A/N: Thanks to all of you guys who continue to read and review, they mean so much to me, and I can't keep for posting with all you guys out there! I'm actually really excited, I'm hoping to break the 10,000 hit bar this chapter...
Me: And for the record, I don't own Dobby, Rita Skeeter, or any other minor Harry Potter character.
The Cricket Dude: What about the rest?
Me: *Huffs* Well I don't own them either, or anything at all. Now you can leave me alone.
The Cricket Dude: I do need to go find Pinoccio...
* I don't own Pinoccio either*
On with the story!
Founder's Adoption
Chapter 4
Another day, another memory. Today it was just another large explosion due to the inability of Godric and potions, and the idiocy of two certain children to try and have him help with a certain- ahem- prank potion. Rowena and Helga were actually watching them, casting invisibility charms over themselves so they could watch and prevent the children from getting hurt from the impending explosion.
"Godric, honestly, Harry and Hermione aren't going to get any better at potions if they keep learning from you!" Rowena was still reprimanding him, an hour later. Harry and Hermione were watching from behind the couch, stifling their giggles.
"Well at least this time it was in the potions classroom in the main castle, so we don't have to fix anything!" Godric hopelessly defended.
"Idiot, someone else is going to get blamed for that, and why exactly did you feel compelled to brew in the MAIN CASTLE, where anyone can just waltz in and find you?" Helga yelled.
"I thought that you wouldn't find us?" Godric said meekly. Truth to be told, now that they had Harry and Hermione living with them, Rowena and Helga scared the crap out of him even more.
Hermione and Harry could no longer hold their breath, and a sharp series of giggles rang from behind the sofa.
Rowena and Helga smiled tiredly. "Come on out, kids, and you get to tell us exactly what potion you were brewing, seeing as Godric here claims to have been listening to one of you reading the instructions," Helga said, raising an eyebrow as the two aforementioned children gulped.
Them crept out from behind the couch, and they looked so afraid that both mothers could help but burst into gales of laughter.
"Well that's not very nice," Hermione huffed, watching her mother try to reclaim herself. Harry nodded in agreement, crossing his arms in a pouting manner.
"Sorry!" Rowena gasped, straightening up. "So what potion?"
Harry and Hermione looked at each other. "We don't know, Godric was reading out of a book while we brewed!" Harry said convincingly.
"I'm getting a headache," Helga said, while Godric and the mischief makers laughed at their predicament.
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"So what are we going to do today, Godric?" Hermione asked, bouncing up and down.
"Yeah, what dad?" Harry asked, copying her.
"Ah ah ahhh, that's still a surprise!" he answered, a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
"Err... dad, will Mum and Helga approve, because we're not exactly off the hook for that griffin incident yet...," Harry asked warily.
"Of course!" Godric said indignantly. "They're actually going to meet us there!"
Hermione and Harry looked at each other before shrugging and following Godric as he cast an invisibility charm on them and walked into the Forbidden Forest.
They had only gone in there alone once, but after a meeting with some... well lets just call them creepers... they were more or less afraid of the place unless one of their parents were with them.
"Where are we going?" Hermione inquired, after entering the forest.
"We're going to the Forbidden Forest, isn't that obvious?" Godric teased. Hermione huffed.
After twenty more minutes walking in complete silence, they appeared at a small clearing.
"Where's Mum and Helga?" Harry asked.
"Hey, you made it here before us!" Rowena yelled, running into the clearing from another pathway. Helga followed her, struggling to carry what looked like some very heavy boxes.
"Now do we get a bit more insight?" Hermione raised her eyebrows at the sight.
"We're going to make your wands!" Helga said excitedly, setting the boxes down in relief.
"YES! I was RIGHT! You owe me three galleons, 'Mione!" Harry exclaimed, thrusting his hand out. Hermione grumbled good-naturedly and complied.
"What was it this time?" Rowena asked.
"Really Row, we should be encouraging this kind of behavior! Gambling, honestly!" Helga admonished.
"Oh, settle down, I'm not encouraging this, I'm simply asking what it was over!"
"Well-" Helga was cut off from a cough by Godric.
"Sorry," the two said simultaneously, blushing.
"So what was it?" Godric interceded.
"I said we would be making our own wands at nine, and "Mione said that we would be buying them at Olliviander's at eleven," Harry said smugly.
"Give the galleons back them Harry," Rowena told him.
"What, why?" Harry whined.
""These are going to be your wands when you're learning with us, and your backup wands during school, unless completely necessary. We're going to buy you wands at Olliviander's when we go school shopping for you to use at Hogwarts."
"Damn," Harry swore, handing Hermione the gold back.
"Harry!" Rowena admonished, appalled at his language.
Harry smiled sweetly at her. "What does it mean, Mum? I hear Godric use it when he gets himself into fixes, and thought that it would be appropriate in this situation."
Rowena turned to glare at Godric, who gave Harry a look of betrayal.
"It's not that bad!" he squeaked.
"Oh really?" Hermione asked. "Then what's worse?"
Helga turned to glare at Godric as well.
"I am sooooo screwed," he muttered.
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"So drag your hand over the blocks of wood, and choose the ones that call to your magic," Rowena instructed.
"I was wondering, Row, why are we making these wands so complex? Don't most wands have simple ingredients, and only one at that?" Hermione asked.
"The more potent the wand is, and the more personally suited, the harder it is for others to use your wand. Besides, it's more powerful this way," Rowena was about to launch into lecture mode, when Harry yelled,
"Found them!"
Rowena raced over to guide him to the next step while Hermione began to drag her hand along the line of different types of wood.
Harry had three different types of wood laid out in front of him. Smoking holly, diamond redwood, and shifting maple. The maple was constantly shifting into different forms, like a bowler hat and umbrella stand.
"Very good Harry, we'll have to freeze the maple when it comes to that, but here are the cores, run your hand over each container, and again, you may find more that one suited to your person, but pick them all out anyway."
Harry handed Godric the wood, and he immediately started carving the blocks into a wand shape, melding them together to make an interesting shade of brown as he did so. Then ever so carefully, with patience only seen in Godric every few years, he carved out a hollow in the wand for the core to fit snuggly inside.
He then picked up Hermione's wand-wood, and proceeded to make a combination of Blackwood, Blue Azalea, and Sighing Ash.
Harry was a bit nervous around the exoticly labeled core ingredients, and cautiously kept his hand several inches above the various containers and jars. Nevertheless, he laid out in front of Rowena a total of five different cores that had called to him through the difference.
Rowena continued the process, and coated the ash griffin feather in the coral snake venom, then twisted the entertwined Bobincoat hair and Horntail heartstring around them, finally wrapping them all in a basilisk scale. She then very carefully fitted the core into the hollow in the wand, then handed it back to Godric, who took a remaining chunk of his leftover wood and sealed the bottom off.
"Try it out!" he said excitedly.
Harry was about to do so when Hermione yanked it out of his hand.
"What do you think you're doing?" she hissed. "We're in the open, and the Ministry can detect underaged magic in wands!"
"Sorry," Harry said sheepishly.
Rowena and Helga gave her grateful looks for reminding him. They couldn't blame him though; they had been just as enthusiastic when presented with their first wands, it was only a matter of who was going to catch them in the act. Back then it would only be your parents making sure you were only practicing studies; the Ministry actually hadn't existed until they were about twenty, and just beginning the foundation of Hogwarts itself.
Hermione then handed Rowena her three cores; Grindylow tooth with Veela and unicorn hair wrapped around it. She and Godric repeated the process with Hermione's wand, then asked,
"Ready to try them out?" Hermione and Harry nodded enthusiastically, then disapparated back to the tower wit the two, leaving Helga to clean up all the boxes and containers.
"At least Godric forgot his favorite muggle knife, now I've got another bribe," she muttered. "Oh, this one is worth a lot!"
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Remus Lupin and Sirius Black were very near giving up. They had searched all the orphanages, and none had come up with anyone named Harry Potter ever living there. For the past four years, they had been searching through every muggle record and looking for evidence that a muggle might have adopted him and simply switched his surname.
That plan had come to a standstill. Often, they thought about going to ask James or Lily where Harry had been take, but their pride prevented them from doing so. They had gone around the Potter house under a disillusioning charm several times (James, for whatever reason, had never keyed them out of the wards, so they were able to get in unedetected. Likely he was still hoping that they returned.) and found that James had moved on, but Lily was still quite distraught over her ignorance and foolishness.
Unfortunately when the had decided to finally ask where Harry had been put, they heard Lily asking Dumbledore if Harry could come home, and asked him where he was. She didn't know, and Dumbledore refused to tell her. James just didn't care. He could see that his wife was unhappy, but tried to make her forget him by playing with her and Andrew all the time.
Remus and Sirius had very nearly returned, when during another eavesdropping session they overheard James' plan for Harry. Lily didn't know, he was just explaining to 9-year-old Andrew while she was out visiting friends.
That was something else that they had an issue with. Naturally, they had grown up and seen that they had been completely arrogant ponces throughout their Hogwarts' years; at least Sirius had. But Andrew's friends were downright spoiled brats. Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom were his constant companions, and whenever they went to an outing, they always teased and jeered at the other children there. Andrew basked in any glory he could get, and the rest of the wizarding world wasn't helping. They didn't know, but their mere tolerance for his atittude made his head that much bigger.
So now they were camping out in a forest, not really willing to go back to their huge manors or simple homes, or anything that brought them so close to the wizarding world. Their goal for now was to simply find Harry, and make sure he was okay.
A/N:So I rewrote some parts of this story, edited it a bit... subtle changes, but it really makes a difference. new chapter 5 should be coming out within the next week or two, sorry I stopped updating, I waited for every opinion, then my teachers got quiz/test happy for 2 weeks, and I live in MA, and we had massive power outages the last week (my French teacher still didn't have power Friday, but was cheerful anyway (not that she ever isn't) and said she as delirious... it was actually kind of funny, especially because it was Halloween dress-up day and she was wearing a tablecloth) check the news if you don't believe me...
~Tilaliastorm