Such a high response for this next chapter, so here it is! We sing together now, here on the land and sea~ (Little mermaid II)
Warning: Hm, nothing much in here.
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom OR Harry Potter!
Sitting in a dark room, on the edge of his nicely made bed and with his curtains closed for the night, Danny Fenton, the same boy who had survived a night of terror 14 years ago, was now wondering just what life meant to him. Sure he had a fabulous dad who acted as though he would do anything for him and he hung out with the very few friends he had managed to make despite him being somewhat of a 'culprit' to the mysterious fire that had blazed his house to the ground. Danny was beginning to question his life and why the way things turned out for him as they did. But what was there to enjoy now? It was a great deal for him to be taken in by a man who hardly knew him but after 14 years of living with a dreaded past that he wanted to forget, Danny couldn't shake off the feeling of something more that had not been said.
He thought back to the night of the fire and the only voice he could hear that rung in his ears was the same voice that had taunted him so many years ago. It was a real live ghost that set fire to his house and as to why the ghost would hate somebody or something so much as to burn everything to the ground; Danny was hoping he'd learn soon enough. Having been with at least ten different psychologists, Danny was starting to feel a bit desperate. The doctors he was seeing weren't helping like they said they could and the pills that were subscribed to him hadn't helped at all either. Every night he would wake up, screaming out for his mother and father and knew deep down that they would never shout back. His dreams ended with nightmares and by the end of the night, he would have tears down his cheeks.
Although Danny hadn't thought to mention the nightmares to his doctors, he began to think that he would rather not for the sake of his sanity. He had no dreams he wanted to pursue as of yet nor did he have any goals to complete aside from finding out who the ghost was and why the ghost was ever there in the first place. A knock on the door got him out of his thoughts as Danny got up from the bed and opened the door just a crack so that only his eyes were showing.
It was Vlad Masters. The man had been a bit rough around the edges to get to warm up to but Danny soon began to look up to the man like a real father. But these days, he had been spending his nights and afternoons after school in his room with the lights off and the door held shut with an object or two. Vlad smiled lightly, hoping he wasn't disturbing Danny in anything important or other wise, affected his 'teenage life'. Vlad was a patient man and tried to talk Danny into sitting down with him and talk man-to-man about anything that would have been troubling him.
"I ordered out for pizza, thought you might want some." Vlad held up a plastic plate that was holding two slices of pizza with extra cheese. As much as pizza was alluring to some teenagers, this was not the case with Danny.
Not even the smell lingering in the hallway had gotten through Danny's thick nose. Vlad could see the boy was seriously not in the mood for food and looked to be sulking for half the week. An awkward silence hung in the air as Danny tried to apologize to his foster parent with his eyes alone. But the puppy dog eyes were not fooling Vlad this time and he trudged away with the pizza and plate still held flat in his hand.
'He's probably mad now…' Danny thought cautiously as he shut the door and went and sat back down on his bed.
Later that afternoon, Danny snuck down the hall and tip toed into the kitchen to get the slices of pizza. He was hungry but just not at the right time when Vlad had offered it. Danny smiled and went to take the pizza upstairs to his bedroom when he noticed Vlad sitting in his comfy chair like he usually did during the afternoon after a hard day's work at a factory nearby. But the man sitting in the chair was not all that had gotten the boy's attention, his eyes were looking elsewhere.
Danny looked down at the pizza and shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't as hungry as he thought after all. He quietly walked back down the few steps he had gotten up before he had stopped so suddenly and crept closer to the sleeping man. A curious twitch ran through out his fingers and Danny found himself reaching out for the envelope that had been sitting on Vlad's lap.
"I knew you would come down eventually. Got hungry, did you?" The man laughed quietly to himself and saw Danny's reached out fingers. He looked down at his lap and realized he had fallen asleep with the letter on his lap.
Danny smiled back at Vlad and straightened up, the pizza still held in his hand. "Sorry I woke you up, I was just getting some pizza and I saw you sleeping so I…" Lost in his words, Danny finally noticed at the last second of saying his few words that the man had not been listening at all. Instead, Vlad was looking down at the envelope in his lap.
'He could at least say something before doing that!' Danny thought to himself as the man picked up the envelope and opened it up, revealing a very old and tattered letter with a picture sitting along side it.
"I should have told you this sooner and I should have given you this a bit earlier. Talk about a lousy father. This son…is for you." Vlad handed the letter to Danny and smiled.
Danny wasn't sure what to make of this. Was this all some kind of trick to get him joking like when he was a child? The boy halted in his decision upon taking the letter and watched Vlad for any signs that it might be a prank and that the man was just pulling his leg just to have him out of the room for a while. But looking down at Vlad's saddened face, Danny could feel the tension rise in the room and held out his hand again and took the letter from the man's hands. He looked at the letter on both sides seeing all that was written but he couldn't make out some of it as most of it seemed to have been smeared away but it was still readable for anyone who could read such fine hand writing.
"Who's it from?" Danny asked as he set the plate of pizza down on a small table next to the chair.
"It's from Maddie. She wrote it out as a will at first but then it became some sort of farewell letter to you. Everything you need to know…is in that letter. I know I should have said something sooner, Danny. I'm sorry." The boy could see that the man had meant what he said and looked back down at the letter he held in his hands.
What could possibly be in the letter and who was Maddie? She must be at least apart of his family if she was writing out a will but why a letter to him? For once, Danny was scared of what he might find in the letter and who might have wrote it. The part that was scaring him the most now was the fact that it was scaring him more then his nightmares had.
Danny read as much of the letter as he could but most of the words he needed help with from Vlad who was happy to give Danny the help he wanted. After he read the last few sentences and looked at the signature, Danny's heart almost skipped a beat. Maddie Fenton, how could he possibly have forgotten his very own mother? After all his self pity and wallowing in despair, amidst it all, Danny had somehow forgotten the woman's name. No, not just hers, but his father's as well. Reading the letter to the very end, he saw that Vlad was right. Everything he wanted to know was right there in the letter. His last name wasn't Fenton nor was Maddie his real mother!
This was not something that Danny could sit down and think about. It was a very big thing to find out he had been left at an orphanage in London and had been adopted into the Fenton family at the age of one. On top of this information, Danny also found out about a twin brother he never knew about. From what the woman had wrote, this boy's name was Adrian.
Danny knew he had to sit down for this and went over to the steps to sit down, forgetting all about the pizza on the plate that was sitting on the table. To think he was worried about what or who the ghost from 14 years ago was, now he was facing an even bigger dilemma. He had a twin brother who he never knew about and a family that he was never born with. 'First a fire and, now this…I think someone's out to get me!' The boy was having a hard time dealing with the new facts of his life and Vlad could see that Danny would need some time to gather up this information in one file in his head.
A/n: Hope I made it not too rushed or not too mushy, I just wanted Vlad to break it to him gently! Not sure if I'm piecing this together right or not…