A little stalker

*Turpin home*Surrey, England*July 30, 1992*

It had been mostly a good summer, the headsets he had created were incredible over long distances, the only one that Lisa and Harry couldn't contact out of the group was Blaize, and even though the Italian boy had yet to make contact, the vacation of everyone was enjoyable, even with the muggy heat of the summer, Harry even got around to working around the neighbourhood to raise money, even though George and Becky were willing to give the boy an allowance.

Through their conversation they found out that Hermione got around to follow Harry's example and restarted her muggle education during the summer, catching up to him and Lisa by the third week thanks to her constant effort and reading. They also gathered that her parents were glad that she would try to spend more time in their world.

From Neville they didn't hear much, the quiet boy didn't speak much when they called, answering with short phrases, but managing to not make them cutting, so they could keep the conversation going, even if the boy didn't have much time to speak thanks to the time his grandma made him spend with tutors on etiquette and all the a heir of a magic family should know.

Fred and George had confessed their vacation had been repetitive, as their mother had taken their wands as soon as they had been picked up from the station, leaving them unable to perform magic around the house, or at least active magic, so their daily routine was as follows: wake up, get to breakfast, answer some, ignore some of their little sister's question, signal their next-lot neighbour through smoke signals, go down for lunch, try to piss off Percy, go back to their room after dodging their sister, blow up some things with their experimental products, fly around a few hours, get dinner and then sleep, only to repeat the next day.

Terry had, once again, spent his vacations visiting historic monuments, going to Stonehenge, The Tower of London, the Big Ben, and this week he had told them that the trips would stop for the summer, as he had yet to do his homework and his parents were needed at their jobs, so he stayed at home, doing his homework, asking for help whenever he got stuck in something, in non-Ravenclaw way. More than once the boy had Morag McDougal over, apparently he and she got as close as Harry and Lisa during the year, so eventually Harry promised to get her a headset, sending Hedwig to Blaize so he could get the diadem headset and find out why he hadn't been in contact.

That had been a week ago. Hedwig had returned the day before, her feathers looking ruffled and her eyes angry, but she had been clutching a letter and the headset. The letter had explained that he had sent his family's owl several times during the month, but it had always returned with the letter clutched between its talons and thoroughly confused, which led all of them to believe that there was someone intercepting the mail. Good thing only one of them needed the mail, maybe it was time to introduce Blaize to international muggle post.

Today, the day before Harry's birthday, exactly five months before Lisa's birthday, had been nothing but bumming around, mostly because the heat had been unbearable for the day, it was a nightmare for all of them, both Harry and George cut their hair at the beginning of the week and there was not a moment that Lisa and Becky didn't spend with their hair up in pony tails.

Some family had stopped by, looking surprised when they saw Harry sitting comfortably in what used to be one of the two guest rooms, now permanently a bedroom for Harry, looking rather confused when they saw him lounging on the hammock with a book in hand and twirling his wand, most of them thinking it was a normal stick.

It was amusing whenever it happened, even more when they entered and saw the hammock swinging by itself.

It didn't break the Statute of Secrecy because Harry didn't use visible magic and they assumed that most of the runes painted on his walls were just tribal decorations, instead of runes that silenced his room, made the walls hard when pressed softly but hard when hit, so he wouldn't break anything if he fell, kept the room fresh and from smelling like a captive teenager, something appreciated by everyone in the house.

Becky and Gorge had asked for the silencing runes, Harry was not entirely sure why, but he complied anyway, no reason to deny them. Maybe it was an adult thing.

Anyway, apart from that, summer had been uneventful, no trouble from the wizarding world, an invitation to stay at the burrow for a week, or at the Boot home for another, or a get together with Hermione at one mall or another, or with the whole group at Diagon Alley now that the Hogwarts letters had arrived.

Both Harry and Lisa had asked if they could stay one week at each of those houses, George and Becky had agreed to six days in total, three in each house, as they did not know any of the parents and therefore trusted them only because they were the parents of their children's friends, complete and utter strangers otherwise.

So a week from now Mr Wesley would come to the Turpin's to pick up Harry and Lisa, and then Mr Boot would turn up to the Wesley home to pick them up, and then apparate them home.

Today though, and tomorrow for that matter, the Turpin household would laze around the house.

Or that was what Harry thought would happen.

He left his room around noon to get a fruit, to stave off hunger while George cooked lunch, munching on an apple as he went back to his room, thinking of how he would get around to start selling the runic headsets, and upon entering his room he saw the strangest creature he had ever seen.

Now, as sated before Harry had started to do chores for money around the neighbourhood, but what hadn't been mentioned was the fact that many times during his works he had felt eyes on him, and not the kind of eyes that came from an adult watching from the windows in concern for his front yard, but the eyes of someone following him.

The strange thing was that every time he looked, actually looked and not just glanced, in which case he would see tennis-ball-sized eyes, there was no one looking at him except for the owners of the homes he worked at.

Or so he thought, the eyes of the creature were the very same he had seen whenever he just glanced at whenever he was being looked at.

So when he saw the creature that caused him so much discomfort during his jobs, he reacted the way he reacted to most threats; surrounding it with his magic tendrils and waited for any provocation, "Give me one good reason not to break your arms."

The creature, whatever it was, and Harry was not about to ask, squeeked and tried to hide behind the one chair in his room, "I be Dobby, and I comes to warn the Great Harry Potter Sir of a great danger coming to the Hoggy Warts."

"Hogwarts is in danger," Harry raised an eyebrow, "Is it related to the wraith possessing my ex-teacher?"

"Dobby is not knowing what the Great Harry Potter Sir is talking about, but it be a very dangerous" the thing answered.

"Voldemort, is it related to him, in any way?" Harry started to raise the thing from the floor, making it look very scared.

"Harry Potter must not say his name," Dobby screeched, struggling in his invisible bonds, "And it does not involve Snake-Face," the way he said it…

"A memory?" Dobby's arms looked particularly stretched, so he would stop pulling, "Something from his past.

The elf looked gleeful, "Yes, the Great Harry Potter Sir must not go back to Hoggy Warts."

"And leave my friends to Voldemort, not thanks, I am not helpless, haven't been since I was orphaned" he had a magic shell around his body, a shell that protected him from everything physical, something that allowed him to manipulate magic itself without a focus.

The elf looked like he wanted to say something, but Harry interrupted before he could, "I am not sure what you are, my best guess is some kind of elf, and from what I know of elves, you are capable escaping from almost everything, yet here you are, I can keep you from doing anything, I can do it with every animal, what makes you think I can't do it whit whatever threat rises," a bluff, the biggest he had ever said, he knew that his magic tendrils were limited, they only worked actively when he was thinking of them, otherwise serving as nothing more than armour, "I don't care if Voldemort regains his body, I will find a way to send him through the veil, he will pay for what he has done, and I can't do that if I don't go to Hogwarts."

The elf looked about to say something, but something startled him, his eyes widening comically, and he popped away, leaving Harry with his eyes narrowed

'Mum, I've a felling it's going to be a bad year' Harry walked to the hammock and started to read again.

"Did you have to torture that elf?" Lily asked, more than a bit mortified.

'We both know I wouldn't hurt him, it was more of a psychological thing' Lily shook her head.

"Maybe he would have talked if you just asked" Harry had not answer for that.