A/N: Hello everyone. Here's the next chapter. It's a shorter one but rather important.

Disclaimer: The X-Men were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and belong to Marvel Comics. Harry Potter was created by and belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this and the only thing that's mine are the original parts of the story.

3) SHADOWS OF THE PAST

Harry wasn't in Britain just to inspect Potter Castle. He had other business to take care of while he was there before pushing on to Kenya to visit Ororo and her family. In fact, one of the reasons he had come to Britain first was that it would help with adjusting to the time zone changes. Kenya was seven hours ahead of New York but only two hours ahead of Britain. By coming to Potter Castle first Harry would take care of most of the potential jet lag before heading to Africa.

It had been two months since Harry's aunt, uncle, and cousin, the Dursleys, had been ordered to vacate Number 4 Privet Drive so the house could be sold to help pay back the 150,000 pounds that the Dursleys had gotten from the Potter estate to use on Harry's care when he was living with them. They had never actually used any of that money on him, choosing to keep it for themselves. Now the bill was due.

They had been given a week to move out of their house. At first Vernon and Petunia had blustered and declared that they wouldn't leave, no matter what some freaks said. However as the deadline drew near Sirius made it clear to them that it wasn't a bluff. If they didn't vacate the house by the day in question they would be forcibly removed from it and it would be done in full view of the neighbors. Not wanting to undergo such a humiliation the Dursleys had capitulated and on the appointed day moved out of the house.

There was still a lot to do before Number 4 Privet Drive could be put up for sale. The Dursleys had been allowed to take their furniture and personal items but they left a lot of stuff behind for others to clean up. The last Harry had heard of them they were staying with Vernon's sister Marge while trying to get back on their feet. They had put anything they couldn't take to Marge's into storage for later retrieval when they found a new place to live. Wherever they finally ended up wouldn't be as nice as Privet Drive was. Both Harry and Sirius considered this to be a good lesson for the Dursleys in how actions have consequences and sins can come back to bite you. Harry didn't think the Dursleys would actually learn that lesson, at least not where he was concerned, but he didn't waste too much time thinking about their situation. They'd brought this on themselves and hopefully Harry would never have to see them again.

The Dursleys left behind a lot of junk that had to be removed and disposed of. The attic of the house was full of boxes filled with all sorts of stuff that they had used in the past but didn't use any longer, such old clothes, toys, books, papers, knick-knacks and pieces of furniture they didn't need anymore – in other words normal attic stuff. But there were also some surprises up there. Harry and Sirius uncovered a couple of boxes that had Lily's name on them and when they opened them up they found a collection of obviously magical items including books, picture albums, and other stuff. How these boxes came to be here in the house at Privet Drive was answered when Harry found a letter in one of the boxes from Dumbledore to Petunia telling her that he had collected these items from Godric's Hollow and sent them to her for safe keeping. He concluded the letter by asking her to give the boxes to Harry when he turned 11 and received his Hogwarts letter.

"Wow" said Harry with a frown, "all this time she had these boxes up here and never said anything about it. She was supposed to give this stuff to me four years ago but she didn't. If it weren't for them being forced out of this house I don't think I'd have ever found out about this stuff. My aunt really is a spiteful bitch."

"That's true pup" said Sirius not even blinking at his Godson's language, "but you have the stuff now."

"I'm surprised the Dursleys never threw it all away" said Harry, "I suppose Dumbledore had something to do with that."

"You're probably right" said Sirius, "from what you've told me he kept an eye on you while you lived here. It wouldn't be hard for him to make sure they didn't get rid of this stuff. I wonder why he never had Petunia actually give these boxes to you?"

"After 10 years he might have forgotten" said Harry, "when you think of everything he has to do this isn't a big thing."

"True" agreed Sirius, "we should get it all back to the castle and look through it."

Harry agreed so Sirius shrank the boxes they took them with them when they portkeyed back to Potter Castle. Once back in the castle keep they took them into the main livingroom where Sirius returned them to their regular sizes. With Remus' help, Harry and Sirius began looking through them.

The books were mainly older copies of school books that Harry already had although he didn't have the ones on Arithmancy or Ancient Runes. Harry also found several notebooks which made up Lily's private journals. These started when she first went to Hogwarts and continued on for the rest of her life with the last entry being dated the day before she and James were killed. Harry put these aside to read as soon as he could. This was a chance for him to learn about his mother in her own words and he wasn't going to pass it up.

There were a lot of pictures in the boxes too. Several photo albums showed Harry his parents at Hogwarts. At first neither was in the other's pictures. Sirius explained this when he told Harry that Lily hadn't liked James during their first years at Hogwarts. She thought he was an arrogant prat. Instead there were separate albums for both of his parents. James' pictures mainly showed him and the other Marauders along with some other friends. Lily's showed her own friends. Harry was surprised to find out that one of them was a younger Professor Snape! He appeared in her pictures for the first five years at Hogwarts before suddenly disappearing from them. Harry remembered what Snape had told him back in April about his friendship with Lily and how it had ended. Harry made a note to see if there was anything about it in his mum's journals.

The later albums finally showed his parents together. These started in seventh year and continued on to their wedding of which there were a lot of pictures. These were followed by pictures of Lily's pregnancy and finally Harry as a baby.

"I was pretty cute" said Harry looking at himself with a grin.

"That you were cub" said Remus.

"You were the cutest baby I ever saw" said Sirius.

Harry's first pictures were taken in New Zealand and there were some which showed him out on the beach being carried by Lily while James looked on at them both with eyes which showed his love for them.

"New Zealand looks nice" said Harry, "I wish we'd stayed there." Both Sirius and Remus nodded their agreement.

There were a number of loose pictures which hadn't been put into albums yet which all seemed to be from the last year of his parents' lives. Harry saw pictures of his first birthday party with his parents and the Marauders present as well as a couple of other people. Harry recognized the Longbottoms and realized that the baby in Alice's arms must be Neville. Remus confirmed this when he told Harry that the party was actually for both babies as they were born one day apart.

"Neville and I should have grown up together" said Harry when he heard that, "and had parties like this every year."

"There was talk of that" said Sirius with a sigh, "I'm sure it would have happened if James and Lily had lived."

"Everything would have been different if they had lived" muttered Harry who quickly turned over another picture to distract himself from that thought. When he saw the next picture his eyebrows went up in surprise. Sirius noticed this.

"What are you looking at pup?" he asked.

"I'm not sure" said Harry who handed him the picture, "I recognize mum and dad and the baby is obviously me, but who are the other two people?" Sirius took one look at the picture and his eyebrows also went up.

"Wow" he said, "I'd almost forgotten about this."

"What?"

"These are your mother's parents" said Sirius, "didn't Petunia ever tell you about them?"

"She mentioned grandma Rose sometimes" said Harry, "but she never said anything about grandpa. She actively refused to talk about him, wouldn't even let Dudley ask about him. I don't remember her ever even saying his name. I always wondered why."

Harry took the picture back and looked at it.

"Seeing this I guess I understand a little" he said.

"Lily's father was a very unusual man" said Sirius, "in hindsight I'm not surprised Petunia wouldn't talk about him."

"Was he a wizard?" asked Harry.

"No" said Remus, "but he had other abilities that made him unique."

"He must have" said Harry as he continued to look at the picture. His grandmother was a normal looking woman with red hair who looked a lot like Lily. His grandfather, on the other hand, had a very distinctive appearance. From looking at the picture Harry didn't think he was very tall. He was wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a t-shirt which showed off a muscular frame. His face was gaunt and weatherbeaten, as if he spent a lot of time outside, and his hair jutted up on both sides of the front of his head like he had small horns.

The most distinctive thing about him was that he had 3 long claws coming out of the base knuckles of each hand. They looked very sharp and this was confirmed by the magic of the picture which repeatedly showed him throwing a salami up into the air with one hand and slicing it with the claws of the other hand while baby Harry looked on and seemed to be laughing.

"This was taken in New Zealand during your first Christmas" said Sirius, "we were all there, your parents, me, Moony, even the traitor was there."

"How on Earth did he get those claws?" Harry asked.

"He said he always had them" said Sirius, "so I assume that meant he was born with them."

"Could he have been a mutant?" asked Harry.

"Maybe" said Sirius, "he could do other things too. He had enhanced senses that were much better than any other person I've met."

"What do you mean?"

"His senses were like an animal's" said Remus, "he could hear and smell like one and he could move really silently so you didn't hear him coming. He was very good at sneaking up on people and more than once he almost got a stupefy in the face when he surprised me or any of the other Marauders. I doubt that would have bothered him very much. He could heal very fast – faster than Hank can."

"That's saying a lot" say Harry as he remembered how fast Hank had healed after being injured by Juggernaut, and that was without magical help.

"It is" agreed Remus, "but there's more we can tell you about your grandfather. He had a feral quality about him. He talked about hunting now and then but not like normal people hunt. No, he would silently sneak up on an animal until he was close enough to touch it before letting it run away. I saw him do it once. It was pretty weird. My inner wolf recognized him as an alpha pretty quickly."

"What was his name?" asked Harry.

"James – " said Sirius.

"He had the same name as dad?" asked Harry.

"Yes" said Sirius, "so to avoid confusion we usually called him by his second name which was Logan. His full name was James Logan Howlett Evans."

"That's a bit of a mouthful" said Harry, "not as bad as Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore but still impressive."

"True" said Sirius, "from what he said he grew up in Canada."

"I wish I could have known him" said Harry. Sirius and Remus both gave him a long look.

"What?" asked Harry noticing Sirius looking at him.

"I'm not sure we should tell you this" said Sirius.

"Tell me what?" asked Harry.

"You know your grandparents were attacked by Death Eaters trying to get to James and Lily?" asked Remus.

"Yes I know."

"At the scene both of them were declared dead" said Sirius, "but I'm going to tell you something very few people know. Logan's body disappeared from the funeral home before the funeral."

"What?!" exclaimed Harry.

"Yes" said Sirius, "by that time Petunia was barely talking to Lily or her parents. She made them bury an empty coffin in her father's grave without telling your mother but Lily found out about it just the same. When she confronted Petunia the blow-up that happened between them – well, Lily and Petunia never saw each other again."

"Aunt Petunia wanted to be rid of her dad that much?" asked Harry in disbelief, "isn't it illegal to do something like that?"

"In answer to your first question, yes" said Remus, "as for your second, I don't know." Sirius shook his head to indicate that he didn't know either.

"Is my grandfather alive?" asked Harry.

"We don't know that either" said Sirius, "Lily searched for him for a while but never found him and then you all went into hiding so she had to stop. Maybe he survived. Maybe he didn't and some sick person stole his body from the funeral home. Maybe his memory was affected and he didn't remember his family which would explain why he never came for you. Who knows?"

'Who knows indeed?' thought Harry as he stared at the picture of his grandparents for a few moments longer before putting it aside and grabbing something else out of one of the boxes.

That evening Harry began reading his mother's journals. The very first one began in the months before she left for Hogwarts and from it Harry learned again just how it was that Professor Snape has known his mother. They were from different parts of the same town. In fact Snape was the one who had first told Lily she was witch and later helped her to learn basic facts about the wizarding world. They had remained friends for five years until the "one insult given in anger incident" that Snape had told Lightning about. Snape hadn't said what the insult. It was only now as he read his mum's journals that Harry found out that Snape had called Lily a filthy little mudblood.

"That would probably do it" murmured Harry to himself as he went over what he knew of his mother. Being insulted like that by someone you thought was a good friend would almost always hurt much more than if it came from an enemy. Harry had lost count of how many times Malfoy had used the insult on Hermione. She didn't rise to it but Harry knew that if he were to call her that (not that he would of course) she would hex him ten ways to Sunday! Under such circumstances Harry wasn't all that surprised that his mother had ended her friendship with Snape.

The journals also made him wonder a little about what might have happened if his mum hadn't fallen out with Snape. Would her continuing friendship with him have kept him from joining the Death Eaters? Some of her later entries showed a bit of regret over that very possibility. She knew Snape had joined the Death Eaters after they were no longer friends and she wondered if she could have stopped that.

Harry also wondered if maybe, assuming the friendship had continued, would it have developed into something more? Would they have fallen in love? Even gotten married? Was it possible that Snape might have been his father? Harry tried out the name "Harry Snape." It didn't sound right but he knew that his view of Snape was biased.

And whose fault was that? When he first got to Hogwarts Harry had no preconceived ideas about Snape. He'd never even heard of him. He certainly didn't have anything against him. Yet Snape had it out for him from the very beginning because he was James' son. Why couldn't Snape have remembered that he was Lily's son too? It might be a copout to claim of Snape that "he started it" but from Harry's viewpoint Snape had started it. Snape might have claimed that James started it, and from his viewpoint that might have been true. That, however, was between Snape and James and had nothing to do with Harry who didn't even exist back then. It was Snape's choice to hold on to the grudge long after Harry's father was dead.

After mulling it over Harry just shrugged. There was nothing he could about it now. There was a good chance he would never see Snape again and he was fine with that. Harry put his mother's journal away and got ready for bed. Tomorrow Dumbledore would be coming to visit and Harry wanted to be well rested for the meeting the next day as they had a lot to talk about.

(To Be Continued)

A/N - That's all for this week. What did you all think of this chapter? Please take a moment to leave me some feedback. Constructive comments are always welcome but no flames or trolls please. Stay safe and well everyone.