Chapter 25 the House of Potter
Harry, Hermione, Professor McGonagall, and former professor Lupin were all seated at a table in the Ministry of Magic canteen, watching as Sirius devoured his 6th sandwich. Apparently, according to Mr. 'Call me Sirius' Black, the prisoners were fed a restricted diet that kept them just on the right side of starving. The idea was to limit their metabolism to the point that they couldn't produce enough magic to use in an escape attempt. The result was that Sirius was hungry, despite the amount of time he had been in St Mungo's recovery.
"So...Sirius, what are you going to do now?" Hermione asked, still a little uncomfortable with using the first name of the man she had only met just over an hour ago.
Sirius looked down for a second before obviously forcing a fake smile onto his face. "No clue. My flat is probably someone else's home by now, and most of my family and friends are gone. I'm sure someone will let me sofa surf for a few days until I can get to the bank. As the last Black, there should be enough gold there for me to rent a place."
Moony turned to Sirius at that. "Of course you can stay at my place. It's not much but it's a roof over your head.
Hermione got their attention. "I only ask because Harry had something else planned for today before we were notified that it would be the trial." She gave Harry a look that told him he needed to do the right thing.
"Actually, that's not a bad idea." Harry understood her plan. "I recently learned about my grandparents' house in Hogsmeade, and today was going to be my first chance to go and look around since learning of it since it is a Hogsmeade weekend. Uncle Moony told me my grandmother took you in when you had a falling out with your parents, so assuming that everything is still in good order, why don't you have your old room back?"
"I can't take your house from you, Prongslet. You'll need it yourself soon enough. I'll work something out." The man looked tired as he spoke.
"Prongslet?" Harry asked, a little confused.
Sirius smiled a little. "It was my nickname for you when you were little. Your dad was Prongs, you looked like a little clone of James. Little James was little Prongs, so Prongslet. It used to drive your mum nuts. The number of times she shouted at me, 'His name is Harry you bloody mutt!'" It was possible to see the echoes of life in his eyes as he spoke of happier times, but it was overshadowed by the thirteen years the man had spent with the Dementors of Azkaban. The man could heal, but it wasn't going to be quick.
Harry smiled at the story of his mother. They were a lot more rewarding for him than the ones of his dad. "Well anyway, it's not like I'm using the house right now, and I'm sure there are things that need sorting out there. The Floo probably needs reconnecting after this long, and who knows what else. Save yourself the stress of finding a new place for a bit and you can help me at the same time."
Sirrus relented and agreed. Professor McGonagall gave them permission to go to Hogsmeade under the restriction that they were to be back at the castle at the same time as the other students who were visiting the village. Since that time was six o'clock, and it was approaching two o'clock now, they decided to set off.
-ϟϟϟ-
Harry stood outside his house with a shocked look on his face.
Professor McGonagall had Floo'ed back to the school where the rest of them had Floo'ed to the Three Broomsticks. A few people had been shocked to see Sirius Black, but as his trial had been announced in the Daily Prophet and he Floo'ed into the pub bold as brass with Harry Potter, nobody tried to stop them. Though, judging by the fact that a few people slipped out in a hurry, Harry was sure the DMLE was about receve a number of reports about an escaped mass murderer who had kidnapped the Boy-Who-Lived.
Harry and Hermione didn't know the way to the house, so Sirius and Moony led the way. When they arrived and pointed out the house, Harry realised he recognised it. It was the same old-fashioned, whitewashed, wattle and daub house with black timber frames and a more modern style front door that was half glass that he had noticed the first time he and Hermione had come to the village. The glass had the family crest set into it, a cauldron with three potion bottles over it, a field of brown as the background. His family crest was a cauldron and three potion bottles...or potion pots, as traditionally before glass was so easy to make, potioneers stored their creations in clay pots. Such was the origin of the name Potter.
After hesitating for almost a minute, Harry placed his hand on the door handle. The handle suddenly felt warm in his hand, then the door popped open. Harry stepped into his family home. Harry would have paused and taken in the moment, except he was interrupted when a small wrinkly missile came charging at him and attached itself to Harry's legs.
"Master Harry is home! Master Harry is finally home!" The house-elf, who was wearing an immaculate white pillowcase as a dress and a brown hand towel as a shawl with the Potter crest directly over the little elf's heart, kept saying between sobs of happy tears. "I has been waiting for so long."
"Sassy? Is that you?" Sirius's voice came from behind Harry.
"Master Sirius too! Master Sirius and Master Harry have come back home to Sassy!" Harry didn't know how, but suddenly he was outside standing next to Sirius, and then he was inside again, Sirius still standing next to him with the house elf's arms wrapped around him as she sobbed into the leg of his trousers.
It took Harry a few seconds to get his bearings, as when Sassy had popped them back into the house she had popped them to the end of the entrance corridor, and Harry had a view of the inside of his family home. He could see a set of stairs leading up, but most of his vision was taken up by a large formal dining room that was dominated by a huge table surrounded by chairs. There were paintings on the walls that, while obviously wizarding in origin, were devoid of people. 'Probably so they didn't interrupt dinner.' Harry thought.
The rest of the group walked in, Hermione looking at everything around her. She looked in a door that was on the left of the corridor, revealing a large cloak room. What Harry didn't see that Hermione did; on the other side of the cloakroom was another door, which, given the size of what was essentially a closet, prompted her to ask a question.
"Is the house bigger on the inside?" she asked, a slight tone of confusion in her voice.
Moony, who was the only other person not currently having to deal with an overwrought house-elf, answered, "Yes. Hogsmeade is the only place in Britain where you can legally expand the inside of a house, in case muggles not in-the-know get into the house. So, as most of the people who live here are magical, and the handful of muggles who live here are in the know, there is a suspension on a lot of restrictions of the Statute of Secrecy here."
That surprised Harry. "There are non-magicals living in Hogsmeade? I thought that this was a wizarding-only village."
"Officially, it is. However, families are complicated; there are a few parents of muggle-born wizards who are too old to look after themselves and live with their children and their families, as well as a couple of muggle spouses who married a witch or wizard. They all know about magic anyway, and by living here they know that they now live under wizarding laws, which means Azkaban for breaking the Statute of Secrecy." Remus, who was back in professor mode, explained.
"So how big is this place?" Hermione asked, now curious about the house she would probably be living in within a few years.
Sassy was the one who answered. "Miss, this is being the main home of the House of Potter. It is two times as wide, deep and tall as the outside. There be six floors instead of three, this floor is for the greetings of guests, with the greeting room containing the Floo fire and the formal dining room. The kitchens also be on this floor. The back stairs on this floor is leading to the function room. The main stairs on the right leads to the family room. The owlery stairs in the family room are also the access for the library/schoolroom and the warlocks office. The main stairs in the family room is also leading to the main family bedrooms. There is a large master suite and two heir's rooms and a bathroom. And the back stairs on that floor leads up to the guest suites and old Master Fleamont's potions lab." Sassy explained, with pride evident in her voice as if she was describing a palace.
"Guest suites?" Harry asked, a little confused. "I get that the House is bigger inside, but from what you said I didn't think that left much room for even one guest suite, let alone multiple."
Sassy finally released Harry and Sirius before she answered. "We is having six guest suite wardrobes. Each wardrobe is having one big family room and nine smaller rooms that can be made as you need: bathrooms, bedrooms, maybe a kitchen if you need it."
"It's an older tradition in the less well off families, Prongslet. Rich Houses have huge manors where the House Warlock lives. These manors are warded as best a house can manage, and during a time of war or other such emergencies, every family in a House will retreat there. Less affluent houses do the same, but the bigger a property is, the more complicated and expensive it is to ward effectively. So they ward a smaller property and use things like expanded wardrobe suits, apartment chests, and wizarding tents. It lets you fit a lot of people in a smaller building," Sirius explained, a wide smile on his face from Sassy's welcome.
He then got a nostalgic look in his eyes. "Your father, Moony, Wormtail, and myself used to use one of the suites as a sort of Marauders' clubhouse during the holidays. We did a lot of our planning in that wardrobe, practising prank spells and brewing potions we needed. James used to use his cloak to sneak home and pick up any supplies we needed on the weekends. Auntie Dorea and Uncle Charlus used to find it funny. Once I moved in with them, they used to sit us down at the start of each holiday and have us tell them about the pranks we pulled."
That last bit of information surprised Harry. "You lived here with my dad?" Harry asked as Hermione started looking around a little and Moony moved to stand next to Sirius, a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Yeah, my parents were as dark as a goblin mine filled with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. My parents were very vocal supporters of He-Whose-Name-Must-Be-Hyphenated. Oh, they never joined him, but they were proud Slytherins for generations with a handful of Ravenclaws thrown in, all pure-blood supremacy nutters. And I was a Gryffindor who hung out with muggle-borns and liked muggle things like motorbikes. In my fourth year, it got so bad at home that I left. Auntie Dorea, who was a Black before she married Charlus Potter, was one of the few relatives I had who I could turn to for help. It helped that I was best friends with their son James. They took me in, and I lived here until I joined the Auror Academy. Those years were some of the best of my life…" the man trailed off after that and went quiet.
"Well, it's good you'll be staying here then, isn't it? Sassy and Remus can both help you out," Harry said, putting a hand on Sirius's other shoulder.
Sassy perked up at that. "Really, Master Harry sir? Sassy cans be looking after Master Sirius again?"
"Yep." Harry told the overtly happy elf. "Sirius needs a place to stay, we obviously have the room, and Moony here can stay as well. Sirius needs people who care about him at the moment."
"Harry, you don't need to do that, I can pay for my own apartment." Remus objected.
Harry pulled Remus into a room on the left of the building. Judging by the furniture, fireplace, and the doorway into the cloakroom, this was the receiving room/Floo room. Idly Harry wondered what it would take to get the Floo reconnected; he knew there was an annual fee to the Ministry for a Floo fire, they needed to pay the people at the Floo office to monitor the network, after all. There was no way the bill was paid in the last thirteen years, but that wasn't his focus.
"Uncle Moony, this isn't about giving you charity. Sirius needs people watching and helping him, people who genuinely care about him. That's you and Sassy, and that will work a hell of a lot better if you are living here. This house is too big for just one person, and I won't be able to move in properly for a few years yet." Harry laid it on thick. He knew he was being obvious, but it was all true.
"I always pay my way Harry. It's something that I take great pride in, even though I am a werewolf, a monster. I have gone through life never needing help since I came of age. While others in my position cheat and steal, I have always had a job and paid my way." Remus tried to defend his position.
"I'm asking you to help look after someone, not sit on your ass and be given stuff. The mundane population has a saying, 'Pride comes before a fall.' Don't let your pride get in the way of helping Sirius. Hell, if it makes you feel better, you can pay for the Floo license or something, but you're staying here and helping Sirius get back on his feet." Harry didn't realise it, but he was fast moving away from the timid and beaten boy that the Dursleys had made him. There were signs that the confident person was there, just waiting to come forward: charging a troll, taking on a basilisk, not running from the monster that was LeStrange. But he was now a year clear of the Dursleys, he had Hermione, he had good friends he could trust, and it was all starting to come together, so when he spoke that confidence was starting to show through.
"OK Harry. I'll do it," Moony agreed.
They returned to Hermione, Sassy and Sirius, with Sassy excitedly telling Sirius that he could stay in his old room if he wanted and Sirius responding with how he thought the old marauders clubhouse was a better idea. After a few more minutes, Sassy started showing Harry around the house. The ground floor was mostly aimed at entertaining visitors, with a receiving room and a dining room. Harry asked about the kitchen, but according to the elf there was no door to the kitchen, as it was the elves' responsibility and no masters needed to work there. Harry had tried to say he liked cooking, but the elf wouldn't hear anything about it. Harry got the impression the only way he was going to be allowed in his own kitchen was directly to order the elf to let him cook, but he was uncomfortable doing that, at least for his benefit. Orders to Dobby preventing him from punishing himself and for him to tell him if a job was too much was different.
From the dining room, there was a set of stairs going up that led to what Sassy called the function room but was in fact a small ballroom with a large balcony that overlooked the garden. The garden was nice but simple. There was a large green lawn bordered by a raised flower bed that was full of plants, but as it was late November in Scotland there were no flowers in bloom. At the far end of the garden there was a large apple tree that, despite the time of year, was still holding on to its green leaves.
To go higher in the house, they had to return to the ground floor and go up another set of stairs that were next to the front door. The family room was as large as the ballroom, but whereas that room had a highly polished floor and a balcony, the family room was full of comfortable yet elegant furniture, nice carpets, and a few paintings. There was a painting of a couple over one of the two fireplaces, and the subjects of the painting introduced themselves as Charlus and Dorea Potter. Harry actually recognised them, he had seen them before (though he didn't know how they were related to him) when he saw his family surrounding him in the Mirror of Erised. Harry felt a few tears make their way down his cheeks as he introduced himself to the echo of who he now knew were his grandparents.
"Sirius! Is that you? And is that Harry with you? Where have you been?" Dorea Potter berated Sirius like a mother scolding a child for being out past their bedtime.
"Auntie Dorea. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I failed. It was my job to look after Harry, but I messed everything up." Tears started to fall down the man's face.
While Harry's grandmother was working with Moony to get the full story of where Sirius had been from him, Harry's grandfather turned to him and Hermione. "Well you're obviously my grandson Harry, you look just like James but with Lily's eyes. I am Charlus Fleamont Potter, or a painting of him at least, so why haven't you been here for so long? What happened to my son and his wife, and who is that lovely young lady who is with you?" His voice was kind and warm.
Harry gulped before answering, hoping he would make a good first impression. "Hello sir. Yes, I'm Harry, and I'm happy to meet you. This is Hermione Granger, my girlfriend."
"It's a pleasure to meet you sir," Hermione said, looking up at the painting while occasionally glancing to check that uncle Moony didn't need help with Sirius.
Harry told the painting about the attack on Godric's Hollow, how his father had fought to buy his mother time to escape with Harry, but how his mum found every avenue of escape cut off. Harry didn't notice, but soon enough everyone was listening to him, even Sirius. Harry explained about growing up with his aunt and her husband, how he was kept ignorant of the magical world until his eleventh birthday, and how he only found out about the house recently, but had been to busy trying not to to die in the Triwizard Tournament and discovering he had a betrothal contract to be able to visit before now.
By the end of Harry's recounting (that still left a lot out), Harry was being hugged by Hermione, who already knew everything and was offering him what support she could. The other person holding on to him as though its life itself was under threat was Sassy. If Harry didn't already know that Hermione had no magical blood in her family, he would wonder if the two were related; the elf was certainly doing a passable imitation of a Hermione-type hug.
Grandfather Charlus looked livid. "Raised ignorant of your heritage and of magic. The nerve of that woman. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put you there was either suffering from a long term Confundus or is working against you."
"Or is deserving of a bed in the long term care ward at St Mungo's," Grandmother Dorea added.
Grandfather Charlus nodded. "That is a possibility. Either way it doesn't matter." Everyone looked at him confused, noticing that he corrected himself. "The why doesn't matter now. What matters is fixing it. Going forward you need to catch up with what you missed. In the library upstairs is an introductory book on the Potter family. Take it with you and read it. You really need to read the family grimoire, but it's protected so it can't be removed from the library, nor can it be read by anyone not part of the House of Potter. However, it would take too long to read it now, so the introduction book will have to do."
Grandfather Charlus then turned to Hermione. "Granddaughter, if you want to read it, Harry will need to specifically give you permission to read it. Oh, don't look at me like that, young lady. It's obvious you and my grandson are together and that it's serious. You can call us grandfather and grandmother, just the same as Harry."
Hermione was staring at the painting like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, but smiled as the old man finished talking. "Thank you grandfather, I'm honoured."
They talked for a bit longer, and the two in the painting were happy to have Sirius and Remus living there and agreed with Harry that it was a waste to leave the house unused while he was still in school. The two adults stayed to talk with Harry's grandparents while Harry and Hermione finished looking around. There was a door leading to a set of spiral stairs at the back of the room, so they took those next. After going up one floor, they found the library and office that Sassy had mentioned. The library was very large for a home library but nothing compared to the one at Hogwarts.
Hermione dove into the books and started checking the titles; every so often she would pull a book from the shelf and stack it on the table. Harry just watched an amused smile on his face.
Hermione caught sight of Harry watching and froze, suddenly realising that she was going through his library and that Harry might want to check out everything that belonged to his family before sharing.
Harry, seeing Hermione freeze, decided to tease her a little. "So where are you taking the books?" Harry asked.
Hermione blushed. "I was going to ask to borrow them?" Even though it was a statement, she said it like a question.
"That's a bit much to carry up to Hogwarts, isn't it?"
"I'll put them back." Hermione said, sounding like she had just been told all the ice cream companies in the world had gotten together and decided that they would never again make chocolate caramel swirl flavour ice cream as she started to return the books to the shelf.
"Not so quick, Hermione. Dobby, Sassy, can you come here for a sec?" The two little elves popped into the room.
"How's can we be helping the great master Harry Potter sir?" Dobby asked.
"First, I need to know, can either of you bring me or Hermione books from here if we ask you?
"I's can bring you books Master if you is asking, but miss is not Mistress, Master, so I is not supposed to gives her books." Sassy said.
"What if I give her permission?" Harry asked.
"Then yes, Sassy can be taking her the books."
"What about you, Dobby?" asked Harry, curious why the little elf hadn't spoken.
"Dobby cans fetch and carry for Mistress Hermione, but Dobby thinks he can't bring her her the books Mistress Grangy wants."
"Why not?" Hermione asked, though she already suspected what the little elf's answer would be.
"Dobby is not knowing how to read, Mistress. Dobby's old master is saying there is no point in teaching elves to read," Dobby answered plainly.
"Well, you will learn now. Reading and writing is the foundation of civilization. The ability to pass on knowledge and ideas without the need to be there in person, removing the effect of information changing as it passes from person to person, and the ability to store your thoughts and ideas outside of your head where you don't need to worry about forgetting it. Theas are what civilizations are built on. You will learn to read and write, Dobby, if I have to teach you myself. What about you, Sassy, can you read? And if so, how well?" Hermione finished her little speech.
Harry wasn't at all surprised at how passionate Hermione was about reading, but was surprised at what she was saying. Harry had never thought about reading that way, to him it was just a useful skill that everyone needed in life, never anything so profound.
"Sassy is knowing her letters and numbers, miss," the elf said with a hint of pride, yet judging by the look on Hermione's face the elf was still in for a test on how well she could read and write. Harry told the elves that Hermione had his permission to borrow books and asked Sassy if they could have writing materials so Hermione could make a list of the books she wanted to borrow.
While doing that, Harry also looked around for the introduction book his grandfather had mentioned. It was easy enough to find, it was on a bookshelf that was more ornate than the others and the books there all seemed to focus on his family, though the copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard seemed an odd inclusion. They explored the rest of the floor, though it was just a mostly empty area with portraits lining the walls and a few places to sit, and the office for the Warlock of House Potter.
The office was pretty boring, with a large desk and some filing cabinets. Harry found what he assumed was the Potter family grimoire on a lectern in the room. He assumed it was the grimoire, as when Hermione approached the book out of curiosity, the lectern shot a few harmless warning sparks at her. Harry gave the grimoire a quick flick through, but it was all too complicated to get anything without sitting down and actually reading it. They quickly moved on, as Hermione was shooting dark looks at the book, as though a book that wouldn't let her read it was offending her to her core.
They continued up the spiral stairs but they didn't lead to another part of the house. Instead, the top of the stairs opened up into a small owlery. Well, small by comparison to the one at Hogwarts; there were perches for up to twenty owls. Even assuming some of them were for guest owls making a delivery, that was a lot of owls for one family. The view from the owlery was magnificent. The house was high enough that they could see a good distance, and they also had a good view of Hogwarts out of one of the windows.
They went back downstairs to the family room, passing Sirius and Moony. Apparently Sirius was having a minor breakdown. From what they had been told, that was to be expected after someone had been in Azkaban so long. In fact, Professor McGonagall had commented that Sirius was doing far better than she expected for someone so fresh from that hell.
They claimed up the main stairs and found the head family bedrooms. The master bedroom had an en-suite bathroom and a bed large enough for six. Hermione flopped on the bed and posed a little to tease Harry, and the two teens lost a good fifteen minutes in a hormone-filled snogging section.
The other two bedrooms on the floor were left unexplored because of the names on the doors. One read Sirius Black, and it was left out of respect for the man's privacy. The other read James Potter, and Harry just didn't feel ready to go in there yet. He had had a pair of long, emotionally draining days back-to-back, and he wanted to leave that one for a day when he was fresh and better able to cope.
The last floor had two large rooms, one medium room, and one storage cupboard. The largest of the rooms appeared to be another open space. Harry was beginning to suspect that the open spaces were for him to fill, and that Sassy had tidied away his grandparents things so that when he moved in he could make the place his own. The next largest room was a potions lab, but it was completely different from the potions lab at school. While the one in Hogwarts was dark damp and cold with stale air, this was an open brightly light room. Windows along one wall flooded the room with light, and the storage cupboard was off this room and was stocked with potions ingredients. However, they would all need to be checked before anyone tried to use them, as they were definitely all over a decade old and most of them had probably gone bad (though there were a few ingredients such as dragon teeth and unicorn horn that were shelf stable).
The last room only held six unimpressive-looking free-standing wardrobes. If they hadn't already been told about the wardrobes containing a set of rooms each, they would have ignored them; instead they stepped into one. "If we find a lamppost growing out of the floor, I'm leaving." Hermione quipped, but Harry looked confused. "It's a Chronicles of Narnia reference. In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the main characters cross into another word called Narnia by traveling through an enchanted wardrobe. On the other side is a lamppost growing out of the ground," Hermione explained.
The suites were not that nice. The entrance went straight into the main room, and the three walls that didn't have the door outside in them had three other doors each. Those doors each led to a small room that could easily be made into a bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen with magic. The place certainly wasn't a nice place to live long-term, but it was easy to make it comfortable. With the room layout, everyone living in one would be on top of each other, and there would be very little privacy with every room opening into the main living space.
They checked out the other wardrobes, and they were all the same besides one that had what was obviously a teenager's dream of a clubhouse. The pool table was the most obvious of the things in there that looked like a lot of fun, though the parchments stuck to the walls, each with a different project, would probably interest the Weasley twins more than them.
Harry and Hermione left the wardrobes and went back down to chat with the two men who were still in the family room, though now (probably courtesy of Sassy) the two men were drinking tea. However, the two school children couldn't stay much longer, as they needed to get back to Hogwarts before everyone was due back from Hogsmeade, so they said their goodbyes and headed out.
They didn't go straight up to the school, instead stopping by Honeydukes and getting Fleur a selection of sweets and chocolates. The two felt a little guilty that they had abandoned her for the day, when only yesterday she had taken a potentially deadly hit meant for Hermione. But Madam Pomfrey had said that Fleur would be asleep for most of the day, and it wasn't as if they could reschedule the trial. Harry also picked up a bunch of flowers from the florist as a "get well soon" gesture.
The first stop they made once they got back was the hospital wing. Fleur was awake, but it was easy to see she had been asleep most of the day. They presented Fleur with the flowers and sugar filled treats, much to her delight, though Madam Pomfrey confiscated some of the magical sweets until Fleur was off some of the potions she was currently required to take. Harry and Hermione filled Fleur in on their day, telling her about the trial. Eventually, Fleur fell asleep again with a smile on her face, and the two Gryffindors slipped out.
A/N
hope everyone likes the new chapter.
there is a post on pat re on that goes with this. it is not behind a paywall but it is an image and fanfiction doesn't let you post images here so the post is open to everyone if you go to the pat re on sight and search Lowten you should find it or on the sight add " 'F-slash' posts 'F-shash' 54777873"
This is also a good point for me to thank everyone who has used that sight to help me out. with special thanks to Jack Schriner. you are all briliant people and I love you all.