Forty-Two Months Later: Things You Already Know (1/2)
Title: Forty-Two Months Later: Things You Already Know (1/2)
Author: kanedax
Spoilers: Deathly Hallows & Previous Chapters
Rating: PG13 for language
Characters: Harry, Dudley, Petunia, Susan
Summary: Harry Potter tells his story
Notes: I expected this to be an easy chapter. Boy, was I wrong. I really, really hope I get it right. Trying to pull seven books together into one long chapter is difficult. It’s even tougher when you’re afraid of misinterpreting some of the more metaphysical aspects of the Potterverse, such as his time at King’s Cross with Dumbledore and his connection to Voldemort. But I did my best.
I don’t own these characters. Or this story. They belong to JK Rowling.
Forty-Two Months Later: Muggle Charms / Previous Chapters / Things You Already Know (2/2)
“Seventy-five years ago,” said Harry, “There was a boy named Tom Riddle.”
He reached over to take the small stack of parchment, the notes that he had written for himself, and laid them next to his plate, which remained empty.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle’s father was a Muggle,” he continued, flipping through his notes, “from a well-to-do family. His mother was a witch from outside of town, an inbred woman by the name of Merope Gaunt, whose family was on the tail end of the dwindling bloodline of Salazar Slytherin and Cadmus Peverell.”
“Slytherin?” asked Dudley Dursley, turning to Susan Bones. “That’s…”
“One of the four Houses at Hogwarts,” she nodded. “He was one of the founders, along with Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw.”
“Are we going to have to memorize all these names?” asked Dudley, his face already showing signs that, although he was more tolerant than he was when Harry Potter was growing up, he still wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“No, sorry,” said Harry. “I’ll try to keep the unimportant ones out of it. And if I start talking about things you already know, Aunt Petunia, just say so. I don’t know how much my Mum or Dumbledore told you. If any of you want to, you know, get more detail later, I’m sure Hermione’s notes will give you more than even I’d want to know.”
“Just do what you can,” said Petunia Evans, taking a sip of her tea. “You know what’s important more than we do. Besides, if I know any of it, I still haven’t thought of it in years. And Dudley hasn’t heard any, I never told him a word of your history.”
“Right,” said Harry. “Anyway, Merope had a father and a brother still alive, still with a hatred for Muggles. And she had a mad fancy for Tom the senior, much to her father’s chagrin. One day her brother attacked a Muggle in town, and the Ministry came down on him. Merope’s father fought them, as well, and they were both arrested, leaving Merope to fend for herself.
“Suddenly finding herself free of the clutches of her family, she did what any trodden-down witch in love with someone she couldn’t have would do: she mixed up a love potion and made Tom drink it. He fell in love with her and got her pregnant. After a while she convinced herself that he must love her back, so she stopped giving him the potion.”
“And he left,” said Petunia.
“Like a bat out of hell.”
Petunia shook her head, marveling at the stupidity that can come from people in love.
“So that left her alone,” Harry continued. “With nothing but a baby in her belly and a locket, the last heirloom of Slytherin, around her neck. Even the locket didn’t last very long; she sold it to a shop in Knockturn Alley for a fraction of what it was worth. But, when you’re hungry and poor, you do what you can.
“Eventually, she ended up on the doorstep of an orphanage in London, on her last legs. She gave birth to her son that night, named him Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for his grandfather, and died.
“Tom was… odd… to say the least,” he said. “Creepy’s probably a better way to put it. Mysteriously killed animals, and did things to the children of the orphanage that no one wanted to talk about. Tom didn’t understand why these things were happening around him until Albus Dumbledore showed up around his eleventh birthday to tell him he was a wizard.”
“That was the Merlin-looking bloke that showed up before your sixth year, right?” asked Dudley.
Harry nodded. “He eventually became Headmaster of Hogwarts, but at that time he was just a Transfiguration professor.”
“What’s that?”
Susan pulled her wand from her pocket and tapped Dudley’s fork, which turned into an earthworm. Tapped it again, and it turned back.
“That’s Transfiguration,” she said to his dumbstruck face. “Go on, Harry.”
“Dumbledore invited him to Hogwarts,” said Harry, smiling despite himself and wondering if Dudley would be able to touch that fork again, let alone eat with it. “And so he went. Distanced himself publicly from his past. Excelled in all of his classes, became one of the most popular boys in the school. Almost all of the professors loved him.”
“Except Dumbledore…” said Susan, not asking.
“Dumbledore knew some of Riddle’s past,” said Harry. “About his time at the orphanage, at least. He had met the real Tom Riddle the day he brought him his letter of acceptance. He knew the boy could be charismatic, but he also knew that he had a twisted sense of right and wrong.”
“Sounds like a wizard version of Hitler,” said Petunia.
“Close enough to the truth,” said Harry. “But when you’re talking the wizard world, the scale will never come close to anything Muggle tyrants could pull off. Thank God for small favors. Dumbledore had the right idea, though. While he was getting perfect marks in all of his classes, while he was achieving prefect status and getting the professors to fall all over him, Riddle was doing some dark stuff behind the scenes. Fashioning himself a small legion of other dark wizards. Learning about his past, and about his connection to both the Muggle and Wizarding world. Gave himself a new name: Lord Voldemort.”
At the name, Susan Bones flinched. Harry turned to her. “Sorry,” he said.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I know that it’s been four years, but… I guess it just takes some getting used to, hearing it used like it’s nothing.”
“I knew Riddle sounded nasty,” said Dudley.
“When he was sixteen, he went back to Little Hangleton and met his uncle. Next thing Morfin Gaunt knew, he was being arrested for the murder of Tom’s father and his grandparents. But he didn’t do it; Tom did, and altered Morfin’s memory to make him confess to the crime.
“The next summer Tom returned to Hogwarts and opened the Chamber of Secrets, a room created by Salazar Slytherin, to only be opened by a true heir of Slyterhin, that housed a giant snake.”
“A… a snake?” asked Petunia. “One of the founders of the school put a… how big are we talking?”
“Big enough to fill this room, easy,” said Harry.
Petunia shook her head. “Professors putting snakes the size of airplanes in their own school,” she sniffed. “I know there are a bunch of decent wizards, but a lot of you are psychotic.”
“I know it as well as you do, Aunt Petunia,” said Harry. “So he sent this snake, this basilisk, through the school in secret and under his control. It actually killed a girl named Myrtle.”
“Oh, my God,” said Susan, her hand covering her mouth. “That’s how Moaning Myrtle died?”
Harry nodded, but Petunia looked confused. “Is this one of those names that we don’t know?”
“She’s one of the ghosts in the school,” said Susan to both Petunia and Dudley. “Not exactly the friendliest girl, but, wow, I can see why.”
“She wasn’t exactly the social butterfly before she died,” said Harry. “But this obviously didn’t help matters. So Riddle used the basilisk to kill Myrtle. But after he discovered that they would close the school because of the attacks, and that he would be sent back to his orphanage, he ended it the best way he knew how: by framing someone else. So he found the biggest, softest animal lover in the place, who just happened to be Rubeus Hagrid.”
“Hagrid?” said Dudley. “The giant that came to get you before your first year?”
“Half-giant, actually,” said Susan. “I’ve seen more real giants than I ever care to again, and he doesn’t come close.”
“He doesn’t look seventy,” said Petunia.
“Giants age well,” said Harry. “He’ll probably be around long after we’re gone. That’s how magical creatures tend to be. So Hagrid was framed and Riddle was able to keep the school open, finish his education, and disappear for ten or fifteen years before returning to the wizarding world and beginning a reign of terror the likes of which hadn’t been seen in centuries. The Ministry fought Voldemort and his dark wizards, now calling themselves Death Eaters, as well as they could. Which wasn’t enough.
“Dumbledore, in the meanwhile, founded a group called the Order of the Phoenix to contend with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. My parents were in the first version of that group, along with the others in that photograph.” At this, he tapped on the picture, causing James and Sirius to jump back in surprise. “So was Susan’s uncle, Neville’s parents, Hagrid, Molly’s brothers… when you get right down to it, you two will learn over time that everyone seems to be related to everyone else in one way or another in the magic world. There aren’t a lot of us to go around, so we end up with one hell of a family tree, even before adding in all of the Muggle-borns wizards and half-blood marriages.”
“What about Sev?” asked Petunia. “You told me that he has some role in all of this. He was one of the Order, wasn’t he?”
“It’s… complicated,” said Harry. “When the Order was founded, though, he was a Death Eater through and through.”
“Who’s Sev?” asked Dudley.
“Severus Snape,” said Harry. “He was my Mum’s best friend at one point, and was also the one to introduce her to the wizarding world.”
Susan’s eyes widened. “Get out of here,” she said. “Professor Snape was your Mum’s friend? I don’t know how anyone could like him.”
“So he was a bad guy,” said Petunia, shaking her head. “He always seemed off to me, I could never see what Lily saw in him. He insulted me whenever he had half a chance.”
Yeah, you weren’t so great yourself, thought Harry, but bit back the retort. Instead he continued. “So this group fought Voldemort’s group for years. There were losses on both sides.”
“My uncle was killed during that war,” said Susan quietly. “His entire family with him. I never knew him, but my parents and my aunt told me about him.” Dudley reached over and took her hand, squeezing it gently. Harry gave it a quick glance (This is Dudley?) before continuing.
“In late 1979 Dumbledore, who was Headmaster by then, was interviewing potential professors for the new Divination position at Hogwarts.”
“That’s, like, fortune-telling, right?” asked Dudley.
“Yeah,” said Harry, and Dudley smiled proudly. “As he was interviewing one of them, he thought she was a bit of a fraud, until she let loose a big one.” At this, he pulled the notes closer to him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve heard it so often I almost have it memorized, but I want to make sure I get it right:
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,” he read. “Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”
“That’s… that’s creepy,” said Dudley. “Like something out of that movie with all the hobbits.”
“Dumbledore heard the prophecy,” said Harry. “And had an idea of what it meant. He hired the woman instantly, in order to protect her from the Death Eaters, since he wasn’t the only one to hear it. Professor Snape happened to be in the same inn that Dumbledore and Trelawney were in, and was walking by the closed door when the prophecy happened.”
“Trelawney?” said Susan. “I didn’t think she had an ounce of ability in her.”
“Only a few ounces,” said Harry. “Anyway, Professor Snape reported what he had heard to Voldemort. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you were asking, he hadn’t heard all of it. Only the first part. He knew that someone who could defeat Voldemort was going to be born at the end of the seventh month, and was going to be born to someone who had thrice defied him, someone who had fought him on three or more occasions and came out alive.
“Dumbledore and Voldemort did the same math. Odds are it was someone in the Order, since they were the ones who fought Voldemort’s army the most. And it had to be someone who would be born at the end of July 1980. That left only two possibilities, two mothers who were due around then. One was Alice Longbottom, Neville’s mum. And the other…”
“Lily,” said Petunia quietly. “Good Lord, that’s why she died? Because of some prophecy?”
“It could have been either us or the Longbottoms,” said Harry. “But Voldemort decided I posed more of a threat for some reason, so decided I was the one he would kill. If anything, he was probably planning to take us out, and then go to the Longbottoms and do the same, just to be safe.
“Snape told him about the prophecy, but never thought about the repercussions. He didn’t realize that my Mum was a target. Once he found out, he asked Voldemort to spare her, even went so far as to meet with Dumbledore in secret. Begged him to protect her. Said he would do anything, so long as she lived.”
Harry turned to Petunia. “Severus loved my mother,” he said. “Had from the moment he laid eyes on her when they were ten. He hated my father, didn’t give a lick about me. But he cared about her more than anyone he had ever known, anyone he would ever know.”
Petunia shook her head in wonder, but didn’t seem that surprised. “I didn’t see him very often after Lily went to school,” she said. “He would come over occasionally, but I always made sure I was somewhere else when the two of them were together. He spoke like witches and wizards born from human families were something to look down upon, but he never said that about Lily.”
“He did once,” said Harry. “That’s what ended their friendship. But he still loved her, all the same.”
“How do you know all of this?” asked Susan. “You talk like you were there. Did Snape tell you all of this?”
“In a way, yeah,” said Harry, recalling dipping his head into the Pensieve all of those years ago. “Anyway, Severus begged both Voldemort and Dumbledore to protect Lily and, despite his best wishes, myself and my father. Dumbledore did what he could. He hid my parents using the same spell that I have around this house, the Fidelius Charm. They made Sirius, my godfather, the Secret Keeper. But Sirius had his doubts. He realized that anyone who knew anything about Dad would know that he was candidate number one, with Lupin as number two. So he talked Dad into giving the duty to Peter Pettigrew, one of the other members of the Order. That one, right there.” He again tapped his finger on the picture, and Peter flinched at the contact.
“But it wasn’t enough…” said Petunia.
“Definitely wasn’t enough,” said Harry, both sadly and darkly. “Peter was a Death Eater. A spy for Voldemort within the ranks of the Order. He took his newfound knowledge and ran to Voldemort, singing like a bird. So Voldemort knew where we were hiding. Came in on Halloween. Killed my Dad. My Mum tried to protect me, put herself in front of me. Voldemort, deciding that Snape was high enough in his ranks where he could give him a woman, gave Mum the opportunity to get out of the way. She refused, so he killed her.”
Harry had to stop speaking for a moment. He looked down at his notes, flipping them absently. He didn’t talk about the details of his parent’s death very often. He spoke of them even less since he actually saw them occur in Voldemort’s mind that Christmas Eve in Godric’s Hollow. It was one thing to have dreamt about it for his entire life, but now…
He sniffed, trying to regain his composure. From what he heard above his lowered head, it sounded as though Petunia was doing the same thing. Dudley and Susan both remained silent.
“So it just left me,” he said eventually. “Voldemort pointed his wand at me, and said the words for the Killing Curse. Then things went… wrong.”
“Wrong how?” asked Dudley.
“It’s going to sound strange no matter how I describe it,” Harry tried to explain. “Hell, Dumbledore told it to me for years, but I still can’t really put it into words, the how, the what, anything like that. All that I can say is that my Mum died to protect me. Because she did that, I was… given protection. A spell that probably doesn’t have a name. ‘Love’ is too vague of a term, but that’s what Dumbledore called it. My Mum loved me, she gave me her love to protect me, and it was the one thing that Voldemort feared, that he had never had.”
“You’re right, it does sound strange,” said Dudley, shaking his head.
“So it hurt him,” said Harry. “It deflected the spell he cast back at him. Would have killed him for sure, if he hadn’t had enough protective measures to keep him immortal. As it was, the Avada Kedavra he cast turned him into something almost nonexistent, and left me with nothing but this scar. What was left of him escaped, never to be heard from for another ten years.
“Soon after that, Hagrid came to the house. He found me and brought me to Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, who were waiting for him at Privet Drive. They wrote a quick note and left me on your doorstep, where I spent the next ten years of my life while all around the wizarding world I was becoming the most famous name in anyone’s lifetime.”
“Okay, wait, I’m confused,” said Dudley, waving his hand. “Why us? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s been… interesting. But if Dumbledore knew anything about Aunt Lily he would have known that Mum had disowned her, and would have wanted nothing to do with you. Why weren’t you put up for adoption, or given to another family? If you were so famous, if they thought you had taken out Voldemort… wouldn’t somebody else have taken you in?”
Harry wanted to answer, but Petunia interrupted. “It was because we were blood,” she said slowly, looking to Harry for confirmation. “The Headmaster did his best to explain your situation, with the power that Lily gave you, and all of that. But the best way that I remembered it was simply that we were the last family that you had. As long as you were with us…”
“I couldn’t be touched,” Harry said, nodding. “Not by Voldemort, at least.” He turned to Dudley. “That’s why your Mum didn’t let me leave after Vernon tried to kick me out. Remember after the Dementor attack?”
Dudley nodded. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I’ll admit, a lot of it was fuzzy that night, but I remember an owl screaming at Mum, or something.”
“You were attacked by Dementors?” Susan said, turning to Dudley. “God, that’s… I didn’t know. What was it like?”
“It was… odd…” said Dudley, and once again, Harry wondered what had gone through Dudley’s mind when the Dementors attacked him. Dudley’s worst memory…
“I stayed because I had to,” Harry said. “Your Mum could have thrown me out or given me up for adoption, but she didn’t. That’s all that mattered. I stayed protected until you three left for the States.
“So you all know the next ten years,” he continued, wishing to leave it at that. They knew as well as he did the type of treatment that he had received at their hands. Why remind them of it, why tell Susan about it, when the worst of the lot was now out of their lives and they were doing their best to reconcile? “Of my life, at least. In the meantime, after my parents were killed, Sirius was falsely accused of a mass murder that was committed by Peter, and was shipped to Azkaban, the wizard prison. Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville’s parents, were tortured into insanity by some Death Eaters who didn’t know that they were beaten. And I lived with you three, and Voldemort disappeared from the map.
“Then Hagrid brought me my letter of acceptance to Hogwarts. I met Ron, Ginny, and most of the other Weasleys before I even got on the train. Met Hermione and Neville during the journey to school. I won’t bore you with the details of most of my school life…”
“Why stop now?” asked Dudley, which earned him a glance from the others at the table. “I’m only joking,” he said defensively, “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“…But in the ten years after he had been defeated,” Harry continued, “the remains of Voldemort were trying to find a way to come back to full power. He was doing what he could. Drinking unicorn blood, mostly, which gives a person immortality, but not really. But he found another way when he ran into our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in Albania. Voldemort possessed him, and learned about an item called the Philosopher’s Stone, which could be used to make an elixir for true immortality. He learned that Dumbledore had it, and that it was being hidden at Hogwarts.
“Ron, Hermione, and myself also found out about it, and we ended up trying to protect it from Quirrell. I fought him, faced some twisted version of Voldemort for the first time, and almost died. But, in the end, he didn’t get the Stone.”
“When you were eleven…” breathed Petunia.
“When I was eleven,” Harry agreed. “When I was twelve, the Chamber of Secrets, the chamber that housed the giant snake, was re-opened. Through sheer luck and coincidence it didn’t kill anyone, but left a lot of people, including Hermione and Penelope, Percy’s girlfriend, paralyzed over the year.”
“You had said it was the true heir of Slytherin who could open it,” said Petunia. “Who else was there if it wasn’t Voldemort?”
“It was Voldemort, in a sense,” said Harry. “He had left an enchanted diary behind that contained a fragment of his soul. One of his Death Eater buddies slipped it into a stack of books, and it possessed the person who wrote in it.”
“Who was it?” asked Susan. “I mean, I remember that you were a suspect to a lot of people. At the end of the year they said that the Chamber was closed forever, and the person who did it was cleared, but they never announced who…”
Harry took a deep breath. Boy, I hope she doesn’t kill me for this, he thought. “It was Ginny,” he said, staring into Susan’s shocked face. “Lucius Malfoy slipped the diary into her stack of books that summer, hoping that it would discredit Arthur at the Ministry if his only daughter was involved in re-opening the Chamber.”
Susan whistled under her breath.. “No wonder she was all weird that year.”
Well, that wasn’t the only reason, he thought, but decided it was probably best to leave Ginny’s then-unrequited crush out of the story.
“The summer before my third year,” he said instead. “When I turned thirteen, Sirius escaped from Azkaban. He had learned that Peter was still alive, and hiding at Hogwarts in the shape of Ron’s pet rat.”
“No, no, no, wait,” said Dudley. “So he was a rat. Literally a rat, with the tail and the whiskers and all?”
“He was an Animagus,” said Harry. “It’s a wizard that can take the form of an animal. He was one. So were Sirius and my Dad.”
“What about the fourth one?” asked Dudley, pointing to the picture. “What’s his name?”
“Remus Lupin,” said Susan. “He was our professor that year. And he was a werewolf, not an Animagus.”
“A werewolf?” said Dudley. “And… umm… and they’re real?”
“Welcome to the world of magic,” said Harry. “You’ve already met the half-giant and the centaur. Why not werewolves?”
“So, okay, let me get this straight,” said Dudley, taking that bit of news surprisingly in stride. “Your best friend just happened to have a pet rat who was really the bastard who let slip to Voldemort about your parents.”
“Right…”
“And one of his best friends happened to be a professor at your school the same year that his other best friend happened to break out of prison to kill him?”
“Right.”
Dudley shook his head. “I know you said that everyone seems to be related to everyone else in this world, but, blimey…”
“We eventually found out the truth,” said Harry. “Even if it took the Ministry a few more years to decide on Sirius’s innocence. Peter escaped before we could get him into custody, so Sirius had to spend the next few years in hiding.
“I remember that,” said Petunia. “You made it clear that you were related to that man we saw on the news.”
“That was one of those rare instances where the Ministry and the Prime Minister connected up,” he said. “But they could only say that he was a murderer, not a dark wizard. Even though he was, you know, neither.”
“What was he like, Harry?” asked Susan. “So few of us ever got to meet him.”
“He was a decent sort,” said Harry. “A little short-tempered sometimes. Twelve years in Azkaban will do that to anyone. Plus, after he escaped, he spent a lot of time here, where he grew up. And he hated his family, and his family hated him, so he hated this place. He was the only Black to never get into Slytherin, and they thought of it as a kind of betrayal. So he was never really the happy-go-lucky type around me that I guess he was growing up. But, still, I loved him. He’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to having my Dad back in my life.”
“What happened to him?” asked Dudley. “I mean, he’s not around anymore, right?”
“No, he’s not,” said Harry. “At the end of our fourth year, Voldemort came back to full power. There was a contest held at our school that year called the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Our school, along with two others, joined together for the year, and one student from each school competed in three different events in order to win the Tri-Wizard Championship. Fleur Weasley, then Fleur Delacour, was one. Viktor Krum, the one you two met at the reception, the foreign bloke talking to Gwenog and Charlie, was another. Cedric Diggory, a Hogwarts student from Susan’s house, was a third. And I was the fourth.”
“That math doesn’t add up,” said Dudley.
“A Death Eater had infiltrated the school that year,” said Harry. “Posed as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Alastor Moody. You met the real Moody later, at the train station.”
“The one with the weird eye?”
“That’s why the called him Mad-Eye,” said Harry. “Anyway, this Death Eater rigged the tournament to get me into it, with the ultimate goal of getting me to Voldemort. So there were four Champions from the three schools. In the end, Cedric and I won it at the same time, and were both teleported to Peter and Voldemort. Peter killed Cedric, and then used my blood, the bones of Tom Riddle, Sr., and his own hand in a ceremony to bring Voldemort back to his old self. More than his old self, since the protections that my Mum gave me didn’t work after that point. At least not the same way as it had before.”
Susan remained silent, poking at her half-eaten shepherd’s pie. Harry didn’t know if she had been friends with Cedric (it seemed like every Hufflepuff had been friends with Cedric), but she probably wasn’t very comfortable hearing about his death, friends or not. It had hit everyone hard, since it was really the first death in the new war.
“Voldemort and I fought,” said Harry, deciding that the discussion of Priori Incantatem would probably be too much information for Dudley and Petunia to absorb, “and I escaped. But he was back, and, although the Ministry refused to admit it for almost a year, the war was starting again.”
Forty-Two Months Later: Muggle Charms / Previous Chapters / Things You Already Know (2/2)
Author: kanedax
Spoilers: Deathly Hallows & Previous Chapters
Rating: PG13 for language
Characters: Harry, Dudley, Petunia, Susan
Summary: Harry Potter tells his story
Notes: I expected this to be an easy chapter. Boy, was I wrong. I really, really hope I get it right. Trying to pull seven books together into one long chapter is difficult. It’s even tougher when you’re afraid of misinterpreting some of the more metaphysical aspects of the Potterverse, such as his time at King’s Cross with Dumbledore and his connection to Voldemort. But I did my best.
I don’t own these characters. Or this story. They belong to JK Rowling.
Forty-Two Months Later: Muggle Charms / Previous Chapters / Things You Already Know (2/2)
“Seventy-five years ago,” said Harry, “There was a boy named Tom Riddle.”
He reached over to take the small stack of parchment, the notes that he had written for himself, and laid them next to his plate, which remained empty.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle’s father was a Muggle,” he continued, flipping through his notes, “from a well-to-do family. His mother was a witch from outside of town, an inbred woman by the name of Merope Gaunt, whose family was on the tail end of the dwindling bloodline of Salazar Slytherin and Cadmus Peverell.”
“Slytherin?” asked Dudley Dursley, turning to Susan Bones. “That’s…”
“One of the four Houses at Hogwarts,” she nodded. “He was one of the founders, along with Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw.”
“Are we going to have to memorize all these names?” asked Dudley, his face already showing signs that, although he was more tolerant than he was when Harry Potter was growing up, he still wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“No, sorry,” said Harry. “I’ll try to keep the unimportant ones out of it. And if I start talking about things you already know, Aunt Petunia, just say so. I don’t know how much my Mum or Dumbledore told you. If any of you want to, you know, get more detail later, I’m sure Hermione’s notes will give you more than even I’d want to know.”
“Just do what you can,” said Petunia Evans, taking a sip of her tea. “You know what’s important more than we do. Besides, if I know any of it, I still haven’t thought of it in years. And Dudley hasn’t heard any, I never told him a word of your history.”
“Right,” said Harry. “Anyway, Merope had a father and a brother still alive, still with a hatred for Muggles. And she had a mad fancy for Tom the senior, much to her father’s chagrin. One day her brother attacked a Muggle in town, and the Ministry came down on him. Merope’s father fought them, as well, and they were both arrested, leaving Merope to fend for herself.
“Suddenly finding herself free of the clutches of her family, she did what any trodden-down witch in love with someone she couldn’t have would do: she mixed up a love potion and made Tom drink it. He fell in love with her and got her pregnant. After a while she convinced herself that he must love her back, so she stopped giving him the potion.”
“And he left,” said Petunia.
“Like a bat out of hell.”
Petunia shook her head, marveling at the stupidity that can come from people in love.
“So that left her alone,” Harry continued. “With nothing but a baby in her belly and a locket, the last heirloom of Slytherin, around her neck. Even the locket didn’t last very long; she sold it to a shop in Knockturn Alley for a fraction of what it was worth. But, when you’re hungry and poor, you do what you can.
“Eventually, she ended up on the doorstep of an orphanage in London, on her last legs. She gave birth to her son that night, named him Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for his grandfather, and died.
“Tom was… odd… to say the least,” he said. “Creepy’s probably a better way to put it. Mysteriously killed animals, and did things to the children of the orphanage that no one wanted to talk about. Tom didn’t understand why these things were happening around him until Albus Dumbledore showed up around his eleventh birthday to tell him he was a wizard.”
“That was the Merlin-looking bloke that showed up before your sixth year, right?” asked Dudley.
Harry nodded. “He eventually became Headmaster of Hogwarts, but at that time he was just a Transfiguration professor.”
“What’s that?”
Susan pulled her wand from her pocket and tapped Dudley’s fork, which turned into an earthworm. Tapped it again, and it turned back.
“That’s Transfiguration,” she said to his dumbstruck face. “Go on, Harry.”
“Dumbledore invited him to Hogwarts,” said Harry, smiling despite himself and wondering if Dudley would be able to touch that fork again, let alone eat with it. “And so he went. Distanced himself publicly from his past. Excelled in all of his classes, became one of the most popular boys in the school. Almost all of the professors loved him.”
“Except Dumbledore…” said Susan, not asking.
“Dumbledore knew some of Riddle’s past,” said Harry. “About his time at the orphanage, at least. He had met the real Tom Riddle the day he brought him his letter of acceptance. He knew the boy could be charismatic, but he also knew that he had a twisted sense of right and wrong.”
“Sounds like a wizard version of Hitler,” said Petunia.
“Close enough to the truth,” said Harry. “But when you’re talking the wizard world, the scale will never come close to anything Muggle tyrants could pull off. Thank God for small favors. Dumbledore had the right idea, though. While he was getting perfect marks in all of his classes, while he was achieving prefect status and getting the professors to fall all over him, Riddle was doing some dark stuff behind the scenes. Fashioning himself a small legion of other dark wizards. Learning about his past, and about his connection to both the Muggle and Wizarding world. Gave himself a new name: Lord Voldemort.”
At the name, Susan Bones flinched. Harry turned to her. “Sorry,” he said.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I know that it’s been four years, but… I guess it just takes some getting used to, hearing it used like it’s nothing.”
“I knew Riddle sounded nasty,” said Dudley.
“When he was sixteen, he went back to Little Hangleton and met his uncle. Next thing Morfin Gaunt knew, he was being arrested for the murder of Tom’s father and his grandparents. But he didn’t do it; Tom did, and altered Morfin’s memory to make him confess to the crime.
“The next summer Tom returned to Hogwarts and opened the Chamber of Secrets, a room created by Salazar Slytherin, to only be opened by a true heir of Slyterhin, that housed a giant snake.”
“A… a snake?” asked Petunia. “One of the founders of the school put a… how big are we talking?”
“Big enough to fill this room, easy,” said Harry.
Petunia shook her head. “Professors putting snakes the size of airplanes in their own school,” she sniffed. “I know there are a bunch of decent wizards, but a lot of you are psychotic.”
“I know it as well as you do, Aunt Petunia,” said Harry. “So he sent this snake, this basilisk, through the school in secret and under his control. It actually killed a girl named Myrtle.”
“Oh, my God,” said Susan, her hand covering her mouth. “That’s how Moaning Myrtle died?”
Harry nodded, but Petunia looked confused. “Is this one of those names that we don’t know?”
“She’s one of the ghosts in the school,” said Susan to both Petunia and Dudley. “Not exactly the friendliest girl, but, wow, I can see why.”
“She wasn’t exactly the social butterfly before she died,” said Harry. “But this obviously didn’t help matters. So Riddle used the basilisk to kill Myrtle. But after he discovered that they would close the school because of the attacks, and that he would be sent back to his orphanage, he ended it the best way he knew how: by framing someone else. So he found the biggest, softest animal lover in the place, who just happened to be Rubeus Hagrid.”
“Hagrid?” said Dudley. “The giant that came to get you before your first year?”
“Half-giant, actually,” said Susan. “I’ve seen more real giants than I ever care to again, and he doesn’t come close.”
“He doesn’t look seventy,” said Petunia.
“Giants age well,” said Harry. “He’ll probably be around long after we’re gone. That’s how magical creatures tend to be. So Hagrid was framed and Riddle was able to keep the school open, finish his education, and disappear for ten or fifteen years before returning to the wizarding world and beginning a reign of terror the likes of which hadn’t been seen in centuries. The Ministry fought Voldemort and his dark wizards, now calling themselves Death Eaters, as well as they could. Which wasn’t enough.
“Dumbledore, in the meanwhile, founded a group called the Order of the Phoenix to contend with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. My parents were in the first version of that group, along with the others in that photograph.” At this, he tapped on the picture, causing James and Sirius to jump back in surprise. “So was Susan’s uncle, Neville’s parents, Hagrid, Molly’s brothers… when you get right down to it, you two will learn over time that everyone seems to be related to everyone else in one way or another in the magic world. There aren’t a lot of us to go around, so we end up with one hell of a family tree, even before adding in all of the Muggle-borns wizards and half-blood marriages.”
“What about Sev?” asked Petunia. “You told me that he has some role in all of this. He was one of the Order, wasn’t he?”
“It’s… complicated,” said Harry. “When the Order was founded, though, he was a Death Eater through and through.”
“Who’s Sev?” asked Dudley.
“Severus Snape,” said Harry. “He was my Mum’s best friend at one point, and was also the one to introduce her to the wizarding world.”
Susan’s eyes widened. “Get out of here,” she said. “Professor Snape was your Mum’s friend? I don’t know how anyone could like him.”
“So he was a bad guy,” said Petunia, shaking her head. “He always seemed off to me, I could never see what Lily saw in him. He insulted me whenever he had half a chance.”
Yeah, you weren’t so great yourself, thought Harry, but bit back the retort. Instead he continued. “So this group fought Voldemort’s group for years. There were losses on both sides.”
“My uncle was killed during that war,” said Susan quietly. “His entire family with him. I never knew him, but my parents and my aunt told me about him.” Dudley reached over and took her hand, squeezing it gently. Harry gave it a quick glance (This is Dudley?) before continuing.
“In late 1979 Dumbledore, who was Headmaster by then, was interviewing potential professors for the new Divination position at Hogwarts.”
“That’s, like, fortune-telling, right?” asked Dudley.
“Yeah,” said Harry, and Dudley smiled proudly. “As he was interviewing one of them, he thought she was a bit of a fraud, until she let loose a big one.” At this, he pulled the notes closer to him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve heard it so often I almost have it memorized, but I want to make sure I get it right:
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,” he read. “Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”
“That’s… that’s creepy,” said Dudley. “Like something out of that movie with all the hobbits.”
“Dumbledore heard the prophecy,” said Harry. “And had an idea of what it meant. He hired the woman instantly, in order to protect her from the Death Eaters, since he wasn’t the only one to hear it. Professor Snape happened to be in the same inn that Dumbledore and Trelawney were in, and was walking by the closed door when the prophecy happened.”
“Trelawney?” said Susan. “I didn’t think she had an ounce of ability in her.”
“Only a few ounces,” said Harry. “Anyway, Professor Snape reported what he had heard to Voldemort. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you were asking, he hadn’t heard all of it. Only the first part. He knew that someone who could defeat Voldemort was going to be born at the end of the seventh month, and was going to be born to someone who had thrice defied him, someone who had fought him on three or more occasions and came out alive.
“Dumbledore and Voldemort did the same math. Odds are it was someone in the Order, since they were the ones who fought Voldemort’s army the most. And it had to be someone who would be born at the end of July 1980. That left only two possibilities, two mothers who were due around then. One was Alice Longbottom, Neville’s mum. And the other…”
“Lily,” said Petunia quietly. “Good Lord, that’s why she died? Because of some prophecy?”
“It could have been either us or the Longbottoms,” said Harry. “But Voldemort decided I posed more of a threat for some reason, so decided I was the one he would kill. If anything, he was probably planning to take us out, and then go to the Longbottoms and do the same, just to be safe.
“Snape told him about the prophecy, but never thought about the repercussions. He didn’t realize that my Mum was a target. Once he found out, he asked Voldemort to spare her, even went so far as to meet with Dumbledore in secret. Begged him to protect her. Said he would do anything, so long as she lived.”
Harry turned to Petunia. “Severus loved my mother,” he said. “Had from the moment he laid eyes on her when they were ten. He hated my father, didn’t give a lick about me. But he cared about her more than anyone he had ever known, anyone he would ever know.”
Petunia shook her head in wonder, but didn’t seem that surprised. “I didn’t see him very often after Lily went to school,” she said. “He would come over occasionally, but I always made sure I was somewhere else when the two of them were together. He spoke like witches and wizards born from human families were something to look down upon, but he never said that about Lily.”
“He did once,” said Harry. “That’s what ended their friendship. But he still loved her, all the same.”
“How do you know all of this?” asked Susan. “You talk like you were there. Did Snape tell you all of this?”
“In a way, yeah,” said Harry, recalling dipping his head into the Pensieve all of those years ago. “Anyway, Severus begged both Voldemort and Dumbledore to protect Lily and, despite his best wishes, myself and my father. Dumbledore did what he could. He hid my parents using the same spell that I have around this house, the Fidelius Charm. They made Sirius, my godfather, the Secret Keeper. But Sirius had his doubts. He realized that anyone who knew anything about Dad would know that he was candidate number one, with Lupin as number two. So he talked Dad into giving the duty to Peter Pettigrew, one of the other members of the Order. That one, right there.” He again tapped his finger on the picture, and Peter flinched at the contact.
“But it wasn’t enough…” said Petunia.
“Definitely wasn’t enough,” said Harry, both sadly and darkly. “Peter was a Death Eater. A spy for Voldemort within the ranks of the Order. He took his newfound knowledge and ran to Voldemort, singing like a bird. So Voldemort knew where we were hiding. Came in on Halloween. Killed my Dad. My Mum tried to protect me, put herself in front of me. Voldemort, deciding that Snape was high enough in his ranks where he could give him a woman, gave Mum the opportunity to get out of the way. She refused, so he killed her.”
Harry had to stop speaking for a moment. He looked down at his notes, flipping them absently. He didn’t talk about the details of his parent’s death very often. He spoke of them even less since he actually saw them occur in Voldemort’s mind that Christmas Eve in Godric’s Hollow. It was one thing to have dreamt about it for his entire life, but now…
He sniffed, trying to regain his composure. From what he heard above his lowered head, it sounded as though Petunia was doing the same thing. Dudley and Susan both remained silent.
“So it just left me,” he said eventually. “Voldemort pointed his wand at me, and said the words for the Killing Curse. Then things went… wrong.”
“Wrong how?” asked Dudley.
“It’s going to sound strange no matter how I describe it,” Harry tried to explain. “Hell, Dumbledore told it to me for years, but I still can’t really put it into words, the how, the what, anything like that. All that I can say is that my Mum died to protect me. Because she did that, I was… given protection. A spell that probably doesn’t have a name. ‘Love’ is too vague of a term, but that’s what Dumbledore called it. My Mum loved me, she gave me her love to protect me, and it was the one thing that Voldemort feared, that he had never had.”
“You’re right, it does sound strange,” said Dudley, shaking his head.
“So it hurt him,” said Harry. “It deflected the spell he cast back at him. Would have killed him for sure, if he hadn’t had enough protective measures to keep him immortal. As it was, the Avada Kedavra he cast turned him into something almost nonexistent, and left me with nothing but this scar. What was left of him escaped, never to be heard from for another ten years.
“Soon after that, Hagrid came to the house. He found me and brought me to Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, who were waiting for him at Privet Drive. They wrote a quick note and left me on your doorstep, where I spent the next ten years of my life while all around the wizarding world I was becoming the most famous name in anyone’s lifetime.”
“Okay, wait, I’m confused,” said Dudley, waving his hand. “Why us? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s been… interesting. But if Dumbledore knew anything about Aunt Lily he would have known that Mum had disowned her, and would have wanted nothing to do with you. Why weren’t you put up for adoption, or given to another family? If you were so famous, if they thought you had taken out Voldemort… wouldn’t somebody else have taken you in?”
Harry wanted to answer, but Petunia interrupted. “It was because we were blood,” she said slowly, looking to Harry for confirmation. “The Headmaster did his best to explain your situation, with the power that Lily gave you, and all of that. But the best way that I remembered it was simply that we were the last family that you had. As long as you were with us…”
“I couldn’t be touched,” Harry said, nodding. “Not by Voldemort, at least.” He turned to Dudley. “That’s why your Mum didn’t let me leave after Vernon tried to kick me out. Remember after the Dementor attack?”
Dudley nodded. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I’ll admit, a lot of it was fuzzy that night, but I remember an owl screaming at Mum, or something.”
“You were attacked by Dementors?” Susan said, turning to Dudley. “God, that’s… I didn’t know. What was it like?”
“It was… odd…” said Dudley, and once again, Harry wondered what had gone through Dudley’s mind when the Dementors attacked him. Dudley’s worst memory…
“I stayed because I had to,” Harry said. “Your Mum could have thrown me out or given me up for adoption, but she didn’t. That’s all that mattered. I stayed protected until you three left for the States.
“So you all know the next ten years,” he continued, wishing to leave it at that. They knew as well as he did the type of treatment that he had received at their hands. Why remind them of it, why tell Susan about it, when the worst of the lot was now out of their lives and they were doing their best to reconcile? “Of my life, at least. In the meantime, after my parents were killed, Sirius was falsely accused of a mass murder that was committed by Peter, and was shipped to Azkaban, the wizard prison. Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville’s parents, were tortured into insanity by some Death Eaters who didn’t know that they were beaten. And I lived with you three, and Voldemort disappeared from the map.
“Then Hagrid brought me my letter of acceptance to Hogwarts. I met Ron, Ginny, and most of the other Weasleys before I even got on the train. Met Hermione and Neville during the journey to school. I won’t bore you with the details of most of my school life…”
“Why stop now?” asked Dudley, which earned him a glance from the others at the table. “I’m only joking,” he said defensively, “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“…But in the ten years after he had been defeated,” Harry continued, “the remains of Voldemort were trying to find a way to come back to full power. He was doing what he could. Drinking unicorn blood, mostly, which gives a person immortality, but not really. But he found another way when he ran into our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in Albania. Voldemort possessed him, and learned about an item called the Philosopher’s Stone, which could be used to make an elixir for true immortality. He learned that Dumbledore had it, and that it was being hidden at Hogwarts.
“Ron, Hermione, and myself also found out about it, and we ended up trying to protect it from Quirrell. I fought him, faced some twisted version of Voldemort for the first time, and almost died. But, in the end, he didn’t get the Stone.”
“When you were eleven…” breathed Petunia.
“When I was eleven,” Harry agreed. “When I was twelve, the Chamber of Secrets, the chamber that housed the giant snake, was re-opened. Through sheer luck and coincidence it didn’t kill anyone, but left a lot of people, including Hermione and Penelope, Percy’s girlfriend, paralyzed over the year.”
“You had said it was the true heir of Slytherin who could open it,” said Petunia. “Who else was there if it wasn’t Voldemort?”
“It was Voldemort, in a sense,” said Harry. “He had left an enchanted diary behind that contained a fragment of his soul. One of his Death Eater buddies slipped it into a stack of books, and it possessed the person who wrote in it.”
“Who was it?” asked Susan. “I mean, I remember that you were a suspect to a lot of people. At the end of the year they said that the Chamber was closed forever, and the person who did it was cleared, but they never announced who…”
Harry took a deep breath. Boy, I hope she doesn’t kill me for this, he thought. “It was Ginny,” he said, staring into Susan’s shocked face. “Lucius Malfoy slipped the diary into her stack of books that summer, hoping that it would discredit Arthur at the Ministry if his only daughter was involved in re-opening the Chamber.”
Susan whistled under her breath.. “No wonder she was all weird that year.”
Well, that wasn’t the only reason, he thought, but decided it was probably best to leave Ginny’s then-unrequited crush out of the story.
“The summer before my third year,” he said instead. “When I turned thirteen, Sirius escaped from Azkaban. He had learned that Peter was still alive, and hiding at Hogwarts in the shape of Ron’s pet rat.”
“No, no, no, wait,” said Dudley. “So he was a rat. Literally a rat, with the tail and the whiskers and all?”
“He was an Animagus,” said Harry. “It’s a wizard that can take the form of an animal. He was one. So were Sirius and my Dad.”
“What about the fourth one?” asked Dudley, pointing to the picture. “What’s his name?”
“Remus Lupin,” said Susan. “He was our professor that year. And he was a werewolf, not an Animagus.”
“A werewolf?” said Dudley. “And… umm… and they’re real?”
“Welcome to the world of magic,” said Harry. “You’ve already met the half-giant and the centaur. Why not werewolves?”
“So, okay, let me get this straight,” said Dudley, taking that bit of news surprisingly in stride. “Your best friend just happened to have a pet rat who was really the bastard who let slip to Voldemort about your parents.”
“Right…”
“And one of his best friends happened to be a professor at your school the same year that his other best friend happened to break out of prison to kill him?”
“Right.”
Dudley shook his head. “I know you said that everyone seems to be related to everyone else in this world, but, blimey…”
“We eventually found out the truth,” said Harry. “Even if it took the Ministry a few more years to decide on Sirius’s innocence. Peter escaped before we could get him into custody, so Sirius had to spend the next few years in hiding.
“I remember that,” said Petunia. “You made it clear that you were related to that man we saw on the news.”
“That was one of those rare instances where the Ministry and the Prime Minister connected up,” he said. “But they could only say that he was a murderer, not a dark wizard. Even though he was, you know, neither.”
“What was he like, Harry?” asked Susan. “So few of us ever got to meet him.”
“He was a decent sort,” said Harry. “A little short-tempered sometimes. Twelve years in Azkaban will do that to anyone. Plus, after he escaped, he spent a lot of time here, where he grew up. And he hated his family, and his family hated him, so he hated this place. He was the only Black to never get into Slytherin, and they thought of it as a kind of betrayal. So he was never really the happy-go-lucky type around me that I guess he was growing up. But, still, I loved him. He’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to having my Dad back in my life.”
“What happened to him?” asked Dudley. “I mean, he’s not around anymore, right?”
“No, he’s not,” said Harry. “At the end of our fourth year, Voldemort came back to full power. There was a contest held at our school that year called the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Our school, along with two others, joined together for the year, and one student from each school competed in three different events in order to win the Tri-Wizard Championship. Fleur Weasley, then Fleur Delacour, was one. Viktor Krum, the one you two met at the reception, the foreign bloke talking to Gwenog and Charlie, was another. Cedric Diggory, a Hogwarts student from Susan’s house, was a third. And I was the fourth.”
“That math doesn’t add up,” said Dudley.
“A Death Eater had infiltrated the school that year,” said Harry. “Posed as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Alastor Moody. You met the real Moody later, at the train station.”
“The one with the weird eye?”
“That’s why the called him Mad-Eye,” said Harry. “Anyway, this Death Eater rigged the tournament to get me into it, with the ultimate goal of getting me to Voldemort. So there were four Champions from the three schools. In the end, Cedric and I won it at the same time, and were both teleported to Peter and Voldemort. Peter killed Cedric, and then used my blood, the bones of Tom Riddle, Sr., and his own hand in a ceremony to bring Voldemort back to his old self. More than his old self, since the protections that my Mum gave me didn’t work after that point. At least not the same way as it had before.”
Susan remained silent, poking at her half-eaten shepherd’s pie. Harry didn’t know if she had been friends with Cedric (it seemed like every Hufflepuff had been friends with Cedric), but she probably wasn’t very comfortable hearing about his death, friends or not. It had hit everyone hard, since it was really the first death in the new war.
“Voldemort and I fought,” said Harry, deciding that the discussion of Priori Incantatem would probably be too much information for Dudley and Petunia to absorb, “and I escaped. But he was back, and, although the Ministry refused to admit it for almost a year, the war was starting again.”
Forty-Two Months Later: Muggle Charms / Previous Chapters / Things You Already Know (2/2)