A/N: This story was meant to be a two-parter with the second story title being different by just adding one letter on the end - Harry Potter and the Australians. If you read this then you will get the meaning. The plan was for a romance with action/adventure a little later in the chapters. The little over two chapters I've written so far are really just the setup for the story and that is as far as I got.
Harry Potter and the Australian
by Roff
Chapter One
"Welcome first years! I am sure you will find a home in your new houses," Dumbledore announced after the sorting of the first years completed. "I also trust your housemates will welcome you as a new member."
After a pause and looking out at the students, the headmaster continued on with his speech.
"Normally, after you've been sorted into your houses we enjoy a delicious start of term feast. Rest assured we will be doing that soon but before we can do that, there is one last sorting we need to carry out. I know this is unusual but we have a transfer student all the way from Australia.
"Miss Jessica Kelly has passed her OWLs so will be joining us for her NEWT studies in her sixth year. Please welcome Miss Kelly as she comes forward and gets sorted," he said gesturing over to his right.
From out of a shadow near the Slytherin table appeared a very pretty girl with long tan legs. She had light brown hair with blonde highlights, a beautiful face, and a body to match. Not even the school robes could hide well enough what was underneath, or maybe it was just Harry's imagination he was thinking.
Harry had noticed her earlier although he couldn't make out any features due to the shadow. He assumed she was part of extra security for the year since everyone now knew Voldemort was out in the open. It was funny watching the Slytherins jump when she walked out of that shadow. Evidently they never noticed her until then.
She looked over at Harry briefly as she was walking toward the stool. Their eyes met and she gave him a genuine smile. Harry smiled back at her.
She sat very lady-like on the stool with her legs crossed. She had one heel of her shoe hooked over the bar that connected two of the stool legs together. She sat up straight with perfect posture. Professor McGonagall placed the hat on her head and stepped back.
It took a few seconds but the hat finally yelled out "Gryffindor."
Harry wasn't sure why but he was quite pleased with that. She sat near his group and started getting to know her housemates as they tucked into their food.
Many of the students, especially the boys from all across the hall, were staring at her but luckily, or on purpose, she sat with her back to the rest of the houses. Harry usually sat facing the houses so he could see everything and be prepared in case anything happened. His previous years at Hogwarts had him a bit wary.
From his place at the table with the new girl on the other side and just a few places down, it was quite easy to get a better look at her. Occasionally, while they were all talking she would glance over at Harry and smile.
Harry assumed she was just curious because of his unwanted fame. He knew she would relax after getting to know him better. He thought nothing of it as they continued to eat and talk.
Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas seemed keen on getting to know Jessica Kelly quickly and lavished her with attention from the moment she sat down at the table. She would just laugh at their antics but still glance at Harry frequently with a smile.
Hermione was sitting beside Harry but closer to the new girl, so pelted her with many questions.
As it turns out, she was from Melbourne, which is the state capitol of Victoria. There was evidently a strong contingent of magicals in and around Melbourne. The Kelly family went back a long ways in Australia but they did not concern themselves with blood status like some did in England.
As they were dismissed to their houses, the new fifth year prefects started corralling the first years. Hermione, being Hermione, decided to lend a hand so Ron helped too. Although it was more Hermione who tried to make the 11 year old kids feel comfortable. Ron, with his tall and lanky frame, was too busy staring down at them and wondering if he was ever that short.
Jessica fell in beside Harry as they followed the first years up to the seventh floor. She was tall for a girl at 5'9"but was still a little shorter than Harry who was 5'11" with still more growing to do. Jessica had reached her final height already.
They chit-chatted as they walked following the first years and prefects. Harry noticed she was still glancing at him in that strange, happy way.
"Jessica, just in case you're being friendly to me due to my fame, I'd like you to know that I actually hate being famous. I'm just Harry. I'm nothing special. Once you get to know me better you'll be just as bored with me as I am," he assured her.
"Oh, Harry! That's not it at all," she said touching his arm lightly. "Yes, I know of you and your fame. You're famous all over the world after all." She leaned in a little closer and spoke quietly. "You see, our families have a connection and I would love to explain all that to you sometime soon when we can have some privacy."
"A connection?" he asked quietly as he leaned in and noticed how wonderful she smelled.
Their heads were so close together as they walked and talked quietly, they were almost touching.
"Yes, but it's no one else's business so it would be better to discuss it when we are alone and can't be overheard. I promise I'll explain it all to you."
"Well, it's Sunday but it's a bit late. Maybe tomorrow after classes? I have the perfect place for privacy."
"That should work. Thanks, Harry."
The two of them straightened back up and walked normally beside each other after they finished talking quietly. They continued onto Gryffindor tower where the first years were given instructions by the fifth year prefects. Harry watched as Hermione led Jessica up the stairs to their dorm room.
"Goodnight, ladies!"
They both turned and smiled at Harry after he wished them a goodnight. The dorm had already been expanded to include another four poster bed area. Jessica's trunk was at the end of the new bed.
Parvati and Lavender quickly tried to take Jessica under their wing once they were in the dorm room but found she didn't have the same interests. Hermione was quiet once they were back in the girls dorm and getting ready for bed. Jessica remained quiet too as she prepared to go to sleep.
Harry went to sleep that night pondering what Jessica had told him. Their families were connected somehow? This must be another important piece of information about the Potter family that he of course had no clue about.
Tomorrow. He would find out tomorrow.
The next morning was Monday and they all received their class schedules from their head of house while eating breakfast. What was surprising was finding out that Jessica was taking the exact same classes as Harry. Harry was taking seven classes which made the coincidence seem less coincidental.
She promptly decided to follow him around from class to class until she could learn her way around the castle. This made it easier for them to get to know each other better. Plus, since they had the same classes all day they could more easily go to where they had some privacy after classes ended.
Hermione was taking eight classes while Ron was only taking five, which is the minimum amount of NEWTs you need. Harry elected to continue with Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, and Ancient Runes.
Harry was a good student, unlike his friend Ron. Hermione was an outstandingly, good student. She took pride and great joy in learning anything and everything. Harry didn't mind being in the middle. He was glad he took his schooling more seriously than Ron and was pleased that he didn't go overboard like Hermione.
Besides, his extra-curricular activities outside of classes seemed to always take up a good bit of his time, and that had nothing to do with Quidditch. It was about all the times he was nearly killed every year at the school.
He always found himself in danger but never sought it out. It just always managed to find him. Mostly it was the dark lord that killed his parents and tried to kill him when he was just a baby. Voldemort's failure to kill him seemed to make the madman more determined to kill Harry.
Harry had put in a lot of work during his fourth year when he was illegally entered into the Triwizard Tournament as a fourth champion under a magical contract. With the help of Hermione, Ron, and Neville, Harry learned a lot of new spells to compete. Many were advanced spells above fourth year. He was three years behind his competitors who were all seventeen and considered adults.
In his fifth year, he taught many students Defense when the teacher they had from the Ministry refused to teach them properly. His preparation and work on that made him soar ahead of everyone else in Defense. It had always been his best subject. He found that as a teacher he tended to over prepare and learned far more than he had time to teach his students.
He was a natural at defense. He always managed to keep a cool head during a crisis or faced with any danger. His mind worked quickly with good ideas of what needs be done in every bad situation. He was good at leading others when they weren't sure what to do or were too scared to think.
After fighting Death Eaters in the Ministry at the end of his fifth year, watching his godfather get killed, and being possessed by Voldemort before he could finally cast him out, Harry had become even more serious about how he prepared for facing whatever came next.
He worked himself to exhaustion nearly every day over the summer.
He had refused to stay at his relatives house. Sirius had told him that he was leaving practically everything the Blacks owned to Harry, besides a little money going to Remus and Andromeda Tonks.
He also told Harry that if he died before Harry turned seventeen then he would have him emancipated in his will so that Harry could be the head of the Blacks and take over those responsibilities in addition to his Potter family responsibilities.
The Potter family had been without a head since Harry's parents died. Since Harry was underage he could not be the head yet. However, should he be emancipated, he would bypass those regulations and take control being able to help grow the Potter wealth.
Harry knew the Black house at 12 Grimmauld Place was his after his godfather died, so Harry moved in after fifth year ended instead of going back to Privet Drive with his aunt, uncle, and cousin. He didn't plan on wasting time waiting on the will to be read. The house was under so many wards and enchantments that no one from the Ministry could detect magic being used there.
While Mrs. Weasley and her children, plus Harry and Hermione, managed to do some cleaning the previous summer and Christmas holiday, she never allowed the children to use magic. This means there was still too much to do. Harry bonded with Dobby the house elf and had him work with Kreacher to clean up the place right.
Once the will was read and Harry was emancipated before his sixteenth birthday, no one could tell him what to do any longer. He had already had the house locked down so the Order could no longer get in. He wanted to make sure no one showed up and tried to force him to do anything before the will was read.
Once the will was read, Harry told them he would consider opening the house back up for use by the Order again but if anyone treated him like a kid or tried to force him to do anything against his will then he would have everyone violently ejected from the house and it would go back to complete lockdown.
They agreed and when people from the Order arrived back at the house they could not believe how nice it looked. They especially noticed the missing picture of Walburga Black in the entry hall where she yelled her obscenities at people entering her house. However, the house elves were not even done with it yet. Harry had been waiting on the Black family fortune before he made the real renovations to the home.
The elves had been able to remove all the darkness though. They stripped the walls and ceilings then changed them to light colors. They stripped the dark wood floors and stained with a light stain. Everything was polished to a shine.
Dobby was pleased to be able to take care of all the extra people and provide beverages and snacks for their meetings. Kreacher had other opinions but had kept them to himself on orders from Harry. He had also discovered that Dobby had no patience for him if he dared grumble or complain about Harry in any way. Dobby was very adamant about that too.
Given Dobby was younger, physically stronger, and more magically stronger than Kreacher, he tended to watch his step better than he did previously. Kreacher was bound to the Black family and the house in general while Dobby was personally bound to Harry Potter. Given the power of their master, Dobby had received a boost.
In addition, since Kreacher had betrayed Sirius, his former master and therefore the house of Black, he had received a hit to his magic. He was trying to prove himself again but his old prejudices sometimes got in the way of his thinking.
Usually when members of the Order showed up, Dobby would have to pop down to the basement to let Harry know. He was always training himself relentlessly down there. He had quite the setup too with dummies he could hit with spells.
If he wasn't in the basement he would be in the library learning more spells. The Black family library leaned more toward dark spells but Harry didn't mind. He just ignored the truly gruesome ones that tortured more than just killed or crippled. He figured if it will get the job done without making his soul go dark then he could use them.
He made sure to also learn the spells to reverse the darker ones just in case he needed to save someone from one of those spells or if he needed to reverse one he used before it killed the person.
Harry studied ahead and worked hard over the summer at Grimmauld Place but he mostly worked on his defense and fighting ability. He found some good training manuals in the library that took you through repetitive exercises designed to get you casting quicker and with more potency, while at the same time using muscle memory instead of having to remember the incantation and wand movement.
After a while it became obvious to him that there was more to silent casting than just not saying the incantation out loud. As it turns out, you can also ignore most if not all of the wand movements if your intent and will power are strong enough. Plus, practicing it over and over continually made it easier to bring up the right amount of intent and will power.
Not saying a spell and cutting out all the unnecessary wand movement really sped up the process and allowed you to cast so much quicker he discovered.
He knew that they were supposed to learn silent casting in sixth year so he was happy to get that part out of the way early. He would spend the extra time at Hogwarts getting further ahead and training hard in the Room of Requirement. The dummies couldn't move on their own at Grimmauld Place in his training room but they could at Hogwarts in the Room of Requirement.
He looked forward to that.
Classes were a breeze, not just for Harry but for Jessica too. She seemed to be able to do just fine with every spell or subject discussed.
When classes were over, they had eaten, and everyone had gone back to the tower to put away their things, Harry had Jessica follow him to the tapestry on the seventh floor where a wizard was trying to teach trolls ballet.
Harry had her wait while he walked three times in front of the wall opposite the tapestry thinking of what he needed.
On his third pass, a door appeared in the wall. Harry opened it and gestured for Jessica to enter first. She entered and looked around. She saw a good-sized room with some training dummies on the far side. Closer to the door was a comfortable looking sofa and chairs around a throw rug.
However, when she turned around to look at Harry who had entered after her, she saw that the door was disappearing.
"Interesting room, Harry, but why did the door disappear? How do we get out of here?"
"I believe I need to explain the room so your questions are answered. Would you like to have a seat?"
She turned and went to sit on the sofa while Harry used one of the chairs. She figured if Harry wasn't worried about the door disappearing then she could relax about it. They both put their bags on the floor next to where they were sitting.
"Jessica, this room is called the 'Room of Requirement' because it gives you whatever you need in a room. We needed to talk so it provided a sofa and chairs. I also want to train some before heading back to the tower so it provided the training area."
"So why did the door go away?" she asked.
"It will provide it when we need it. I actually asked it to make the door disappear so we could have the privacy you asked for. I don't want anyone else interrupting us or overhearing."
"This is amazing! Who came up with this?"
"I believe it was Rowena Ravenclaw, one of the founders, who created this room. We used it last year a good bit when I was teaching several students defense."
"What happened to the Defense professor?"
"She was a ministry stooge that refused to teach us anything so I taught whoever was interested. We had third years through seventh years showing up. With OWLs and NEWTs for the fifth and seventh years it was basically a necessity."
"You as a fifth year taught sixth and seventh years?"
"As a matter of fact, I did. Defense is my best subject and I'm beyond NEWT level in it. Plus, I've faced Voldemort and various other threats nearly every year since I arrived at this school, so I have a good bit of experience too."
"Harry, your life is beyond reasonable for a kid growing up. I'm so sorry for everything you've had to endure," she said sincerely.
"That's enough about me," he said uncomfortably, changing the subject. "What is it you need to tell me about my family and yours that I'm obviously completely ignorant about?"
"Put simply, my family, the Kelly family, owes the Potter family a life debt. It goes all the way back to our great-grandfathers. We have remained in touch all these years up until you were attacked as a baby and your parents were killed."
"Wait a second! Are you saying that your great-grandfather owed my great-grandfather a life debt and after all these years it has yet to be repaid?"
"Yes! However, don't think for a second that it's been the fault of my family. You Potters are something else. We've tried over and over again to repay this life debt but your family always thinks we're offering too much. We even decided that we would offer up a daughter to your Great-Grandfather Henry so his son, your Grandfather Fleamont, could marry and repay the debt."
"What happened?"
"Henry Potter said only if Fleamont agreed. Turns out he fell in love with your Grandmother Euphemia whom he met here at Hogwarts. We then tried it with Fleamont and offered another daughter to your father James but Fleamont, just like his father, said only if James agreed."
"Let me guess! James met Lily at Hogwarts and fell in love so didn't want to marry the Kelly daughter. So what happened next?" He then got a disturbing idea and asked, "Wait a second! You aren't here offering yourself to me are you, to pay back this debt?"
"No, Harry," she said assuring him. "We gave up on that plan. We know now how you Potters work."
"Then why are you here?" he asked.
"I'm getting to that."
"By the way, before we go further, what exactly did my Great-Grandfather Henry do for your great-grandfather to create this life debt?"
"Oh! Well, he saved his life, of course," she told him like it was obvious.
"I figured that part out," Harry assured her. "Could you be a little more specific?"
Jessica smiled then told him, "My Great-Grandfather Warren was set upon by some thieves who were after his money. He had just made a good bit in a deal he made to provide beef to the soldiers. He was headed home when the nine wizards attacked him. Your Great-Grandfather Henry was visiting our fair country and came upon the spell fight.
"They had managed to hurt Great-Grandfather Warren because there were too many against one but he was still game and had taken down two of them. Henry Potter, as it turns out, was a very powerful wizard and when he didn't like the odds, he entered the fight and took the remaining seven down rather quickly.
"He did what he could for my great-grandfather and then immediately took him to a healer where he was made well again. Your great-grandfather stayed with mine while he was with the healer. He was going to pay for the healer's services if my great-grandfather could not afford it. Of course, that was not the case.
"Warren invited Henry over to his station, what you guys call a ranch, and insisted that he owed Henry a life debt as he was positive he would not have made it otherwise. Henry said no and insisted that he would have helped anyone in that situation. He did not do it to incur a life debt.
"They went on this way for a few days arguing back and forth and they eventually became good friends. When Henry left to go back home, he told Warren that if he insisted on this life debt then they would figure something out eventually.
"The rest is history, Harry. I can tell you though that the Kelly family take life debts very seriously. We will find a way to repay it and your situation provided that way for us."
"How so?" he asked curiously.
"Our families have always kept in touch but after they heard about what happened to James, Lily, and you, all communication was cut off and they couldn't get any information about where you were and how you were. No one really knew about our families being so close. Both the Potters and the Kellys have always believed strongly in privacy so no one outside our families knew much.
"They were told that you were safe and it would be too dangerous to give out the information of where you were, so my family bided their time and formed a new plan. That plan ended up putting me right in the middle of it."
"So now I get to find out how you are involved in all this?"
"Yes. You see, since I'm the same age as you and in the same year as you we made this work. We also worked stealthily so no one would know what we were doing. As you went through Hogwarts, we found out what classes you were taking and I ended up taking the same. I was so glad when you turned out to be a good student and took the better classes."
"Wait! Wait! What are you saying?" he asked unbelieving.
"Relax! I didn't suffer because I had to take classes I didn't want, Harry. I liked all my classes and still do. Just let me finish."
"Alright, go ahead," he resigned to hear her out.
"I was trained from a very early age because we found out that Voldemort was not really dead. We knew he would be coming after you again. Since we owe the Potters a life debt then we can help you defeat this dark lord once and for all."
"I don't see how the two of us, no matter how good you are, will be able to do it. He is extremely powerful and has around 50 years more experience. He also has no qualms about killing people. His followers are no better."
"No, Harry! You misunderstood me. It's not just me who plans to help you. I have a whole hoard of Kelly family members who will join us as soon as they are needed. The Potter family may be down to one person, but the Kelly family is just the opposite. We are many and we have plenty of adult witches and wizards who will be willing to fight. We've all been training as soon as we heard what happened to your parents.
"We will repay this debt."
"You guys really take this life debt business very seriously."
"Oh! You have no idea!"
"So, why are you here now?" Harry asked. "Why not sooner or even later?"
"Well, it was decided early on that I was to be the one. My magic was stronger and I was better at defense than my cousins who were also being considered. When Voldemort came back at the end of your fourth year, we sent a couple of family members here to keep an eye on things for us. They were to notify us if we needed to come running.
"Instead, they said it looked like it would be safe to wait until I sat my OWLs. The dark lord was laying low and not coming out in the open. If we can wait then it will make more sense for me to show up for my NEWTs, less suspicious anyway."
"Right."
"I hope you don't mind but I'm going to be keeping my eye on you a lot. It's part of my job to help protect you, although it sounds like you can protect yourself pretty well."
"I do alright," he said with a shrug.
"I'll have to keep my family informed of what's happening. My parents came with me to complete the picture. I tell them and they inform the rest of what they need to know."
Harry thought about it all for a few seconds, found himself satisfied with the answer, so he then changed the subject.
"Would you like to join me in my training?" he asked her.
"I would love to but I'm not really dressed for it."
"Room of Requirement, remember. Hang on."
Jessica watched as he closed his eyes and then two decent sized bathrooms appeared attached to the wall.
"Just change in one of those. Ask the room for whatever you want to wear. If we need to shower after we're done, it will provide that too."
"I have got to get me one of these rooms!" she said walking to a bathroom while she looked around.