Disclaimer – If I owned Harry Potter, I would be filthy stinkin' rich, and you'd have paid to read this story.

Chapter 2 – Old Friends, New Allies

Dr. Remus Lupin was a professor of Religious Studies at a small privately funded University near Epsom. It was a position that he maintained, despite many offers of better positions, including some head of department jobs, in order to remain as close to Little Whinging, Surrey as possible. For fifteen years, he had been hoping to get the Dursleys to change their minds regarding contact with Harry Potter, so far with no luck. The couple had not managed to have him legally banned from contact, as had been their original intent, but either Harry wasn't interested in making contact with him, or he wasn't receiving the letters that he sent.

It was nearing Halloween, a time of year that Remus especially hated. It was at this time of year that Remus remembered the night that he lost everyone who had ever meant anything to him. It had taken time for Remus to recover from the losses of his closest friends, but the loss of Harry had been especially devastating. Never mind that James and Lily would not have wanted their son to be raised by the Dursleys, never mind that there was ample money with which to raise Harry. After nearly a year of court battles which drained Remus emotionally the judge had made the pronouncement that, as Harry's legal guardian had died in the car at the same time as the Potters, Harry would have to go to his relatives.

The triumphant looks on Petunia and Vernon Dursley's faces told him everything that he needed to know. The battle had not been about what was best for Harry, at least not on their part. No, the Dursleys knew that there was money to be had, for whomever raised Harry. They wanted the money that came with the child, not the child himself. The only plus in the entire case was that the judge had ruled that there was no legal basis to have Remus excluded legally from little Harry's life. The restraining order requested by the Dursleys would not be granted. Unfortunately for Remus, this didn't prevent the Dursley family from keeping Harry away from him. He'd been sending Harry regular letters from the day the judge made the decision. As the years past the number of letters had dwindled, particularly when no response was received. He had gone from writing every week, to every month, and now was finally down to three times a year: Christmas, Harry's Birthday and Halloween.

It's still gut wrenching, thought Remus. It never seems to get any better, no matter how much time has passed. I wonder if I would still feel this way, if I knew how Harry was. Even with no actual contact, if I knew that he was happy and healthy, maybe I could move on. It's the not knowing that hurts the most, that and being sure that James and Lily would have wanted me to be involved in Harry's life. They would have wanted me to raise their child.

Remus sighed. There was no hope for it. He had friends in the legal field. On more than one occasion he inquired as to whether he would be in a better position to sue for custody, now that he was a little bit older, had a home and an established career. They had all agreed. As time went on it became less and less likely that a custody suit would be successful. Not because Remus was unable to prove that he would be an ample guardian for the child, but because he no longer knew the boy. As of now, it would be unlikely that the suit would make it in the door of any courtroom. Harry didn't know him, except possibly from letters that he never responded to. If Harry were removed from his relatives by the courts, it was possible that he could be named a suitable guardian, as there were no other relatives to take him in. Otherwise Remus had little chance of ever adopting his Harry.

In preparation to leave work and go home for the evening, Remus turned back to his computer. He had several emails from students to deal with before he left for the evening. He had finished sending emails of advice to students and scheduling one or two meetings when one final email arrived in his mailbox. He didn't recognize the name of the sender, but neither had the firewall recognized it as spam. Curious, Remus opened the email, wondering if it had somehow slipped through the cracks of the latest spam filter. It read:

Dear Dr. Lupin,

We have never met and you don't know me, but I believe we may have a mutual acquaintance. My name is Mary Harris, and I am one of the Librarians at the public Library in Little Whinging. I have recently been assisting a young man in the research of his parents and the accident that took their lives and found your name in one of the articles reporting on their deaths.

The young man I am assisting doesn't know that I am contacting you at this time; in fact I doubt he thought of it yet. He was, when last I watched him research, very focused on the accident in general, though it was obvious that he wanted more information than just how his parents died. He has limited time available to him to complete his research, and so, I offered my assistance.

I am contacting you, before speaking to the young man in question, in order to prevent him from any heartache. It is entirely possible that you have moved on with your life and do not wish to bring up the painful memory of the tragic death of several of your friends. Please, do not feel that I am attempting to pressure you into any kind of relationship with this boy. However, I am afraid that my young man will find very little information of a personal nature regarding his parents in his research. Certainly, he will be able to find lists of charities that they donated to and sponsored, perhaps even the names of old school friends, but this is all very impersonal information and the child seems desperate to know his family.

If you know the child of whom I speak, and you would be interested in corresponding with the boy, please send me an email. I would like to set up a meeting between us before providing your information to the young man in question. He may be sixteen and nearly an adult, but I do feel that it is my responsibility to ensure that the person I am introducing him to, is one who will not take advantage of him.

Thank you for your time,

Mary Harris

Remus sat in shock for a full five minutes before even beginning to think of an answer. This woman, someone whom he had apparently never met, was contacting him on behalf of Harry because he was looking for information on his parents. His Harry knew so little about his parents that he had to research them on the internet as if they were a school project. He had known, he had been sure that Petunia had no interest in Harry, except for the money that would come with raising him, but he had never imagined that it would be this bad. He would arrange a meeting with this Mary Harris. Meeting Harry was something that he had been praying for now for fifteen years. Now he had his chance. Petunia and Vernon couldn't keep Harry from him if they didn't know the meeting would take place. It seemed that there was much that his Harry needed to know about his parents.

Harry sat on the bed in what was, supposedly, his room. In reality the room he occupied was nothing more than a repository for all of the toys that his cousin either didn't want or had broken. What little furniture occupied the room consisted of a rickety old bed with a sagging mattress, a toddler sized nightstand and a desk and chair so old and uncared for that Harry suspected they were found at a yard sale and purchased for less than a pound. Old though it might be, the desk in this room was well used, and well loved by the occupant. It was at this desk that Harry was free within the home.

He had learned early on that the only real chance that he had to escape the life the Dursleys had planned for him was to study hard and do the best that he possibly could in his classes. His Aunt and Uncle hadn't been thrilled about this. They wanted their son to be better than their nephew in school, but it simply didn't work out that way. Harry had a natural intelligence that allowed him to achieve superior grades with only a modicum of effort. The unfortunate consequence of this evidence of Harry's mental superiority was an unspoken requirement that Harry complete Dudley's homework in addition to his own. They had hoped that forcing Harry to complete Dudley's work would leave him little time to do his own. While Harry had always found the requirement that he complete Dudley's work unfair, it had the effect of doubly reinforcing all of the learning he did at school. If anything, the Dursley's insistence that Harry complete all of Dudley's homework had made him an even better student.

The desk was currently covered in books on World War II. Harry's most recent school paper had been on the relocation of London children to the British countryside, and the ways in which this program affected the short-term economy in rural England. The paper topic had been a challenge, as it required him to utilize his skills at mathematics to present the data in such a way that would be understandable by the layperson without making the paper boring. He was pleased with the result, and knew that his teacher would be as well.

Ordinarily, any research that Harry was conducting would be spread out across his desktop. It was his favorite place in the house to work. Unfortunately, while his Uncle wouldn't touch any school library books (it took only one bill from the school for Vernon to realize that destroying school property was a poor way to punish the boy) internet research was another matter entirely. It was too dangerous to leave this particular research out at any rate. Harry knew very well that the Dursley's would throw a fit if they discovered that he was attempting to learn about his parents. If they caught him, it could mean being forced out of the house. Harry didn't especially like living with the Dursleys, but he wanted to attend University, and if they kicked him out, it could significantly delay his goals.

In order to attend University, Harry would need top marks on his A Level exams, particularly because his relatives would never agree to pay for his education. It had been a fight to get permission to continue on to sixth form studies. It was only after pointing out that with good A Levels he would be able to attend a University, perhaps even earning an academic scholarship, which could potentially get him out of the house sooner, that got the Dursleys to agree to the continuation of his education. Despite the fact that they hated him, they wouldn't be able to justify kicking him out before he was able to find a job that paid enough to allow him to support himself. They would never hear the end of it from the neighbors, most of who had realized that Harry was not the juvenile delinquent that the Dursleys purported him to be, soon after Dudley left for Smeltings. When the neighborhood parents realized that their children's fear of being beaten up ended when Dudley left for school in the fall, only to start again whenever he returned home, it quickly became clear who was actually causing the neighborhood problems.

With the discovery that it was Dudley who had been beating up their children, the neighborhood parents had descended upon the Dursleys en masse, demanding that something be done about their son when he was at home from school. They had also taken an interest in the way that Harry was treated. The occasional unexplained bruising that cropped up even while Dudley was away had prompted a call to Social Services. While the worker had not found any evidence that the Dursleys were mistreating Harry, it had scared Vernon into keeping his hands to himself from that point on. Harry was grateful to whomever had made the call, though he would never have told the social worker that his uncle had beaten him up. Vernon was too fat to catch Harry on a regular basis, and Harry knew that all foster homes were not as nice as they were cracked up to be. By the time anyone had bothered to take an interest in his welfare he was already fifteen. He believed that with Vernon no longer even trying to hit him, he could survive the three years it would take him to finish his compulsory education and his A Levels without having to leave the house he had grown up in.

Tonight he was supposed to be sleeping, but he had decided to stay up late, hoping to have a chance to work on his research a little bit more without having to worry about being caught. Vernon and Petunia slept like the dead, so as long has he was quiet he could potentially have hours to work, though he wouldn't need it. He had only printed articles related to his parents' death at the library that day, hoping to glean enough information from them to begin further research. If I can just find enough information on them to go further, he thought, then I could really begin to find out about them. Names of friends, or other more distant relatives would be helpful, even birth years. Harry paused in his thinking to listen carefully. It was nearing midnight and he was just starting to hear his uncle's snoring coming down the hall. Give it another five minutes, he thought to himself, then it'll be safe to start.

Sure enough at about five past midnight, his uncle's snoring had reached the point that it could wake the dead. Harry quietly reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, climbed out of the bed and reached underneath to lift the loose floorboard where he hid anything he didn't want his relatives to find. Vernon and Dudley were too fat to get to it, and Petunia never bothered to come in to Harry's room. After retrieving the printouts of the articles, a fresh notebook that he had purchased just for his search, Harry got back on the bed, and began writing basic facts that he had gleaned from the various newspaper articles and obituaries he found on the internet. It hadn't yet occurred to Harry that an ordinary car accident wouldn't have garnered the attention that his parents' death seemed to have spurred. After an hour, Harry had the following list of details to look up:

James Potter b. 27 March 1960, d. 31 October 1981

Lily Evans Potter b. 30 January 1960, d. 31 October 1981

Godric's Hollow, Somerset, England

Sirius Black d. 31 October 1981

Peter Pettigrew d. 31 October 1981

Remus Lupin (still living?)

Bathilda Bagshot (still living?)

Attended a ball for children w/ Leukemia in Exmoor the night of their deaths

Looking back over it, Harry realized that it wasn't a terribly long list. But, he thought to himself, it's more than I had to work with yesterday. So what to research next, he wondered. I could start with the ball. It should be easy enough to determine what charity held a ball in Exmoor on Halloween 1981. The only problem is, I have no way of knowing if the people in charge even knew my parents. No, he decided, not the ball. At least, not at first. First I think I'll try to find the two people mentioned who may still be living. Starting, I think, with this Remus Lupin person. The article said that he was a housemate of my parents and was staying with me that evening. He must have known them. I wonder why he didn't keep in touch with me?

Then again, he mused, with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hating anything to do with my parents, maybe they kept him away. If they wouldn't let him see me, he couldn't force his way in. He doesn't look to be a relative. Tomorrow, he decided, tomorrow is Thursday and Mrs. Harris will be at home. Maybe she'll have something new for me. I'll stop by after school.

With that decided, Harry hid his research back under the loose floorboard, clicked off the light and went to sleep. He had to be at school the next day after all, and he'd need to be up in time to cook breakfast for his Aunt and Uncle. There was no need to make them especially antagonistic while he was doing something they wouldn't approve. After all, when they weren't upset with him, they mostly just ignored him, and left him alone. That was his favorite way to be treated by his Aunt and Uncle.

A/N: Be excited! Two chapters in a week! I actually seem to have a fair amount of time on my hands, so I may be updating more frequently, but no promises.