The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Part III - Chapter Twenty-Three
When I look back on that trip to Diagon Alley, there were things that I should have noticed; but in those days, I thought Dad could do no wrong and was simply happy to have some time with him without the twins to share his attention. We traveled by Floo powder and arrived in the rear of the Leaky Cauldron, thus bypassing the common room and any observers. It didn't occur to me either, that Dad had enchanted his glasses to look like sunglasses for any other reason than that it was a fine, sunny summer day. Unusually, he wore wizard’s robes rather than the jeans and t-shirt that were his accustomed dress on his days off work. He even wore a wizard's hat, which effectively squashed down his ever-untidy hair and flattened the fringe on his forehead almost down to his eyebrows. Nevertheless, as we strode down the Alley to Ollivander's, a few people watched us curiously for a moment or two, with an expression as though they had half-recognized us or were trying to remember something.
For me, it was all a grand adventure, and I was dreadfully excited to be so grown that I could have my own wand. Ollivander's is an odd place, even as places for wizards go. There is a feeling that something might happen any moment, and the fine hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up as though I had been too near an electrical charge or the place where a lightning bolt had just struck.
An old man appeared as though from nowhere. He was quite elderly and had strange, lamp-like eyes that seemed to see right through you. His eyes widened, however, on seeing Dad and he swept down into a low bow.
"Harry Potter," he said, "I wondered whether I should ever see you here again. Will you be needing a new wand?" Mr. Ollivander asked Dad, "or, do you, perhaps, still have the one I sold you last?"
I thought this an odd question as I was there with Dad and it ought to have been obvious that I was an eleven-year-old ready for his first wand. Mr. Ollivander's voice, too, was peculiar: the eagerness to know the answer to his question was masked, but still there. He was truly strange and I could not help thinking that I didn't really like the old man.
"We're here for Sirius," Dad answered proudly. "It's his first wand we've come to buy."
The old, bright eyes turned to me and his silvery brows rose. "Sirius?" he asked.
Dad smiled and said, "I named him for my godfather, Sirius Black. He looks just like him, don't you think?"
The old man pondered me closely and I felt as though the memories of all the wizards that had ever been through Diagon Alley to buy their wands were scrolling behind his eyes. After a barely perceptible pause, he said, "He does look very like Sirius Black. Let us hope he comes to a more fortunate ending than his namesake."
I found this quite off-putting and even Dad frowned and said quietly, "Sirius Black died in battle fighting the Death Eaters. He was a great and brave man."
Mr. Ollivander stilled and then bowed low once again. "As is his godson." For the second time then, he asked, "Your own wand is still in good shape then?"
I assumed that he wanted to sell Dad a new wand too, rather like the Muggle car salesmen who want to convince you that the one you bought last year is not good enough anymore. Dad drew his wand out of his pocket. It's a fine wand, eleven inches, made of holly and phoenix feather. Dad gave it a bit of a rub, as though he was embarrassed there were a few fingerprints on it and handed it over to Mr. Ollivander without a word. The old man's eyes lit up and again I thought he was remembering many things at once. Indeed, his words echoed my thought. "I remember..." he said. "Ah, yes. I recall it quite well." He ran his hand over the wand, feeling its magical energies, I supposed, and then handed it back to Dad almost reluctantly. "One of my finest," he said.
The bright eyes turned on me and I felt as though I were being weighed somehow, on a scale whose measure I did not understand and could not affect or perceive. "Let us see then, young Sirius," he said, "what sort of wand you merit."
He proceeded to bring out half a dozen wands. Each of them was quite fine, but none of them met the old man's standards, whatever they were. I would wave one, and it would do nothing; another made a large hole in the ancient counter, which Dad hastily repaired. I stole a glance at Dad thinking that I must be a rather awful wizard after all, if I couldn't even make a wand behave with the tiniest wave. He looked unsurprised however, and simply commented, "Some customers are quite tricky, aren't they, Mr. Ollivander?"
"Indeed," the old man agreed. "And this one is trickier than most."
I was inclined to feel insulted and quite worried as the pile of wands that failed to suit grew higher and higher. After nearly half an hour, when it seemed I had tried three-quarters of the wands in the shop, Dad laid a hand on my arm and stopped my next wave. "I wonder," he said to Mr. Ollivander, "whether you ever make a wand to order?"
The old wizard's silver brows rose even higher. "On rare occasions," he answered.
Dad slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out a soft flannel cloth. He laid the violet cloth down on the ancient counter and gently unwrapped it. Shimmering gold lit the rather dim ship, and I stared with awe at the gleaming feathers there. I reached out to touch them and then pulled my hand away just as quickly.
"You can touch them," Dad said.
They were warm to the touch and soft as down. "Phoenix feathers," Ollivander said softly. "Where did you get them? Professor Dumbledore's?" he asked.
Dad did not reply directly. "The bird gave them willingly," he said. "For those who are stout of heart and kind in spirit." He laid a hand on my shoulder again, I felt so proud to know that Dad thought that of me. "When shall we return," he asked.
Before we returned to Ollivander's, Dad took me to the Magical Menagerie so I could have a pet to keep me company. I was tempted at first by one of the cats, a beautiful Siamese with sapphire eyes in a chocolate mask. But I decided I had rather have an owl, after all, since we have lots of cats at home. My own favorite, Sasha, is a Russian blue; but he's so old I felt it would be mean to displace him and carry him with me to strange new surroundings.
I looked eagerly at the different birds. There were brown barn owls, tiny scope owls, horned owls and haughty looking eagle owls. There were no snowy owls, though, like Dad's Hedwig, who is quite the most beautiful and clever owl we know. I suppose I looked disappointed for the sales witch ushered us into the back and showed us an owl that had just arrived all the way from Australia. She lifted a black velvet cloth from a large cage and the owl that blinked back at us was black with a few speckles of white and silver on her head and bib. Her eyes were black and huge in a silvery mask.
"That's a Sooty Owl," the witch said, "quite rare and very clever."
In minutes, I was walking out with the large cage. I wouldn't admit that it was nearly too heavy for me to carry as I was determined that this owl was special and mine.
We went back to the Leaky Cauldron and Dad got a private parlor for lunch. I couldn't think what to name my owl and I was still worrying over whether there would ever be a wand to suit me.
Dad sensed my anxiety, I suppose, as he kept me occupied with a very funny story about Aunt Hermione losing her temper and slugging one of the other boys in school when she was only a third year. That made me laughed, as aunt Hermione is so dignified and cool. And though I could imagine her losing her temper in a quite terrifying manner, I would have expected her to use her wand to hex her target, not to whack a fellow upside the face. It just goes to show that you should never pigeonhole people. They will always surprise you, just when you think you know everything about them.
When we returned to Ollivander's, the afternoon sun was slanting down and you could see a sparkly trail of motes in the beams of light that penetrated the dusty old windows. The old man came back, perfectly soundlessly, and he looked me up and down most thoroughly. "I wonder," he said to Dad, "whether this is altogether wise?" He laid out three wands on the counter. Each was quite fine looking and I couldn't tell which I would prefer. In truth, at that moment, I was merely hoping that at least one would be mine before I left that shop.
I picked up one, and almost immediately, the old man took it away.
"But I didn't even try it," I protested.
"Try this one," he said. I picked it up and felt this time the crackle of energy that went with live magic. A shimmer of gold sparks shot from the wand and I jumped. From the cage, a very loud whistling cry erupted. Mr. Ollivander jumped and I said, "S-Sorry. That's my owl."
"I haven't heard a sound like that since 1945," Mr. Ollivander said. "Sounds like the bombs those Muggles dropped every other night."
"Hush," I said to my owl. She looked at me reproachfully and I guessed that the bright shimmer of sparks from the wand had spooked her somehow. I turned back to the old man and said very firmly and politely, "I'll take this one, sir. I like it just fine."
"It's a good thing then," Mr. Ollivander replied, "although I should say that the wand has chosen you, sir, not you the wand." His moon-like eyes watched me strangely and I wondered what odd thoughts were going through his head. Was he perhaps growing peculiar in his old age as some men do. Or had he always been eccentric? The latter, I supposed, as I reluctantly gave up my wand for it to be boxed and wrapped.
When we arrived back home, I smiled hugely up at Dad and said, "Thanks! This is perfectly brilliant. Now if only I can think of a name for her." I lifted up my owl and Dad chuckled said quickly, "Best get her upstairs to your room and think of a name quickly, before Mum comes up with something awful like Pigwidgeon."
My eyes widened in a horror and I sped upstairs to my room as fast as I was able. I couldn't think of too many things more embarrassing than having to explain why my owl was named something as silly as that. In the end, I decided she was so grand and wise looking that I named her Athena after the goddess who was embodied by the owl.
James and Lily came bounding in just as I brought Athena out of her cage.
"Whoa," James said enviously. "You've got your own owl and all. Why can't we be two years older?"
"Have you got your wand?" Lily asked. "Come on, let's see!"
I put Athena back in her cage, but left the velvet cloth off so she could get accustomed to her new surroundings. Both of the twins made small sounds of longing when they saw my wand.
"Twelve inches," James said knowledgeably, "and made of willow. What's it got in its core?"
"Phoenix feather," I answered. "Like Dad's."
***
Harry smiled nostalgically at Sirius's rapidly retreating back. It seemed so long ago that he had received his invitation to Hogwarts and set upon the journey that would teach him who he really was, a journey that had been both terrifying and wonderful. His ruminations were interrupted by a knock at the front door. This was fairly curious in itself as normally only the children's Muggle friends ever knocked there and it was nearly dinner time, well past the time when even Sirius's friends would come.
"Whoever can that be?" Ginny poked her head into the room. Her face was faintly flushed from her dinnertime preparations and he thought she looked hardly a day older than when they had married.
The knock came again, a rather demanding sort of knock, and Harry considered simply not answering. He really did not want to spend time in an extended conversation with either a door-to-door solicitor or some odd religious wanting to convert him. Curiosity won out and he stood and stretched and said, "I'll send them away, don't worry."
Harry opened the door and his jaw literally dropped. There on the step, dressed in his Sunday best was his cousin Dudley, his wife and a slight little girl who looked like she belonged to neither one of them. All the long years seemed to fall away and for a moment he felt as he had at ten when Dudley was his worst enemy and chief tormentor – other than his Uncle Vernon, whom Dudley now resembled more than ever. He opened his mouth to send them away, but before his automatic reflex was enacted, Dudley's tall blond wife, Ashley walked right in and said, "It is you, Harry! You look exactly the same as you did when we last saw each other! You haven't changed at all!"
Harry closed his mouth and stepped back sheepishly to let them in. He coughed and recalled that he ought to say something polite. After all, it wasn't Ashley's fault that Dudley had always been something of an oaf. "So do you," he managed to come up with. "How did you find me?" he blurted out next.
"Well, you were in the telephone directory," Ashley answered brightly. "Duddy was sure this wouldn't be you because he thought wizards don't have telephones, but I thought there can't be that many Harry Potters about, now can there?"
Harry stared at Dudley, who was looking rather like Uncle Vernon used to when magic and wizards were mentioned – half furious and half terrified. Only in Dudley's case, there was an element of embarrassment as well. Dudley coughed and said in his best board of director's voice as he extended his enormous, meaty hand, "Good to see you Harry. Looks like you've done quite well for yourself."
In this, true to form, a tinge of envy laced the appreciation of his appraisal of the high foyer and the polished wooden floors through which Harry led him. "This is really quite a pile," Dudley remarked more comfortably. "It's quite old, isn't it?"
A feeling of unreality persisted as Harry answered, "Erm, yeah, it's over a hundred years old." Some demon of mischief possessed him and he added casually, "No one wanted it cause it's supposed to be haunted."
Dudley paled slightly, but the little girl, who had said nothing till then, said breathlessly, "Is it really?"
Harry looked down at the little girl and felt immediately ashamed, as he had no business frightening a child. Then he received another shock, as the girl was anything but scared. She looked about the house with excitement, and Harry saw that her eyes were a brilliant green and her hair was a thick, shining mane of an unusual dark auburn. She looked, in fact, just as Harry’s own Mum must have looked when she was that age.
"Are you really our cousin?" she asked, and before Harry could answer, she added, "You must be. We have the same eyes haven't we? I've never seen anyone with eyes like mine before?" Without pausing for breath, she added, "And are you really a wizard? Because Daddy says it runs in the family and that's how I have it."
Harry looked sharply back at Dudley and his cousin nodded almost defiantly. "She, erm, got an invitation, you know, from...your school." He looked quite pained as though he'd have liked to run. His wife, though, looked perfectly thrilled and Harry recalled that Ashley had been one of those Muggles who had an almost obsessive interest in all things magical and occult. "It came the other day," Ashley said, "with a letter from the headmaster suggesting we should contact you to help with purchasing Bryony's supplies."
"Bryony?" he asked.
"Bryony Rose Dursley," the little girl piped. She put her hand small slender fingered hand out and Harry was unexpectedly charmed as he shook it.
"And I am Harry James Potter," he said gravely. "Come and meet the rest of the family."
"Did you send them..." Ginny cut off her remark immediately upon seeing the visitors. She flushed slightly and raised her eyebrows upon seeing Dudley's wife Ashley. The tall blond was elegantly dressed in what was almost certainly a designer outfit and her neck was draped with pearls. Ginny wiped her damp hands on her apron and tossed her vivid red hair out her face, a habitual gesture that amused Harry as it was totally unselfconscious. Her brown eyes widened as she stared at Dudley. "I remember you," she said almost accusingly. "You're the cousin, the one who knocked Malfoy in the jaw."
Dudley turned pink and Harry grinned. "Yeah, that was the best punch you ever threw," he said. It was one of the few that hadn't been aimed at Harry, too, when Harry was within punching distance of Dudley. Dudley clearly recalled this too as he looked nervously at Harry, no doubt wondering whether the recollection of their youthful loathing might make Harry pull out his wand and start jinxing them.
Ginny, however, averted that as she said crisply, "You'll be staying to dinner, of course, and then you can tell us why you're here."
"Dudley's daughter's got an invitation to Hogwarts," Harry said quickly. "And Dumbledore sent a letter suggesting they come to us for help buying her books."
"Has she?" Ginny said. She looked at the girl, Bryony and said, "My, you look as though you'll fit right in."
In fact, this was proven seconds later as a commotion sounded through the hallway. Harry went quickly through to the inner hall just as James and then Lily came sliding down the staircase that led to the floors above. James vaulted stylishly over the knob at the end of the stair rail and Lily came to a dead stop just before. Ginny opened her mouth to yell, but James called up to Sirius, who was still standing at the top of the landing with his hands in his pockets, his blue-gray eyes looking both irritated and amused. "Bet you can't do it," James cried. "Bet you're scared."
Sirius shook his head and said, "What an idiot," and just as Ginny was about to yell again, Sirius vaulted onto the stair rail himself. Instead of sliding down, however, he stood up and walked right down the railing as coolly as a cat on a high wire. He had obviously expected the dare as his feet were bare and he placed each one before the other as gracefully as a dancer in a ballet. Ginny forgot to yell and Harry had to admit the feat was done with peculiar dash and style. He kept his grin to himself, though, when Ginny proceeded to turn on all three of them and yell in a loud whisper, "I never! Look at you, showing off in front of your cousins!"
Sirius jumped down and looked thoroughly embarrassed. Harry was sure this was more because he had allowed James to get to him than because his Mum was yelling at him.
Bryony, however, was more than impressed. "Whoa, cool," she said delightedly. "Did you do a spell to do that?"
Sirius looked at her most forbiddingly and said, "Of course, not."
Bryony was unabashed and answered, "Well, too bad. I was hoping someone would show me some proper magic since Mum and Dad don't know any. Only Dad says Cousin Harry knows lots and that's why we came, so we can get my school things."
"You're going to Hogwarts, too?" James demanded. "You don't look old enough to go? You're not really eleven are you?"
"She is too," Lily said. "Look how tall she is, taller than you, James and lots taller than I am."
"It's a good things she's not in your year," Sirius cut in, "since she looks like someone squashed the two of you into one. Everyone would get confused, wouldn't they, trying to figure out who was really whose twin."
It was quite peculiar, Harry thought, how certain things ran in families. His first impression had been that the little girl looked like his own mother, but next to Lily and James, she did indeed seem to fit right in.
They managed to get through dinner with only a few upsets. Dudley frequently paled and turned pink as plates floated their way from the stove to the table and into the sink upon being emptied. He only relaxed when Harry took him back into the library after dinner and gave him a stiff measure of whiskey. He sipped his own butterbeer, but he nearly dropped the bottle when Dudley said, "You have to tell me one thing before I actually let Bryony go." His pink face was rather sweaty and his meaty hand shook slightly as he gulped at the glass. "I would have refused, you know. Only Ashley got to the letter first and showed Bryony before I got home and she already has her heart set on it, the little tyke."
Harry gawked at Dudley, as he had never imagined his huge hulking bully of a cousin as harboring any gentle feelings at all. Then he recalled that his Aunt and Uncle had been just so fond of Dudley.
"That Lord Whosis," Dudley said. He looked right and left to check if anyone was listening and whispered, "he's not still around is he? I won't let her go if he's still around."
Harry breathed in one deep breath and said calmly, "Voldemort's dead. You've nothing to fear." He paused momentarily and added, "In fact, she's more likely to be in danger in your ordinary secondary school the way things are today."
"Well, she was going to go to Smeltings," Dudley said.
"I thought that was for boys," Harry said. He thought the girl had a lucky escape. Even he, with his relatively poor sense of dress could figure out that the red head would loathe the orange and maroon uniforms as he recalled were the required dress at Dudley's old school
"They've a girls' division now," Dudley answered. "She was all set to go, and now this." He looked so mournfully at his empty glass that Harry topped it off again. He understood that this must have been a huge concession for his cousin. He hesitated before saying, "What about Aunt Petunia? Does she know?"
Dudley's small, piggy eyes widened in horror and he shook his head. "No. We won't tell her either. She shall have to go on thinking Bryony's going to Smeltings. I'll have to tell her."
Harry started to inquire after his Aunt as civility required it, but Dudley interrupted. "She still hates you, you know. She won't bear the mention of you. She thinks it's your fault Dad died, even though it was really some escaped lunatic."
A wave of guilt swept him. Harry knew, though Dudley did not, that the Muggle who had murdered his Uncle had been one of the gang that Voldemort had controlled. Voldemort had intended for Aunt Petunia to be killed, so that Harry's protection would be eliminated. But it had been Aunt Marge who was in the van on that fateful day and Aunt Petunia had lived on alone and embittered. And Harry could hardly blame her. If she had never taken him in, her family would not have been threatened. She had never loved Harry, but she had sheltered him, and she had paid a terrible price in fear and loss and unhappiness; and there was nothing Harry could do to pay her back or provide any comfort. It was one of the things that weighed on him in the dark of the night, when nightmares came and old shadows tormented him. The sound of notes plinking on the piano interrupted Harry's conversation with Dudley.
"Is that a piano?" Dudley asked. His tone was disbelieving as if he thought wizards were so entirely removed from all things that music would be outside of their knowledge.
Harry got up and strolled into the parlor where the piano sat. It was another thing that had come with the house, but he didn't tell Dudley that. A spark of mischief rose in him and he said as gravely as he could, "Music is one of the greatest magic’s of all according to Dumbledore."
Dudley looked a bit panicked, even though it was his own daughter sitting there plunking at the keys. She clearly had no idea what she was doing, but was playing as children do when they've discovered a new toy. Harry winced as she struck several keys together, producing a quite awful sound. So did Sirius. He pushed her hands away, not too rudely, and said, "Here, I'll show you."
He ran his long thin fingers over the keys in a preliminary arpeggio and then settled in to play a pretty baroque air. Harry watched with pleasure. He liked music himself but had never really learned to play an instrument as music lessons were one of those things the Dursleys would have given to Dudley had he shown any interest, but not to Harry. Sirius, however, had a natural gift for it. They had found him one day when he was all of four years old picking out and actual melody and Harry had gone out of his way to find a music teacher who would come out to Ottery St. Catchpole to teach the children to play. He had had a vague feeling that music and a mastery of music might have a good effect on a person's character, though he could not have said why that was so.
Dudley continued to look uncomfortable until his wife came in and said, "It's Bach. How nice. I didn't know wizards play piano."
Sirius stopped playing and said a bit cheekily, "Of course we play piano. We eat and drink and do all the normal things non-magic folk do."
James piped in and with that perfectly acute nose for mischief and trouble added, "Yeah, but we fly too, so don't get them totally confused."
"Fly?" Ashley asked uncertainly. "Fly how?"
Dudley looked perfectly terrified but his daughter looked up with enormous excitement and asked, "Really? How do we? Shall I?"
Harry was about to answer, but Dudley interrupted. "Brooms," he said. He pointed to the other end of hallway where their brooms were neatly hung on a rack. That was all he could get out apparently and Ginny jumped in to save his discomfort. "Of course you will," she answered. "You'll have flying lessons this year. It's one of the best subjects in school."
"And what else do they do?" Ashley asked. Clearly it had only just now struck her that this business was really real and that her daughter was going to learn to do things she had only read about or imagined - and some of those were rather scary and evil. Surprisingly, Dudley answered again, "They can make things vanish and grow bigger and..."
Harry judged it was time to stop scaring them as little Bryony was looking from one parent to the other, sensing their worry. "We study charms and transfiguration and potions. We use charms to do things that most people have to do with electricity, like light a fire or lift heavy loads and things like that. Transfiguration changes an object - makes it vanish or appear. And Potions can be used for things like healing and stuff."
He tried to keep it very matter-of-fact, as if this were all quite everyday business, and this seemed to succeed in part. Dudley, he was sure, would never be entirely comfortable with magic as his first experience had been when Hagrid had given him a pig's tail. Harry was actually surprised that Dudley was going along with this at all, but it appeared that he doted on his only child as much as his own parents had doted on him. He said with a show of bravado, "Don't worry popkin, you shall have a broom of your own, if you want one."
Harry goggled at Dudley's use of this pet name on his daughter and shook his head. It was amazing how even the nastiest person alive put aside his meanness for his child. "Next year," he said. "First years don't get to bring brooms to school." Seeing the disappointment on the little girl's face, which was so the image of his mother, Harry said, "But you'll get your own wand and you can bring a pet, an owl or a cat or a toad."
"No owls," Dudley said immediately.
"Oh, but owls are dead useful," Sirius objected. "You'll want to get letters from Bryony won't you?" He added quickly, "But you can borrow my Athena if you want, and the school has owls the students can use."
"A cat then," Dudley said firmly. "Anybody can have a cat. We can get one from that batty Mrs. Figg. Hers just had kittens again."
Harry had to suppress a laugh and as he said, "Is she still there?"
"Oh yeah," Bryony answered. "She baby-sits sometimes and she's quite nice, but very odd. She has Mr. Tibbles and Snowy and..."
"And the stalest chocolate cake anyone ever made," Harry finished.
Bryony laughed and everyone else chuckled. Dudley said with a return of his old malice, "You did get stuck spending a lot of time with the old bat, didn't you Harry?"
"It was better than the cupboard under the stairs," Harry said quietly, so that only Dudley could hear. Again the old dislike welled up and again the guilt from his Uncle's death. He hoped fervently that he would only have to see Dudley occasionally, at the train station once they helped Bryony get her things. He wasn't at all sure how long they could be in each other's company without the old hatreds breaking out again.
