Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling, I am just playing in her world
Mate?
Previously
So now they only had to face the music of informing Hermione's parents that Hermione now had a twin sister they hadn't previously known about.
Hedwig showing up next threw a spanner in the works; she let both of the twins know she wasn't really happy about now being told to fly to the Grangers and got promises of bacon every day for two weeks before accepting. A final few nips that hadn't been as friendly as the prior nips had been, and taking flight once more Hedwig slowly left. Both twins were sure that she was milking it to make them feel guilty. They were however, very guilty and promised to make it up to her.
Heather having put the cloak back on and with her shrunken trunk in her pocket followed Hermione through the portal with Mad Eye behind her. Neville, Luna and the Weasleys had left thankfully already. She saw the Grangers virtually pounce on their daughter. They had obviously been worried with it taking so long for her to get through the portal. Their smiles were strained as they pulled Hermione into a shared hug.
"Everything is alright, yes?" Hermione's mum asked her daughter.
"We were getting worried the train got in forty minutes ago and we have only about five minutes left on the parking meter." Hermione's Dad interjected.
"Everything is fine, Mum, Dad. We can talk as we walk to the car. Is it okay if I have a friend over?"
Both Doctors looked incredulously at the old peg legged auror that was following their daughter.
"Oh, not professor Moody, though he wants to check the house is safe and help organize some wards being put up to protect us. My friend is under an invisibility cloak for her safety. She is further disguised as my identical twin sister so no one knows they are staying at our house."
The Grangers' emotions ran the gambit from relief to concern to confusion to incredulous and were now wondering if their daughter might need professional help. An imaginary friend to use to blame if anyone saw Hermione do something wrong was their prevalent worry with the whole invisible identical twin sister that was apparently going to visit this summer. It was normally not a problem at this age though. After Dan Granger opened the boot of his Skoda Suberb Estate, and helped Hermione get her trunk inside he was stopped from closing it by Hermione.
"Harry you should put your trunk in too, last thing we need is it unshrinking while you're in the car." Hermione called behind her.
Harry carefully took the trunk from his pocket extended the arm from his cloak after quickly checking no one was around then after placing it on the other side of the boot. He removed his wand and cast finite incantatem. To the watching Grangers it was yet another reminder that every time they thought they had a handle on magic their daughter would find a new rabbit-hole to plunge them into. They saw a young girl's arm appear from thin air and reach into their car's boot. The arm retreated from sight then reappeared with a wand. Latin words, a flash of light, and now their boot had two trunks in it and they noticed the car's suspension shift from the suddenly increased load. The girl's arm and wand then re-vanished. So okay, there actually obviously really was an invisible friend, and the girl was apparently named 'Harry'.
"Do you want to ride with us Professor?" Hermione asked.
"No I'll watch you all leave then apparate ahead and start ensuring the house is safe. Stay under the cloak Harry, and I mean stay under it for the whole trip, Constant Vigilance!" Moody yelled startling Hermione's parents and drawing public attention to the car.
Hermione opened her door than stood to the side, "Get in Heather and scoot across I will place Crookshanks in the middle seat and get in after you."
The Grangers silently talked to each other then also got in and pulled into traffic, a few minutes after they were no longer visible even from a magic eye. There was a crack and the last of the group left Kings Cross station.
Dan communicated to Emma that he expected her to start the queries by dipping his head back twice, once to each of the two outer rear seats and then looking hard at his wife. "Hermione, you asked for a girl to stay over, and have named her both Heather and Harry. The professor called her Harry. We know of a male friend Harry Potter, but you have never mentioned any girl friends aside Luna and Ginny, definitely no one known as Heather before, even in passing. Does she really have to stay under a cloak the whole trip and she doesn't have a seat-belt on? Also are you going to feed her under the table when we stop for dinner on the way home like some kind of pet dog." A chocked off cough sounded, after the pet dog comment, from the empty looking side of the rear seat, helping the Grangers to believe the invisible girl was still in their car.
"We need to wait a bit more. I don't know how far Professor Moody's magical eye can see and we don't need him to try to apparate into this moving car to prove a point on constant vigilance." Hermione replied while laughter arose from the 'empty' corner of the rear seat.
"There has to be about half dozen buildings between the car and Kings Cross station now. How magical is his eye?" Hermione's dad asked her.
Hermione shrugged her shoulders, "Just give us ten more minutes to be sure Dad. Then Mum we will answer your questions."
"Hermione, you could answer our questions even if your friend is invisible."
"Heather, could you answer mum's questions?"
"No, wait Heather. Hermione we will hear from you first and then in ten minutes when your invisible friend becomes visible we will hear from your friend." Her mum explained to Hermione. "Let's start with how long you have been friends with Heather?"
"Actually I think I need to start with my polyjuice accident in second year." Hermione replied and at her mum's nod proceeded. "Prior to fixing the issue I was able to cast magic at home because the half kneazle was mature and that removed my active trace on my wand. Well you recall how I told you the evil wizard returned to life a year ago when he used my friend Harry's blood. At the end of this term he managed to get his death eaters to kill Dumbledore, the only wizard that he feared and we are worried how much of the ministry already actually answers to him, and Harry's seventeenth birthday is the last day of July and you know how I explained that magical maturity and the active trace and the waivers…
"Hermione, relax you are not in trouble and I now think I know what is going on. Your friend Heather was Harry." After her daughter nodded Mrs. Granger continued. "You used the kneazle hair polyjuice deliberately to remove the active trace from Harry to protect him from evil elements that might be within your ministry, but until seeing the result hadn't realized the half-kneazle was female. Is crookshanks really female?" A yowl from the middle of the rear bench was Crookshanks voicing his displeasure to that.
"No Crookshanks is a male-half kneazle and was the hair we were planning to use in the potion."
A bark from her Dad, "And history repeated and the wrong hair got into Harry's potion too."
"Do you want me to explain what happened?" Hermione asked rather put out. After getting nods from both parents she continued. "Crookshanks got spooked and clawed his way up me and hid behind my neck, digging his claws into my shoulders making me nearly drop the potion. I rushed Harry due to being in pain and he got at least one of my hairs, as well as one of Crookshanks into the potion. Madam Pompfrey believes Harry is stable as Heather-half-kneazle-hybrid and is investigating into whether the method used to cure me will cure Harry. She is concerned though due to this, using her words, being at least another order of magnitude more complex than my accident.
"Normally human hair in polyjuice potion lasts about an hour. Harry took the potion nearly ten hours ago now. So he could suddenly become what we had planned to avoid the trace. Or return to normal Harry with an active trace, which will require him to retake polyjuice potion without my hair to escape the trace. However, that could be bad as you're not supposed to stress the body for at least a year. Or he might remain as is. Heather go ahead and take off the cloak and put the seat belt on."
While sitting in the Granger's car listening to the conversation, Heather was having a breakdown. She felt like two people. One was the boy-who-lived, Harry that had accidently been turned into a girl. The second was Heather, she didn't have the weight of prophecy, the pile of expectations people had placed upon an emotionally abused, malnourished and stunted child. She could hide in plain sight like Moody had happily exclaimed earlier. She was not the wizarding world's savior their chosen one.
She was free of the all the baggage Harry came with. He vacillated between thinking of himself as he was, and as she now had become. He began to notice two distinctly different points of view on how to look at the situation as their conversation discussed her as Harry at points and him as Heather at others. When his thought process had him in the wrong state for how others referred to her he noticed that one of the points of view did a better job handling the miss-alignment than the other.
The old Harry was always upset when referred to as female, but the new Heather seemed able to switch comfortably between the past when she didn't exist as that was Harry to her point of view, and the present where she is a girl, and there is no problem being so. The main concern Heather had was a worry that she was killing Harry. That she was taking over another person's life and starting it off by committing murder.
As a now visible Heather pulled the seat belt on and then folded up a shimmering silky silver piece of material, which had been the magical artifact enabling her to appear invisible, both Grangers stared looking from one daughter to the other 'girl'. They now were the proud owners of completely identical twins and it was odd. Yes their daughter, admittedly with help this time, had managed to even trump today's Kings Cross debacle.
"We can't go into our usual restaurant. They would think we had been hiding our other daughter. Frank and Bernice would never let it go. There is no way we could pass her off as a friend from school." Emma stated to her husband.
Heather got a momentary shock at this. It shouldn't have shocked her as she had already identified that Hermione was her identical twin sister. So the natural progression then, was that the two people sitting in front of her were her parents. She had a mum and dad. Something Harry had always wanted and felt cheated when he discovered his parents were still dead, even if his aunt and uncle had lied about how they died. She was forced out of the reverie realizing dad was referring to her as Harry again.
"Well we could if he suddenly became Harry with the end of one or both aspects of the potions. Though having a customer flip genders in their restaurant would blow the statue of secrecy right out of the water. That's for sure." Dan replied "We could get dinner delivered, and eat at home. I think I have enough adrenaline to not need a break."
"I'll order, you let me know if you need to make a small stop for coffee, or if you want me to drive. They will have to have separate bedrooms for just in case she becomes he. What are we going to do about my parents' visit? What are we eating? Heather are those your only clothes that fit?"
"They're Hermione's, Harry's clothes don't fit me, mum. I am sorry, I mean Mrs. Granger." Heather was mortified she had been thinking of the Grangers as her parents and it had just slipped out.
"I would love you to call me mum, Heather. It would make things more natural when we out in public, which will happen tomorrow as we need to get you some clothes."While talking she noticed that Heather referred to Harry as a different person than herself.
"I don't want to buy girl clothes." Harry declared, the mistake of using mum causing the other way of thinking to take over.
"You are going to need clothes that fit. We can get you a more boyish style...
"Actually mum though you can't see it Heather still has a tail so they can't be more boyish than what she's wearing." Hermione cut in.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. Well except both parents were beginning to notice a pattern of two distinctly different personalities within Hermione's friend. Ones that could easily be correlated to an uncomfortable boy named Harry and an accepting, all be it unwillingly, girl named Heather living within the same girl's body. They both decided it would be healthier while she was female, if Heather was encouraged to be more dominant. As Heather was Hermione's twin sister she was their daughter. One they wanted to help. If, or when she became Harry once more they would help Harry recover dominance. However, it would be best currently to allow Heather to take over.
Hermione and Heather's grandparent visit was shelved to address later. Heather was misled into believing that her need for new clothes was shelved too. Food was ordered and hopefully timed to arrive after they were settled at home. Hermione ensured Heather was wearing the cloak over the seat belt well before they got home as Mad Eye would be looking to see they obeyed his order when they got home. It looked like a seat belt had been cut with a sharp blade as four inches of seat belt hung unnaturally from the dispenser and was cut off in a straight line as it obviously entered the invisibility cloaks domain.
Having parked the car in the drive way, they were greeted as they got out of it by both Professor Moody and Bill Weasley. "Perfect timing can the four of you all place a hand on this rock?" William held out an almost two foot cube irregular grey rock with seams of quartz running through it and runes obviously carved on the exterior. "Any where is fine. Actually can Hermione and Ha.. I mean Heather hold it between them it isn't very heavy and you don't need to give me rights to your house."
They all shuffled around. Moody glared into the dark as if he expected death eaters to pour out of it followed by Voldemort. Then again that was probably top of his list for what just might happen next. Bill touched his wand to the keystone and started chanting light beams shot from the held stone to different places along the edge of their property.
Instead of death eaters Hedwig swooped in, dive bombed Moody for daring to shoot a spell at her then landed on Heather's shoulder furthest from Moody.
"What will the neighbor's think of all these flashing lights and a dive bombing owl?" Mrs. Granger asked.
Having finished his chant Bill then answered, "I have a notice me not ward up outside this main ward so they aren't seeing this light show nor did they see Hedwig's entrance."
"We are expecting a delivery driver in ten minutes. Will they miss the house?" Hermione asked
"I will drop the notice me not ward for the delivery."
"Where does this stone get placed?" Mr. Granger inquired.
"Okay I am done with this. Can you two place it in the basement on the floor, as close to the center of the property as you can? It doesn't matter if you stack things on it or around it, while I go and tweak the perimeter stones, then ensure the main ward links and includes the notice me not ward. These aren't perfect but their better than nothing by a long way. They are however, drawing their magic from us so you two need to limit your usage after we leave as you will tire sooner especially while they are initially charging. You both should spend a few minutes every few hours touching this stone too for the next day or two. I will get a team together to place permanent wards as soon as we have worked out how to pay for them, so hopefully within two weeks."
"I will pay for…
"Harry you can't go into Gringotts like that. Our best defense is that no one knows what you look like. This type of expense the Goblin's would demand a face to face meeting with you before allowing release of the funds. As heir to an Ancient and Noble house you will likely find restrictions until your twenty-fifth birthday. Most get annoyed at seventeen when they see they can still only access a trust fund.
"The fund is usually sourced with a greater amount of galleons annually, but also often then comes with actual management and conservation clauses to ensure the wealth is not being squandered. Gringotts will demand to teach the heir how to handle their wealth. In many ways depending on the level of scrutiny the magical guardian placed on you, and knowing Dumbledore, I would expect it to be next to none. You are likely to find it harder to use your money than you did previously.
"Dumbledore would have filled in all the paperwork allowing you to use what you had been using, and now you will have to prove justification to the Gringotts board in charge of transference out of the main Potter account, and for withdrawal for just about everything from your trust account above the allowed maintenance and the last year of Hogwarts school fees and costs. It might be easier to get blood from a stone than get your money from Gringotts." Bill informed them before heading towards the perimeter.
Turning back after a few steps with a wicked grin stretched across his face, Bill calmly added. "You should get that keystone into the basement soon. It is draining your magic as you hold it, far faster than it drains Moody and mine. I strongly advise you get it placed before you become too magically exhausted to hold your glamour. Especially seen as the way Crookshanks is behaving and staring at Heather. I think he thinks that Heather-half-kneazle-hybrid is in heat."
