So... I won't be updating much anymore for the summer, or for what i think will be the summer. I got a job as an electrician helper and after getting up at 4 in the morning and working til 2 in the afternoon mixed with weakness from a heart disorder, I no longer have much energy to splice up these chapters. I'll try when I have access to a computer like today, but yeah...
Chapter 2 - The New Home
A cough came from Harry, muffled by the blanket he had fallen asleep on. He felt the weeks of battle on his body, the searing pains of war mixed with the blinding pain from his beating, leaving a weak mess behind that collapsed onto the floor in one big bloody heap.
"Fuck," Harry mumbled as his body flared up from the pain of getting the same part of his arm broken twice, mixed with... four bullet wounds from a bolter level weapon. 'Bolter?' An image of a gun filtered into his mind along with the exact specs of how to build and maintain the firearm.
The information dump into his head didn't help the migraine already there in the least, and he had to grown out in pain as the information sorted itself into a category like the religion did. "My bones hurt," the teen made weak note as he stared up at the cobweb filled ceiling.
The door knob jiggled across the room and he heard someone faintly curse, "Why are there so many damn locks?!" The voice sounded fairly young, maybe early twenties. Harry didn't care. He wasn't going to be getting up anytime soon. Lifting his back off the floor and braced himself against his bed, the teen reached into his waist from behind his back.
The wand resting there was intact and fine. 'I need a holster if I make it through this,' the warrior mindset he had forming noted. The scenarios where the wand could fall out without his notice filled his mind for a moment before he banished it so that his migraine didn't grow. Raising the wand at the door, Harry was about to cast a bludgeoning spell to splinter through the door which would hit one of the intruders, but before he could do the required twist, the door flung open.
A dazzling white light slammed into the sitting man's face, blinding him and flaring up his headache. Squinting at the light, he sneer out the spell anyways at the target in front of him, "Reduct-" but he didn't finish it as a red light snapped out and tore his wand from his hand. "Fuck!" Harry moaned as he let his arm drop back into his lap, relaxing back onto the bed so that whatever happened, he didn't have to be in as much pain for it.
The first one entered with wide eyes, staring back at the person behind her. It was a she too. A young woman, at most twenty-two with bubblegum pink hair and a punk rocker attire. Completed with the holes in the knees and the big, comfortable coat that had a quite the number of large pockets. Her wand was lit with a lumos spell.
The next one in the room was a slightly round man with a bulging fake eye. Mad-eye Moody, whom Harry thought was retired and should still be in the hospital for malnourishment over the last year. In his hand was the Holly wand that harry had just been disarmed of.
Behind the pair were three more people crowding the hall. Two small older folks and a large man whose bald head nearly grazed the door frame.
The two people in the room both aimed their lights at Harry and the woman flinched back at the state they saw the boy in. He was covered in drying blood and both his arms were slightly askew, making the woman look slightly green in the face. Moody didn't show any outward appearance change other than his eye focusing on Harry instead of examining the room.
Tired of being stared at, the teen asked them, "What do you want? If you're here for my wand, you have it already. Not sure why you needed five people." The woman was the first one to move and it wasn't to leave as Harry first thought. She took a hard step forward and dropped to her knees, sliding next to Harry to examine his broken bones. "Can I help you?" He asked the woman with a raised eyebrow as she extinguished the light from her wand.
Pink-hair bobbed up and down as she nodded her head. "Sir, please flip on some lights," she called back to Moody. The man flicked the switch after a moment of searching, only for nothing to happen.
Harry just chuckled softly at the attempt. "This room has never had a working light. Try the lamp on my desk if you need light. I'm not going anywhere soon." The obviously concerned woman meant medical attention, which meant the pain would go away soon.
She did just that, lunging at the desk and flickering on the weak light that was barely enough to cover the desk. The light was incredibly old, been there since he had gotten the room. The light was enough for the woman though as she crouched back down next to Harry.
Said teen noticed her eyes had slitted like a cat's as she looked over his form. 'Mutant,' a voice in his head echoed with a surge of hate. The teen quickly squashed the thought and hate down. He might accept that he was going mad, with the religion and visions, but he refused with his being to hate someone just because they were a little different. That was what destroyed his childhood, so he refused to let it shape him into destroying his own adulthood.
She ran a wand down his arms, trying to get a read on what was the problem while everyone else crowded into the small room, former storage room. "If you're wondering about injuries, I can just tell you them..." The injured man spoke up as the woman slowly cast the strange spells on him. "Both arms are broken. Right at the two place. Radius and humerus. The first isn't clean, but the other one is. Left arm has a few fractures and one break on the ulna. Ribs 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9 are broken clean if the shifting is anything to go off of. None of them posing immediate life threatening injuries. One of them is close to my right lung, but just grazing. My left leg is fractured in multiple place along it, but nothing that makes limping not an option."
The pink-haired one leaned back in shock at the list of injuries. "Shit... Shit, and we can't take you to the hospital..."
"Kingsley!" Moody barked out. "Get out of the wards and get to headquarters, we will need Pomfrey and Jenson for medical attention!" The large man nodded and sprinted out of the room in a hurry. The back door opened and slammed shut within moments. "Where is your stuff Potter, we are taking you to headquarters where Dumbledore is waiting for you."
Harry tilted his head as the woman started sealing up his cuts so they didn't reopen for the journey back. "You're not officials here to snap my wand?"
The woman spoke up next as she continued to work, "No. Dumbledore has made sure that you will have a hearing over why you broke the law, like a normal warlock." When all the wounds were as closed as they could be, she cleaned the blood off the man's body, leaving him in his ripped T-shirt and oversized jeans. "Where is your trunk?"
He looked into the slitted eyes for a moment before sighing. "In the cupboard under the stairs. It's padlocked, so you have to magic it open or just kick it. The door isn't that thick." The two older intruders quickly ran down to get the stuff, the sound of the unlocking charm filtered upstairs and the sound of the door opening came next. "Be a dear and help me up," Harry told the woman fussing over his broken body.
When he saw the nod, he used his remaining leg to push himself up, the young woman's hands keeping him upright in his ascent. "So what's the exit strategy here, Moody? Just walk out the front and fly away?" The man gave a harsh nod of his scarred head. "Really? No, we go from the backyard then. This house is watched from most of the neighborhood as I am a criminal in their eyes, want to make sure the delinquent is kept tabs on. Fence around back, if you lot get into the air fast enough, no one will notice." The plan filtered into his head easily, information and patterns of his neighbors that he never knew he watched came to mind and how to get around them.
Harry didn't wait for confirmation as he took a painful step forward. 'Pain is just righteousness entering the body,' he chanted as he took the next step to get the weight off his leg. "Let's just go, I don't care if you work for Riddle, I just need this fixed." The woman did something behind him but it didn't kill Harry, so he didn't care anymore.
Using the railing as a support, the teen skipped down the stairs, and saw the two older people staring at the cupboard door. He glanced at what they were staring at and saw it was the bloody writing on the wall. "Harry's room." Was plastered above the small bed the trunk was resting on. 'Huh. I'd of thought they'd clean that up in the decade since I placed it there.'
Moving the people out of the way, he grabbed his trunk, heedless of the pain it caused him. Vera had felt worse in the month long trial, even though he still felt that pain as fresh as it happened along with the broken limbs, he knew it could be worse.
The thing that Harry didn't note that he was bleeding from his torso in areas that Vernon had not touched, but the warlocks around him easily saw with the pool of blood staining his recleaned shirt. Two were on the left side, near the waist and the other was in the right shoulder.
The warlocks wanted to call this out, but the teen didn't listen as he lifted the forty pound trunk onto his wounded shoulder, only the twitch of his eyebrow showing the pain it caused him.
'HOLY Shit! What the hell happened to my shoulder? Did I fucking nap wrong?!' The teen screamed in his head as he forced the pain not to show in his eyes. 'Fuck that hurts.' Each step was agony with the added weight on his back.
Harry was, by no means, unfit. He had been ran to the ground every three days in Hogwarts with Wood as his mentor. The captain wanted him to be in tip-top shape due to the game resting on his shoulders. That meant double the endurance exercises for a more leaner build along with upper body works so he could do more dangerous maneuvers and have the strength to lift himself back onto his broom.
None of that mattered when you had the equivalent of a fifty caliber slug hole in four places, two right where he was lugging the heavy trunk around. 'Had to keep all the books I've ever bought in here, didn't I?' Harry moaned in his mind. He opened the back door and walked out, leading the four into the fenced in yard.
Brooms flew out of the brush, including his firebolt. The seeker grasped the broom in his hand and barely suppressed the grin on his face at finally holding the broom in his hands once more. The weight on his back seemed to shrink suddenly and he barely caught a time, cigarette box sized steamer trunk. He turned to see Moody aiming his wand at the trunk, so he gave the man a nod before sliding it into his pocket.
Moody grabbed his broom and joined a line next to Harry, everyone else joining in. "No one break ranks if you of us is killed!" He growled out, looking up and down the line.
"Do you plan for us to die, sir?" Harry asked with some snark, his personality shining through the trauma of the attack and visions. "If so, we can just call a taxi. It's only eleven." The man growled and mounted his broom.
He looked at Harry and at the woman. "Potter, you are riding with Nymphadora, your injuries are too serious to allow you to ride alone. Too much risk of you falling to your death," the scarred man growled out, making Harry believe that was his normal speaking voice.
The woman, Nymphadora, had her hair turn red as she turned to the old man. "Never. Call me. Nymphadora!" She snarled out in rage. "You know I go by Tonks, Moody!" She shrunk her broom with a wave of her hand and marched over. Knowing that he was really too injured to do anything like flying, even in his skewed sense of pain, the teen simply handed his broom over to the redhead. "You know who to ride bitch, Harry?" she asked with a grin, all traces of rage gone from her expression.
The teen snorted and sat in front of her, allowing her to weave her arms carefully around his torso to grab the broom. "Always wanted to fly one of these, never really had the chance."
"Glad I can fulfill a dream of yours," Harry said as they lifted off the ground slightly. The lack of weight on his legs were a relief and he barely felt the ascent. Tonks went a bit faster than the others, doing more movement than needed even if she was careful never to jostle Harry.
She gave a whoop of joy as they sped along the clouds at high speeds in formation, Moody in front and the rest in back.
"On your feet, grunts! You call yourselves Cadians?! What the fuck are you doing?!" The drill sergeant shouted out as he walked up and down the line of soldiers, giving their all for push ups. Harry's muscles burned as she reached the upper nineties. She was on the second set of hundreds and had one more to finish before the group could move on, so she kept pushing herself as the sergeant screamed at her and everyone else for being pathetic.
Her mind drifted off as her body worked on autopilot, pounding out the exercise as she prayed to the God Emperor.
"Wake up recruit!" Sergeant Ashleys shouted as she kicked her in the side."Time to go!" Harry nodded and rolled to her feet, joining the others without a word as the sergeant went and woke up more people from their trances. Her body ached pleasantly and they went off for running drills.
The day ended quickly with church and they all went to sleep for five hours. The next day came and they trained in hand-to-hand. The next day was more muscle building and they switched. For a year, Harry/Vera trained to be one of the best soldiers she could be. She was top of her class with a lasgun, top in fitness, and top in intelligence. Making her ready to head out to defend a section of the forge world.
Her sector was in the north, within the cold tundras that were covered in mining sites. Even though she was done with training, Harry never stopped working herself to the bone in her down time, practicing with her lasgun until she had to charge it for the night, working her body ragged so that when war came, she would be able to charge and only a bullet would stop her, not fatigue.
In a year's time, she would fight off a leading element of a WAAAGH with her brothers and sisters of the guard. In three more, she would show her colors as a guardsman as multiple minor invasions filled her months with war and death, yet she survived where others fell.
Finally, on the last year of her stay in the tundra, Mira had earned her stripes to become an officer as she fought a last stand with a few of her brothers to keep a shipment out of the hands of an assault force.
For the next year, she learned how to be an officer, the ins and outs of politicking and leading soldiers of the guard. It had nothing on trying survive an Ork invasion in the tundra, but it was still a difficult challenge, but she passed in the end, taking her place new the warlord-class battle titan manufactorum. It was due to be finished in a year's time and shipped out in three to invasion forces into the chaos controlled space.
Everything was fine for the first two years of her career. Mira had obtained the rank of Lieutenant in the Imperial Guard, garnering respect and admiration from her squad due to her devotion and skill on the battlefield even if she was so young.
A month after her deployment at the manufactorum, the latest WAAAGh came in, but they had been smart this time. They didn't charge in like senseless beasts, but snuck in on a small stealth ship to drop a team near the planetary defense cannon that covered the manufactorum.
Once that was disabled, it was all downhill from there. "Lieutenant! The Colonel's dead with the rest of the superior officers! What do we do now, ma'am?! The orks are coming from everywhere!" The radio fell silent as a loud explosion rocked the ground which she stood one, one of the outposts near the cannon had just gone up in flames.
A growl came from her lips as she pressed the talk button on her headset, "All squad and platoon leaders! This is 2nd Lieutenant Mira of the 203rd Regiment! Regroup! We need to make a plan on taking back our cannon from this filth!"
Harry blinked and found himself back in the air, but his body felt raw and ragged like he had just pushed a decade of damn training and combat into it all at once. Through the pain, he also felt incredibly out of shape. He might pride himself in fitness, but compared to what Vera was as a Sister of Battle Novice, he felt like an obese nerd.
He looked down and saw himself flying over London, obviously been in the vision far longer than the ones before as he lived three hours away from the city.
At the steady speed of two hundred miles an hour, Harry was cold as hell in the front, but his back was pleasantly warm. Apparently Tonks had felt the same way and huddled herself closer, pressing as much as she could into Harry without hurting him. Though touching had hurt a bit, it was a dull pain and the cold arm helped numb the lingering agony that had been in him for the past month... few minutes.
And like the snap of fingers, they stopped in a dark park. Dismounting nearly dropped the teen to the ground, but Tonks stabilized him enough that he didn't go down from the sudden influx of pain in his body now that gravity was pushing the wounds into the ground.
"By the Emperor that hurts!" Harry moaned under his breath as he straightened up and hopped into a more comfortable stance. Balanced mostly on his right leg, the teen hobbled towards a walking Moody, silently cursing with every flare up of pain in his body.
They made it to a street in the middle of an impoverished neighborhood. Everyone stood on the street and Harry looked around. "Are we waiting for something?" He asked after a pause.
Moody pulled out a note and Harry's wand. "Read this and take your wand back. No wizard should allow his wand to be held by a stranger!" The teen didn't care about his wand at the moment, he could barely move his limbs. Taking the wand, he put it into his pocket before grabbing the offered paper from the older man.
'12 Grimmauld Place is located between 11 and 13,' he read in his mind. "Okay... What am I suppose to..." He looked up to see that there was a new house in front of him, surprisingly more broken down than the neighbors'. "Place looks like it hadn't been cleaned since World War Two."
Tonks snorted as she helped Harry get up the stairs and through the door. "We're here!" She called out and an onrush of footsteps from the side room showed that people were waiting. Madam Pomfrey was the first one that came out of the side room, her wand already moving. Before Harry could move out of the way of the spell, he was being levitated and kidnapped into the side room. Door slamming behind him.
The room itself was a dreary place with dust on everything. The couches and tables looked like the only thing that didn't seem to have dust on them, but were still old as Dumbledore. "Oh dear!" Pomfrey mumbled as she set the teen onto the table. It seemed like that was the keyword for the next event.
Curtains on the other side of the room wiped open, revealing a hideous woman that was taking a breath. "FILTHY MUDBLOODS IN MY HOU-" it started screaming before it was cut off.
"Reducto! Pierce et Contret!" Harry called out, twisting his wand and flicking it while continuing the twist. This unleashed a bludgeoning spell along with a follow up mining charge spell. He didn't pump too much power into it, but enough that the portrait was torn to bits and a dent was left in the wall.
A wail came from the side and Harry coldly shifted her weapon to the side, facing a house elf with a knife descending from the shadowy ceiling, and barked out a bludgeoning spell. The spell took the elf by the neck, sending it spiraling to the floor with a soft crack from the broken bone. It hit the floor with a soft thud, eyes left forever wide with mania and rage.
The knife in his hand shot out to the side, right at the nurse who was staring at the sudden violence with wide eyes. A hand lashed out in front of her and fingers closed over the blade, stopping it from stabbing her in the leg. The teen scoffed at the attack and threw it to the side, bouncing it off the carpet to have it stop on the elf's body.
A hand came forward and took the wand from his grasp. "N-no spells, Potter! Not until I can figure out what has happened this time to you!" Madam Pomfrey stammered out, tearing her eyes away from the body in a second. Not wanting to get on the woman's bad side when she had the power of keeping him cooped up for days, Harry lowered his wand, and placed it into his pocket. "Good, now. Shirt off, I need to see the damage." She pointedly kept her eyes away from the dead creature to the side as the teen readied himself to taking his shirt off.
This was the difficult part. With two broken arms waiting for just a twitch to start hurting, the task of simply taking a shirt off became a puzzle worthy of a tech priest. Harry tried for a few seconds before mentally telling himself to 'suck it up, buttercup,' and ripped the shirt up and off, even if it shifted his badly broken arms. "Going to slaughter that bitch!" Harry growled through the pain as he allowed the fabric to fall from his arms.
The nurse shook her head at the language as she checked out the damage, only to release a gasp when she saw the true extent even without magic. "Dear Merlin! Where did you get those stab wounds?!" Harry looked at her and checked his body for these 'stabs' wounds she saw. His gaze ceased at the bullet holes in his side and his head whipped over to the side to see the two in his shoulder from a robotic ork's automatic rifle haphazard burst shot.
He cursed softly under his breath as the nurse quickly went to work, setting all the bones with magic and closing the larger wounds. Once everything was set up to heal, she nodded, and pulled out potions from her bag. "Blood replenisher, nutrition potion, skele-gro, muscle-gro, and a dreamless sleep," the woman read off as she handed the potions one by one to the half-naked man sitting on the table.
Harry tossed back the first four, barely keeping from gagging at the horrid tastes, but handed the dreamless sleep back off an urge he felt. "I would like to keep my senses about me, Madam Pomfrey." The woman glared, but took the potion back. Mumbling something about shock or another absurd notion. 'Like I could go in shock, I've fought Orks, Daemons, and traitors for ye-... No, Mira did that, little Harry has only killed his teacher, a sixty foot impossibly dangerous snake, a dementor, and watched his classmate die in front of him... Like I could go into shock for killing a house elf that was trying to take me out.'
"The breaks will take an hour, nothing like when we had to regrow your arm, the stab wounds will take a while longer, but you should be back in shape by tomorrow, that being said, I do not want you to strain anything for three days so that everything can settle," she ordered the teen sitting in front of her.
All the teen could do was nod under her stern look and pulled on his shirt quickly, like apply disinfectant, do it quick without a thought of the resulting pain. He nodded to the nurse and slowly got up, carefully moving on his leg. The nurse too stood and flicked her wand out to the side for reasons that became clear when a bearded man burst through the door with a few adults behind him. One of those adults was Tonks, the other Moody, who was staring at the dead elf and smoking painting with his spinning eye, the last being the large man that was at Harry's house, but left to get the nurse.
Sirius looked Harry up and down, trying to judge where he could hug the teen without hurting him. "Uh, no. Um... Help me out here, Harry!" He said with a worried look in his eyes. Licking his lips, the teen could barely contain his chuckles as he hopped forward and pulled the man into a hug, heedless of the pain it sent flaring into him. Sirius embraced him back, but making sure not to squeeze anything. "So... Um... should I... go, you know, kill your uncle?" He asked hesitantly as they stepped back, a manic gleam of violence in his eye.
With Vera's influence on his mind, as Harry knew she had already affected him greatly in the few hours she had been there, the look of violence and suppressed rage was an almost normal look in a man's eyes to him at that point. Vera Mira had seen and experienced enough homicidal rage on Cadian to warp her perception greatly and in turn Harry's. "No, Padfoot. I get that honor. You can help clean up if you'd like," he told his godfather in a no nonsense voice. Revenge will be his in due time.
The people coming into the room as Padfoot asked to kill Harry's family member gasped when they heard that Harry planned to do it himself. The tone of his voice and blank look in his eyes told them all they needed to know that he spoke the truth. Moody nodded to himself as he looked at Harry and the dead elf in the shadows. He knew the boy would do it too if what he saw through the wall was to be believed.
The teen then ignored his freshly healed arm and threw the right one over the taller man's shoulder in an uncharacteristic display of physical affection. "We can deal with that when it happens. How was your vacation?" Harry asked as she... he lead the man out of the room, only barely limping from the slight pain every step gave him. That slight pain would have been horrible for anyone that wasn't use to a near constant feeling of broken bones in their younger years, but throwing in the feeling of war and painful training in the god's name, it barely made her want to grimace.
Moody watched them leave as he took a step into the room, wand flashing out of a hidden holster. Harry barely heard a muttered spell before Sirius started talking.
"Oh, it was grand!" The man laughed as he walked with the teen through the door and to the dining room. "Moony and I stayed at this tropical Island that the Blacks have owned for quite some time. With a little help from the house elves..." A look from Harry told him that he was skeptical at the little part. "Okay, a lot of help from the house elves there, the building was cleaned, much better than this ghastly place," He ran his finger along the dirty wall and flicked the wad of dust onto the floor. "I was actually sad to come back to this stupid country, but Dumbledore told me that I would see you, so it was alright!"
The man seemed to relish in talking to Harry as he rambled about the vacation. The teen enjoyed speaking with the man too and listened to the man's words, throwing in little questions like how he managed to get tropical birds to send off letters, "Oh, there's an emergency postal owl spell for stranded wizards. It's kinda like the imperious curse, but only works on the dumber versions of bird species. It works for one delivery exchange and then the bird goes off to do whatever." And if Moony the wolf liked to play in water, "Oh, I managed to trick him into falling into the ocean. It was awesome! Did you know werewolves doggy paddled?! I didn't, but it was soo funny to see this giant half-bald wolf trying to get back onto dry land when it could have just stood up!"
Moony caught the end of the story as he walked into the room from some meeting area and grumbled as he passed, "Yeah, well... The wolf is not that intelligent enough to realize that he was big enough to touch the bottom. I think it was because he always hunches over and never remembers he's that tall."
The scarred man sat in front of Harry with a coffee cup in hand. "So how are you, cub? Well, now that you're away from those awful people?" Harry waved the man's concerned question off as he relaxed into his seat, careful about stretching out his aching body.
"I'm fine. Should be right as rain in two days, not the first time I've broken bones," Harry flippantly said as he snatched a piece of bread off the table and munched on it. "Won't be the last neither. Got to keep up the record in Quidditch, one broken bone or more a season." Sirius barked out a dog-like laugh as he leaned back in his chair.
A thump upstairs got their attention however. "Oh! Your friends are here!" Sirius said, leaning forward again. Harry looked at him for a second in confusion. "They are on the first door to the right of the third floor." Harry looked at the man for a moment before patting him on the back, snatching another piece of bread as he got to his feet.
"I'll talk to you after I get done dealing with my friends, Padfoot," Harry said, slipping into Low Gothic on instinct. It sounded light in tone with a strange mixture of Icelandic, Mandarin, and Russian, with Spanish sounding language accents thrown in. He didn't notice the confused look on the man's face as he left, nibbling on the warm bread.
He mounted the stairs two at a time as he ascended upward. The walls were lined with grime, cobwebs, and strangely enough, glass containers with stuffed house elf heads with plaque of their names under it with dates to match.
Harry examined them all as he walked up the stairs. There were a few that looked rather young, but the plaques didn't tell how they died. "Strange way to display dead servan-"
Harry stood in front of the chapel where the Sister Novices would be praying. She excitedly walked in to the place and froze at the sight of Orks. There were Orks everywhere, all sneering or with their tongues hanging out, eyes blank with death.
All around the walls were ork heads piked to the wall, no doubt stuffed so that they did not stink up the place. The soldier hesitantly walked into the room and to one of the pews that were in the middle of the floor where the other sisters were already praying.
These people were there from the normal recruitment method, so there were mentors around the sides to keep the young women and girls in check. None of them were over the age of nineteen, all taken from their orphanages so that the good word of the Emperor could be given to them. Harry counted herself lucky that she lived with a priest and he did that already even though she wasn't part of the Adepta Sororitas.
The soldier slowly sat down next to one of the older girls, taking out her rosary, and bowing her head to begin prayer. The girl next to her, no older than fifteen, checked Harry out for a moment when she noticed her, but turned back to praying, her hands empty of any rosary.
"-ts" Harry shook his head as he finished stepping down onto the step, careful not to trip from the hour absence from his body. The second flight was less lined with the heads, but they had places for them, just in case more were meant to join. Seeing as Sirius was the last Black, they would not be filled anytime soon.
The door he had been directed to was dusty and old, but had a warm light coming from the bottom of the frame. Harry slowly brought his fist up and knocked twice. The sound of feet walking quickly to the door filled his ears and it was thrown open in a grand fashion, revealing Hermione.
Her eyes widened a fraction when she saw who had knocked, but dove forward all the same. The teen had to fight down the instinct to flip her until she had settled for a hard hug. "Hermione!" Harry barked out as his ribs bent. "Ribs, broken! Let go!" He gasped as the girl didn't let go immediately.
She let out a high-pitched gasp as she released the teen and stepped back, her hands flying to her mouth. Harry let out a sigh of relief as she straightened her back. As he, he straightened his back. He limped into the room and gave her a smile, patting her shoulder. "Are you alright?! Did the dementors do that to you?! You've gotta tell us everything! This hearing at the ministry, simply outrageous too!"
Harry shook his head as he settled down on the bed, Ron, who hadn't said anything, took a seat on the trunk in front of said bed. "Nah, the dementor... well, he choked me out and did... something else to me... but he broke nothing. That was a bit later on, it's fine. I, on the other hand," A grin spread across his face teeth showing on one side of the crooked grin. "I burned it alive and fused the lips and eyes shut on the one that got away. Even got a pretty little bauble out of the deal." He raised his arm, showing the silver trinket that kept the dementor aura from affecting him.
Hermione grew pale as Harry talked and Ron was staring at him in horror. "Y-you k-killed a dementor?! H-how?!" The orange-headed teen cried out.
"Well... I cast a Patronus charm, but..." His eyebrows furrowed. "It was red and not the deer that it usually was. It wasn't that big either, but it slinked its way into the monster's mouth as it was tearing my soul apart, eating it. And well... the orb responded to how my wand was moved, so I tore it out of the stomach." He tilted his head as he thought of something. "I think I know why no one has reported a dementor killed before. They turn to dust. At least mine did, leaving just the trinket and... cloak." Harry reached down into his pocket and pulled out the tightly folded cloak.
He unfolded it with a sharp flick of his wrists, letting it pull onto the floor as it unfurrowed into the six foot tall cloak. "Cool, right?!" He exclaimed with a grin. "I figure its mine by conquest and all, and feel the fabric, it's so warm even though it's so thin!" The teen offered his new cloak to Hermione and Ron.
Ron flinched back and wordlessly walked out of the room quickly, but Hermione reached forward with curiosity burning in her eyes as she felt the fabric. "It's softer than wool, but... thin and more tightly woven. Is it a blend of cotton and wool?" Harry shrugged as he folded it back up once she was done checking it out.
"So... Wait... You used a spell outside of school!" She shrieked suddenly. "You'll be expelled!"
Harry just grimly nodded to the girl. "I am. But it would seem I can at least do spells in here, because I blew up that Emperor-damned painting in the sitting room." He left off the part of killing the elf, he was sure that it would be known later, but he didn't want to ruin the carefree air that was around him. "So, either that doesn't count anymore, or this place is hidden enough that magic doesn't get out. Or maybe owls couldn't come in... or out." Harry cast a sidelong glance over at Hermione at that point.
She caught on to what he was implying quickly. "I'm sorry we... I didn't write, but Dumbledore made us, me, swear not to tell you anything! I wanted to send a letter to you, but he... said with You-Know-Who back... it would have been too dangerous."
Harry's eyebrow rose due to how utterly stupid that sounded. "Does anyone know where this place is? And you know... Non-magicals still use the post office. I'm sure you could have figured out a way to send them by mail."
Hermione just groaned and rubbed her face. "I know. I know, but he literally made us swear, on our magic and all! I couldn't make myself send you the letter even if I wanted to because my magic would make me not allow it to be sent. It wants to preserve my safety and all." She grew more upset. "I can't believe I listened to him. It was until I saw you again that I could send news, but... I really wanted to check in on you."
Seeing how upset she was, Harry nodded his head, and in an action that would not have been possible with how completely awkward social interaction was before Mira, Harry pulled the girl into a hug for a second, despite the flash of needles in his arms. "It... sucked... that you didn't message me, but the Dursleys kept me busy. Had to reshingle the damn roof and fix the oven, so that killed a lot of my days learning how to do that."
"Language," Hermione mumbled immediately as she pulled back. Harry chuckled as she forced herself off the bed, hands behind her head in a carefree manner, if tensed for anything to happen as she was growing accustomed to doing in the short time she has been awake.
A strange spiraling sound erupted behind her.
"That is the sound a lasgun makes when it is heating up, little Vera," Her mom said to Harry as she taught her the basics of how to fire a Laspistol to her four year old. She fired off three accurate shots across the range that she was standing at, burning the targets on the other end.
The girl looked with childlike awe at her mother and the target. "Will I ever be able to shot like that, mommy?" She asked in a small voice.
Rachael laughed and nodded her head, ruffling her daughter's hair. "You will be able to and more before the year is out, Sunflower. Now, come here."
The arms that were behind Harry's head whipped down past her waist and back, cracking the two people that were behind her. Her left arm grasped the wrist it hit while the other didn't manage to grab on fast enough. That didn't matter as the teen pulled the wrist forward and twist her hips around so that she led with a hard knee to the gut or balls of the target, depending on height.
Air rushed out of the assailant as she released the wrist and spun on her planted leg the opposite direction to lash out with a strong roundhouse kick aimed for the chest of the other ne. The hit was solid and sent the other attacker stumbling back, forcing them to tumble over the bed that was behind them. As her leg planted, she was about to bring her elbow down onto the back of the winded one's head when she heard, "HARRY!"
Her arm stopped right before slamming into the orange-haired teen's head as he bent over, breathing hard from the strike to his 'stomach.' The teen turned around and saw the other twin holding his chest as he sat up, a disgruntled look on his face, as if getting hit by a bruising kick was a simple inconvenience.
"You good there, George?" He asked as he rubbed his chest. He only got a wheeze in return as Harry stepped away from the twin next to him.
"Stomach?" The younger teen asked. A short wheeze was his reply as the teen remained bent over, holding his knees. Harry winced a bit before asking,"Boys?" There was a long wheeze as he nodded his head.
The teen looked around at the two and scratched his neck with a sheepish expression on his face. "Sorry about that, you startled me and all..."
Fred looked up from the bed and waved the apology away. "Happens sometimes when we surprise Bill and Charlie. They throws out mean left hooks though you do give a menacing kick. I think we're even though. Wouldn't you say George."
The teen nodded with a shaky thumbs up as he sucked down air. "Oh, that hurt," he breathed out as he sat down on the floor. Hermione was just staring wide-eyed at the three in the room as they shrugged off the sudden bout. "Urg... I think only spying on elders will cheer me up," the grounded teen said seriously between gasps.
"Well, it would seem that we must make sure you are okay. Come little Harry, we have delinquent acts to commit so you can make up for balling my brother!" He hopped off the bed and threw his arm around Harry, dragging him past the shocked Hermione with a stumbling George close behind.
"Sorry 'bout hitting you in the dick," Harry mumbled to George, then accepted the swat on the back of the head from Hermione for his language.