Muggle Summer
A/N: I've been reading a lot of Independent!Harry/Manipulative!Dumbledore fics lately, and some of that has bled into this chapter. Not too much, mind you, but there had to be a reason why Remus Lupin hadn't figured much in Harry's life since PoA, right?
Disclaimer: Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.
Chapter 35 - On Lounging and Lupin
Saturday, June 23
Windsor Castle
The next morning Harry found Hermione still wearing the top half of his pajamas. Unfortunately, rather than modeling them in bed (where he wanted her), she was wearing them whilst sprawled out on the tatami-atted side of the Love Shack's bathing area. She was scribbling furiously on some parchment next to a detailed half-metre tall scale model of Windsor Castle.
"Thought we had a `no work' agreement, Miss Granger," Harry deadpanned, as he struggled to hide a grin behind the stern countenance of an authority figure.
Hermione dropped her quill and gave Harry a "hand in the cookie jar" look of guilt. "Oh, that was `no physical work,' wasn't it?"
"Nice try," Harry replied. "You'd have been better off claiming that the castle was a toy that you were playing with."
"Well I am playing with it, in a way," Hermione replied. "Here…watch."
She then touched her wand to five small stones that lay on a circle around the castle and said an incantation that created a translucent purplish dome that completely enclosed the scale model.
"Brilliant," Harry said. "When I get back from the loo you can explain what you just did."
Hermione nodded in agreement, then returned her gaze to the arithmancy equations she'd been working on. When Harry returned, she told him that an owl from Gringott's had made an overnight delivery.
"Miniaturized rune stones," Hermione explained. "They work exactly the same way as the full-sized ones, only on a much smaller scale."
"And they're good for what…" Harry asked, "creating protective fields around a little witch's doll house?"
Hermione slugged his arm. "No, silly…they're used to help design protective fields using a bench-scale model."
Harry nodded. "So this bit of `I'm not working' is working on your asymmetrical warding plans for the castle?"
"Exactly," Hermione replied with a smile. "It really is more fun than work, though…hard to believe that ward designers actually get paid for this type of thing."
When Harry looked over at the equations Hermione had scrawled out he shook his head in disagreement. "Well, it looks like work to me."
"But it's rather exciting, Harry," admitted Hermione. "The goblins were rather taken with the idea when I wrote to them…they want to meet with me on Monday to discuss it, and, well…I just wanted to be prepared for that meeting."
Harry reached over and pulled her up to her feet and up against his bare chest. "Well, I'm rather taken with the idea of you following through on plans to lie about on the rooftop in your swimming costume."
Hermione gave Harry a devilish look in response. "Who said anything about wearing costumes while we sun ourselves?"
Harry gave her a gobsmacked look. "You can't be serious…we're directly under Heathrow's flight lanes. Fancy on giving the pilots a show?"
"Oh Harry," she replied with a smile, "am I not a witch?" She then took a step back and cast a disillusionment spell upon herself. A few seconds later, Harry's pajama top appeared out of thin air and landed on his head.
"They won't be able to see me," Hermione explained, "but the sun's rays will."
"Rather ingenious, there, sweetheart…but what if someone were to call out a Finite Incantatum spell?"
"Harry Potter, you wouldn't dare!"
"Aaaah, you're probably right," he admitted. "But it would make it rather difficult to tell if you're getting a sun burn, wouldn't it?"
"Hmmm….hadn't thought about that," she admitted.
"Suppose I could always poke about at intervals to see if any parts were hot to the touch?"
"You would be so lucky…I'll just make sure I've got plenty of sunblock applied."
"And you think that the lotion would disappear on skin contact?"
"Don't imagine why not."
"Think we ought to find that out before we hit the roof, don't you?"
"Well, suppose you're right. And I imagine you'll volunteer to be the applicator?"
"No, got a better idea," Harry replied. He then made a sudden lunge towards Hermione. Having gauged her position by the sound of her voice, he quickly scooped her up, carried her over to the hot tub and threw her in (completely ignoring her protests). Harry was rewarded with an anatomically correct depression in the water's surface once Hermione surfaced.
"Always wondered what would happen if you were caught in the rain wearing an invisibility cloak," he replied dryly, as Hermione splashed and sputtered her objections.
"Harry Potter, you are incorrigible!"
"Yeah, well, Hermione Granger, you are very wet," he replied, with a grin and two eyes that were fixated on her aqueous outline.
Hermione was about to issue a retort when she experienced deja vu. Laughing, she asked, "Isn't this the point where I banished your trousers?"
Harry paused, then smiled as he caught on to just how much the conversation was mirroring their first visit to the Love Shack. He pulled on the drawstring of his pajama bottoms, and launched himself into the tub almost before those bottoms hit the stone floor. When he resurfaced and pulled Hermione into a wet embrace he simply noted,
"Beat you to it."
+++
After a half-hour or so of what Harry had cheekily described as "snagging" (i.e. intimate acts intermediate to snogging and shagging), they called Hermione's parents and arranged to meet for a late breakfast. Emily Granger only ordered tea and biscuits, as she had a very busy schedule ahead of her. Almost all of Hogwarts's muggle-born students and families were converging in London that morning for what would have been a spectacular Summer Solstice Party on Privet Drive. As that location was no longer available to them, Emily had followed through on Harry's mention that he had seen some kind of amusement park from the Round Tower's roof. It had turned out to be a theme park named "Legoland," based around a muggle play toy involving plastic building blocks. And while the theme park was geared towards younger children, there were roller coasters and rides available for the older siblings. The park normally closed at six, but Mrs. Granger had made arrangements to rent out the entire park just for the muggleborns and their families for an additional four hours. The band and caterers that had been contracted for the party would also move to the new venue.
Mr. Granger got some quality time with the kids once his wife left to double check on the day's transportation. Harry and Hermione filled Roger in on their previous day's discussion with Luna's father, and that led to a discussion concerning the wizarding world's portion of Harry's investment portfolios. Roger expressed some concern about his ability to manage the wizard business side of Harry's portfolios. He didn't have the kind of access to information that existed on the muggle side, and obviously knew very little about the business plans of cauldron makers and broomstick manufacturers. This led Hermione to remind Harry that they had failed to reschedule their appointment with the wizard barrister that Mr. Weasley had recommended, and Harry agreed that it would be worthwhile to see if this person could help not just with legal advice, but business as well.
A light rain was falling from plump low-hanging clouds as they left the Mess, dashing any immediate plans for roof-top lounging. Roger returned to his ground level living quarters to gather a few things before taking over Steve's watch on The Farm. Harry and Hermione walked up to their quarters and lit a fire in one of their first floor fireplaces to battle the damp chilly air within the stone tower.
"Any ideas on how we can productively rest?" asked Harry, as he joined Hermione on a sofa placed in front of the fire.
Hermione shook her head "no" as she looked around the large open room. Castle staff had moved the furniture they had selected into the Tower, and done some cursory placements and groupings, but not exactly to her liking. Then there was the issue of the boxes delivered by the goblins the day before. Within those boxes were almost all of the shrunken furnishings that had survived Voldemort's attack on Godric's Hollow the night Harry's parents were killed. Someone had made arrangements to move them into the Potter family vault, and they'd been front and center when she and Harry had visited it the day before.
It had been the most emotional part of the trip…direct links between Harry and his murdered parents were few and far between, so the chance to sit at his parent's kitchen table, or rock in rocking chair his mum might have used to sit with him was quite something. The furniture itself might not have been as ornate or lavish as the Castle's, but there was no way Hermione could refuse Harry's request to bring all of the furniture back to the Tower. The only suggestion she had made was that they leave Harry's crib in the vault. He had spent a good five minutes sobbing and clutching the rails (as if it were a lifeline), and she feared that the raw power of those emotions would be ever present if the crib were brought back with them.
Not that she told Harry that reason, mind you….Hermione got in touch with her inner Slytherin and had suggested that with the limited amount of room they had in the Round Tower that it might be better to store the crib "until they had need for it."
Hermione chuckled to herself as she recalled the resultant look on Harry's face. Talk about emotions turning about on the head of a pin…
"What's so funny?" Harry asked.
"Oh…nothing," Hermione replied, trying her best to keep a grin from breaking out. "Just wondering how we're going to fit all of the new furniture inside the tower walls.
Harry nodded. "Well, with Sir Evan taking up residence downstairs we could move some of it to his quarters." He then added with a smile, "Not that I'd consider it a legitimate way of resting."
"We could always levitate the pieces…wouldn't even break a sweat."
Harry shook his head. "Yes, but that'd be quite a bit of expended magical power, wouldn't it? We need to keep our heads low until the anti-magical detection wards are up."
Hermione nodded in agreement. "Which is why I really should take another look at my equations and ward model…I'm so glad that you agree." And before Harry could object she placed a peck on his cheek and bolted upstairs to continue her project work in the tatami room. He snorted, quite certain that Hermione had expertly steered the conversation in that direction from the very start. But he let her go…it was important work, and asking Hermione to leave that bench model for a day would be like asking her to forego breathing.
He thought about visiting with Sir Evan, but the old man was busy trying to remember his wartime French in his efforts to interact with the Muses. Ron would still be sleeping after his shift at St. Mungo's…Harry wondered just how early he could call and see if Ron and Luna wanted to join them at the theme park that evening. And then he remembered that there were others he could call using his badge, and he gave Remus's badge a tickle.
"Erm…hullo?" Remus answered, after a few moments time.
"Hey, Remus, it's Harry…hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"No, no…not at all…Tonks is working day shift at the Ministry right now."
"Oh," replied Harry with interest. "Does that mean I would have been interrupting something if she were there with you right now?"
Harry heard something close to a growl, before Remus answered. "Are you looking to talk about witches, or something? Because I've got a few questions about you and Hermione…."
"No, no, Remus, just joking," Harry quickly countered. "Actually, I was wondering if you'd like to pop over for a visit. You haven't had a tour of our new digs yet, and I'm looking for some company now that Hermione's abandoned me for her arithmancy."
"Sure, cub, just give me a few minutes to clean up."
And so it was that Harry found the second best way to spend a rainy day of rest within the Round Tower (he thought Remus would have understood coming in second to "Hermione in the hot tub"). After the tour (and raised lupine eyebrows over the Love Shack), the two spent time catching up with each other's activities. Both felt a bit of remorse for not having kept in better touch. Harry thought running with the werewolf pack as an important enough reason to be away the previous year, but Remus disagreed, and got Harry a bit riled up once he explained why.
It turned out that Remus had considered almost all of the time he'd spent on his "mission" for the Order of the Phoenix to have been a waste of time. Moony had long known enough about werewolf subculture and wizarding world bigotry to accurately predict how the pack would react to Greyback's alpha leadership and Voldemort's promises. He had told Dumbledore at the outset…and still was ordered to go and "gather intelligence," and disappear from the wizarding world for the better part of a year. Moony initially resisted Harry's questioning about why he thought Dumbledore had done so, but finally gave in and voiced suspicions that the mission was a part of the former Headmaster's efforts to limit his contact with Harry and Hogwarts over the past three years.
When Harry (quite predictably) insisted that the former DADA professor explain, Remus recounted a confrontation with the Headmaster after Snape had outed him as a werewolf. Remus had insisted that Snape was a direct threat to Harry, and that if he had to go that the potions master did as well. Dumbledore, however, claimed that he would not be able to overrule the Board of Governors on Remus's termination, and that Severus Snape had to remain at Hogwarts for security reasons (and this was even after Remus had shown the Headmaster a pensieved memory of Snape's actions within the Shrieking Shack). Ever since that argument, Remus had thought Dumbledore had made it a point to find ways of keeping Remus away from Hogwarts and Harry, and only asked for Remus's involvement as a last option.
After hearing Remus's explanation, Harry became angry to the point of almost letting off some accidental magic. The way that Dumbledore appeared to have kept Remus out of his life and out of the picture seemed too much like the way he forced Sirius into quasi-house arrest at Grimmauld Place. There were only two possible explanations in Harry's mind, and neither were charitable… the Headmaster had either justified his actions with his (ultimately) deadly zeal to insulate and protect Snape, or worse, had purposely manipulated Harry's childhood to remove anyone who might challenge Dumbledore's self-appointed position as a trustworthy father figure.
They'd been sitting in front of the fire during the discussion. After silently fuming (and running his hands through his unruly hair), Harry stood and pulled his white board out from a pocket. After enlarging it and placing it upon a wall, he took a marker and vented some energy with a few lines:
"I will not speak ill of the dead."
"I will not speak ill of the dead."
"I will not speak ill of the dead."
Remus looked on at this exercise with a bit of wonder at Harry's maturity and control. When he complimented Harry on this, the teen responded with a statement that the white board could have come in handy the night he'd been told the full prophecy. When Remus asked what Harry was talking about, the Queen's Wizard's anger redoubled.
"You mean Dumbledore never told you about the prophecy?" Harry yelled. "It wasn't just me he was keeping it from?"
More lines were written when Remus confirmed that was indeed the case. The former DADA professor asked if Harry wanted to put off continuing the conversation, Harry shook his head, firm with the conviction that Remus deserved to know the full story about Harry's life, from the earliest point that he could remember it.
It only took a few descriptions of the abuse Harry had suffered at the Dursley's for Remus to grab a marker and write a few lines of his own. However, curiosity proved far stronger an emotion than outrage, and the two soon were swapping stories and filling in missing pieces. Harry was amazed at the number of things that Remus didn't know about him…from the little things (e.g. the Sorting Hat had suggested Slytherin), to the big (e.g. everything that had happened within the Chamber of Secrets, and his first year's adventures with Norbert, Fluffy, and the Philospher's Stone). Remus, in turn, gave Harry full descriptions of what the Order of the Phoenix had (and hadn't) done over the years, and told a few stories about Hogwarts faculty meetings that had ended up with wands drawn. Those stories provided just enough comic relief for the two wizards to begin to look forward at what could be, rather than back at what should have been.
The "So now what?" moment came a bit after two in the afternoon, a fact that Harry only realized once his stomach began grumbling. The two fetched Hermione (who had also been expertly ignoring her own stomach's empty protests) and made their way to the Mess for a late lunch. The late hour at least provided the three an empty room and the ability to continue their Round Tower conversations.
After getting an abridged (and less emotional) description of Harry and Remus's revelations, Hermione noted that the Headmaster, for all of his faults, had at least made the current situation possible by arranging for Harry's introduction to the Prince of Wales. Harry then added that the provisions made in Dumbledore's will could also bring forth a positive legacy, providing a segue way for a discussion on Harry's plans for the defense of Hogwarts.
They spent more than a few minutes brainstorming on ways to defend Hogwarts from what they all saw as an inevitable attack (whether or not students were in residence). Remus was fascinated by what Hermione called "Harry's Hair-brained Scheme" to create a video game simulation based on attacking and defending Hogwarts Castle. Without knowing very much at all about muggle electronic or strategy games Lupin shared Hermione's skepticism, but did add that so long as it didn't take to much time in Harry's schedule that it was worth the shot in the dark.
The mention of Harry's schedule led to discussion on the types of training that Harry and Hermione were undertaking. Remus was very impressed with the physical training and sword play, but added that while the two had done well in the muggle world that they still needed to keep their magical skills sharp. The two agreed, with Harry noting that it was only with his appointment as Queen's Wizard the week previous that he'd been able to get around the underage magic laws. Remus offered to help them now that the restrictions had been cleared, and the three decided that the Room of Requirement would be the best place to train. Harry was leary of spending more time than was needed within the wizarding world (given the Ministry's and Prophet's attacks), but Hermione noted that if Remus was already within the castle that their badges could provide a "quick in/quick out" form of transport.
Remus asked if the badges would work within the grounds of Hogwarts, as it was only the Headmaster (or Headmistress) who had the authority to create portkeys for travel to and from the school. Hermione replied that while badge-travel felt like portkey use that they worked differently enough from portkeys to be potentially excluded from this restriction. They therefore reached a "only one way to find out" conclusion, and Harry and Hermione asked Lupin to set up a meeting with Headmistress McGonagall early in the next week.
The discussion about Hogwarts, and Harry's earlier stories about the Chamber of Secrets led Harry to gently ask Remus about the full moon two weeks past. Lupin's wince made Harry regret that he had done so, but Remus went on to say that the use of Hogwart's dungeons as a secure place to transform had proven effective, and as he'd only had opportunity to use the wolvesbane potion two out of the past twelve months that the change hadn't been that traumatic. This led to Hermione picking up their previous discussion about brewing the wolvesbane potion. She informed Remus that they had plans to harvest the basilisk's remains for potion ingredients, and that she thought they'd fetch a fair value trade for what they would need. Remus nodded and expressed thanks, but noted that they'd still need the services of a master potions brewer who had the right contacts to make the trade.
When Hermione asked if Slughorn could fill that role Lupin said yes, but added that he was a hard wizard to find when he didn't want to be found. Harry agreed, but thought that even when in hiding that the man would probably still keep in touch with his network of carefully-selected friends and former students. Remus laughed at that comment, and said that the Slug Club was a well-entrenched institution even back in his days as a student. Hermione then suggested that the network might be used to their advantage, and that if word got out that someone had a basilisk corpse on their hands that he'd find them in a heartbeat. Harry agreed, recounting the zeal with which Slughorn had collected arachnid venom and unicorn hairs on the night of Aragog's funeral, and Remus offered to set the wheels in motion by contacting a few members of the Slug Club that he still knew.
Remus parted company with Harry and Hermione after finishing their late lunch, promising to keep the two informed as he worked the various tasks that he had agreed to tackle. The hug that Moony gave Harry before badge-jumping to Diagon Alley via Fred and George's shop was almost as bone-crushing as Hermione's best.
Harry didn't mind one bit.
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