Chapter 16
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or James Bond or any of their characters. I do however own this story! I wrote it and I do NOTgive permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.
The next time Harry heard from Hermione was a demand for him to go to Flourish and Blotts and see if they had any books that wrote about the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts after the briefest of Hello's.
"Hi Hermione, nice to hear from you. I'm fine thanks for asking, my Aunt and cousin are in good health and school's going really well, Rowing and cricket have finished until spring we came second in the Cricket and third in our division for rowing, but I'm glad to be back on the football team and I signed up for the chess club though I must admit wizards chess is more fun, I miss the personalities of my wizarding chess set," Harry said sarcastically.
"Oh Harry, I'm sorry, but the Chamber of Secrets has been opened, Filch's cat Mrs Norris has been petrified and there's a warning written in blood 'Enemies of the Heir Beware' and nobody can find more than a sentence or two about the chamber," Hermione replied.
"You think that this is the thing that that house elf was trying to warn me about over the summer?" Harry asked.
"I don't know, nothing really bad has happened yet, except to Mrs Norris. The potion to revive her is going to take months and most of the students are glad about that, the twins are organizing a party to celebrate. But I don't like it, and it happened on Halloween which is the anniversary everyone celebrates you defeating Voldemort so it could be a day his supporters want to ruin," Hermione replied.
Harry stiffened slightly at the casual reminder that everyone in that world celebrated the night his parent's had died. Hermione knew how he felt about it, but clearly she'd forgotten and allowed herself to get caught up in the popular view of that night now that he wasn't there to be upset about it. He wondered if her memories of last Halloween had been altered like her memories of being told what happened after they split up after the potions puzzle seemed to have been.
"So much for being the safest place in Britain," he said snidely.
"Harry," Hermione scolded.
"How's Ron? And Dean and Seamus and Neville?" Harry asked.
"They're all fine," Hermione replied as if she hadn't thought about it. "Ron spends all his time talking about Quidditch and playing chess. He tried out for your spot on the Quidditch team but it went to a third year, Cormac McClaggan. Ron was quite ridiculously upset."
"Ron would need a much better broom to be a seeker, he'd be better at one of the other positions, but it isn't ridiculous to him, imagine how you'd feel if you came second in all your subjects, or started a new subject and found that you couldn't do it," Harry commented.
"It's not the same, grades are important for how many electives you're allowed to do next year and what subjects you can continue after owls as well as getting into university or apprenticeships," Hermione replied.
"It's the same to Ron," Harry said bluntly.
"If you knew it's that important to him why didn't you give him your broom, it isn't like you can fly it in London? It was brought for you to play for Gryffindor," Hermione asked.
"It wasn't a gift, Hermione. It was purchased with money from my trust vault," Harry countered. "As to giving it to Ron, why should I? It's mine and I can't afford another one if I find a place to fly. His parents wouldn't have let me give it to them anyway."
"But you can't use it," Hermione said. "Isn't it just a reminder of what you've given up?"
"I haven't given up magic Hermione, I'm still a wizard and so what if I can't use my broom here at home, but my tutor can take me somewhere I can fly a couple of times a month, just like I need to go the river to row or the park to play footy," Harry retorted.
"Then you could come back?" Hermione whispered hopefully.
"I won't though, this is where I belong," Harry replied seriously.
-o0o-
It turned out that in spite of the fact Petunia found it distressing, embarrassing and quite troublesome to have Vernon constantly needing her with him to supervise tasks and try to keep calm and quiet so he wasn't overloaded, placing him in a care home wasn't an option. Vernon's savings and severance payout weren't enough for them to afford the mortgage repayments and the fees at Smeltings as it was let alone the care home fees, and Petunia reluctantly made the decision to bring her son home and send him to Stonewall Comprehensive in order to save their home.
She also started working of an evening trying to make ends meet trusting Dudley to stay at home to care for Vernon, not realizing that Dudley took the opportunity to go out with his mates leaving Vernon alone. It wasn't until one of the local restaurants called her about Vernon refusing to pay for his meal that she realized what was happening. Petunia tried to reason with Dudley, that if she couldn't work or had to pay for outsiders to babysit Vernon while she was working there would be much less money for her to spend on luxuries like brand label clothes and shoes for him, computer games or even a new TV next time Vernon lost his temper and threw something at the one they had, but it didn't do any good. She was called away from work regularly to collect Vernon from the local bars and restaurants after Dudley had left him alone to go and meet his mates, and she eventually lost her job and was unable to find another without references and with the reputation for being unreliable, forcing her to put the house on the market and move into a poky two bedroom flat.
Vernon was much more unsettled in the flat where he could hear the neighbours all around them at odd hours of the day and he didn't have his routine of working in the garden and became more difficult for Petunia to manage.
Dudley threw a massive tantrum the first time she had to deny him money to go out with his mates but for once Petunia didn't give in to the spoilt boy, reminding him that it was his decision not to look after his father while Petunia worked and therefore his own fault that she'd lost her job because she had to leave to rescue Vernon too often so they couldn't afford tickets to the concert he wanted to go to.
Dudley decided to steal the money from her purse only to find it virtually empty, he took what money was there and was furious to find that the following week Petunia had bought the supermarket brand cereal and only a few cheap brand snacks instead of all his favourites. Petunia unsympathetically pointed out that she could only buy what she could afford and the money she'd been saving for the groceries had gone missing and if that continued she wouldn't be able to afford anything other than the basic necessities. She didn't bother to accuse him of taking it, though she was fairly sure it hadn't been Vernon.
Dudley then tried to bully the money out of the younger students at school but someone told the teachers and without his cousin around to frame for the crime and his father around to get him out of trouble Dudley was expelled from school and given a good behaviour bond by the police. He wasn't legally old enough to get a job so Petunia reluctantly enrolled him in another school where a similar situation arose and Dudley was expelled again, and soon after this he was caught trying to rob empty houses in his old neighbourhood, and assaulting a home owner who arrived home unexpectedly and surprised him. This time the police did not let him off with a slap over the wrist sentencing him to two years at St Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys, leaving Petunia alone with an increasingly angry and abusive Vernon.
Petunia did her best to look after her husband but finally left him after he put her in the hospital with 5 broken ribs and a broken clavicle, spending time in a battered women's shelter before being settled in a bedsit in another town. With nobody to look after him it wasn't long before Vernon attempted to assault a waitress who refused him service unless he went home and showered and was arrested. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to his hypoxic brain injury and ended up being placed in a state run secure care home for people with acquired brain injuries who had aggression and violence issues.
She tried visiting Dudley but receiving visitors was a privilege that Dudley frequently had taken away from him for violence against the other residents or attempts to abuse the staff so she couldn't visit often. When she did manage to visit, he cursed at her for not bringing him sweets and snacks and refused to sit and talk to her so worn down by the constant abuse at home as well, it was difficult for her to find the motivation to keep visiting.
By moving away from the Little Whinging area Petunia eventually got another menial job cleaning other people's houses, but the owners did not want to socialize with their maid and her neighbours weren't the sort of people Petunia wanted to associate with so she lived a very small and solitary existance. Having long lost contact with all of her friends and without Vernon or Dudley to care for, Petunia slowly sank into depression.
-o0o-
Harry didn't hear from Ron or Hermione again that term though he still had hopes of meeting up with both of them in London at the start or end of their Christmas Holiday. He was disappointed that neither of them bothered to write and Hermione didn't call though he understood that satellite calls were expensive. Neville wrote a couple of times and the two formed a somewhat closer friendship than they'd had while Harry was at Hogwarts the previous year.
Surprisingly the next person to contact him with news of what was going on at the school was Dean Thomas. He wrote that maybe Harry had been right not to come back and told him about Justin Finch-Fletchley and a first year kid being turned into statues and how they were going to stay like that until June, since the school were still growing the ingredients needed for the potion to fix them.
Harry rang Hermione
"Hi Harry, are you missing Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, feeling a little guilty that she hadn't written to her friend. With what was going on with the chamber and having a mystery to solve Ron had started hanging out with her a little again and she was busy trying to find out what was happening.
"No Dean wrote to me about the students being petrified and I wanted to know that you and my other friends were all alright," Harry replied.
"Everyone's a little on edge," Hermione admitted. "Nobody really knows what is doing this and we're all worried who will be next."
"Have they sent the petrified students home?" Harry asked.
"No they're in the hospital wing, they can't really send home statues that look like their children. The muggles wouldn't understand," Hermione replied.
Harry frowned at that reply. It sounded more like something Ron who had never spoken to a muggle for more than 5 minutes might say, and if he'd said something like that last year Hermione would have torn into him defending her parents. So to hear her talking like that made him suspicious and even more glad he'd decided not to go back.
"So what are they going to do, just let them disappear, have their parents even been told what happened?" he asked.
"I don't know Harry, they must have been told something to explain why they're not getting any letters," Hermione said dismissively.
"What's the firstie's name? Where's he from? Dean didn't say," Harry asked.
"Colin Creevey, he's a Gryffindor, he's from London somewhere I think," Hermione replied.
"Do you think you could ask some of his friends to write to his parents tell them what's going on and maybe some stories about what Colin was like or what they were learning in class before he got turned into stone. It might make them feel better," Harry suggested.
"I'm sure Professor McGonagall has taken care of that, Harry," Hermione said irritated.
The problem was that Harry remembered the way McGonagall had spoken to Aunt Dahlia and Ellery and he was not at all sure she would have gone out of her way to assist Colin's parents.
"Can I talk to Dean for a minute?" Harry asked.
Dean? Not Ron?" Hermione asked astonished.
"Well yeah, Dean lives in London he might know a bit more about where Colin is from," Harry explained.
"Let it go, Harry. What good is having some kid who never met Colin writing to them or turning up on their doorstep telling wild tales going to do?" Hermione said seriously.
Harry sighed, Hermione might be right about that but it didn't feel right leaving Colin's parents with no means of support until Colin had been cured.
"If it were you that was petrified, wouldn't you want me to visit your parents and try to explain what has happened to you in case the professors didn't?" Harry asked.
Hermione was silent for a moment. "No, I don't think I would. I would be afraid that they wouldn't let me come back next year if they knew what was happening," she admitted.
"So you'd prefer to leave them not knowing what's happened and worrying why you've stopped writing to them for months, I don't think that that would convince them to send you back to Hogwarts," Harry said furious on the Grangers' behalf. He couldn't imagine worrying his Aunt or Ellery like that.
-o0o-
"What's wrong Harry? You look like you're afraid to tell us you failed your midterms," James asked teasingly.
"Of course I didn't," Harry scoffed.
"But there is something. Did something happen at school today? Ellery asked.
"No, I got a letter from a friend at Hogwarts," Harry said quietly.
"Did it make you miss the school?" James asked suddenly alert, recalling the strange longing for a place he'd never been before in the last letter Harry had shown them.
"No touching the letter didn't make me feel anything. I checked that before I read it," Harry replied. "It was from Dean, it reads like something he'd write and he wasn't encouraging me to come back. He told me that there have been two students attacked and somehow turned into statues of themselves. I rang Hermione to find out more and she said they'll be like that until June and the students were both muggleborn and so they're being kept at the school to avoid trying to explain it to their parents."
"They haven't contacted the parents at all?" Ellery asked, shocked.
"I don't know. They must have told them something to explain why their kids have stopped writing to them and won't be coming home or asking permission to stay at school over the Yule and Ostara breaks," Harry replied.
"Did you know the two students well?" Ellery asked.
"Not really, one only started this year so I've never met them and Justin was a Hufflepuff so we only had a couple of classes together. I was more upset by the way Hermione totally dismissed my concern about their parents. She's muggleborn and she never would've said something like that last year," Harry said frowning. "I felt like I didn't really know her anymore."
"Is there anything you can do to make yourself feel better? Anything we could help you with?" James asked practical as always.
"I don't know. I suggested to Hermione that she should get Colin's and Justin's friends to write to their parents, explaining again what happened and why it's going to take til June to fix it and maybe a bit about what they were learning or liked to do with magic since they won't be able to see that at home with the restriction for underaged magic use, since I doubt McGonagall will have explained it properly to Colin's parents and given them a way to contact her or offered to come back if they have more questions," Harry replied. "Hermione told me to leave it alone, that the professors would have done what was necessary but I don't know that they would've."
"That's not a bad idea. Would you like me to try to find them and call in so they've got some contact for the magical world. I could pass their questions along to my aunt," James offered.
"Do you have their names and addresses?" Ellery asked.
"Well no but Justin Finch-Fletchley had his name down at Eton before he got the invitation to Hogwarts and it's not a common name, so he shouldn't be too hard to find and I've written to Dean to ask him if he or any of Colin's friends can give me Colin Creevey's address, Hermione only knew he lived in London somewhere," Harry replied.
"Justin Finch-Fletchley, there's a Finch-Fletchley in the foreign office," James said.
"Do you know him well enough to set up a meeting?" Ellery asked.
"We've met a time or two. I expect he'd take a meeting with me, out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. I'll set it up for as soon as possible," James agreed.
"Harry, may I take him your letter from Dean as proof?" Ellery asked.
"Sure, I'll write back to Dean now then you can have it," Harry said.
"Thanks for doing this Ell, James," Harry said.
"Harry we would have gone spare if you suddenly stopped communicating with us and nobody would tell us what was really going on. We understand your concerns," Ellery said hugging his cousin.
"I'm afraid I don't know why I've suddenly received a visit from MI-6's quartermaster and one of their most infamous agents," Peter Finch-Fletchley said trying to hide his concern.
"We are here to discuss Justin," James said watching the man's reaction.
Peter paled, "How do you know my son?"
"We didn't know he was your son, only that you share a surname and were therefore likely related. My cousin went to school with him last year. A friend of his wrote and told him of an incident in the school, and knowing how condescending the staff were when they visited us with the invitation to the school, we were concerned you hadn't been fully informed," Ellery replied.
"I haven't been bloody informed at all! We received a letter but all it said was that Justin would be unable to contact us until June. There was no explanation or apology at all. Can you tell me what happened to my son? My wife is beside herself with worry," Peter replied anxiously.
"There's no easy way to say this except to assure you that the professors told the rest of the school that Justin and the other boy affected will be fine with no lasting effects once the potion to cure them is ready. Justin was 'petrified' that is to say Harry's friends describe that he was somehow turned into something resembling a stone statue of himself, and his classmates were told that the potion to return them to normal would be ready before the end of the school year," Ellery said.
"I have a great aunt teaching at Hogwarts and she assures me that Justin will have no knowledge of time passing. Once he receives the potion he will wake up as if no time at all had passed for him," James said.
"Why will it take so long if they have a known cure?" Peter asked.
"I questioned my aunt about that. Apparently one of the ingredients is extremely difficult to source. They did manage to get some immature plants but it will be several months before they can be harvested to produce the cure," James replied.
"Is there any way for you to get me up to Hogwarts to see my boy?" Peter asked.
"I did ask but my aunt said that the wards would repel people without magic. Tell me could you see 'The Leaky Cauldron' when you weren't touching your son?" James replied.
"I'm afraid that his mother accompanied Justin when he purchased his school things, I was working," Peter said sorrowfully.
"It's almost lunch time, no time like the present to find out," James suggested. "If you can see their pub you'll be able to see the school, and I'll be able to get you in to see your son."
"I will call my wife to join me," Peter replied.
-o0o-
It turned out the only one who couldn't see the pub on his own was Ellery who had to be helped in by James.
Once inside James paid for the use of the floo and called his aunt who turned out to be Rolanda Hooch.
"Hello James, I take it one of his parents is a squib," Rolanda said cheerfully.
"Both the Finch-Fletchleys have enough magic to see the pub. I'll send them through to visit their son," James replied.
"It will be distressing for them to see him like that. Justin will not know that they're visiting," Rolanda warned.
"It was distressing for them to be told Justin would be unable to write to them, call them on the phone until June or come home for Christmas or Easter with no explanation at all Aunt Rolanda," James retorted scoldingly. "They need to see him."
"James, Justin isn't breathing, his heart is stopped. He looks and feels dead. I can reassure them that he will be fine as soon as we have the cure but I don't think that seeing him will help," Rolanda said quietly.
"I will explain that to them before they visit, but I don't have the right to prevent parents from visiting their child. I expect you to open your floo and let them through if they still wish to come," James said irritated.
"It will be open for the next hour," Rolanda agreed.
James walked over to the bar and ordered himself and the Finch-Fletchley's a whisky each and a pot of tea for Ellery, since the bar didn't have Martini's.
"Aunt Rolanda wanted me to warn you about what you will see. Justin looks frozen in a state of suspended animation, he's not breathing which will be distressing but he isn't dead however bad it looks, he will wake up in June and he will be fine. No side effects from being immobile for that long at all, he's not aware of time passing and unlike someone in a coma there is no chance of him hearing you or being aware that you're with him. My Aunt is worried that seeing him will cause more anxiety than it relieves. I would understand if you chose not to go," James said passing them both a drink.
Peter threw his back, gasping at the unexpected heat. "That's a lot stronger than normal whisky," he rasped.
"Wizards call it Firewhiskey," James replied, smirking as he sipped at his drink. "You'll find that nothing in the wizarding world is openly nonmagical. I think a lot of the food must be sourced from the nonmagical world but you'd never know it from the packaging. You won't find any of the brands you recognise.
The honorable Ariadne Finch-Fletchley looked hesitant but she was still far too pale so James encouraged her to have at least a little, while Ellery poured her a cuppa and sweetened it to combat any shock.
Ten minutes later, with their equilibrium restored they floo'd through to Hogwarts to meet James' aunt who took them to see their son.
Madam Pomfrey tutted as they entered the ward. "There was no need to drag you all the way here. Justin is perfectly unaware. The most distressing thing for him will be when he wakes up and realizes that he's missed months of the school year."
"You are not a mother or you would understand our need to see our son," Ariadne said reproachfully.
"Are we to expect the Creeveys too?" Poppy asked Rolanda.
"When we can locate them, I'm sure they will need to see their soon as much as we did," Peter replied. "Could you provide their address to expedite the process."
"Colin has been here more than a month," Poppy replied.
"Yet you still haven't bothered to contacted his parents and given them a way to come to visit," Ariadne said disapprovingly. "If this is his first time away from home then they'll be even more upset than we were. It was cruel to tell us our children would be unable to contact us without explaining what happened. We need to find them as quickly as possible."
Madam Pomfrey looked chastised.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited or gave Kudos to this story for your support.
