Disclaimer: Nothing's changed. Ron still hasn't been elected to his rightful position and I still don't own Harry Potter. Quelle horreur…

Additional info: Unless otherwise specified, all the stuff in italics is now Harry, and all stuff in bold is a letter found in the crate. Or James quoting something but that doesn't happen very often. All else is our dear James and his notes, letters and ramblings. M'kay?

Last little note: I know I'm not exactly allowed to do this but I'd like to thank sequinedfasade for reviewing Home, Bitter Home before I even had a chance to log off after posting it. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint you at all.

Harry worked hard to ignore the package for the next few days but it was getting harder and harder to do.

This was partly because he'd finished all his homework. And partly because he'd been stupid enough to mention it to Ron and Hermione in one of his letters. Now both of them were pestering him to find out what was inside. "It could be really important." Hermione told him. "It might help you understand more about what sort of person he was."

"It might have lots of cool stuff to insult Snape about next year!" Was Ron's angle. Neither one of these points were really making Harry feel better. But it was, he supposed, a pleasant break from them asking if he was 'doing okay' while both were carefully avoiding the subject of Sirius.

However the main thing that was making it hard to ignore, regrettably, was the fact that… his curiosity was killing him. Sirius had said that his father's head had deflated by his seventh year. And that was the year that his mother had started going out with him. What could have happened to make her change her opinion of him so much? What could he possibly have done to make her forget the sheer loathing she had obviously held for him just two years previously?

Out of simple, unadulterated stubbornness Harry tried not to think about it too much. He'd decided not to read any of it, and so he wasn't going to read any of it. That simple… or at least it was that simple for a while. Then he started to lose his mind. Which made things a tad less simple. His only choices for pastimes were either re-reading his homework, sending frighteningly long letters to everyone he'd ever met, mourning Sirius or opening that package.

After a week or so, the first three options got boring. Particularly when you couldn't sleep anyway and were therefore conscious for twenty-two hours a day. Finally, at six PM on Sunday night, Harry gave into temptation.

He walked over to the package, which hadn't moved since being delivered, and crouched down to take a closer look at it. The thing was about a foot tall, a foot deep and two feet wide and it was covered in an inordinate amount of brown paper. It took Harry almost five whole minutes just to unwrap it and reveal… an astoundingly ordinary wooden crate.

With a small sigh he began trying to prise the lid off. Unfortunately he pulled a bit too hard and forgot that Lupin had already opened it, which resulted in him overbalancing and landing on the ground with a thump. He glared at the only other living thing in the room in an effort to vent his annoyance.

Alas, the only other living thing in the room was Hedwig.

And she just glared right back.

- - -

A little under an hour later Harry was sitting on the floor with dozens of random bits of paper scattered around him in a pitiful attempt at neatness. One pile held his father's old report cards and test results from school. Most of which, Harry was surprised to see, were actually on par with Hermione's. Including straight Os in Potions. Harry wondered a bit what his father would say if he'd seen Harry's last potions result… he chose not to dwell.

Another pile held notes about Hogwarts and Hogsmeade that had probably been used in the construction of the Marauder's Map. James Potter was apparently very methodical in his approach to rule-breaking, since some of the notes were made on the back of homework assignments Harry recognised to be first year level. Early first year level. There was one on the 'purpose and application of Transfiguration in day-to-day life and purposes of the following course'. Harry seemed to recall McGonagall handing that out on their first day.

He'd even found a couple of notes detailing the times of Lupin's absences from school. James had obviously spent quite a bit of time trying to prove that Lupin was a werewolf, before accusing him openly.

The two largest piles however, were dedicated to assorted notebooks, all of which were plainly dated with the relevant letters stuck inside them. Harry had divided them into the 'Australian Summer' pile and the 'Post Australian Summer' pile.

After checking that his trunk was in place and no one could get into his room, Harry carefully picked up the first notebook. It appeared to be a regular muggle journal. In fact Harry could have quite easily bought one almost identical to it in the newsagents down the road. Except he suspected that the absent-minded doodles of broomsticks and Quidditch pitches that littered it's bright red surface were his father's addition rather than an original feature.

Harry could, in fact, recognise one picture of a snitch to be an approximate copy of the one that he'd watched James draw in his DADA exam just a few months previously. Had Harry not been intimately acquainted with the Marauder's Map, he would have simply opened the book and started reading. But since he was, and since he sort of suspected that his father would have been slightly paranoid about his journals, he opened it slowly, cautiously and facing away from him. It had only open about fifteen degrees when-

BANG BANG BANG!

"Boy! I don't know what you think you're doing in there but if it's anything strange then I'm warning you, you'll regret it!" Uncle Vernon's ominous voice roared, as the windows continued to rattle from his thumping on the door.

Harry barely noticed. He was slightly preoccupied with the thumping heart that had leapt into his throat. "Do you hear me!" Uncle Vernon added. Harry rolled his eyes and gasped for breath, swallowing hard.

Something about the thought of being cursed into a vegetative state by his father's old journals sat wrong with Harry, and he had been absolutely certain it just happened. But no, it was just Uncle Vernon being a pain in the neck. Not exactly an unusual hobby for Vernon Dursley, it had to be said. But Harry had a hard time being angry with his Uncle. Particularly since, as a result of his outburst, his father's notebook had tumbled to the floor. It now lay, directly in front of Harry, open at the first page and ready to be read. No horrifying curses or anything. Harry was in awe.

"DO YOU HEAR ME BOY!" Uncle Vernon bellowed. Harry grinned to himself.

"Yes Uncle Vernon. I hear you. Sorry, I was writing a letter." he lied, sounding as sweet and innocent as he could. Uncle Vernon quickly got the message and retreated. Harry heard him mumble something about being sorry to intrude, before shuffling back down the stairs.

With a child-like glee, Harry leant over the book and started reading his father's neat, round handwriting. Neat, round handwriting that was written in a blue ballpoint pen rather than with a quill and ink. Apparently James Potter appreciated muggle stationary...

Quidditch Journal Thing
Entry number 1
July 14th

Dear… thingy,
Well, here I am. I've been in this hell hole for one day and I'm already starting to lose my mind. Mum told me to look on the bright side. To think of this "Not as a punishment, but as a learning experience". Learning Experience?

So far, all I've learned is that a six-year-old Texan with vertigo can throw up three times his body weight. And as much as I appreciate the importance of wide and varied knowledge, I don't really see THAT coming in handy any time soon. Not unless I can hover the kid over Snivellus' head or something. Okay, so planning ways to annoy Snape in the middle of the holidays is pathetic, even by my standards. But come on, I've got to cling to something out here.

Perhaps I should explain a bit more so that someone reading this will have a small idea of what I'm on about. Not that anybody should be reading this. So if you're reading this and you're not me (or maybe Sirius) then you should know that you'll be jinxed as soon as I get a hold of you. On the other hand, maybe I'll lose my mind this week and fly a broomstick into the side of a mountain and this is being read as evidence.

In which case, Remus I leave you my chess set since you were always better with the bloody thing than I was, Peter I leave you my Transfiguration notes since Merlin knows you need them and Sirius I leave you whatever you want, since you've pretty much got access to it all anyway. Except the chess set and my Transfiguration notes. Because they're accounted for. But I digress.

So, back to the explanation thing: Around about Christmas I may have, perhaps, slightly, in a way, helped a friend of mine run away from home. In order to do this I was required to place a very small and almost harmless spell on his father so that said friend could get out of his house without having various extremities cut off by said father. I mean honestly, how much damage can a Full Body Bind do, anyway?

Total Drama Queen if you ask me.

But when the Ministry found him four days later they blew things slightly out of proportion. As usual. They make a big deal out of something harmless and playful like that, but Voldemort is 'not considered a threat at this point'. How morons like that came to form our governing body is completely beyond me… I'm digressing again, aren't I?

Well the thing is, the Drama Queen happens to have some rather strong connections with people that I'd rather he didn't have any connections with. That is to say, Ministry officials. He convinced them that I kidnapped his son, and kept him locked in my house against his will (like anybody short of the Azkaban guards could drag Sirius anywhere he didn't want to go. Complete nonsense). The Ministry wasn't entirely convinced by this rubbish but they decided to punish me anyway. I think the judge's ruling went something like this:

"James Potter, for the truly heinous crimes of prank-pulling, wise-cracking and general mischief-making I am sentencing you to six weeks of teaching screaming brats from all over the planet how to play Quidditch. Regardless of the fact that none of the aforementioned brats will be allowed near broomsticks until they are at least ten years old, and also regardless of the fact that they will be taught all about it at school soon enough. Since you're basically a cocky bastard about the fact that you can stay airborne for more than five minutes at a time this little exercise should make sure that any sense of pleasure you get from being on a broomstick is sucked out of you, leaving you a broken quivering wreck of a human being. And by the way, your hair's a mess too you scruffy little git."

All right so perhaps that wasn't exactly what he said. But it was the general idea he was trying to get communicate. So there you have it (still not sure who "you" are, but I don't suppose that particular question is going to answer itself anytime soon, so we'll just move right along). Those are the events that led to me spending my summer in this hothouse they call a country. Rather than sitting at home, annoying Sirius and postponing my homework until the last three days of the holidays. At which point I will be forced to go without food or rest until it's completion, resulting in an amusing and unpredictable mental imbalance for all to see.

I'll explain more about where "here" is in a minute. Right now there's some whiney little eight-year-old called "Justin Case" (no, I'm not making that up) who is trying to tell me about how "NEWTS don't look that hard".

Tell you what mate, you try making up a couple of vats of Felix Felicis on your Easter weekend with Slughorn breathing down your neck, then we'll talk… twerp…

- - -

Harry grinned.

His stomach had twisted painfully at his father's casual mentions of Sirius and Wormtail. One friend who had been locked up, hunted down and killed, and another turned traitor and working for Voldemort. That was not exactly a happy thought.

However, at this point, Harry kind of liked the guy writing in the notebook. He was enjoying reading something written by James Potter. Which meant that Snape was wrong, which meant that Sirius was right, which meant that Harry would probably sleep better at night. With a smug sort of satisfaction he reached up and grabbed the pillows off his bed to make himself comfortable before he started reading again…