A cold and blustery morning greeted Bella on Saturday as she dragged herself out of her cosy bed and into the hot shower. The air quickly filled with steam as the cold bathroom air turned warm, the blood slowly returning to her extremities in the hot water. As Bella turned her face up to the shower head, her thoughts turned to the day ahead.
Being a Saturday, she and Harry would be having their usual weekend study session. Harry had come a long way since their first meeting. There were still times that Bella wondered if his school back home had actually taught him anything at all, but he was starting to pick up new concepts much quicker. A lot of it, Bella thought, was due to the recent changes in his attitude; the anger and the misery had both been detrimental to his concentration and motivation, but more recently Harry was brighter. He was still far from the carefree teenager he should be, but it was a positive start. Well, it had been.
The last two days at school, Harry had retreated back into his shell. He stayed silent during their car trips and lunch times, not even providing his usual minimalistic responses. Edward had also been more quiet and reserved around Harry, and Bella hadn't seen the two conversing behind her back since Wednesday. Bella could only presume the behaviour of her two friends was related to Harry's latest meeting with Edward's father. Whatever it was the two had discussed had definitely stirred up some troubled emotions for Harry, and it was obviously the case that either Edward was privy to the discussions as well, or he simply sensed the unease within Harry and perhaps even his father.
'Can I ask him about it?' She wondered as she turned the shower off and wrapped herself in her towel. She was his friend, wasn't she? That meant that she should be allowed to worry about him and ask how he's feeling. So why did it feel like that wasn't the approach to take? Bella had never felt more wrong footed around a friend than she did around Harry – Edward as well if she were being honest. Both of them held secrets, some of which she was sure had been shared between the two of them but were apparently all too personal to share with her. It hurt to think that they didn't trust her with their secrets, and so Bella had been trying her best to prove her reliability. She hadn't even mentioned the van incident since Wednesday.
Dressed in some of her warmest clothes, Bella headed downstairs to throw together a quick breakfast before heading out to pick up Harry. Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming mug of coffee reading the paper. He looked up as she walked in.
"Morning, Bells," he said.
"Morning, Dad." Bella began to fix herself a cup of coffee too.
"You seeing Harry this morning?" Bella frowned. She decided Charlie shouldn't be allowed to sleep in so much; it made him chatty.
"Uh, yeah," she replied, sipping from her cup. "I'm going to pick him up in a little while."
Eyeing her carefully over the rim of his mug, Charlie took a long sip before setting it back down. "Why don't you two work over at his house today?" Charlie suggested mildly. Bella raised an eyebrow at him.
"Harry's passed your test then, has he?" She asked somewhat sarcastically. Harry had been wondering but refusing to ask when they would be allowed to relocate their sessions to his house. Bella suspected he felt guilty that Bella had to drive him everywhere.
Charlie sighed. "You know why I wanted him to come here to start with. He's getting much better from what little I can see of him," he said with slight bitterness. Harry had been avoiding Charlie like the plague, still annoyed at the man's strict rules that had been placed on him when he first arrived in Forks. "The kid's earned a bit of trust now, so I thought he'd want to be able to stay at home." He watched as Bella didn't respond. "If he doesn't want to –"
"No!" Bella cut in. "No, Harry will be happy to work at his place." Turning away from her father's lingering gaze, Bella began to slowly wash up her minimal breakfast dishes. She knew that look on Charlie, and it never meant anything good.
"You and Harry seem to get on well," he began awkwardly. "I don't have to, um, worry about –"
"Stop right there, Dad," Bella interrupted. "Please. You can keep your shotgun away from Harry. Promise." Giving him a pointed glare, she left the kitchen, grimacing.
As she gathered her books to take with her, it occurred to Bella that she had never thought of Harry in the way that Charlie was worried about. With Harry the way he was, she had never had any intention other than that of supporting him through whatever it was he was going through. There had never been room for any romantic feelings, and Bella was quite sure that Harry felt the same way. He had certainly reacted poorly to advances from other classmates he'd received…most of them from Jessica.
All Bella had wanted was to give Harry someone he could feel comfortable around and talk to when he did finally decide to talk. It had seemed for a while that they may eventually come to that day together and Harry would confide in her what dark things from his past were haunting him. Now, however, with Harry closing himself off once more, Bella felt unsure whether he would ever trust her enough to allow her that close.
"I can ask him what's wrong," she declared to her empty room. "I will earn his trust."
Newly resolved, she grabbed the last of her things and headed out to the truck.
Bella knocked loudly on Harry's front door.
'Really, for a place so large he needs a doorbell.'
Despite the lack of a bell, she only had to wait a few short moments for the door to open. Harry stood in the doorway with his bag slung over his shoulder and a faraway expression on his face.
"Let's go then." He said, frowning slightly when he saw Bella's own bag of books.
"Actually," she began, "my dad said we could work at your place today. If you want to, that is," she hastened to add.
Harry continued to stare blankly at her, seeming to take several seconds for her words to compute. When they did, he gave a genuine smile that Bella hadn't seen for days.
"Really?" he asked excitedly. When Bella nodded his smile widened and he stepped aside for her to enter the house.
Bella had never been further than the entrance hall of Harry's house, and as she was now lead through the living room to the large sweeping staircase she struggled to keep her mouth closed out of amazement. She had always suspected that Harry must be very well off by the size of the house, but seeing the expensive furnishings held within confirmed her suspicions; Harry was loaded.
"I'll show you through to the study," he said, completely oblivious to Bella's gaping. He opened one of the many doors off the long corridor, entering a generously sized study. "It's a bit of a mess. I wasn't expecting anyone else to ever come in here."
Both side walls were covered by tall bookshelves, most of which were empty. A comfortable recliner sat in one corner, a spot that Bella immediately identified as a cosy place to read. The only real mess was on the large oak desk which sat underneath a wide window overlooking the expanse of trees behind the house. Notebooks and loose papers covered its surface revealing very little of the polished wood below.
Placing his bag upon one of the desk chairs, Harry headed back for the door. "Feel free to shove those things to the side. Want something to drink or a snack?"
Recovered from her initial amazement, Bella found her voice and replied, "No, thank-you, I just had breakfast." Muttering something about needing a cup of tea, Harry exited the room leaving Bella alone.
She deposited her things on the floor beside the desk and looked out the window. It was amazing just how secluded Harry was here; there was no possible way that anyone could see into his backyard without being on the property. A loud hooting noise startled her. Had that come from inside the house?
She wandered over to one of the bookshelves. One stark difference she had noticed between Harry's house and her own, apart from the incredible size, was the lack of photographs in the rooms. She had not seen one photo of his family, his friends, or even of somewhere that could be his old home. Bella's house was, mortifyingly, covered in photos from all stages of her life. Had Harry not gotten around to putting his up yet, or did he not want to?
But here on a large, bare bookshelf was a single photograph: the only one she had seen in the whole house. It showed a young man with Harry's glasses and unruly black hair sitting with a young, bright faced woman. Bella thought she recognised her eyes as Harry's. Was this what his eyes would look like if they sparkled with life? In her arms lay a tiny baby, no older than a few months. A tuft of jet black hair was visible, poking out from the cocoon of blankets. Bella smiled sadly at Harry's family. It had never seemed more real to her what he had lost.
Bella turned her attention to the desk; now that she was closer she was better able to see the various scraps and notes. Most of them were from school and Bella noticed some pages with notes from their first few sessions together. Piling those together neatly, she moved onto the notebooks. There were only a couple, as most of them were still in his bag to take to her house. She unzipped the top and reached in, pulling out the books and placing them on the desk. Biology, Algebra and Government were the biggest and the ones that they usually used during their sessions. They were definitely the classes Harry found most challenging. Bella piled them one by one onto the desk which was now relatively clear of mess. Now with his books stacked and loose sheets piled, there was a space that they would be able to use for work.
She sat down in the second chair to wait for Harry and looked back over her good work. From this angle, she could see something small poking out from behind the desk. Leaning over slightly, it appeared to be a small notebook that had gotten wedged between the desk and the wall. How it had fallen behind there Bella didn't know. She wrestled with it for a while before managing to extract it.
It was a small notebook that had clearly seen better days; the corners were all bent out of shape, and it looked suspiciously like it had drowned in a cup of tea at some point. Bella had never seen this book before, indicating it wasn't one of Harry's school books. The age of it and the way it was stuffed, forgotten, out of sight made Bella suspect it might be a notebook he used at his school in England. Curiosity piqued, she opened it.
Disappointingly, the book was empty. Bella continued to flick through every blank, tea-stained page hoping to find something interesting. Perhaps this book had been defaced like this before Harry had a chance to use it and so it had lain forgotten, falling down behind the desk. She was about to close the book and put it down, but the appearance of writing in the last few pages stopped her.
There were lots of words she didn't understand, and names she had never heard before. A list of words – cruciatus, imperius, sectumsempra – were written in blood red ink with a smattering of other phrases like 'left them to die' and 'murdered her sons'. Uneasiness building in her stomach, suddenly Bella didn't want to be reading this anymore. Something about the bright red ink and the shaky handwriting made this list feel like a written confession.
The next page was covered in two phrases written in that same blood red ink. 'I must not tell lies' was written dozens if not hundreds of times all over the page. Then, in smaller writing, squeezed into the margins and any gap available, the phrase 'I can only tell lies' written in the same ink. Bella felt sick. The ink almost looked like blood.
Unable to put it down, she turned the next page and found a very familiar list; Harry had tried to list what the Cullens had done wrong again after that meeting where Bella had demanded it from him and apparently hadn't been able to add anything else. Thankfully this was written in normal black ink.
The bottom half of the page had been ripped from the binding and folded up on itself. Flattening it out, Bella found yet another list. This one looked as though it had been edited most recently, with several lines crossed out or circled seemingly as Harry had gained more information. It was the heading of the list that confused Bella most.
Cullens – Vampires
That had to be some kind of a code or a joke, didn't it? Harry obviously didn't actually mean vampires because vampires didn't exist. And these other things that Harry had written – speed, strength, and cold hard skin – they were all just things that he thought a vampire should have, surely. Maybe Harry found it easier to hate the Cullens if he imagined them as evil beings. Bella noticed that he hadn't included any of the actual traits of vampires – the burning in sunlight, fear of garlic and crosses, the stake through the heart. Were English vampire stories different?
Bella's eyes were drawn to her own name on the page.
Stealing Bella – trying to get closer to me? To kill me? To kill her?
Bella frowned. Not liking them was one thing, but believing – fictitiously or otherwise – that the Cullens were murderers? Bella shivered as she remembered what Harry had written in that blood red ink about murder.
Scribbled in the corner she read, 'Golden eyes (not red) – don't drink from humans?' This last part was circled, and recently too, Bella thought.
Bella could feel something prickling in her mind as she read and re-read the page. The Cullens all had bright golden eyes. The same eyes but none of them were related. They were never at school on the rare days of sunlight. Edward never ate the cafeteria food. They all warmed slightly to Harry after he had denied anything strange during the van incident.
The van.
Bella let out a nervous chuckle.
"Oh my god, they're vampires," she whispered.
"Sorry that took so long." Bella jumped at Harry's voice, throwing the notebook back onto the desk and trying to look innocent. "It took me almost five minutes to realise I hadn't turned the kettle on."
He walked over with a steaming cup of tea and several biscuits on a plate. He looked at her closely.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said. Bella knew she must have been incredibly pale.
Harry put down his morning tea and froze. His hand moved oh so slowly to the small, tea-stained notebook thrown roughly toward the wall, not sitting wedged behind the desk as he knew it ought to be. Bella's stomach plummeted.
"What have you done?" Harry's voice was soft. It shook slightly at the end of his question.
"I didn't mean – you mean it's true?" The chill from outside seemed to have seeped into the room through the closed window. A manic look suddenly appeared in Harry's eyes.
"What? The vampire rubbish, ha!" he cried. "They're not real, it's just a joke, Bella." He was panicking, Bella could hear it in his voice. She stood up to be at his eye level.
"Don't." She said. "Tell me, Harry, what is going on?"
He shook his head. "This is out of my hands. Come on. You're driving." He grabbed his coat off the chair and went to leave again.
"What? Where are we going?" She asked as she stumbled over the chairs to follow him.
"The vampires' house."
"He must return," she said. "The Wizarding World is facing terrible danger once more, I feel it."
The wizened old man in the portrait examined her carefully over his half-moon spectacles. "Alas, it is possible he may not wish to return, Minerva. The Wizarding World has not been kind to the boy of late."
"Be that as it may, it is still his world too, Albus," she replied.
"We must trust in Kingsley's decision in allowing him to leave."
"And look where that left Kingsley," she snapped. "I'm sorry, but we need his talents, Albus. We need Harry Potter to save us once again."
