A/N: As those of you who wrote or read the reviews will be aware I finished writing this fic at the weekend and have begun work on the sequel, the problem is I can settle on a name for it. I’ve generated a few alternatives and would appreciate your opinions about which one is best, the contenders are:
Harry Potter and… The Door Unlocked
The Secret Within
The Final Key
The Unspeakable Power.
All of which could be very appropriate, so if you could drop me a line and let me know what you think I’d be very grateful.
Happy Reading!
He stormed from the Library along countless corridors and staircases until he was stood at her classroom door. The room was empty so his next stop was her office. When he knocked on the door he heard her pleasant voice call ‘Come in,’ Harry opened the door and stood glaring at her furiously.
“Is everything alright Harry? You look angry,” once again the worry seeped into her voice, her face, and her eyes.
“No I’m not Ok,” he grunted at her, she was quite obviously puzzled by his behaviour.
“Well why don’t you sit down and we can talk about it. What is it that’s the matter?”
“I just found out that I’ve been lied to,” he snapped.
“Lied to? Who lied to you?”
“Everyone, Dumbledore, Molly, Arthur, Sirius, Remus and most importantly YOU!”
“What did I lie to you about?” although there was conviction in her voice Harry could see the smallest taint of fear.
“YOU LIED ABOUT WHO YOU ARE! ABOUT HOW WELL YOU KNEW MY FAMILY AND ABOUT MY COUSIN DYING! WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE YOU’VE LIED ABOUT!” he was sat on the edge of his seat hollering at her. They could probably hear his ranting several floors away.
“I see that Hermione has undoubtedly picked up on Draco’s clues and been to the library?”
“YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HER FACE SHE COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU’D LIED EITHER.”
“Harry I didn’t exactly lie, I was by all means a little liberal with my editing of the truth, I omitted a few things but I did it to protect you….” she had the good grace to look ashamed.
“PROTECT ME? THE BEST WAY FOR YOU TO PROTECT ME WOULD HAVE BEEN TO TELL ME THAT YOU WERE MY COUSIN,” it felt very strange to suddenly say that.
“I had my reasons, as did my grandfather,” she was beginning to lose patience with his temper.
“HOW DID I KNOW HE’D COME IN SOMEWHERE? HE’S ALWAYS DOING WHAT HE THINK’S IS BEST FOR PEOPLE AND THEN HE GOES AND DESTROY’S THEIR LIVES!”
“HOW DARE YOU! HE HAS ONLY EVER TRIED TO PROTECT YOU AND ME; HE HAS DONE EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO ENSURE THAT WE DIDN’T GROW UP WITH THIS HORRIBLE BURDEN ON OUR SHOULDERS. HE HAS ALWAYS TRIED HIS BEST TO ENSURE THAT WE GREW UP SAFE AND HEALTHY BUT MORE IMOPRTANTLY HAPPY!”
“WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT TERRIBLE BURDENS? YOU’RE NOT THE ONE THAT HAS TO BE EITHER MURDERER OR VICTIM!”
“MY BURDEN IS YOU HARRY!” this completely flabbergasted him.
“HOW THE HELL AM I A BURDEN TO YOU?”
“HARRY YOU AND I ARE ALL THAT’S LEFT! VOLDEMORT WIPED OUT OUR FAMILY AND YOU AND I ARE ALL THAT IS LEFT! I’M SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF YOU. YOU ARE MY COUSIN, YOU’RE MY RESPONSIBILITY. I HAVE A DUTY TO MY PARENTS, TO YOUR PARENTS, TO SIRIUS AND TO YOU!” the conversation that Harry had overheard between Ellie and Charlie flashed through his head, that was why she thought her being at Hogwarts would have stopped him going to the Department of Mysteries.
“SORRY TO BE SUCH A THORN IN YOUR SIDE. INCASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED THOUGH, I’M CARRYING A DEATH SENTENCE AROUND WITH ME!”
“WHICH MEANS THAT I AM TOO BECAUSE I WILL DIE BEFORE I LET VOLDEMORT GET TO YOU!” it was a response that Harry hadn’t expected at all.
There was a very long pause.
“Tell me the truth, all of it,” he finally managed to get his flaring anger under control.
“I will if you sit down and promise not to shout any more,” he realised that in the course of their argument he had left his seat and advanced on her. He returned to his seat and waited for her to begin.
“I suppose the best place to start is right at the beginning, as you most probably know from Hermione, I was born to Jane and Andrew Potter. My father was your uncle and he was two years older than your dad. My mum was the youngest Dumbledore, all of whom are dead now. Voldemort picked off every one of them. My mum and dad died on the 23rd of April 1981. Voldemort came after us, it wasn’t because of a prophecy but because they had escaped the previous battle and apparently dad had laughed in his face. It didn’t go down very well. When he eventually found us mum and dad duelled him, what he didn’t realise was that my Great Uncle Aberforth had popped by to check on us that night. He managed to sneak me away from the house to my…our Grandparents before going back to the house with re-enforcements. By the time he got back my mum and dad were dead and Voldemort had gone,” her voice was but a whisper that wavered with every word as though it may be extinguished any moment.
“After that I went to stay with our Grandparents. But he came after them too. We still don’t know if it was because he knew that I was there or because he wanted to pick the Potters off as well. Our grandfather was a very, very powerful wizard Harry. He could have given my granddad a run for his money. The duel between him and Voldemort was very messy, especially once he had killed grandma. I was asleep in the upstairs bedroom in my cot when the house collapsed around us.
“When the order came I was under a pile of rubble, my cot had turned itself upside down so that it acted as a kind of shelter from the falling debris. They found granddad on the stairs, dead. We think he tried running to save me but was killed in the process and Voldemort had once again disappeared. That was the 9th of August,” the tears were gently streaming down her cheeks.
“Once that had happened my granddad wanted to send me away into hiding in Europe but you’re dad wasn’t having any of it. He said that I was his niece and that he owed it to his brother to take care of me. As far as anyone knew I had died along with our grandparents. With your mum and dad about to go into hiding anyway it seemed safe enough, then on Halloween night he came to take what was left of our family. Your dad tried to hold him off, he shouted to your mum who was upstairs with us that she was to grab us and run. She had just pulled out her wand and picked you up when Voldemort came into the room. She sat you back down next to me and stood in front of us; she begged and pleaded with him to take her and not you. But he killed her and then it was our turn. He threw the killing curse at us but it rebounded and hit him square in the chest, he just vanished.
“The next thing I remember was waking up with Great Uncle Aberforth staring down at me, I cried for days because they had taken you away,” her every word was full of pain and Harry once again felt disgusted with himself, like he should throw himself forward and try and drown himself in the pool of tears which had formed on her desk. Ellie pulled the left sleeve of her robe up to her shoulder to reveal a lightening red scar, identical to Harry’s, on her upper arm.
“Ellie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you relive all that. But all I could think about was what it was like for me sitting here not knowing that you were my cousin. I didn’t think about what it was like for you. Again,” he looked at his feet as the shame crept up into his face.
“No, you were right Harry. Things might have been very different if I had been here for you and I apologize. We did exactly what Voldemort wanted us to do.”
“Why did nobody tell me?”
“Because we thought that the best way to keep you safe would be to take you away from the Wizarding world, I certainly couldn’t go with you to your Aunt and Uncle’s so we were separated. Then when you rejoined our world it was me who stopped granddad telling you about me. I was worried that you would hate me, that you would be bitter and angry because I left you with those horrible muggles. I was right wasn’t I?”
“I don’t hate you… but I just wish that you’d told me sooner.”
“So do I. Sirius was right, we shouldn’t have let you go this long without knowing. But I was supposedly dead; it was going to look very odd if Elizabeth Potter suddenly re-appeared out of thin air. I trusted my granddad and Sirius would take care of you, I didn’t reckon on you being so much like your Dad. After what happened I knew that I couldn’t stay away any longer.”
“What happened to you after all that? It was like you just disappeared off the face of the earth?”
“I spent most of my time being home schooled by granddad’s many friends, when I reached the age for school he realised I couldn’t come to Hogwarts, it would raise too many questions. So that was when we decided on Italy, a nice, safe country away from here, tucked away in a wizard school that was hardly known outside of Italy itself. A place where very little was known about my family or me, of course a few of the people who came from old Wizarding families knew the name.
“I made granddad promise to tell me how you got on, he wrote to me all the time. He told me about you getting into Gryffindor; I was really pleased about that. Every time something important happened, the Mirror of Erised, saving the Philosopher’s Stone, rescuing Ginny from the Chamber of Secrets, setting Sirius free, after that Sirius wrote to me as well. During the Tri-Wizard tournament he wrote to me after every task, then last year he and Sirius told me about the dreams you’d been having about the Department of Mysteries. Then the night you went there grandfather sent me a letter simply saying ‘He left this evening’ I knew what he meant straightaway. I tried to find a way to get here but he’d sent a letter to my Headmaster telling him that he was to, under no circumstances, let me leave.
“His last letter was the worst. He told me that Sirius was gone and that you knew of the prophecy, as soon as I finished my exams I left Italy for here. Apparently my mood when I arrived was very reminiscent of yours.”
“I was furious that night.”
“So I heard, my fury took a very different form. I was to quote my granddad ‘crackling with power’. I think I did more damage than you, I was very harsh on my granddad that night and I said some things that I regret. We made a mistake Harry. We thought that keeping the two of us separate would keep us safe but all it’s really done is kept us bitter, both of us are fuelled by our anger and that was never our intention. People have died because we were apart, that won’t happen again Harry, so long as I am alive and have breath in my body I will do everything that I can to stop anything that might hurt you. I will die for you if necessary.” There was steel once again evident in her eyes that Harry found intimidating. It was almost as if a door slammed shut in the back of her mind and all that was left there was determination. He recognised that expression as one that he had often worn before doing something dangerous like going after the Philosopher’s Stone, fighting the Basilisk or duelling with Voldemort. He remembered it from his father’s eyes; he had seen it in Snape’s memories. Maybe it was a Potter trait. He was looking at the only blood family he had left.
“Don’t. I think… that we need each other…that we should stick together. I don’t want to lose another person before I’ve had the chance to know them.”
“You won’t lose me again,” she came around the desk and held her arms out to him. He allowed her to envelope him in a hug. She clung to him as though he was that last raft that would stop her from drifting out in to the cold, dark sea. As tightly as she held him, Harry held her just as tight.
That night at dinner the headmaster once again rose to make an announcement, “If I could once again ask for a few moments quiet,” silence fell throughout the student body.
“I promise to stop making these little announcements, if I had known that appointing my dear granddaughter to the staff was going to cause so much controversy I may have reconsidered,” he chuckled, as did Ellie and Professor McGonagall. “I have been asked by her to make this announcement from now on I would ask that you no longer address her as Professor Dumbledore. From now on you shall address her as Professor Potter. For now that is all,” He returned to his seat. When Harry looked along at Ellie she was smiling wider than he had seen since that first evening at Grimmauld Place. She locked eyes with him and if it was humanly possible her smile widened.
My cousin, and me Harry thought to himself.
My cousin.
My family.
Hope you all enjoyed that one, any questions that you’ve had burning away should have been answered but if they weren’t drop me a line and I’ll clarify.
The next chapter is Aurors and Good Howlers?