The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Chapter Four
As casually as he could, considering he was barefoot and still in his pajamas, Harry stowed his wand up his left sleeve. Being thorougly annoyed at having been scared into nearly blasting a bunch of Muggles with magic, he growled, "What the devil is going on here?" never thinking how odd it was that he, a mere teen was demanding answers of adults.
And official adults at that. They all gawped at him as if he were an alien from another planet. The two Social Services people were there and two policemen as well. Harry had to force himself to be calm and not run right out the door again when he realized they were the ones who had searched him and his room and had taken Dudley to the station to be cited for Anti-social Behavior last year.
"It's the nephew," the plainclothes detective said. Harry couldn't remember his name, but he thought it might be Williams or something like that.
"You're the one that does magic tricks," the detective added. "Card tricks and all." Harry swallowed and said nothing. He looked at Dudley, who was pale and sweating with fear and whose large fists were presently handcuffed behind him.
"What exactly did you think you were doing, jumping down here and yelling like that?" the blond social worker asked. Her helmeted hair was as stiff and shiny as it had been the day before last, and she sniffed with suspicious disapproval.
The uniformed officer joined in. "You part of the gang after all? Were you going to help your cousin escape?"
Harry glared at him and said, "I'm not part of any gang. And why've you got him handcuffed like that?"
"Take it easy," the plainclothes detective said. His eyes lingered on Harry's face and Harry supposed his hair must be messed up and his lightning scar must be showing. Or maybe, he thought with embarrassment, he needed to shave?
"What did you think you were doing charging in here like that?" the detective asked. Harry could feel the heat rising in his face. He felt like a proper fool, the stupidest of all stupid prats.
"I thought there were...burglars or something. I was sleeping and I woke up cause I heard screaming..." He thought his face must be hot enough to fry an egg on, and he tried to figure out how to get out of this without being arrested himself. Or sent to an asylum.
"You thought there were burglars, so you came running out and, what...what did you think you were going to do? Pretend you could actually do magic or something?"
The detective's voice was incredulous, but Harry could see Aunt Petunia had gone even whiter than she had before. What could possibly be worse? Dudley actually arrested or Harry actually revealed to be a wizard? Both in one day, he thought miserably. The only thing that could make matters worse would be for a Ministry owl to come and drop him a notice of expulsion for breaking the Statute of Secrecy.
The thin man from the Soical Services with the pop eyes said, "Well it seems one of you has made the right career choice."
"Career choice?" the plainclothes policeman asked.
"We had a nice chat with him on Saturday," the social worker said. His eyes bulged out as he said with apparent amusement, "Seems he wants to be a policeman. Looks like he has the right instincts all right."
The blond woman looked at him with disfavor again, but the plainclothesman said, "Really? What happened to the magic act? Card tricks and all that?"
Harry deliberately avoided Aunt Petunia's eyes as he lied with the straightest face he could manage, "Oh, that. It's a hobby, you know. Just for fun." Dudley had stopped screaming and was staring at Harry in disbelief.
"So you didn't have anything to do with this robbery either?" the uniformed policeman asked. Harry frowned.
"What robbery?" He knew Dudley's gang had been prone to shoplifting, but this sounded like something rather worse.
"The robbery in which six digital television, six cd players and twelve portable boomboxes were lifted from McGillicuddy's and in which Mr. McGillicuddy himself was struck from behind with a bat and left with a concussion. That one," the uniformed policeman said harshly.
Harry was a bit shoock. He wouldn't have thought even Dudley was likely to go that far. He simply shook his head. The uniformed policeman stared at him with narrowed eyes as if he could read Harry's mind just by staring him down. Reflexively, Harry took a shallow breath and closed down his mind and thoughts and expression.
"We might as well check him, too," the uniformed man said. "Maybe they were both in it." He turned to the plainclothes detective and said, "I never bought his story last year. He was a lot too panicked when we searched him and his room. He was hiding something, too."
The plainclothesman said softly, "Go ahead and ask then."
"Where were you on the afternoon of July first," the constable asked.
"I was.." Harry stopped to cudgel his brains, and then he realized what that day had been. "Hang on," he said. "July first was the day my train came back from school for the summer hols. And Dudley couldn't have been in on this robbery either, cause he came to the station with my Aunt and Uncle to pick me up that afternoon."
"A likely story," the constable said; but his tone said the opposite. "Dudley's friends all say different. Dudley's friends say he was in on it. They say he helped plan the whole thing. They say he's the one who did Mr. McGillicuddy. What do you say to that?" Harry looked at Dudley. His face was pale and there was something in his eyes Harry had never seen before. Shame? Sorrow? Understanding?
"They lied, didn't they, then?" Harry answered. "Because they're mad Dudley gave them up last year. And they're mad he stopped seeing them, cause he wanted something better than hanging around a bunch of stupid gits and bullies for the rest of his life."
"Can you prove that?" the plainclothesman asked.
Harry shrugged. "I can prove I was at Kings Cross on July first. And I can prove Dudley and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were, too. Just ask Inspector Bones at Scotland Yard. He'll tell you. Cause that was the day that...erm...Annie O'Hara was there and they had this big ruckus. And Inspector Bones saw us there. He could tell you." Harry waited and thought, was that a mistake? Would Bones confirm his stoy? Worse, would Bones mention Voldemort and all? But he could see that even the constable was impressed, even unwillingly. The officer turned around and said to Aunt Petunia, "Is that true, ma'am?"
"Yes," Aunt Petunia said. "Ask the neighbors. They'll tell you. We go every year on the first of July to pick my nephew up at Kings Cross." She seemed to recover her calm and she added, "Ask Dr. Evans. He lives several streets down. His son goes to the same school Harry does. He was there, too, to pick up his son."
"And," the constable asked, "was it terrorists really? Or was it really a new film they were rehearsing for?"
"A film," Aunt Petunia said firmly. "The Scotland Yard people said so in the paper."
"I see," the plainclothesman said. Then almost regretfully, he asked, "So that's how you knew the detective's name. You read it in the paper?"
Harry stared at him and said with annoyance, "No. I met Inspector Bones before that. In fact, that's what made me decide I might like to try to be a policeman. Cause I thought it was interesting, his job."
The plainclothesman stared at him and said, "And exactly how did you become acquainted with Inspector Bones? You weren't, perhaps, the subject of his inquiries?" Harry kept his face as calm as he could, but it was hard as he remembered the terror of being fished out of the sea at Devon after having faced down Voldemort and being questioned for hours about the fire at Nicholas Flamel's house.
"No," Harry answered after a moment. "He investigates murders, you know. He was investigating a man who might have been the one that murdered my Mum and Dad. That's how I know." He stared at the detectives angrily and considered simply walking out. But that wouldn't do, he knew.
"Your parents were murdered?" the plainclothesman asked. Aunt Petunia replied for him.
"Nearly sixteen years ago, yes," she said. Her face tightened up and she said, "That's why he lives here. We took him in when they...when my sister was killed." Harry turned to look at her. It was maybe only the second time he'd ever heard Aunt Petunia refer to his Mum as her sister.
The plainclothes man said, "Right. Well, we can check all of this out. Meanwhile, Mr. Dursley," and it took Harry a second to realize the dtective was talking to Dudley, "you keep your nose clean. If we find one bit of evidence, fingerprints or whatever, to link you to the scene, we will arrest you. Is that clear?" Dudley nodded and the constable reluctantly undid the handcuffs.
Dudley rubbed his wrists and moved behind his Mum as if she were big enough to shelter him from the police and everything else. The oddest bit of the day happened then.
"So you do magic tricks?" the blond social worker asked. Harry gawked at her.
"Why d'you want to know?"
"Why do I want to know?" the blond woman echoed. "Because we have a duty to be thorough when we report in these circumstances. All of our subjects must be thoroughly investigated." She added primly.
Harry glared at her and said, "I'm not your subject. And I don't need to answer to you." He knew instantly that he had made another mistake.
All of the government people, the two social workers and the two policemen considered him again with renewed interest.
"Perhaps you will be," the blond woman replied frostily. "You live here with Dudley. Perhaps you're in on everything with him. You look like just as much of a delinquent as he does. Maybe more. Maybe," she added coldly, "you've given him a false alibi."
The thin man's eyes bulged even more and he said, "I don't think we need go so far if there's corroboration. But we would like a bit of a showing that you're truthful. So, why don't you just let us see a bit of this hobby of yours. Card tricks, eh? and anything else?"
Aunt Petunia looked as though she would faint. Harry supposed she expected him to do real magic. He reflected quickly that this was one of the weirdest experiences he'd ever been through. To buy himself time, he said testily, "I'm not standing around in my pajamas doing card tricks." And without giving anyone a chance to protest, he ran up the stairs to his room, locked the door and changed his clothes.
Aunt Petunia shrieked up at him, "Harry Potter! Get back down here, now!"
For one wild moment, Harry debated throwing on his invisibility cloak and flying out the window on his broomstick. Then logic reasserted itself and he checked that his clothes were as close to respectable as possible. He put on the only dress shirt he had that was clean and rolled up the too short sleeves, slapped on his Gryffindor tie and sighed with annoyance over his ill-fitting jeans and too tight trainers. He flattened his fringe down over his scar and stuck his wand in his waistband. He thought with more annoyance that it would be nice to have clothes that fit for once.
Defiantly, Harry went back downstairs. He nearly jumped when he saw the constable standing right outside his door and he met the officer's stare straight on before descending the stairs to the lounge again. This time, he didn't leap over the bannister; he walked down sedately as if nothing had happened and no one was there.
Continuing his act of nonchalance, Harry said calmly to Aunt Petunia, "Have you had coffee, yet? I'd fancy a cup myself. Or I can make tea, if you prefer?" Aunt Petunia stared at him and Harry was sure she'd spoil it all by screaming at him.
Then, as if some miracle had wrought a change in her brain, she said loftily in the way she did when she was showing off for Uncle Vernon's business acquaintances, "Tea would be lovely, thank you."
She turned to the two policemen and social workers and asked in her best hostess voice, "Do you care for tea?" The plainclothesman, Williams?, seemed suddenly amused and he said just as politely, "I'm perishing for a cup myself."
Harry proceeded calmly into the kitchen and put up the kettle. He went into the etagere and pulled out three of Aunt Petunia's best teacups, the ones with the gold rims that she only ever used when people like Mr. Mason came to dinner. The memory of that incident made him wince. He could at least be thankful that Dobby wasn't there to drop a pudding on the social worker's head. In a cool parody of company manners, Harry brought the steaming teapot out to the dining room table and politely asked his Aunt, "Will you pour, or shall I?"
Aunt Petunia folded her trembling hands in her lap and replied perfectly graciously, "You pour, please."
Harry poured the steaming tea as carefully as any potion he'd ever made in Snape's class and carefully placed one fragile cup in front of his aunt. He poured another for the policeman and one for himself and he sat down at the table and drank his tea as if everyone there were his best beloved friend. Harry could see the corners of Williams' eyes crinkling up and Harry supposed the plainclothesman must see right through his act. But he didn't mind. The policemen weren't half so intimidating as Professor Snape or McGonagall in one of her snits.
As for the social workers, they reminded him of Umbridge, especially the woman. All she cared about was inculcating the proper confromity in her charges and she didn't care if that conformity were real, only that it looked real enough to pass a superficial inspection. Harry sipped his tea and tried to be as calm as Dumbledore when he was dealing with a fractious student.
The thin man watched him with fascination. His bulging eyes followed Harry's movements and he said with surprising firmness, "We want to see you do a card trick or two. Then we can write up our report, you see, that this is actually a very ordinary household and that both of you boys are studying hard for your A Levels and attend good public schools and that Dudley has a hobby boxing and you have a hobby doing magic tricks. Perhaps," he suggested gently, "You'd like to do a small performance for the Children's Hospital. A worthy cause." Harry put his cup back on his saucer with just a bit more force than necessary. Aunt Petunia winced again, and checked out the cup from the other side of the table for any chips or cracks.
She looked at Harry and said with her best hostess voice, "Go on, then."
Harry shrugged and went into the lounge to pull a new deck of cards out of the small games table that sat by the couch. There was a chessboard in wood squares on the tabletop, and each drawer was lined with green felt and contained chessmen, and pieces for backgammon and checkers. There were two wrapped decks of cards, which nobody ever used. And that suited Harry perfectly. He ripped the wrapping off and returned to the table. Avoiding his Aunt's anxious gaze, he shuffled the cards the way Black Jack Crowley had taught him. The cards slipped smoothly through his fingers and he kept track of them as he'd been taught.
Then he fanned the cards and said to the blond woman, "Pick a card. Any card." Her helmeted hair shook in one piece as she grabbed a card right from the middle of the deck.
"So," she said, "what card have I got?"
Harry considered her with distaste and and replied, "The Queen of Spades." Her eyes widened so that they bulged nearly as far out as the thin man's and she laid the card, the queen of spades, on the dining room table for all to see.
"What are you, a mentalist?" she asked. She seemed unduly impressed by what Harry thought of as a run of the mill trick.
He lifted an eyebrow and said coolly, "Not at all. It's just sleight of hand. It's speed and knowing where your cards are. Anybody can do it, really. It isn't, properly speaking, magic at all." Harry saw Aunt Petunia relax marginally. He hoped she had got the message.
"Well, of course not," the blond woman said haughtily, "there's no such thing as magic."
Harry simply inclined his head and hoped the woman would assume that meant he agreed with her. The plainclothesman, Williams, said with open amusement, "Remind me not to play cards with you."
Harry could feel the heat climb up his face once more. But he said nothing and tried to keep his face as neutral as possible under the circumstances.
"I think we're done here for the moment," Williams said.
"Right," the Constable said. "So long as nothing else turns up to connect Dudley here with that robbery. And we will be checking your alibi." All four left and Harry found himself the subject of his Aunt's and cousin's most intense scrutiny.
"How could you?" his Aunt said.
"How could I what?" Harry asked. He was quite taken aback. Not that he expected thanks for helping Dudley out, but this seemed a bit much even for Aunt Petunia. Even Snape, he thought, would have acknowledged assistance like that. And Snape was about as low on the ladder of humanity as one could get, Harry thought, barring perhaps, Umbridge and Voldemort and the Death Eaters.
"Jump down here in your pajamas with your...your wand out, like a wild man," she answered.
"I thought Voldemort was here," he answered. He felt, all at once, both the horror and the absurdity of it all. He had a terrible impulse to laugh or maybe cry. He wasn't sure.
"He wouldn't come here," Aunt Petunia said. "He couldn't...I thought you said he can't," she said accusingly. Harry blinked and thought how to answer without panicking her.
"According to Dumbledore," he said calmly, "so long as you permit me to stay here, we're protected from him."
"Then why did you go jumping around like that?" Dudley said. "It looked like you were going to attack those policeman."
Harry sighed and answered, "I was dreaming. Your yelling woke me up and I thought we were being attacked. I didn't stop to think about it, I just grabbed my wand, that's all."
"You have nightmares about him," Dudley said. "About...that swordfight," he added hesitantly. The last thing Harry wanted to discuss with Dudley was his dreams. They were both staring at him waiting for an answer. Reluctantly, Harry said, "Yes."
There was a short silence and Harry stood up. If he'd ever been hungry that morning, he was no longer. And he wanted to get away, though he couldn't have said where he wanted to go.
"Do you really know how to use a sword?" Dudley asked. Dudley ignored Aunt Petunia's shocked "Enough of that!" and stared at Harry, apparently waiting for an answer. But that was another thing Harry didn't want to talk about.
"Do you?" Dudley repeated again. Harry shrugged.
"Why do you care?" he asked.
"What if this Voldy guy comes at us again like he did in the station? What if he comes at us with that sword? I want to know how to use one," Dudley said aggressively. "I'm not standing around waiting for him to run me through."
"You're not learning swordfighting!" Aunt Petunia said shrilly.
"I am too," Dudley retorted. "What am I supposed to do if he comes after us again? What if he comes after you again, Mum?"
"He wasn't after me," she said firmly. "It was Harry he was after." Harry watched their argument with amazement. It seemed as though all the barriers between his life with the Dursleys and his life at Hogwarts were utterly, competely down. They had pretended for sixteen years that magic didn't exist. Now Dudley was talking about learning to use a sword in case Voldemort attacked. He shook his head in disbelief. Dudley said nothing for a moment. Then he said slowly, reluctantly,
"No, Mum. He went after you, too. Why'd he go after you? Why would he?" Aunt Petunia opened her mouth and shut it again like a fish trying to breathe out of water.
"He was after him," she said again, pointing at Harry.
"Don't look at me," Harry said. "How do I know why he'd go after you?"
"He did not!" Aunt Petunia said yet again. But it struck Harry that he knew after all why Voldemort would go after his Aunt. Somehow, Voldemort knew or guessed that Aunt Petunia's house, her acceptance of him, her blood, gave Harry protection. And he assumed that Harry would run to protect his family as he had run to help Sirius. As he had. Harry stared at his Aunt and he realized just how far Voldemort meant to go to deprive him of every bit of ordinary comfort and help in the world. He would go after every relative and every friend Harry had, waiting each time for Harry to come running to defend them, and sooner or later, Voldemort would find the opening he needed to kill Harry. But before that, he'd make Harry twist in the wind, every time someone that mattered to him was harmed or killed.
"Throw me out," Harry said abruptly. "You'll have to throw me out. Then I won't have your protection any more, and he won't need to go after you."
"What?" Aunt Petunia exclaimed. "Then you do...what do you mean he won't need to go after me?"
"I should have realized it before," Harry said grimly. "He's figured out that I get some form of protection by being here, in your house. Because you're my Aunt. My mother's sister. So if he kills you, my protection goes. If you throw me out," he added, "then Voldmeort has no reason to go after you, because he gets what he wants anyway." Petunia's pale eyes were dilated wide with fear. Extraordinarily, it was Dudley who answered.
"You can't," he said. Harry stared at his cousin in astonishment. Dudley had never once missed an opportunity to do him harm, in small ways or large. At least, not until he'd sent the gang away. And Harry had a suspicion that was simply because Dudley didn't want to go to jail. Not because he cared what happened to Harry.
"Why not?" Harry asked. "I'd think you'd be happy. I'd think you'd all be happy. You'd never have to see me or my "abnormality" again." He stopped there. His tone was more than bitter as sixteen years of misery and jealousy and loneliness boiled up and threatened to spill out.
Dudley turned almost as red as Uncle Vernon did when he was angry. "Don't think we wouldn't all love that," Dudley answered. "But you can't go. Because this Voldmeort guy, he won't stop coming after us now just cause Mum throws you out."
"What makes you say that?" Harry asked. "It's me he wants. He could care less about you if it weren't that you provide me with sanctuary here."
"We're on his list now, see," Dudley answered. "This Voldemort guy, he's just like a gang leader. Once you get on his list, you stay there till he crosses you off. Just cause he's a wizard doesn't mean he's any different that way. So even if you go, he'll still come here after us. So you stay. Cause you're the only one here that can fight him with magic, aren't you?" Harry simply stared at Dudley. He couldn't think what to say that answered that.
"And," Dudley said, "you're going to teach me how to use a sword. So in case he comes and you're not here..." Harry cut that off immediately.
"If Voldemort comes here, Dudley, you run. Cause there's no way you can learn to use a sword against Voldemort. Cause if he did use a sword, he'd use a magic sword. And so far as I know, you haven't a drop of magic in your veins that'd let you fight him that way."
"And how're we supposed to defend ourselves then? What if we can't run? What're we supposed to do?" Dudley's voice rose and his piggy eyes were wide and the whites showed around the small round blue of his irises.
"Use your fists, Dud," Harry answered sardonically. "That's what you're good at, isn't it? Nobody beats you there, Dud. And besides," he added slowly, "wizards are just as susceptible to a good right cross as anybody else, you know. So if you do have to defend yourself, avoid their wands and hit them before they know what's coming. They won't be expecting it either, cause they don't even think about how effective some Muggle defenses are." Harry turned back to Aunt Petunia and said determinedly, "I still think you should throw me out. I'll tell everyone I can think of that would get the news back to Voldemort that you've tossed me out and my protection is gone. I'll even send him a letter myself." Harry saw that there was nothing his Aunt would like better than to see the back of him forever.
So he was more than surprised when she said, "No. You stay."
He waited for her to say something that would explain this. And when it seemed that she would say nothing more, he said, "But, why?" He waited for her to say the usual, be quiet and don't ask questions, but this time she didn't.
"Because...," she said finally, "because the protection does go two ways. If I let you stay here, you're protected from him. If you stay here, I...this house..is protected, too. He can't see us or find us or get at us if you stay here."
"How do you know that?" he asked quietly.
"That...Dumbledore explained to me how it works." She spoke as if the words had been dragged out of her unwillingly.
"When?" Harry asked.
"He came to see me," she said, "after I took you in. When you were still a baby. He said Voldemort might come back. That he wasn't gone altogether, and that he'd made a spell that gave protection to us both, so long as I kept you." She bit her lip and her long neck seemed to stretch way up higher than usual.
"So you stay," and "if Dudley wants you to teach him swordfighting, you do."
Harry frowned at her and said, "You're serious about that? Even if he comes after you again?" Her eyes slid evasively away from his and she said, "Just do as I say, while you're in this house. You can start by cleaning up the teacups."
"What if HE comes here and kills us all?" Dudley asked. "How do we know this spell is strong enough to stand up to him? How do we know he won't break it? He killed Harry's Mum and Dad, didn't he? And they were grown ups. They weren't just schoolboys in training."
"Don't worry, Dudley," Harry answered. "According to the tea leaves here I'm the only one likely to die so soon. You, on the other hand, will be a good college boxer and then settle down to get married and have children and take over Uncle Vernon's business and lead a nice respectable life." Dudley gawked at him and Aunt Petunia had an expression he simply couldn't read.
Recklessly, he added, "Just do me a favor. If I live long enough to get married and have a kid, and if you end up having to take my kid in, just don't lock him in the cupboard under the stairs, okay. Cause I'd have to come back from the dead and haunt you if you did." Harry felt a perverse pleasure in seeing his Aunt's shock at that. Then he found he'd misinterpreted her once more.
"You look just like her when you do that," Aunt Petunia whispered.
"What?" Harry asked.
"You look just like Lily when you do that. You've got her eyes, you know. She had the greenest eyes. And she saw things with them. Just like that. When she was ten, she told me she'd die young, and that I'd have to swear to take care of her baby. She made me swear and I did. So I have. And she looked just like that when she did it. Just like you did when you said Dudley would marry and have children and take over his Uncle's business."
"But I wasn't really..." Harry said. He started to say, tea leaves are just nonsense, but Aunt Petunia got up and left him in the dining room staring after her. Dudley, on the other hand, looked as though some great weight had dropped off him.
"Well," he said, "I'll make you a deal, Potter. You teach me how to use a sword, and I'll teach you how to box. You never know when a good right cross can come in handy." Harry looked back at him and said, "You're right about that."
