Chapter 26
On Sunday, most of the schoolchildren from third year on up were enjoying the second day of the Hogsmeade weekend. Harry and Hermione, however, found themselves walking into the hospital wing right after breakfast looking for Fleur. They had spent breakfast with Ali and the twins, who had promised that they would speak to Madam Maxime about getting Fleur her assignments so she had something to do in the hospital wing and didn't fall behind academically.
The two walked up to Fleur's bed and found it surrounded by curtains. Harry was just about to open them and step in when Hermione put a hand out and stopped him. "I can hear people talking inside. There must be some type of silencing charm, because I can't make out what they are saying," Hermione explained when Harry shot her a questioning look.
"Is it Madam Pomfrey, so you think Fleur is alright?" Harry asked, now worried about their teammate/potential girlfriend.
"It's not Madam Pomfrey, I can hear her in her office. Fluer probably has visitors." Hermione knocked on the metal frame that held up the curtains.
A few moments later the curtains were drawn aside, revealing a dark haired older gentleman who was a little on the short side, with a heavier figure and well trimmed beard. He looked like he was more attractive in his youth but time hadn't been kind to him, yet he didn't look like it bothered him at all, seeming like a good-natured, happy, go with the flow sort of person. The woman that Harry could see over the man's shoulder standing by Fleur was the opposite as far as looks went. She was tall (a full head taller than her companion) and thin, fair haired with fairer skin as well, and her appearance was an image of elegance, yet she too looked like she was easy with a smile.
"Bonjour, je peux vous aider ?" ["Hello, how can I help you?"] The man asked something in didn't know what to say, but Hermione apparently did."Oh Monsieur Delacour je suppose ?" ["Oh, Monsieur Delacour I presume?"] She replied in kind."Je m'appelle Hermione Granger et c'est Harry Potter. On est là pour voir Fleur" ["This is Harry Potter and I am Hermione Granger. We are here to see Fleur."] Harry was unable to follow the French, but he had picked out two words that helped him understand: 'Monsieur Delacour'. This was Fleur's father, so this could get awkward quickly.
"Harry? Hermione? Is that you?" Fleur's voice called out. Harry looked over Monsieur Delacour's shoulder and he could see Fleur leaning to try and see around her father. When she spotted Harry, she motioned the two of them in as well and started the introductions. "Papa, Maman, this is Harry Potter and his soul mate Hermione Granger. Harry, Hermione, these are my parents Apolline and Sébastian Delacour. Papa works in the Le Département des Affaires Internationales, the French Ministry's counterpart to your Department of International Cooperation.
Harry shook the hand of Monsieur Delacour, but almost stumbled when Madam Delacour went in for the French cheek kiss. However, his experience over the summer was enough that he didn't think he did too badly. The two adults also greeted Hermione, though Harry was sure that Monsieur Delacour was a little frosty with Hermione while Madam Delacour was very warm towards her. It made sense, from what Fleur had told them. Her father was a regular wizard who would see Hermione as competition for his daughter, whereas her mother is Veela. According to Fleur, Veela consider soul bonds sacred. Apolline Delacour would consider her daughter lucky to have a chance at joining such a relationship.
They all sat around and tried to distract Fleur from the fact that her shoulder was being knitted back together. Apparently the Delacours had gotten to Hogwarts quite early this morning, as the two had been trying to get to the UK ever since they heard about the result of the first task. Due to immigration checks, though, they hadn't been able to get a portkey until this morning. Monsieur Delacour had pulled a few strings at his Ministry due to his position in International Affairs and had gotten a portkey to Britain first thing in the morning after they were cleared. However, France was an hour ahead of Britain, so they arrived very early by British time and had wasted no time travelling to Hogwarts. As a result, the Delacours had arrived at Fleur's bed before Harry and Hermione had even gone down to breakfast.
Meeting the two older Delacours seemed to be as awkward for Harry as he had expected. Despite the fact that Fleur was probably going to be in a relationship with Harry and Hermione (especially now that Harry and Hermione understood that in the Wizarding world a three way marriage was completely legal, if uncommon), the truth was that they weren't there yet. Fleur was a teammate and a friend, yet meeting Sébastian and Apolline Delacour had all the hallmarks of "meeting the parents". Apolline did coo over how much Harry had grown since the last time she had seen him, and told the story of how she had to show his mother how to change his nappy, much to Harry's eternal embarrassment and the amusement of Fleur and Hermione, who were giggling at Harry's discomfort.
Talk soon turned to the Triwizard Tournament and the blatant assassination attempt. The two French adults were only marginally reassured to learn that the head of the D.M.L.E. was personally heading the case. They understandably would have preferred for their daughter to get out of the tournament before whoever was trying to kill their daughter succeeded in their attempts. Only the fact that if she forfeited her magic Fleur would die because she was a Veela kept them from dragging her back to France, and Harry and Hermione as well for good measure.
Fleur spent the next few days in the hospital wing. Sébastian and Apolline visited every day to see their daughter, they had gotten a room at a muggle bed and breakfast in a relatively close village - well, close as in it was within a comfortable apparition distance. The three competitors spent a lot of time examining the three chests that they had gotten from the first task. Each of them were locked and wouldn't open. There was no key hole on them, but each had a puzzle on the bottom not dissimilar to the puzzle that held it on its pillar during the first task. They decided to focus on one chest first, and after a few days had solved it. Solving the puzzle had revealed a riddle that had every one of them stumped for now.
A Lifeless cripple who likes to run
Who always Waging war against the sun
always drawn, never dry
I Feast on earth, born in sky
The only other clue was that a small drawer now slid out of the side of the chest. There was nothing in the drawer, but it was progress.
-ϟϟϟ-
Dan and Emma were waiting on a visitor. They had received a letter via owl a few days ago, someone whom they had never met wanted to talk to them. Both Harry and Hermione's recent letters had told them about the person they were waiting on, though it didn't appear as though either of the children had any idea of today's meeting.
There was a knock on the door and Dan went to answer it, revealing two men on the doorstep who had done a fair job of dressing like non-magical people. One was slightly taller, with dark hair and looked ill; Dan had seen people on aggressive chemo who looked better than the man. The second man had lighter hair that was starting to show the signs of age. A number of scars criss-crossed his face, some fresher than others, and it gave the man a wild appearance.
The second man stepped forward with his hand out for Dan to shake. "Mr. Granger, I am Remus Lupin and this here is Sirius Black." Dan shook the hands of both men. "May we come in? We have a few things to discuss."
Dan invited the two men in, and after introducing Emma and offering the two men a cup of tea, they were all seated in the living room trading polite chitchat while everyone got comfortable. Sensing the time was right to switch to whatever the two men wanted to talk about, Dan asked, "So, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?"
Sirius nodded and put the cup of tea he was holding on the table in front of him. "Before my friends died, I made them a promise that I would look after their boy if anything were to happen to them. I was unable to do anything about that until recently because, uh…" Sirius trailed off, not really wanting to talk about his time in Azkaban.
Emma cut in when she saw how uncomfortable the man was talking about where he had been. "Mr Black...uh, Sirius," she corrected after a look from the man. "Harry and Hermione have both written to us about what happened to you, there is no need to explain." Sirius relaxed and Emma continued. "So what exactly do you plan to do to help Harry?"
"Well I am the one that their wills stated was to become his guardian, so I intend to get Harry's guardianship sorted out and for him to move into his ancestral home with me." Sirius explained his plan.
"NO!" Both Dan and Emma said simultaneously.
A flash of anger crossed Sirius's face, but he soon schooled his expression into something more neutral. "You plan to keep my godson from me?" His voice betrayed that he was only acting calm.
Emma spoke up, hoping he could calm things before an argument broke out. "It's not about keeping Harry from you. Neither Dan nor I think that would be good for you or him. But, and I mean no offence here, have you looked in a mirror recently? You don't look like you should be looking after a teenager. You look like you should be in the hospital. It's going to take time before you are in a good place again."
That took the heat out of Sirius who suddenly looked downcast. "I've failed at everything, haven't I? Thrown out by my mother, got my best friends murdered by getting them to switch secret keepers, didn't catch the rat after he betrayed Lily and James, and left Harry without his godfather. Even now I'm too pathetic to live up to the promises I made."
Sirius falling apart like that was all the evidence that Dan and Emma needed that they were right about Sirius not yet being a good guardian for Harry. As fragile as the poor man was, it would be Harry looking after Sirius not the other way around. The man's heart was in the right place, but children and teens, especially ones with a history like Harry's, needed more than good intentions.
"Sirius, just because you aren't ready to be a full time guardian to Harry isn't the same as not being able to help him. There is so much Emma and I can't help him or our daughter with. Harry needs someone he can go to for advice, someone who can talk to him about how life works in the magical world, what jobs are available, how to go about finding a job, how to get a mortgage, where are the best places to eat, is there a public magical library? And so many other questions we don't even know to ask. If you were available to help when they have questions, then it would certainly make things easier for them," Dan tried to offer the fragile man an olive branch.
"In his last letter Harry said he had lent you his grandparents house and that it was in the village next to the school, so you will be right there if anything happens. It would only take Hedwig a few minutes to bring you word." Emma added. In truth, she was glad that there was someone so close to help if (no, when) the next big thing happened.
"Hedwig?" Sirius asked curiously.
"Harry's snowy owl." Remus supplied,, and Sirius nodded in understanding.
"Or if you ask Hedwig, Harry's her human." Dan joked. "Our bacon bill is triple what it used to be and I'm sure most of it is eaten by that bird."
They returned to the discussion about Harry. "If you won't let me take him in, at least let me pay for his schooling and upkeep." Sirius insisted.
Dan snorted. "If you can get him to let you pay for him, you're a better man than me." When Sirius and Remus looked at him confused, he explained. "Harry's relatives, one of the things they did was to constantly tell him he was an expensive burden while spending as little as they could on him. He was given his cousin's old clothes to wear, fed next to nothing, had no toys or games, and according to our Hermione his glasses were held together by tape until she fixed them with a spell.
"Harry has a warped sense of the value of money, or more precisely his worth for money to be spent on him. We bought him some clothes in Paris over the summer and the poor boy threw a fit when we wouldn't let him pay us back. He authorized the payment for his Hogwarts tuition from his own vault before we could even try to pay for it. I'd be worried, but he recently found out that some old woman who had lost her entire family in the war had willed him a load of gold that is marked for his education, so the Hogwarts tuition will be paid from that going forward." Dan let out a sigh. "Honestly the only time we have been able to buy him anything without him trying to pay for it was Christmas."
Sirius and Remus both looked murderous as Dan explained, and Emma was glad that neither man knew where the Dursleys lived or she suspected that Sirius would be on his way back to prison shortly, with Remus as a bunk mate. And this time, the man who looked like a refugee would actually be guilty of the crime he was sent there for. However, at the mention of Christmas Sirius's expression brightened a little. "Christmas, you say. Tell me, do you know what Harry already has?"
"Not really," supplied Emma, "we know he has a broom because he plays that sport of yours, but apart from that we're not really sure. Hermione is probably the best one to ask."
-ϟϟϟ-
Harry was just finishing up in Transfiguration, where the lesson was focused on turning guineafowl into guinea pigs. Hermione had done well as usual, getting a perfect guinea pig by the end of the lesson. She was the only one, though Harry was close; his guinea pig still had wing's coming out of its back. McGonagall cleared her throat at the front of the class, and all the students turned to give her their attention.
"In a few short weeks, the school will be hosting an event that traditionally comes with the Triwizard Tournament, the Yule Ball. It is an opportunity for us all to socialise with our visitors in a more relaxed setting, for us to let our hair down, if you will." A few of the girls giggled at that. "The ball will start at 8pm and finish at 1am, and is open to students of fourth year and higher, although you may invite a younger student if you so wish. Dress robes are mandatory, and while this event should be fun, I would be displeased if anyone from Gryffindor were to cause a scene and embarrass the school." Everyone started to gossip now.
At the end of class, Professor McGonagall assigned homework to all the students who hadn't successfully transfigured their guinea fowl into a guinea pig (so all of them except Hermione), then dismissed the class. Just as Harry and Hermione were about to leave, Professor McGonagall spoke up. "Miss Granger, Mr Potter, a moment of your time, please."
Harry looked at Hermione, who just shrugged and turned back into the classroom. She walked to the professor's desk and Harry followed. "What can we do for you professor?" Hermione asked brightly.
"I wanted to inform you that the champions and their dates will need to open the ball." The professor told them in her usual no-nonsense style.
"What do you mean 'open the ball'?" Harry asked, genuinely confused.
"The first dance Harry, the champions will start the dancing and everyone will join in." Hermione explained.
"Wait, dancing while everyone watches me? But I can't dance."
"You're not that bad Harry. But is this going to be a formal dance, professor?" The head of Gryffindor nodded. "Neither Harry nor I know how to dance formally."
A frown crossed McGonagall's face for a second. "I will need to arrange some dancing lessons then, I doubt you are the only students who will need the help. Now off you go to lunch."
Harry and Hermione left the classroom and started trying to catch up to their classmates. Just as they were about to leave the Transfiguration corridor and enter the main staircase, Harry turned to Hermione. "So Hermione, will you be my date to the Yule Ball?" Harry had already asked her when they had bought their dress robes over the summer, but he thought it was a good idea to ask again, if for no other reason than to show he didn't take Hermione for granted.
Hermione kissed him on the cheek, "I'd love to." They continued walking, but Hermione seemed deep in thought. Harry was just about to ask what was on her mind when Hermione spoke up. "Harry, what are we going to do about Fleur?"
Harry took a breath and let out a long sigh to buy himself a few seconds to think. "I committed to taking you before we knew Fleur, I'm not going to break that commitment."
Hermione bit her lip in nervousness, obviously having a thought but was worried about how Harry would take it. "Why don't we go as a three?"
"It wouldn't work. The champion's opening dance, we need an even number of dance partners," Harry explained the problem he saw.
Hermione frowned, and Harry understood. Until the revelation from Fleur at the end of the task last week, Harry and Hermione had kept the French girl at a distance. Now, though, some of the walls the two had put up between them and Fleur were starting to come down. Without those barriers, it was becoming easy to see that something could grow between the three of them.
"She will need a different date then, for the opening dance if nothing else...this isn't going to be a fun conversation," Hermione sighed as they reached the ground floor and went to have lunch.
-ϟϟϟ-
The conversation with Fleur was not as bad as the two had feared. The French students at least had been told about the Yule Ball before they left their home school. Fluer had, at the time, hoped that she and Harry could attend together, but after finding out about Hermione she had understood the chances of being Harry's official date were low. However, she did insist that both Harry and Hermione would owe her a couple of dances.
She was able to join them for breakfast the Thursday after the first task, her shoulder was still weak and she was taking about six potions a day, but she was improving quickly. Hermione had insisted on fixing Fleur her breakfast, in part because she felt guilty that Fleur had gotten hurt saving her, but also because she was coming to like the blonde. While Fleur had been stuck in the hospital wing, the three of them had talked and Hermione had found Fleur to be rather intelligent and studious like herself, though Fleur was less interested in books and reading and viewed them more as a necessary evil.
Their breakfast was interrupted by the morning owl post. Harry and Hermione were used to it, but Fleur grumbled something about animals on the table, at least if Harry was translating the French words that sounded a lot like the English words 'table' and 'animal' correctly. An owl dropped a copy of the Daily Prophet in front of him and Harry picked it up, wondering who it was for when he noticed an envelope tied to it with his name on it. Confused, he opened the letter first, which turned out to be just a short note from Rita telling him that the copy of the Prophet was a complimentary one as he was mentioned in an article.
Harry unrolled the newspaper, nervous for what he would find. He didn't need to look far, apparently he was front page news and the headline didn't fill him with hope.
The secret life of Harry Potter
An exposé by Rita Skeeter
Well, my lovely readers, I have done it again. I have farmed out the secrets of those who hold possession of being examples in our society. You will all remember, I'm sure, the recent articles I have done with 'The Boy-Who-Lived', young Harry Potter. Well, it's my sad duty to inform you that young Mr. Potter was keeping secrets.
Normally, I am the first to call for the people to pass judgement on people who keep secrets. This is normally because those secrets are rather hypocritical in nature: a politician who preaches family values but has a mistress on the side for example. This time, however, I am going to ask that you consider Mr. Potter's reasons for holding his tongue. While I consider it wrong to have kept this to himself, I can understand why he would want to. I actually considered not writing this story as a courtesy to Mr. Potter; however, I consider it important enough to not let this one go. There are ramifications beyond Mr. Potter that I believe he is too inexperienced to have considered.
What is the secret I have been dancing around? Well, the Boy-Who-Lived, saviour of the wizarding world, vanquisher of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, is a victim of long-term systematic emotional and physical child abuse.
Before any of you pick up your wands and rush off to save Mr. Potter, you need to know that he has already been rescued. He is now living with other people who are decent, hard working people and who genuinely care about him. I won't be revealing where or with whom Harry is now for his own protection; as much as most of you could be trusted with his location, we all know not everyone in our society wishes the best for the boy.
So who was it that went out of their way to harm young Harry? It was Mr. & Mrs. Dursley, the latter of whom was originally Petunia Evans, sister to the late Lily Potter (formerly Lily Evans). As Harry's closest blood relative, it's not surprising that Harry Potter was placed into her custody. She and her husband, while being muggles, had a boy of their own the same age, and Mrs. Dursley knew enough about our world to tell young Mr. Potter of his place in our world and in our hearts.
Instead, the woman who was Harry's only living close blood relative chose to take out an old grudge she had against her sister on her son. The grudge? She was jealous that her sister was magical while she was not. As a result, the woman grew to hate magic and anyone magical. Her husband, now having the responsibility of helping to raise a magical child in his household, was given the same exception to the Statute of Secrecy that the parents of muggleborn witches and wizards enjoy. But instead of seeing magic as the beautiful thing that it is, he saw it as nothing more than an unnatural abomination.
The two proceeded to try to beat and starve the magic out of the boy. Any accidental magic was punished with corporal punishment (leaving Mr. Potter's body riddled with scars), withholding food (all food, not just desserts and snacks) for a week or more, and locking him in the small broom closet that is under the stairs in their home. The closet under the stairs was actually the place Mr. Potter spent a lot of time growing up, not only as a punishment. That was the only space he was given in the house until he received his Hogwarts letter that was addressed to Harry in said cupboard, and the abusers got paranoid that witches and wizards were watching the house, so they moved him to a spare bedroom the house had.
I would like my readers to note some things here. First, they had enough room for Mr. Potter to have a proper bedroom; in fact, they had two such rooms free. The house is a four bedroom place, and there were four people living there, two of which shared a room. Space was not a concern in that house. Also note that once they believed someone to be watching, they acted more like people in their position should. That no one was watching either then or before is concerning, why was Harry's magical guardian not making regular visits to check on his charge as was his responsibility?
That, my dear readers, is the biggest secret I will reveal today. The magical guardianship over Mr. Potter was stolen. How and why was it done? And of course, most importantly, who was responsible?
To work all this out we must start with how it was done, beginning with the will of the late Lily and James Potter. I was lucky enough to see a copy of that will, shown to me by Harry Potter himself. That will, as almost every will written by parents of underage children, contains provisions for their son's guardians in the event of their death. In the case of Mr. Potter, it was Alice Longbottom (Harry's godmother), Sirius Black (Harry's godfather), the well respected professor and friend to the Potter family Professor Minerva McGonagall, and the Delacour family in France.
Due to long term health complications, the Longbottom family don't have the ability to care for Harry, and after his stay in Azkaban Sirius Black will require a long recovery until he is fit for any role in society, let alone the caretaker of the Boy-Who-Lived. So, what about the respected professor of Transfiguration that so many of my readers will remember teaching them during their time at the school? She doesn't hold the guardianship either.
No, my readers, it's not any of the people who were mentioned in the will of the late Lily and James Potter. After much digging, I have discovered that the magical guardian of the Boy-Who-Lived, the one responsible for keeping Mr. Potter safe and checking up on his welfare, is none other than Albus Dumbledore.
Counter to the will of Mr. Potter's parents, Albus Dumbledore of too many names and titles used the powers granted to him by his various positions of power to corrupt the will and have himself named as Harry Potter's magical guardian. He then proceeded to place young Harry in the 'care' of his aunt and uncle. I haven't been able to find why Dumbledore did this, or if he knew about the treatment that the Boy-Who-Lived received while he lived in Surrey with his relatives. But one thing is clear: when he took the job of magical guardian for himself, then it became his responsibility to check on Mr. Potter, his responsibility to know how Mr. Potter was being treated, and his responsibility to stop it from happening. Something the headmaster of a school full of children neglected to do.
-ϟϟϟ-
Albus vanished the newspaper with an annoyed flick of his wrist. It hadn't been a good week for him; he had been barred from the Sirius black trial, and ever since people had been questioning why he hadn't pushed for a trial back in 1981. His insistence that Barty Crouch had told him that the evidence was so airtight that a trial was a waste of time, when the Wizengamot was already overworked and needed to focus on rebuilding after the end of the war, had finally gotten people to calm down and stop pestering him. The late former head of the DMLE was an excellent scapegoat. Not only was he unable to offer a defence or lay any allegations of his own, people were all too ready to believe that the problem had already been sorted out, the bad egg had already been removed, and no more effort was needed.
Everything would have blown over if Rita bloody Skeeter had kept her damn nose out of his business for another month or two, but now people were going to link him not giving Black a trial with him taking Harry as his ward. So what if the boy got a few wallops growing up, back in his day that was called parenting. So what if the boy had to do the chores around the house, it's not like he was living in a workhouse. Ever since Potter met that reporter, things had gotten harder for Dumbledore. He was going to have to find a way to keep her and the boy apart in the future. The headmaster let out a long sigh and stabbed a sausage on his plate with his fork and bit off a section, the thought, 'The sooner Tom killed his Horcrux the better, then all this distasteful blood war stuff would be behind us' running through his head.
A/N
I wonder if any of you can work out the answer to the riddle without analysis from Google? Riddles used to be a lot harder to solve when you couldn't just look up the answer.
Yes, the Dursley house had four bedrooms: Harry's, Dudley's, Petunia's and Vernon's shared room, and the spare room Aunt Marge stayed in at the start of the third book.
Dumbledore's thoughts - Dumbledore is almost 150 years old in 1994, that puts his years as a young man in the Victorian era where orphans were sent to brutal workhouses and beating children with a belt or a cane if they misbehaved was normal. But I hope this context helps you understand how Dumbledore can know about Harry's home life and still see himself as a good man.
Special thanks to Jack Schriner and SvenGTX for sponsoring my creativity