The Park

Harry peeked out through the rather moldy-seeming curtains in his new room. There was a slight blush in the night sky behind the rooftops to the east, but, considering this was summer, that could mean it was as early as . . . what, five o'clock?

Harry groaned and massaged his temples again. The horrible headache was probably due to the weird hours he'd been keeping: yesterday, he'd woken up practically at lunchtime, and then he'd fallen asleep just after dinner! He'd just felt so tired, even though he really had been interested in everything Sirius and Lupin had been telling him about the workings of the Muggle world. Perhaps they could go see Diagon Alley today. If he could just get rid of this. . .

"Headache?" the mirror asked him brusquely, rather in the manner of (Harry thought) an old-fashioned upper-crust governess.

Harry started. "Um, yes?" he said, trying not to stare at the mirror.

"Shame," said the mirror haughtily and unhelpfully.

The rest of the room appeared to be quite normal, albeit far more opulent-looking and spacious than anything Harry had ever inhabited before. It contained an old brass bed; what looked like mahogany dressers and an intimidating wardrobe with silver handles in the shape of something Harry couldn't identify; large and newly-scrubbed-looking sash windows; and a rag rug on the floorboards, quite out of character with the rest of the room, but nice and soft. Except the rug, the entire room exuded casual wealth. It occurred to Harry that, if this big, expensive-looking place in London was Sirius', Sirius might be quite wealthy. Then he told himself off for the thought. Sirius was his guardian, and it didn't matter how much money Sirius had, as long as it was enough so that Harry wasn't a burden.

The room even had its own bathroom attached; Harry suspected, somehow (perhaps from the room's lack of personal touches) that it had been a guest room. The taps of the bath (no shower here) seemed to be in the shapes of snakes of some sort, which was imaginative, although odd. Harry sank uneasily into the vast porcelain tub.

He thought he'd been having nightmares, although that might just have been the headache. His pajamas had been stuck to his back with sweat, though.

Flashes of green light . . . hadn't he dreamed them when he was very small?

And then he'd dreamed of his parents. Not surprising, really, considering he'd spent all afternoon hearing about them from Sirius. Now, for the first time, he could really picture their faces.

They were a witch and wizard, too.

The soap clunked to the bottom of the tub and Harry rescued it quickly, not wanting to wake anyone else up. Sirius in particular was definitely a night owl.

Speaking of owls, what about that white owl that had arrived and taken such a liking to him? Sirius swore this wasn't a repeat of the black dog incident, but . . . well, perhaps Harry would have to learn to ascribe all these weird things to magic.

Magic . . .

Harry's mum and dad had been magic.

So why had they died?

Harry had already seen Sirius and Lupin do magic that Harry was sure would save a person's life in a car accident--making things float, for starters. How could they have died?

As a matter of fact, how could so many of their friends have died? And "We Don't Talk To Him Any More" Peter. It all seemed a bit . . . suspicious, to be honest. And Sirius certainly didn't seem keen to go into detail about any of the deaths, either. Not even Harry's parents'.

And not even Sirius' own illness.

Harry leaned his head back on the tub, hard as the porcelain was. Harry didn't want to think that Sirius was lying to him. Sirius was . . . well, he would have been practically just what Harry would have asked for if told he could have a guardian who'd sweep him away from the Dursleys. Sirius was cool, you couldn't deny it. Sirius had infinite patience with Harry's questions. Sirius cared about Harry, and it wasn't forced at all.

But, Harry realized, he had begun to trust these strangers so quickly that, now, he was surprised with himself. They'd practically kidnapped him from the Dursleys', from one point of view. Their explanation of why they'd suddenly come for him after never even contacting him before seemed a little bit . . . lacking.

Harry didn't want not to love them, even though he felt foolish at the same time.

Sirius must have a good reason for not telling Harry the complete truth about his illness and Harry's parents and all their friends. After all, he had lied to Harry in concealing his magic when Harry had just arrived, but as soon as Harry had recovered he'd told him.

And Sirius did have pictures of his mum and dad, the first pictures Harry had ever seen of them. He didn't know whether you could make magic lie, but from the pictures of his dad's entire school career and afterwards, even including his wedding, it was obvious that James had held Sirius as his dearest friend. It would have been impossible to fake what he'd seen in those pictures.

It turned out that Lupin had piled Harry's things into what appeared to be an old-fashioned school trunk with the initials R.A.B. on it. Digging through it after his bath, Harry realized how few possessions he actually had. The nearly-empty trunk seemed out of place in the lavish room, although it, too, seemed to hail from before the 20th century.

Once he was dressed and had finished his abortive attempts to flatten his hair, he sat back on his bed, at a loss. He couldn't hear anyone else awake, and didn't see the point in wandering around the house alone.

There were bookshelves in the corner, although they were mostly empty.

Harry looked through the books that were there. Unsurprisingly, they were all ancient. Charms for Flower-Arranging: A Genteel Pastime. Avid as Harry was to learn magic, that one didn't thrill him. A Goblin's Guide to Profiting from Investments. Goblins? In any case, since he wasn't very interested in investments, either, Harry moved on. Florizel Flourish's Self-Updating Complete Encyclopedia. This tome was at least as large as Sirius when he was a dog. Harry managed to move it to the bed and opened it to a random page.

Apparently, a Quaffle was a ball used in Quidditch, which was the game his father and Sirius had played, wasn't it? The encyclopedia confirmed it: "Quidditch is a team game played on broomsticks with seven players to a team and four balls in play. It was invented in . . ."

Harry settled into a more comfortable position, with his pillow behind his back. This could be really useful in helping him not look like an idiot when people talked about magic. He flipped to a different page and read about Ghouls, Ghosts and Giants (the book's verdict: all scary). He avidly read the too-brief lines on Hogwarts several times, only noting with a jolt the last time that Mr. Dumbledore, who had first explained his situation to him, was the school's headmaster! Neither Harry's primary school nor his secondary school had had a headmaster with hair that could be tucked into his or her belt. He turned to the entries for Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. The dictionary at least said that Slytherins were primarily ambitious, which made more sense than Sirius' explanation that they were "all bastards."

Then, as he idly looked over the pages from Slytherin onward, an entry caught his eye.

"Squibs are offspring of magical parents who possess no magical ability," said the book. "Luckily, Squibs occur very rarely, but, when they do, they often face prejudice and exclusion from the magical community, not to mention the difficulty resulting from living in the magical world without being able to perform magic. In the past, Squibs were often treated as a family's shameful secret. More recently, Squibs are received with greater tolerance, but most Squibs still choose to leave the Wizarding World and live as Muggles, often sharing little or no contact with their magical relatives."

He read the entry carefully a second time.

Harry closed the book and lifted it back onto the shelf, then curled up back under the covers, his head aching, until Sirius knocked on his door at ten o'clock.

"You're awake?" said Sirius, coming in. "I thought you'd come down for breakfast."

"Actually, I woke up ages ago," admitted Harry. "I had a headache." He rubbed his scar. "But it's all right now," he added.

"Well, tell me if you get another, and I'll get you some headache potion," said Sirius. He sat on the end of Harry's bed. "Do you just want to sleep in today? We're still arranging for you to get your wand, but it should be soon."

"What about . . . going to Diagon Alley?" Harry suggested, sitting up in bed.

He saw at once that this had been the wrong thing to say. "I'm afraid I'm not really up to strolling around Diagon Alley, Harry," apologized Sirius, looking guilty.

"Oh," said Harry, his stomach knotting. "Okay. I mean, I understand. Um . . . breakfast sounds great, then."

"We've got pancakes today," Sirius told him, sounding more cheerful. "And Albus Dumbledore is here again, too. You remember him?"

Harry nodded as they began to take the stairs down. "Isn't he the Headmaster of Hogwarts?"

"That's right." Sirius sounded pleased.

"So it might have been you-know-who?" A young woman's voice carried down the hall. If Harry remembered rightly, it belonged to the pink-haired woman who had complimented Sirius on his haircut.

"I have no idea," a man was snapping behind the kitchen door. "There's simply no information. All I know is that Bellatrix, Malfoy and Pettigrew were--"

They entered the kitchen to the smell of lemon and sugar. Lupin flipped a thin, lace-edged pancake into the air and caught it in its way down. "Good morning," he called over his shoulder to them.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Potter, Sirius," said Dumbledore, nodding to them. He was sitting at the table and squeezing lemon over a freshly folded and sugar-dusted pancake. "How are you, Harry?"

"Fine," said Harry, although it was a funny way for Dumbledore to ask how he was adapting to his new home.

A hook-nosed man with greasy hair and an even filthier glare took in Harry and Sirius, scowled, and without a hello or goodbye stepped into green flames in the fireplace and vanished.

"Don't mind Severus," Dumbledore assured Harry. "Have a seat."

Harry was no less bemused by Severus' odd appearance and mood than by hearing the phrase "You-Know-Who" uttered by an adult woman. Witches and wizards, he thought, with a mental shake of the head. They were all mad in one way or another.

"Harry had a headache this morning," Sirius mentioned, slicing a lemon. "Perhaps Severus can donate some of his headache potion."

"Indeed," nodded Dumbledore, examining Harry yet again with that X-ray-like stare. Harry tried not to squirm.

He hadn't thought before about how not being magic meant he'd never be able to go to Hogwarts. Well, perhaps he could, one day, as the caretaker or something. He'd just like to see it: the Quidditch pitch, the lake, the towers, the Forbidden Forest, the Great Hall with its magical ceiling that showed the stars at night and the sun during the day . . . how wonderful.

But, he thought, jerking himself back to reality, he hadn't really considered what he'd do about school at all.

"At the end of the summer," said Harry, as the others leaned back in their chairs, "I'll go back to my normal school, will I?"

"Do you want to?" asked Lupin, passing him a plate of two gorgeous folded pancakes.

"This looks wonderful," he said, looking up. "Thanks."

"Benefits of being a bachelor," explained Lupin. Sirius passed him a half a lemon. "Do you want to go back to your old school?" he repeated.

"Not really," said Harry honestly. "I mean, it's quite far away from here . . . but I think I should get my GCSEs, shouldn't I?"

"Muggle OWLs," the pink-haired pixie woman, who had been glugging quietly through a tankard of coffee, told the others. "I'm Tonks, by the way." She waved.

"Um . . . hi," said Harry, his cheeks burning. The whole conversation had become very awkward.

"The question is, really, whether you want to live in the Muggle or magical world," Lupin explained in his teacher-like, logical way. "I'm afraid CSGEs won't be much good to you here."

"Well . . ." This was a crucial moment, Harry could tell. "I'd rather stay in the wizarding world," he admitted. Even if it turned out he was a Squib, he'd rather be a Squib in the magical world, with a godfather who loved him, than a shadow in the real world, with the Dursleys.

Everyone relaxed. "Then you can stay here with me, never mind your old school," said Sirius conclusively. "I'll teach you magic, as soon as you get your wand." He added, "That is, if you want to."

"Of course I do!" blurted Harry, and then dug into his pancake.

"By the way, Harry," Dumbledore began, looking at Harry over his half-moon glasses, "I came here today for a purpose related to your magical education."

Harry glanced up at Sirius, who nodded.

"In fact, Harry," said Dumbledore, "I was wondering whether you might accept my offer of some . . . magical therapy, let's call it."

"Magical therapy?"

"Someone your age might have difficulty performing spells, having been prevented from doing it before by his ignorance of magic," Dumbledore explained. "Part of Hogwarts' duties is to send letters to Muggle-born witches and wizards, informing them of the existence of magic."

"Like my mum," Harry contributed.

"Precisely." Dumbledore beamed. "They adjust to their education fairly easily, being young. However, at your age, the adjustment might be more slow."

"Like learning a language is easier when you're a little kid?"

"Precisely," said Dumbledore again. "However, I, being possessed of some not negligible magical talents myself, am able to offer you a little magical assistance in this regard."

"You should try it," said Lupin, and Sirius nodded again.

Harry nodded. "When . . .?"

"No time like the present," said Dumbledore cheerfully. "Shall we say, after breakfast?"

Harry agreed, so, after he'd finished his pancakes and tried to help clear up, he found himself sitting across the table from Dumbledore, while Sirius sat silently at the other end, reading what seemed to be a magical adventure story about someone named Heracles Harvey.

"Now, for this, Harry, all you need to do is look at me and relax. I'm just going to be introducing your mind to some magic. All right?"

"Okay." The man was the Headmaster of Hogwarts, after all, and Sirius trusted him. And Harry trusted Sirius. In a way, Sirius was the only thing his father had ever given him--a godfather. Apart from anything else, Harry had to trust his father's judgment.

This wasn't to say that Harry was completely certain that the treatment was what Dumbledore said it was, and not, for example, a treatment to turn Squibs into wizards. If the therapy had just been invented, it could explain why Sirius had suddenly contacted him now.

Nevertheless, Harry looked at Dumbledore. The old man had a terribly intense stare, and he wanted to look away, but forced himself not to.

"Tell me about this summer . . ." said Dumbledore.

And Harry, feeling a strange detachment from the memories he was retelling, began with school's ending, the hosepipe ban, and Aunt Petunia's wordless battle with the neighbours over the size of their respective camellias.

Every once in a while, he felt a blue spark dancing at the edge of his mind . . .

"Dumbledore!" said Ron in astonishment, dropping the Quaffle he'd been carrying in from the garden. "I mean, er, Professor Dumbledore." His ears turned scarlet.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore, bowing.

The rest of the younger Weasleys streamed in behind him, leaving trails of muddy footprints across the lino and, in Ginny's case, removing minor twigs from her hair. Hermione brought in the rear, still absorbed in the NEWT Transfiguration text she'd found while looking for Percy's Charms text, which had turned out to be no help at all.

"Well, just let us know when you think he's ready, Albus," said Mrs. Weasley, "and we'll make up a bed for Harry."

"I shall," Dumbledore assured her.

Turning to his children and Hermione, Mr. Weasley explained, "Professor Dumbledore wants to talk with you about your plans."

"We won't do anything dangerous, Professor," Hermione began at once, earnestly. "We just can't sit around knowing that we could be helping Harry. And we really might be able to find something useful."

"My intention was not to dissuade you," Dumbledore told her gently. "I'm here merely to assist you, as your parents asked me to. In fact, I've brought you a rather large selection of relevant texts from the Hogwarts library, as well as a few volumes of my own." He waved his wand, and a battered-looking school trunk sailed in from the sitting room. Its trunk popped open, and Hermione, leaning in, saw that it was stacked with books apparently numerous rows deep, far beyond where the bottom of the trunk ought to have been.

"Thank you, sir," she said, standing back in awe.

"I admit that I perused the most relevant of these myself as soon as I had learned of Harry's accident, and found nothing," said Dumbledore humbly. "Indeed--not to be too immodest--but my ignorance of the spell rather suggests that it is not contained in any of these books. However, we are all fallible, and you may very well spot something that I, in my age, did not."

"What about records of Death Eater attacks?" asked Ginny at once. "Mum and Dad saved a lot of Prophets from when they were in the first Order of the Phoenix, but the Prophet doesn't always tell you everything, and neither does the Ministry."

"Ah, Miss Weasley," said Dumbledore appreciatively. "The Order's own records of known attacks are also included, although you may not find them enjoyable reading."

"I understand," said Ginny resolutely.

"We wondered if it might have been a Death Eater that used to work for the Ministry," George said.

"Do you know any Death Eaters who used to be Obliviators?" finished Fred.

"Unfortunately, I do not," said Dumbledore with a sigh. "Rather too much of an anonymous grind for the Death Eater type, I suspect. Nevertheless, again, I do not assert that none exist--only that we know of none. I think it would be not be pointless for you to look over the lists of all wizards and witches in pay of the Obliviation Office in the last, say, fifty years. You may find a name we had not realized was connected with them."

Fred and George glanced at one another, as though deciding whether to take on the job, and then both turned to Dumbledore and nodded.

"I'll bring them to you as soon as possible," Dumbledore promised. "Now, alas, other pressing business draws me, and we must say farewell for now. Thank you for permitting your children to assist us," he added, speaking to Mr. and Mrs Weasley.

Mr. Weasley nodded. Mrs Weasley took her husband's hand.

"And thank you, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Miss Weasley and Miss Granger," Dumbledore finished, making another of his sweeping bows. "Adieu." The adult Weasleys walked him down to the Burrow's gate.

"You wouldn't've thought he'd bring it here himself, would you?" said Ron.

"Fred, look," said George, crouching down in front of the trunk. "Look at the initials."

"It's Dumbledore's school trunk," boggled Fred.

They slid into chairs around the kitchen table and looked at the trunk.

"Well, I suppose we should get started," said Hermione, reaching into the trunk and drawing out Modified Charms and their Specific Results (Vol. 3: Charms to Affect a Human Subject's Mind).

"Better put our stuff away first," said Ron, tucking the Quaffle under his arm.

"Right," agreed Ginny, rubbing her sleeve over the muddy mark it had left on the table.

After collecting the four brooms leaning against the outside oft he house, the two youngest Weasleys stepped out into the drizzle, making their way through the damp summer air to the shed.

Inside the shed, Ron stared up at the unsanded beams supporting the roof. "What do we do if we can't fix Harry?" he asked.

Ginny propped the brooms against the wall. "You mean you and me and Hermione and all, or everyone?"

"I dunno," said Ron, shifting uncomfortably. The rain pattered on the wood outside.