
"You've been looking for me for two weeks..." asked Harry without being able to believe that they took so much time to look for him.
"Oh no, silly boy!" Fleur replied with a wonderful smile on his face as she sat at the table with the tray with a teapot and cups. "We decided we could take some advantage fgom the situation and use the tgip as the honeymoon we couldn't had."
"Believe me, we did other things during that two weeks!" Bill added, exchanging smiles with his wife. Harry rolled his eyes; he didn´t want to know details about his activities.
"Finally, three days ago Fleur's father sent us an owl informing us that Toulon had no magical community and no record of magicians living there. Nor that any Harry Potter has bought any property or opened any bank account." After a sip of tea, Bill put the cup on the table and continued.
"But at the end of the letter, he told us that the nearest magical community was Gap, a town about a hundred and fifty kilometers from Toulon. It was our only clue, so yesterday morning we went to Gap and after a while we located the store from which the owls came out following one that passed over us.
Harry nodded. That's also how he had found Mr. Laffitte's store himself.
"When we came in, we showed your picture to the man who attended us. He said he had never seen you, but his gesture at your image was too eloquent."
Now he remembered. Laffitte had also told him that a man and a woman had asked about him. He had mistakenly linked them to the two death-eaters who attacked him at the back of the store.
"We had a lot of luck. We went to Gap very eagly, and we saw you a few hours later getting into the store. We wanted to call you fgom the table where we were sitting, but then we saw those two wizagds with dark cloaks and we went looking fog you. Too late for Monsieur Laffitte."
Something was not clear not Bill though.
"What did that boy in his bike call you?"
"Jean Martans. I invented that name when I bought this house. That's why you haven't succeeded in finding the name Harry Potter."
"Damn it Harry, if I had known the name you were using we would have located you days ago!"
After an hour of talking, where Harry told them about his new life, Bill got more serious.
"You have to go back to England, Harry. Your friends are there, and the Weasley consider you part of the family, no matter how distant you are from Ron or Ginny."
"I don't think so, Bill. I'm fine here, I still have money to support myself and give me time to decide what I'm going to do." Harry replied. He had the Potter Cottage in Godric Hollow and Grimmauld Place as Sirius' inheritance In England, plus a considerable amount of money on Gringott´s (despite all the money he took to France), but he really liked his new house and felt that he was building a new home and making friends there.
"Harry, have you noticed that things are not as safe as they seem? If something is going to happen to you here no one would know, I mean, no one of those of us who appreciate you and consider you much more than a great friend."
Harry was ashamed at such a display of affection, and smiled uncomfortable. Fleur also smiled and took his hand.
"You have sacgified so much coming here, Hagy." Said the girl, adding with sweetness, "You must have very good reasons. I don't know you that well but I know you are vegy attached to your affections and very pgotective. You must have suffered a lot."
The boy nodded slightly at her. He couldn't hold his tears much longer so he lowered his eyes and took a breath.
"Consider it Harry, please. And take care of yourself." They got up and headed for the door. "We're leaving now, we'll be in Toulon for a few more days. Haven't you thought about doing a Fidelius enchantment here?"
"And who would be my secret guardian?" Harry replied with a hint of cynicism as he opened the door, not telling them that he was having problems with his magic.
"Yes, I see. Have you protected the house in any way?"
"With salvio hexia and protego totalum enchantments, as soon as I bought it. I remember that Hermione used them when..." His heart beat hard when he remembered all those days with Hermione and Ron in which they escaped from Voldemort trying to find the horcruxes hiding in a tent.
"Harry? Are you okay?"
He looked up and saw Bill watching him. He was absorbed in his memories, and when he returned to reality he asked him:
"Do you know anything about Hermione?"
Bill raised his eyebrows and said, "Not much, really. In the last few months I've been going a lot to the Ministry, which was in chaos. I'm sorry to insist Harry, I think those spells are fine, but maybe you need some extra spell to strengthen your security in here."
"Don't worry Bill, those two spells are enough. No one will look for me here." Harry looked outside and discovered that the evening would soon be night. He didn't want to tell him that his magic was failing and that he wouldn't be able to do any of those spells.
"All right. But at least consider returning to England. Everyone misses you there, Harry." He stopped abruptly and frowning added: "How did you manage not to tell me why you left?"
"I don't know, Bill. Perhaps next time you come to visit me."
"We will. And you won't escape again," he said smiling, giving him a farewell hug.
"Goodbye Hagy! Take good care of yourself." Fleur said, kissing him on both cheeks. Fortunately it was getting dark, so no one would notice he was blushing.
"I'll tell my mother you're fine and I tried hard to convince you to come back. Otherwise she would never forgive me," Bill said, adding, "And for Merlin´s sake, your wand must be always with you!
Harry nodded, and a second later a slight "pop" was heard. He stared at the place where the couple was standing a few seconds earlier, and realized that they had disappeared just three or four meters from his door.
"Too close." Harry thought as he entered his house. "Maybe I should listen to Bill and reinforce the protective enchantments." He kept thinking as he sat on the couch and turned on the television, though he didn't know how he would do that.
***HP***
A few hours later, Harry woke up startled by a noise he heard near him. With his eyes still blurry, he put his glasses on and realized that he had fallen asleep in the same couch with the television on. Thinking that perhaps the noise was coming from the apparatus, he pretended to get up and saw with disbelief and surprise an owl standing in the frame of the open window.
After a few seconds in which he had been petrified observing it as if it could not be possible for that owl to be there, he got up and went slowly towards the bird. The night had fall over his home, and as he approached he found that the owl was trained for delivering mail and not a wild one. She was carrying a letter, the first letter he had received in months.
With his hand trembling and an enormous emptiness in her stomach, he took it and read it.
352 Chemin de la Bosquette, La Valette-du-Var, Provence, France.
It was addressed to him as it was his own address. His breath was cut off as he turned it around and looked at the sender with his eyes wide open from another huge surprise: the red wax he knew so well, and the Hogwarts seal.