"I can't believe nobody stopped me getting on the train," Harry opined, as they were safely crammed into a compartment and leaving Hogsmeade to head back to London. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had grown enough that it was a tighter fit with the older boys than it had been on the way to school. Ginny had at least chosen to sit with her roommates rather than cramming in with the Marauders.
Hermione had carefully arranged it so she was sitting next to Ron, though nobody else had really noticed that decision in her seating chart.
"Most people's parents would check up on them," Hermione figured. "You have to have the only guardians that don't know whether you plan to come home for Christmas."
"Maybe," Harry shrugged. "But, say, what if you told your parents you were staying at Hogwarts and then didn't? We could all stay at the Leaky Cauldron or something the whole break. Muggleborn parents might not ever even find out!"
"Scary," Ron nodded, getting his point. "Not that I could afford to stay at a hotel for two weeks."
George figured, "Honestly, with a few simple spells, you could find somewhere free to stay."
Fred added, "Gotta be lots of people out of town on holiday whose house you could just live in."
"Trace," Lee countered. The twins both frowned, reminded of their nemesis.
"I guess with instancing, we could manage it. Or just using normal lockpicks," Harry shrugged. "But I'd feel weird squatting in somebody's house."
"And if you really needed a place to stay, you'd probably do a quest and a free room for the holidays would be the reward," Hermione figured.
"How would you get from the train station to the Leaky anyway?" Ron asked.
"Knight bus," Harry shrugged. "I still need to check riding that one off anyway." Mr. Weasley had at least given him the method for summoning the co-locating transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Changing the subject he asked, "What are you doing for the holidays, Lee?" He had a pretty good grasp on the Weasleys' plans, and he was staying with Hermione, but didn't have a solid understanding of Lee's home life.
"Keeping my head down," he replied. "Got some letters from Mum that make me thing that Dad's been gambling again." He saw looks of worry in Harry and Hermione's eyes and explained, "It's not that bad. He's just the unluckiest bloke in Britain, so he's always depressed once he loses enough." He shrugged and said, "Probably won't really have great presents this year, but that's alright."
"Maybe you can use your new charisma to convince him to stop?" Hermione suggested.
"Maybe," Lee agreed. "But it's not like he doesn't know it's a problem. He just gets excited about stuff he thinks are sure bets, and then he gets drawn in. The real problem is Bagman keeps taking his money…"
BOOKIE CLUB
Put Ludo Bagman out of the gambling business.
"Ludo Bagman?" Harry asked as the quest appeared. "Game system thinks we could put him out of business."
"Yeah? Does it give any suggestions on how?" Lee perked up.
"Nah. Not sure if it's even a real quest, or just automatically tracking my to-do list," Harry admitted.
"Shame. Well, let me know if it changes to suggest something."
It was interesting to be at King's Cross Station when it was cold out: Harry had only been there before at the end or beginning of the school year. He and Hermione broke from the Weasleys before they got off the train; as much as Harry would like to say hello to Mrs. Weasley, there was too much chance of her asking him questions about where he was spending the holidays. That she was part of Dumbledore's order meant she might mention it to him and it could become a problem.
Was it weird that a little mind reading had turned into a distrust of authority worming its way through the adults in his life?
So far, that distrust did not extend to the doctors Granger, who Harry and Hermione found waiting outside the exit to the platform with the other parents of Muggleborn, trying to look unobtrusive. Harry actually got a surprising hug from Helen Granger, and a handshake from Jean. "Thanks for this," he told them, glancing around for anyone paying attention, and leaving out what "this" was, just in case.
"It's our pleasure," Helen told him, as they started walking towards the parking area, wheeling their trunks behind.
"I don't know if we considered whether two trunks would fit in the boot, though," Jean observed, giving a worried look at the luggage. Without a magically-expanded space like in the Weasley car, it was hard enough getting Hermione's trunk to fit.
"I've got it," Harry assured him, thrilled to be in the company of the only two adults that knew about the game system. He rolled behind a kiosk of tourism brochures, again checked that he wasn't being watched, and slid his trunk into inventory. It was immediately shunted off to his vault, but all of his essential items were in his main inventory anyway, if for some reason he couldn't access it from the Grangers' house.
"I had honestly almost managed to forget about that," Jean shook his head in wonder. Part of it was that they didn't actually get to see much of the wizarding world, since Hermione couldn't cast magic at home. But mostly it was just the unobtrusive way Harry made the luggage disappear into thin air. "It's like an illusionist show, right in front of me."
"Watch me cut this ghost in half!" Harry grinned.
Hermione laughed, but noticed her parents realizing there was a story there.
Hermione Granger replies: We should probably work out how much to tell them.
The chat system wound up making it a lot easier to get their stories straight (though they probably should have just done so on the train). On the ride back to Crawley, they gave a heavily-abridged story of the past few months that omitted class quintuple-X giant spiders, minimized their danger from giant snakes that could kill you with their eyes, and downplayed soul-sucking demons with a game system of their own. It was bad enough that there were mind-reading and memory-stealing professors, student-controlling diaries, and traitorous rat-shapeshifters.
"Who'd have thought that decapitating a ghost would be the fun part?" Helen frowned when they'd finally finished.
"I'd like to write to Mrs. McGonagall," Jean suggested. "I feel like it may be time that we have a parent-teacher conference. Harry, can we borrow Hedwig to send that letter?"
"Sure," Harry shrugged, not convinced that Hermione's parents writing would change anything, but not seeing the harm. And Hedwig liked to work. He'd been letting Hermione use her to send mail home over the semester anyway, so the Grangers were familiar with the snowy owl.
"Perhaps we should also talk to Molly and Arthur?" Helen added. "Since it was their daughter that was affected, they may also have some issues with how things have been handled recently."
"Well, we're going to go hang out!" Hermione suggested, bailing from the conversations before her parents started to ask any more questions.
"Keep your door open. Dinner's in an hour," Jean agreed, as they scampered off.
The first few days of winter break were strange for Harry. Hermione's parents took turns working during the day, leaving one parent home to make sure the kids weren't getting up to mischief (whether romantic or dangerous). This involved several outings to go shopping and see various Christmastime sights, during which whichever Dr. Granger was parenting subtly pumped Harry for information about his life outside of Hogwarts. That he was clearly as mystified by fairly commonplace winter attractions as they were by magic did not reflect well on the experiences his guardians had allowed him over a decade in their care.
In the evenings, the adult Grangers mostly plotted to confront the Hogwarts professors, leaving Harry and Hermione up to their own devices as long as they left the door open. Hermione, of course, insisted on getting their homework done first thing, but then they were kind of at a loss. They'd gotten so used to spending all free hours in the library looking for magical secrets and skill books that they didn't know how to just… exist.
Then Harry remembered that he'd kept Dudley's Commodore in his vault for months and pulled it out to set up for Hermione to play. Fortunately, time inside Gringotts didn't seem to have fried any circuits. Instructing her on the finer points of computer video games (with the vague thought it might give her some insight into how to unlock the game system) managed to kill quite a few hours.
On Christmas Eve, in the afternoon they were both surprised to hear Hermione's father shout up at them, "Guests are here."
"Your grandparents or something?" Harry asked.
"I don't think so?" she shrugged, saving and closing the game. "Dad's parents don't really like to leave France, and Mum's family's mostly still in Greece."
"Both sides move to England just long enough to have kids, huh?" Harry wondered.
"One of the things they bonded over at uni, I think," she shrugged, herself not totally clear why both sets of grandparents had moved back to their home countries after their kids were in college.
As they clattered down into the kitchen, they were both shocked to see a man and his large black dog. Hermione had seen neither before, and Harry had only seen them in that one weird dream.
REMUS LUPIN
Abjurer, Level 12
[ORDER OF THE PHOENIX,
GRYFFINDOR,
MARAUDERS,
GREYBACK'S PACK]
DOG
"Oh, hello," Remus started, looking slightly nervous at the surprise meeting and shocked at seeing Harry with another decade's growth since their last encounter. "I'm…"
"Remus!" Harry grinned, himself overwhelmed with the pleasant surprise visit. "And Sirius! Probably? I didn't know you were back in the country!"
"Yes, well, the rat's trail went cold around Hungary and we needed to go to the bank anyway…" he began to explain, and Sirius couldn't handle it anymore. The animagus started barking exactly like a dog that hadn't seen his humans for a long time, shoving forward for Harry to pet. "Sirius! Stop acting like an animal," Lupin commanded.
SIRIUS BLACK
Auror, Level 10
[ORDER OF THE PHOENIX,
GRYFFINDOR,
MARAUDERS]
Harry blinked and the dog had transformed into a man, who looked much more put-together than the prison pictures that had been in the Daily Prophet. He'd shaved and cut his hair short as a disguise. A few months with Lupin watching out for him had been good for his complexion, though his eyes were a little mad with excitement as he grabbed Harry into a crushing hug. "Pup!"
"Um, hi," Harry said, shoved against the man's dark coat, which still managed to smell very much like dog. Not used to physical affection, there was nonetheless something about the scent that triggered long-forgotten memories from infancy and he found himself not minding at all.
"Is it safe for him to be here?" Hermione checked, rapidly working out what was going on and liking the vibe of the men that she'd previously only talked to via Harry. Remus, in particular, had a very tweedy and calm demeanor that overcame the dangerous look of his scarred face.
The werewolf nodded, explaining, "He's only been in human form for the trip inside the bank, and the goblins are unlikely to tell on us. I made sure this house isn't being watched on the way in." He smirked and added, "But he'll have to go back to being Padfoot for walkies."
"How did you…?" Harry asked, still being clutched by Sirius as if he was an anchor to reality.
Helen smiled and admitted, "We may have hijacked Hedwig after Hermione explained the situation to us, and sent Remus our phone number. We've been in contact for over a month to plan this. Happy Christmas, Harry."
For all that they were a down-on-his-luck werewolf academic and an escaped convict who spent most of his time transformed into a dog, it was immediately evident to all three Grangers that the men were infinitely better guardians than the Dursleys. They actually liked Harry, and that counted for a lot. Now to just figure out how to put Harry in their care…
"So, ah," Remus began, intuiting somehow that the Grangers probably already knew the answer, "it's excellent to finally see you as more than a disembodied voice in our heads. Which I know for a fact that the Map wouldn't let you do. So…"
Sirius had finally released Harry and taken a step back, also very curious about the mystery. Harry glanced at Hermione for confirmation that she still thought it was a good idea. They'd discussed with their friends telling the original Marauders if it came up, they just didn't expect it to come up so soon. Since she nodded, he began to explain, "Well, a really weird thing happened to me on my birthday this year…"