Death's Gift - Chapter Three
His New Beginning
When Harry awoke he was in chaos. He saw the steps of his first home, his ears consumed of yelling, footsteps, and heaven breathing. Suddenly, a door slammed and he heard his mother's voice whispering to him.
"It's ok my little Harrison, everything's ok."
She cradled him in her arms, holding him in a protective way. Then, the sounds stopped, Harry knew that his father was dead. Lily let out a whimper at the new found silence and tried to sink in closer to the corner of the room where the crib lie. She let out a scream when the door was blasted open, in stepped a man wearing a black cloak that shadowed his face. Lily set Harry down in his crib and turned around.
"Step aside girl!" The man told her.
Harry recognized that voice, it was Tom Riddle, or Lord Voldemort, before his snake-like transformation.
"No, please! Please not Harrison! Anyone but my Harry!" Lily pleaded, knowing she wouldn't be able to hold her own against the dark lord himself.
"I said stand aside you foolish girl!"
"No-"
"Avada Kadavra!"
Harry watched as his mother crumbled, lifeless, to the ground. Voldemort stepped over her body and looked over the crib, Harry getting a clear view of his face. He was practically identical to the Tom Riddle Dumbledore had shown him while he was still at Hogwarts, only his eyes were a crimson red instead of a deep brown. Smiling, Voldemort pointed his wand directly into Harry's face.
"Avada Kadavra."
Harry felt his magic react and shielded himself, causing Voldemort's curse to rebound and hit him instead. Harry felt a blinding pain after Voldemort died, his vision becoming slightly red. Feeling the warm liquid on his face Harry knew that his scar was bleeding, which also meant that he'd just become Voldemort's Horcrux again. The pain subsided and Harry waited about five minutes before someone else burst into the room. Snape looked around, assessing the situation, then immediately ran to Lily's side. He knew she was dead. Harry watched as the man started sobbing, standing up and whipping his tears, he notice Harry. Snape rushed over to the crib and picked him up, with a flick of his wand the blood was washed away from Harry's face. Harry blinked up at him while the man stared down at him in fascination.
"It can't be..." Snape's eyes flicked up to the scar.
Suddenly, a beam from the roof fell, almost hitting them. Snape jumped into action and ran from the room, feeling the house that was about to crumble, holding Harry close. Harry had never known that it was actually Snape who had saved him from the house, he'd always thought that it was Dumbledore.
"Where's my godson?! Lily! James!"
Harry heard Sirius's voice and turned to see his Godfather trying to get through the crowd that had gathered. Sirius froze when he saw Snape leaving the house, almost directly after he started pushing everyone out of the way to get to them.
"What did you do you filthy Death Eater?!" Sirius growled.
"I had nothing to do with this." Snape snapped.
"And why should I believe you?!"
"Because I just risked my life to go in there and get your Godson!"
Sirius then seemed to notice the little bundle that was Harry in Snape's arms, his eyes softened.
"What about James?" The Animagus asked.
Snape shook his head.
"Lily?"
Snape didn't reply, he turned his face away, his eyes starting to water again. He silently offered out Harry. Sirius, who's own eyes were starting to water, took Harry, cradling him in his arms.
"Thank you..." he whispered, his voice barely audible.
"Don't mention it..."
"Severus! Sirius! What happened?"
Harry saw Dumbledore making his way through the crowd, everyone parting for him.
"Peter ratted them out." Sirius growled.
"He's still out there. Someone need to go after him." Snape said.
"Sirius, you know Peter the best, you should go after him. I'll watch over Harry." Dumbledore told him.
Harry could feel the compulsion being sent from Dumbledore to Sirius and was immediately angered. The whole time it was Dumbledore's fault that Sirius had been imprisioned! Harry stopped the compulsion before it could reach his guardian, unfortunately, that also meant that he'd stuck his hand out. Quickly thinking, Harry stuck out his other one as if he was reaching out for Sirius.
"Siwi." Harry almost gagged at himself, having to do this was mortifying.
Sirius smiled down at Harry and grabbed both of his hands with his, much bigger, one.
"I'm sorry Albus, but I'm Harrison's last guardian. He needs me and I promised Lily and James that I'd be there for him. I can't go after Peter."
Harry could see Dumbledore's face twitch and inwardly smirked.
"Very well, I shall see of having some arours take care of hunting him down. In the mean time I think it would be best to take Harry home, this is no place for a baby."
Sirius nodded and apperated out, he had no way to carry Harry on his motorcycle. He walked into Grimuald place, Harry was still wide awake in his arms. Sirius heard scratching and banging from within one of the rooms. He sighed, he'd fill Remus in on everything that happened in the morning. He knew that he shouldn't tell him anything until after the full moon was over, even with the Wolfsbane potion for his transformation he could still be unpredictable. Sirius walked into the kitchen.
"Kretcher!" He called.
There was a moment of silence before the house elf trudged into the room, dragging his hands along the floor, "Yeah?"
Sirius ignored the obvious disrespect that Kretcher was giving him in favor of just getting on with it, "I need you to set up one of the spare rooms for a nursery."
Kretcher perked up, "A nursery?"
"Yes, little Harrison here will be staying with us from now on."
Kretcher looked at the last of the Potter line with interest, perhaps he could help this child to not turn out to be such a disappointment.
"Kretcher will be right on that." The elf said, popping away.
Sirius sighed and looked down at Harry, curious green eyes looked back up to him. Sirius smiled and made his way to his room. Setting Harry down on his bed Sirius got to work on transfiguring a crib. Harry watched for awhile before he dozed off. When Sirius was done he looked that the crib he'd made. He was never the best at transfiguration but he believed his work to be pretty good. It would last until he had a real crib for the boy. Stuffing is wand back into his pocket Sirius moved over to pick up Harry, holding him carefully so that he wouldn't wake the sleeping baby up, little did he know that inside that baby was actually a twenty-six year old. Sirius set him down into the crib, it was only then that he got a good look at the scar that laid on the right side of Harry's forehead, he grimaced. Walking out of the room Sirius grabbed some ointment from a supply closet, coming back in and applying it to the scar. His frown deepened when he noticed a significant amount of dark magic coming from it, and he could only think of one thing that could've caused it. The killing curse.
. . . . . . .
Growing up with Sirius was even better than Harry thought it would be. The man worked as an Arour and was gone from eight to three every day but the moment he came back he would play with Harry or just keep him company. Remus also stayed at Grimuald place with them, though because of him being a werewolf he couldn't get a job, which was completely unfair in Harry's opinion. Though Remus often went with Sirius to the ministry, being there as a guest and occasionally helping the Animagus out. That meant that from eight to three, almost every day, Harry had the house to himself. So it was in the time that Harry read. He never really knew anything before, just acted blindly, and Harry liked to think that was because of the compulsions. This time he was determined to know everything he could. He'd already shown signs of "accidental" magic around Sirius and Remus, which they always celebrated, as well as an advanced mind. They had always made that connection to Lily, seeing as she was also very intelligent for her age.
Harry smiled, he liked how much more he represented his mother. Since Dumbledore had never taken him away he'd never had the glamour, blocks, or compulsions placed on him this time. He could be completely himself now, not having to hide behind the "Harry Potter" mask. He'd also learned where the nickname "Harry" had come from. When he was little and Lily and James would try to get him to say his name he could only say the "Harri" part, so they had started calling him "Harry" at times. Harry looked at himself in the mirror. His mouth, nose, and eyes, still resembled his mother, but his hair was slightly less wild and his jawline was sharper, though he still had baby fat. Just afew months ago, on his fourth birthday, Sirius had blood adopted him, he was now Harrison James Potter-Black. Harry was also happy that he wasn't forced to do anything around the house, like the Dursley's had made him do by this age. Instead, Kretcher did everything, except sometimes when it came to cooking, seeing as Remus enjoyed doing that. Sometimes Harry would help him by mixing something or grabbing ingredients for him, by choice of course, the wolf wouldn't let him do anymore than that for his safety.
Harry left his room and made his way to the Black family Library. He picked up the book off the shelf that he'd been reading yesterday and settled into an armchair. He continued where he'd left of, trying every new spell he came across. This was also something Harry liked. The Black library held hundreds of books, all covering an array of different areas of magic, history, how the ministry works, and other things like that. Harry had even found a book of all of the rules of Hogwarts. He remembered Hermione mentioning them before, complaining that at she couldn't find one seeing as Dumbledore tried to destroy them all when he became headmaster. Harry had immediately tucked that book away, not wanting anything to happen to it. Harry, knowing that Sirius had most likely thrown away all the books he had last time, went to Kretcher when he was two, asking if he'd kept the books Sirius had thrown out. The elf was shocked, to say the least, but nodded.
From then on he'd started bringing Harry books, which the boy read. Kretcher would watch him with peaked interest for awhile, marveling at his magical ability, before getting on with the other things he had to do. Harry got along well with the elf, they had a good relationship, which confused the hell out of Sirius. Kretcher had even taken to calling Harry "Little Master" while he would only address Sirius as "That guy" or "unworthy Master" when Sirius demanded that he was shown more respect, something that made Remus crack up to no end. Kretcher had even caught Harry talking to himself in perfect English, the kind that a twenty-seven year old would speak. Of course, at the time Harry was twenty seven, but the elf only knew him to be two. Harry smiled to himself as he perfected the spell he had been attempting for the past hour. The trace didn't start until you turned eleven so Harry had nine years left to learn as much magic as possible at home.
Harry had managed to learn that you could read and write in parseltouge after reading a book written in the language brought by Kretcher. He'd even started learning parselmagic too, and it was really useful. It could be done with any spell, including having some of it's own spells that couldn't be done by someone who wasn't a parselmouth. Harry also read about the different things that had happened through the history of the Wizarding world, since all the history that was taught at Hogwarts was about goblins. He'd read about Wizarding holidays like Yule and Samhain, and their rituals. Both were banned by the ministry because they involved blood magic but Harry didn't find it in him to care. Neither could Sirius or Remus apparently because they did both of them every year. Kretcher had brought Harry a book on pure-blood manners and customs, which Harry had actually found quite interesting. He'd read the whole thing, even taking to doing some of the things himself that he liked. He'd also read books on runes and Arthrimacy, both subjects that Harry found interesting and electives he'd be taking in Hogwarts, along with care of magical creatures. He wouldn't be doing divination again. Harry, wanting to actually learn something at Hogwarts, only read slightly into each subject. Sighing, Harry closed the book he'd just finished. There was still a tall pile waiting for him to get started on but he needed a break, besides, Sirius and Remus would be home soon and they couldn't se a four year old reading books on adult Wizarding magic.
"Kretcher?" Harry called. He found that the elf responded better if you called out as if you were asking for him instead of demanding his presence.
"Yes little Master?" The house elf asked, appearing in front of him.
"Would you mind making me some lunch? I need a break from practicing."
"Of course! Kretcher will get right on that for little Master." The elf popped away.
Harry smiled and stood up. He'd been sitting in the corner of the library all day practice if the same parselmagic magic spells over and over again, not stopping until he'd perfected each one, which he had. Stretching, Harry brushed off his clothes. Sirius still wore muggle clothes all the time while Remus wore Wizarding clothes, not robes all the time, but what muggles would view as "higher quality" or "fancy" clothes, even though it was nothing of the sort for wizards. Harry was somewhere in between. He mainly always wore his dragon hide boots, along with a T-shirt or sweater, and a pair of jeans or trousers. He didn't even have any robes yet, after all, his body was only four years old, even if his mind was twenty-nine.
Harry made his way down to the kitchen where there was a grilled cheese as well as a cut up apple on the table waiting for him. Harry laughed. Grilled cheese was such a muggle food that Kretcher practically always refused to make it, or make it disgusting on purpose, saying he wasn't the best at making it. Somehow Harry's always tasted fine whenever Sirius or Remus's was gross. Harry noticed the the elf popped up with a glass of water in his hand, setting it on the table.
"Is there anything else Kretcher can do for little master?"
Harry thought for a moment, "Could you take that stack of books I was going to read up to my room?"
Kretcher nodded and popped away. Harry sat down to eat, choosing to eat his apple first. He'd just reached his sandwich when he heard the floo roar to life. With his sandwich still in his hand Harry ran over to the lounge which broke off from the kitchen.
"Remus?" He asked, seeing the werewolf walk out of the green flames.
"Hey Harrison," the wolf froze, "Did Kretcher make you a grilled cheese?" He asked perplexed.
Harry looked down at the sandwich in his hand and took another bite, "Maybe?"
Remus chuckled, "Don't worry, I won't tell Sirius." He said with a wink.
Harry smiled, Sirius enjoyed this sandwich almost as much as he did.