A/N: Sorry it took so long for me to update, I've been stuck running into writers block around every corner and to be honest it could pop up again any second. But, here is chapter 2 and I hope you'll like it!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, I do own this fanfic.
:-:-:Start of Chapter:-:-:
'Shit, shit shit SHIT!' Harry ducked down, turning it into a roll halfway to evade a red colored curse that came zooming at him over the kitchen counter. Coming out of his roll besides the happily burning hearth, lighting the kitchens, Harry couldn't thank his luck enough and quickly jumped in the flames after a hasty throw of floo powder and a yelled: "Gryffindor Common Room!"
When he came out at the other side, he found himself looking at the two misfits that dared call themselves his friends, snogging on the couch. He didn't waste any time for them to turn around, at the sound of his unexpected arrival, and immediately fired two pertrificus totalus', before running up the stairs to the male dorm room.
Inside he wasted no time in also paralizing the other students and then quickly continued on to the trunk standing at his bed. He only stopped for a second, mid step, when he heard the dim thump of a heavy weight hitting the floor, coming from the common room. The teachers had arrived then. Harry quickly resumed towards his trunk and, with one hand on one of its handles, muttered a shrinking spell before tucking the now small sized box in the pocket of his trousers.
Finished packing all his stuff, Harry promptly dropped to his knees to blindly reach beneath his bed. He let out a deep breath he didn't know he'd been holding when he felt the polished wood of his Firebolt beneath his fingers and, with the the broom in his hand, quickly jumped up back to his feet and strided over to the window next to his bed. Luckily the window was already half open and a good kick made it flap open completely, without much resistance.
Not hesitating Harry threw his broom up, over the small slope above the window, and onto the roof before he climbed up out of the window and onto the roof himself. As soon as he had the broom back in his grasp he jumping off, into a free fall for a few seconds, before finally getting on his broom and pulling it up out of its dive at the last second.
Harry was already flying over Hagrid's hut when he heard yelling in the distance. He only turned his head around to look back and a laugh burst from his throat at the sight of headmaster Dumbledick hanging out of the very same window he had just used to escape. The headmaster seemed to be in quite some pain as he was only kept from falling to his demise by his two foot long beard being held in the white knuckled grip of a very white faced McGonnagal.
Harry didn't stop laughing after he had turned back to face forward and he kept laughing until he was flying over the forbidden forest. Finally calmed down, Harry took a second to decide on where he was going from here on out.
His mind made up, Harry fished in his robes pockets until he found the packet of jerky he had just managed to finish before the teachers had come barging in, he took a big bite of one of the blood colored strips.
It was quite a blunt move, definitely, but it was the safest one he could think of at the moment. 'Grimmauld place, here I come.'
:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Standing in front of the current headquarters of The Order of The Burning Chicken, at number 12 Grimmauld Place, the first thought that crossed a young Harry's mind was: 'Do I have the key?' A very important thing to think of before you go and fly there, probably.
Harry took a step closer to the hideout, entering into the shadow of the gloomy building, and discarding any idea of subtlety yelled into the keyhole of the big imposing front door, "Kreacher!"
A pop sounded next to him and Harry looked to the side, unsurprised to find a very old, snot colored, house elf sneering at him from where it was standing, wringing its pillowcase clothing with wrinkled hands.
Harry sneered back, "I, Harry Potter, as your new master, after Sirius Black's passing, command you to let me into this house."
Kreacher looked unimpressed and lifted one side of his mouth up in a teeth baring smirk before raising its hand, fingers pinched together to apparate away. Harry was at its throat, squeezing it shut, before it could react and he snarled, "Now Kreacher! I want to be let in now! As your master you can't defy me, I'll kill you if I have to and take the key from your ulgy, cold, dead fingers!"
Harry squeezed harder while he talked, relishing in the way the house elf's face turned a darker shade of mold mucus green, only stopping when Kreacher let out a sound that wasn't all that different from somebody gargling water.
Harry stood back up after he let go and looked on dispassionately as Kreacher wheezed for air as it tried to push itself back up to its feet. Once standing, Kreacher gave Harry a uncharacteristicly timid glance before opening its mouth, "Yes, master. Kreacher open door for you, master."
It shuffled over to the door where it pulled a rusty old key from inside its pillowcase and turned it in the equally rusty lock until with an audible click the door opened.
Harry didn't wait for the door to be opened fully and confidentally walked over the threshold and into the narrow entrance hall, dropping his cloak ontop of Kreacher's head when the house elf had closed the door again behind them.
He pulled his wand from his back pocket and silently checked the wards. What he found wasn't all that bad, most of the wards had been left undisturbed, but a few of them -fortunately minor ones that weren't that important- had clearly been polished to The Order of The Burning Chicken's standards. They didn't pose any real threat now but, if Harry wanted to be able to come and go as he pleased later on, he would have to erase them and set up new ones to replace and fill up the then left over holes in Grimmauld's defense. Still, it was not so important it had to be dealth with now, he'd do all of that later when he had settled.
Content to leave the wards as they were right now, Harry put his wand away and turned back to find Kreacher carefully folding up his claok before holding it oddly close to its chest.
Harry chose to ignore the creature's weird behaviour for now and pulled his shrunken trunk out of his pocket before returning it to its original size, "Kreacher."
The house elf flinched slightly but in constrast to his hesitation outside answered immediately, "Yes, master Harry Potter?"
"Can you bring my stuff to the second bedroom on the left of the second floor, I'll be using it from now on."
Harry again did not wait for an answer before leaving toward the library and was already out of earshot when Kreacher's croaky voice could softly be heard saying, "Yes, master." and he thus also missed the big teary eyes and blatant look of adoration on the elf's face as it dissapeard upstairs with a soft pop.
In the library, Harry quickly scanned the nearest bookcase before moving on to the next when the title he was searching for wasn't there to be found. Only after a few minutes of frantic searching did he think of summoning the book to him. A soft mutter of Accio was quickly followed by something that felt like ten pounds being slammed into his stomach.
Catching his breath from the unexpected hit, Harry picked the large tome up from the ground and carried it over to the nearest table and put it down with a loud bang, making a big cloud of dust lift off of the old book and hit Harry in the face.
Sputtering around a mouth and nosefull of dust, Harry yelled for Kreacher.
"Yes, what can Kreacher do for master Harry Potter?" Harry was horrified to notice that the retched creature was blushing!
"Ehm..yes, Kreacher. Clean up all the rooms from dust and grime and general filthyness on the ground floor, first and second floor. I don't think I can live another summer in all this filth."
Kreacher's eyes seemed to bulge out of its head when Harry was done but its tone of voice when it spoke wasn't what Harry had expected as it almost seemed to be happy? "Kreacher has to clean all three floors?"
Harry looked at the elf warily as an almost smile touched its none existent lips, "Yes, all three floors. The bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchen, especially have to be perfectly clean before nightfall."
Kreacher wrung its hands tighter in its pillowcase than Harry had ever seen it do before, and the movement exposed more of its knobbly knees and bone-thin thighs than Harry would've liked to see before lunch, but he refrained from commenting as the green servant bowed low enough to make its long ears sweep the floor before it gave an exited: "Yes, Master! Immediately master!" and popped away.
Harry shook his head in exasperation, a sigh escaping his lips, as he was again left perplexed by the behaviour of the old house elf. He can remember how he had thought the thing to be quite creepy a year ago -though why he would find such a small and weak organism creepy is beyond him- but now he just found it weird and quite ugly to be honest, very ugly indeed.
Pushing aside the whole 'weird house elf in my house' thing for now, Harry turned back to the book he had tried so hard to find. On the cover, in muted grey, it said: Magical Contracts: Types and Uses. Harry brushed of the little dust still left, even after its hard landing, and his eyes quickly zeroed in on the author's name that was now uncovered underneath the title: Ethan Gerald.
"Hmm, interesting name for a wizard." before Harry could even open the book to the first page, however, a loud pop right next to his head had him swearing as he covered his ears. "What in the- don't ever do that again!"
A ashen faced Kreacher trembled slightly at his raised voice but seemed to have gattered up all its courage as it opened its mouth to speak, "D-d-dinner, master."
Harry glared at Kreacher silently feeling a giddiness as its knees started to shake in freight, or nervousness -he didn't really know, nor care- and uncounciously hissed while speaking, "Did I ask for food, huh?"
"No, master. Master Harry Potter, did not ask for food."
"Then why do you interrupt me again Kreacher?" Harry snarled.
The little colour left to the elf's skin was as good as gone, leaving only greyish green behind, before he had finished with the second word and Kreacher burst into tears at the end. "Sorry master. Bad Kreacher!"
Harry didn't move to stop the house elf when it reached for a broken umbrella, that stood among the other useless clutter still taking up most of the rooms, and he didn't stop it either when it started to violently wack itself on the head with it. He kept watching for a minute or two but after that left, with the tome carefully held against his chest, to go see if his trunk had reached the second floor unscathered.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:
When he reached his room he was reliefed and pleased to find that Kreacher had atleast managed to bring his trunk upstairs without breaking any of its precious contents. He wasn't as pleased with the cleaning though, as the room was still full of dust with it covering the furniture in a thick layer and hanging heavily in the air.
He would have to talk with the house elf about that but before he went back downstairs he still had somethings to do. Harry opened his trunk, putting the heavy tome on a desk next to the rooms entrance for now, and rumaged through layers of clothing before he pulled out a small leatherbound notebook with a triumphant exclaim of: "Aha!"
He walked back over to the desk, now half filled with the ridiculously big book from the library, and shoved it aside so he could sit behind the desk with enough room for him to write in his notebook. He turned to the blank page he had saved for todays experiment and, with the small pocketsized quill he had bought a few months ago, started on his new findings.
~Notebook~
Experiment number: 8
I used subject 023 this time since, with the upcoming festivities, it wouldn't be as quickly missed. I was mistaken though as two hours into the experiment the teacher were notified, somehow, and I was forced to stop mid tasting and leave the school premises or they would've kept me from continuing my work.
I escaped successfully and am now located at the Chickens Coop. The house elf serving this location turned out to be more useless than I remembered as it has thus far only managed to bring something up the stairs and not much else. I am considering using it as a replacement for subject 023 so I can continue experiment number 8 even though I lost the first test results, but I'm still not a hundred percent sure as this one is quite a lot older and that can negatively effect the results I'll get. It's still in consideration though, as I don't have any other options for a replacement right now.
I'll probably conduct experiment number 8, or if I do decide to skip on to the next stage and start experiment 9, at the end of this month as I still need some time to recover after this mornings failure.
~Notebook~
Finished writing, Harry closed the notebook and stood up to put it back in his trunk but with the mess of clean and soiled clothes filling up most of the trunk Harry decided against it and left it on the desk next to the tome for now.
Tired from yelling at his useless house elf and the unexpected broom flying to escape his mental headmaster, Harry only planned to sit down on the bed for a second to take in the room but as soon as he touched the bed he was falling down onto the dusty comforter fast asleep.
:-:-:End of Chapter:-:-:
A/N: Sorry that this chapter was so short but I was just so happy I got anything down at all. Anyhow, it's still an improvement over chapter 1 which only had an 1180 wordcount, and that's with the author's notes and disclaimer, as this chapter has 2564, though again that's with the author's note and disclaimer being counted in as well.
The next chapter will hopefully be up sooner and as always I hope you liked this chapter. (=^L^=)