Chapter 14

Summary: Harry finds out that he has a lot more people that stayed behind for him than he ever would have expected.

Notes: I cut off the last chapter, then realized that the wifi was still off so I started this chapter in the hope of giving it to you very soon. I received some awesome news, our sensei is still training with our other sensei and he invited me and one or two others to go train as well if we wanted to train during the holidays. So far we've been training three out of the five days :D.

Harry

Harry stared at the figure on his shoulder until the figure huffed and flicked him on the nose, "You know, I didn't rush my mission to get here just to have you staring at me like I'm a ghost that just decided to haunt you. If you were anyone but my beloved godson I would have called you sleeping beauty for daydreaming like that and…"

Sirius cut off his own rant as he sighed and pushed his head against Harry's, "…I'm glad you are alright, we often came to check on you and we were wondering if you would ever wake up at this point, even though…"

Harry quickly motioned for Sirius to pause as he felt a familiar cold rush through him and he lightly pushed back at the area before mentally whispering, "Please do not come out yet. Let me first finish the story. You already had your fun when you almost gave Sean and Nick a heart attack and I want to explain things to make sure they understand why this all happened."

He was met with a pause, and then the feeling quietly disappeared, leaving Harry with the image of a sulking Death slinking away and he felt a pang of guilt, but he knew that the alternative would create even more chaos than what the two mini Reapers were currently causing.

He turned, only to do a double-take as he saw a cross-looking Sirius being poked on the cheek by Rosalee. His dogfather quickly turned into his grim form in an effort to look menacing, but that simply led to Monroe picking him up in excitement.

Hermione cleared her voice and gained the attention of the people in the room before she motioned towards Harry, who rolled his eyes at her dramatics while being unable to completely hide the amusement he felt.

Sirius took the chance to escape and settled himself on the roof of a nearby clock, he noticed Harry's gaze and the irritated look on his face vanished, leaving only a familiar smile that had Harry finally realizing that his godfather was really there.

He glanced at Hermione, itching to know who else there was, but now was not the time so he shook his head to clear it and focused on his story, "Ok so where was I? Right, Sirius…well, we survived, but people still thought he was guilty so he had to hide away at his family home, which was used as headquarters from then on."

The fact that he could actually talk about the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix drove home the fact that even that familiar place was gone, but he pushed past it.

Sirius flew close and poked his cheek, "You forget the part that you managed to gain the loyalty of Buckbeak." He turned to the others, "he was a hippogryph. Few people ever gained the loyalty of a hippogryph enough to ride them."

Harry saw the confused yet impressed looks, but given the frown on Sean's face he also guessed that they were an extinct species so he continued talking before the man could voice his confusion, "I then entered my fourth year at the school, and Hermione and Ron had stuck by me throughout every challenge until then," he poked Hermione when he saw her face fall, "but then a deadly tournament was announced and I thought that it would be the one year I could just sit back and study because I was below the age required of the participants, but once again something strange happened and my name was drawn, leaving most of the people around me thinking that I was seeking attention."

Rosalee narrowed her eyes at Hermione, but Harry shook his head, "The first task, was to retrieve a golden egg and I managed to do so quickly without any injuries-"

He didn't get any further as Sirius jumped down from his resumed perch on his shoulder, "What he isn't telling you was that he had to retrieve the egg from a nesting dragon, and not just any dragon, but one of the fiercest breeds called the Hungarian Wormtail. They chain even broke and he still survived after outflyng the dragon!"

Harry sighed and sent a look at Sirius, while ignoring Rosalee's whisper of "flying?",who pretty much pretended he didn't notice, which led him to glancing at Hermione and then sighing, "Neither of you are going to let me skip over the details, are you?"

The duo shook their heads and a loud, "Nope!" echoed through the room in unison.

Harry thought for a moment, but could find no other way than adding in a few more details than he usually would have, "The second task was to find a way to breathe underwater for an hour so that you could save someone close to you, only you weren't warned about who it was beforehand."

He saw Sirius getting ready to add the part about Fleur and Gabrielle, but he subtly cast a silencing charm at the man, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn't notice. Rosalee and Monroe seemed to notice his reluctance to add in every extra detail and it was kind of funny to watch Rosalee listening and responding in rapt attention when no words were leaving Sirius' mouth, but it didn't take long for him to notice and he turned to Harry with a look, before shrugging and settling down.

Hermione seemed to take it as a hint to quiet down as well and Harry inwardly let out a sigh of relief before he steeled himself, "The last task was to get through a maze…only, I ended up taking the cup with the other Hogwarts Champion because I wasn't supposed to even be in the tournament and I will forever regret it."

Sean and Nick both frowned, but Harry continued before he lost his nerve, "Instead of ending up at the beginning with a crowd of people to greet us, we were sent to a graveyard after the tournament itself was sabotaged, making it unclear who the actual winner was as the creatures and plants started acting uncharacteristically and one of the champions was ever spelled to follow another person's will."

He could see that both Hermione and Sirius wanted to deny it, but it was the truth as Krom hadn't been himself and Fleur had been attacked earlier in a suspiciously convenient manner. Sure she'd seemed clumsy at first, but he doubted that she would have been chosen as a champion because of the trait and she had been completely fine after the entire ordeal.

He'd even heard her mention to her schoolmates that she didn't feel like herself on more than one occasion during the tournament, but he knew how vehemently Ron and Hermione would deny it, so he kept quiet about it.

"We were met with Voldemort in the form of a homunculus and he immediately ordered his minion, the same man that betrayed my family, to kill the other student. He did it without a second thought before binding me to a grave so that I wouldn't escape. He then performed a ritual that brought Voldemort back using my blood, and with that, I also lost the protection that my mother's refusal to step away and consequent death had given me."

Harry unconsciously ran his hand over the scar then blinked in surprise when he noticed that both Nick and Sean had a death grip on his arms.

Both of them stayed tense as Nick spoke, "If gets worse, doesn't it?". He said it in a low voice, making it more a statement then a question.

"It gets a lot worse, but I don't want to go into all of the details, not yet at least. Maybe someday I will." The people around him nodded their understanding, but Harry suddenly felt the need to get the attention off of himself and onto something else.

"After that things became hectic. The public believed I lied about Voldemort being back and they printed some pretty nasty things about me…" He took a breath to calm himself and Sean took the time to interrupt, "That should be illegal. Weren't they arrested or fired?"

Harry gave a bitter laugh, "Yeah, unfortunately, the wizarding world was pretty much as backward as you could get. If you didn't know the rules and if you didn't have a guardian to protect you, people would jump on you in droves for something you either did or did not do. Anyway, a lot happened that year…", he waited for Hermione to interrupt and talk about both the torture and Severus' apparent betrayal at the time, but she stayed silent so he simply ended with, "Dumbledore died by Severus' hand that year, and yet it had all been pre-planned. Unfortunately, Severus hadn't known that he was also being played."

Sean and Nick looked confused, then Harry remembered that he'd never even told Rosalee that Severus was the one he was thinking of the day they met. He gave a fond smile, "Severus was a right git from the very first day I met him", he laughed at their confused faces, and even Hermione smiled a little while Sirius simply grumbled, "He treated me badly because, according to the stories and reports he got, I was a spoiled little boy that was just like my father, who had bullied him at school."

His face fell a little at the end, "I never knew about it so I just simply thought he hated me, I never knew how bad his life was until we neared the end of the war. He was a spy, both for the light and for the dark, but I only learned after he nearly died that he had done everything he could to protect the last piece he had left of the woman he loved, my mother."

Rosalee gave a slight sniff and Harry was surprised to see tears glimmering in her eyes, to which he nodded, "Severus endured more than most people during the war as he had to constantly live with the danger that, the next time he was summoned, it would be his last, because Voldemort took no prisoners and anyone that stood against him would've been only too grateful it the last thing they saw was a brilliant green light instead of being tortured to death."

Harry noticed Nick's look of horror and he grimaced, "As it was, Voldemort never found out, but he ordered his snake to attack Severus simply because he owned a certain object, an object that, according to Voldemort, would only transfer full ownership once the previous owner was dead. I witnessed the attack and managed to heal him with some antivenom we had made after I learned about Severus' true goals and allegiance. Hermione and Ron helped me to get him to a safe house, where he informed me about something called Horcruxes."

He noticed how Sean stiffened and wondered whether the man knew what they were, the man didn't disappoint, "Bad deeds breaking one's soul into pieces and burying them in containers while being unable to go wherever one should go after death…but that is just a story told to kids to keep them from doing bad things, it shouldn't be possible!"

Harry nodded sadly, "He made six, but there was a seventh one he hadn't known of…"

Mornoe noticed Hermione's sad look and growled, "You?!"

Harry smiled sadly, "Yes, me. Severus hadn't wanted to tell me, but the war was escalating and we had no other choice. I had to die so that the rest of the world could live."

Rosalee and Monroe shifted in anger and Harry's eyes widened when a physical shield formed around the room, cloaking all of them against an unseen threat. His eyes snapped to Sean, whose eyes were glowing an unnatural white-grey and he hesitantly placed a hand on his arm, "Sean, it's in the past, I am safe…"

He frowned when it seemed like the man wouldn't listen at first, but the shield slowly dissipated and the man came back to himself, scowling in confusion.

Harry glanced at Hermione, but she shrugged he felt a nagging feeling at the back of his mind. What if something had gone wrong during the ritual? Even Nick looked worried and Harry wondered whether he should stop there, but the look Sean shot him told him that there would be consequences if he hid information from them.

He tried to choose his next words carefully, "I, well, I did die, I had to let Voldemort kill me to destroy the last Horcrux, but Severus had snooped around Dumbledore's office a few weeks before while we had been on the run and found the truth of the artifacts both he and Voldemort had coveted, one was my cloak given to me by my father, the second was a black stone that really belonged to Voldemort's family, and the third was something called a death-stick. The three items allowed the one that gained their allegiance to become the Master of Death."

Harry hesitantly allowed the objects to appear with the cloak settling over his shoulders and the stone and wand settling in his hands, but Sean seemed to be the only one that fully comprehended the significance of the three items as his eyes widened in shock, "You can't die."