Harry Potter and the Legacy of the Light

Harry Potter and the Legacy of the Light
A Harry Potter/The Dark Is Rising Sequence Fusion
By: Gramarye

Chapter Three - A Bit of Breakfast

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Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives.

-- Maurice Chevalier

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Harry opened his eyes, and his heart sank.

He was in Mrs. Figg's spare bedroom, in the same room where he had
spent so many hours of his younger years. Whenever the Dursleys had
wanted to go somewhere without him--which occurred with increasing
frequency as Harry grew older--they would pack him off to spend a day
or a weekend or a fortnight with Mrs. Figg. Harry knew the spare bed
well: a not very soft mattress, lumpy pillows, and stray cat hairs on
the blankets made it uninviting even to the sleepiest child.

Despite the uncomfortable bed, he had apparently had a decent night's
sleep. He felt refreshed, or at least less tired than he had been. Either
would have been a marked improvement.

He idly wondered why Mrs. Figg hadn't come in to wake him. The sun
was fairly high in the sky, and the battered clock on the small night table
read 11.28 AM. The Dursleys would probably be back soon, and then--

He sat bolt upright, a thin sweat breaking out on his forehead. The
Dursleys wouldn't be back. They were gone. They had moved away,
and he didn't know where they were.

He had imagined this scenario many, many times in his most pleasant
daydreams, but to be confronted with the stark reality was another
matter entirely. The Dursleys, horrid as they were, were also a
familiar part of his life. Without them....

A pair of soft, fluffy slippers sat on the rug next to his bed. He stuffed
his feet into them and padded out of the bedroom, heading for the
bathroom across the hall.

In the bathroom, he splashed cool water on his face and rinsed out his
mouth, which tasted furry and nasty for want of proper brushing. There
was no comb or hairbrush in sight, so he ran his hand under the cold
water tap and finger-combed his unruly hair into submission. His
toilet completed, he left the bathroom and headed downstairs.

He crept down the carpeted stairs, carefully avoiding the third one
from the bottom, which always creaked when stepped on.

"Mrs. Figg?" he said hesitantly, peering around the doorframe into the
kitchen.

Mrs. Figg was standing at the kitchen counter, wrestling with an old
electric kettle that stood in a puddle of water. The puddle seemed to
be growing larger by the minute, flooding the countertop and beginning
to drip onto the floor. She was mumbling to herself, and Harry caught
a few words that he had last heard during one of Ron's particularly
colourful outbursts after a confrontation with Draco Malfoy.

"Ouch!" She jerked her hand away from the kettle as a fine spray of
scalding water erupted from bottom of the spout. "Blasted Muggle
contraptions," she said vehemently, almost spitting out the words.
"Can't even make bloody hot water, let alone a decent cup of tea."
She wrenched the plug from its wall socket and violently flung the
unfortunate appliance into the sink.

This could not be the batty old woman who had looked after him since
he could remember, who had passed the time by showing him yellowing
snapshots of her countless cats. It looked like her, and sounded like
her, but the Mrs. Figg he knew would never use such language, or get so
upset over a malfunctioning electric kettle. She was wearing a simple
housedress with a painfully flowery print and a mismatched scarf over
her almost white hair. Baggy tights that had seen better days and ratty
carpet slippers completed her outfit, which was exactly the same as
every other outfit he had ever seen her wear...yet as he looked more
closely at it, he thought that it looked somehow wrong. Mrs. Figg
looked like an old woman--or rather, someone's concept of how an
old woman should look. It was too accurate, too 'correct', like a
costume worn to a fancy dress party.

In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he came to realise that
Mrs. Figg looked too much like a typical old age pensioner to actually
be one.

"Mrs. Figg?" he repeated, moving from behind the doorframe and standing
just outside the kitchen.

His elderly neighbor whirled around. She glared at him with unfocused
eyes, as if she wasn't really seeing him. "Would you believe it? Prefect
and Head Girl at Hogwarts, countless hours of training, nearly forty
years in the field, undercover operations, counterintelligence activities,
Ministry commendations for this, that, and the other, and look at what
it's come to!" She pointed to the discarded kettle lying forlornly in the
sink. "Wrestling with leaky teapots like...like a blasted Muggle!"

She stood there after finishing her tirade, silently fuming. Slowly,
her angry scowl faded and her anger dissipated. She let out a long,
exhausted sigh.

"Eh, I'm sorry, Harry," she said sincerely, smoothing her dress with
her hands. "It's just that I haven't seen another wizard or witch for
so long...it builds up, you see. Your friend got the full brunt of it,
I fear, once we got you to bed."

Though he was still a little dazed from processing the entirely new
information, her last words clicked in Harry's mind. "My friend...my
friend...Professor Stanton? Is he still here?"

Mrs. Figg shook her head. "No, no. He had to be going, but he stayed
long enough to be sure that you were sleeping naturally. Will Stanton
always was a good man, once you got to know him...if he wasn't being
too cryptic, that is. We had a little chat, once you were in bed. He
wanted me to give you this--"

She held up a plain white envelope, and with a flick of her wrist, she
tossed it to land neatly on the kitchen table. Harry moved to pick it
up, but the elderly woman darted between him and the table with a
speed and dexterity that startled him.

"Ah!" she said imperiously, holding up a bony finger. "Not until
you've had some breakfast. It looks like tea's off...." She glared
at the electric kettle. "How about a bit of egg and toast?"

Harry's stomach, whose last encounter with food had been a pumpkin
pasty on the Hogwarts Express the day before, gurgled and rumbled
loudly at the welcome suggestion. Harry flushed a deep embarrassed
red, but Mrs. Figg merely smiled.

"I'll take that as a yes." She busied herself pulling out crockery
and pots and pans and ingredients. Harry, used to cooking for himself,
started to help, but Mrs. Figg shooed him to the table and told him to
sit. "You're not to do any cooking while you're here...you're supposed
to be on holiday, remember? And since you're not living with those
blasted Muggles anymore, you don't need to worry about the washing
up, either. Just sit and relax for once."

Harry sat, feeling very useless but not wanting to disobey Mrs. Figg.
He fiddled with a corner of the frayed tablecloth. "So you're really
a witch?" he asked, and regretted the obvious question as soon as it
left his mouth.

"Though it might not seem like it at the moment, I am," she replied
casually, tossing eggshells into the dustbin. "And if you'll wait until
this toast is done, I'll tell you more."

Once the meal was ready, she slid a plate heaped with her concept of
"a bit of egg and toast", which turned out to be several fried eggs,
rashers of crisp bacon, and large slices of thickly-buttered toast in
front of Harry. He ate hungrily, devouring the breakfast as if he
expected it to vanish before he could finish it all...which to some
extent, he did. It tasted better than most food had for a while, but
he chalked that up to hunger and lack of proper sleep, as well as the
fact that it had been cooked expressly for him.

"Yes, Harry, I'm a witch," Mrs. Figg said conversationally as he chewed
and swallowed. "And a damned good one, if I do say so myself. Since
those Muggle relatives of your mother's have decided to do a bunk on
you, I'm going to be your guardian from now on. I obtained papers long
ago, in case something like this should happen. You'll spend your
summers here--unless you have some place you'd rather go."

"Where did they go? The Dursleys, I mean," said Harry through a
mouthful of bacon and toast.

"Who knows?" Mrs. Figg shrugged, an expressive gesture that involved
her entire body. She rested one hand on the kitchen table. "Probably
ran off somewhere, hoping no one would know or care that they'd be
leaving you behind. Trying to get away from magic, from 'freaks' like
us. Stupid of them, when you stop to think on it--they're far safer
living with you than they would be otherwise."

Seeing Harry's confused stare, she pinched the bridge of her nose
between her thumb and forefinger, trying to sort out her thoughts.
"I've been living here for as long as you can remember, Harry. But I
haven't lived here as long as you might think. I moved in to this
house the night you first arrived at Privet Drive, nearly fifteen years
ago. Can't use magic here, though. Can't even get owl post--it might
look suspect seeing owls flying around in the day. But in any case,
I've been living in this house ever since your parents were taken,
poor dears."

Harry said nothing, but the hand that held his knife trembled slightly
in the act of transferring marmalade from the pot on the table to his
piece of toast. A chunk of orange goo landed on the tablecloth.

Mrs. Figg grabbed a cloth and scooped it up before it could leave a
stain, continuing her story as she did so. "You see, Albus Dumbledore
was concerned that even though you were living with Muggles, someone
might try to find you and harm you before you were old enough to learn
about who you really were. Your parents, may they rest in peace, made
many enemies in their day...and there are more than a few people I
could name who would have preferred that the famous son of James and
Lily Potter be eliminated before he could pose a threat to them, in the
future."

Harry's fork stopped in mid-air. A piece of egg slipped off it and
fell back on his plate. He suddenly didn't feel like eating anymore.

"So that's why I moved in here," Mrs. Figg finished. "To watch over
you, in a way. You've no idea how hard it was to see you so often and
not be able to say anything about who you really were. Especially when
you needed it more than anything else."

"But why couldn't I have lived with you instead?" Harry asked, dropping
his fork with a clatter. The tight ball of tension that had sat in his stomach
for the last few weeks had returned, and he felt the beginnings of nausea
swirl in his gut. "Why did I have to spend those miserable years with my
aunt and uncle?"

Mrs. Figg's eyes narrowed. "You don't understand. You had to stay
there, for your own safety."

Harry angrily shoved his chair away from the table. "All I understand
is that I spent the first ten years of my life wishing that I had never
been born! You can't imagine what it was like--"

Quick as a flash, her hand shot out and struck him full in the face,
nearly knocking both him and his chair to the floor. His glasses flew
off and landed on the table, miraculously unharmed. His cheek burned
with the impact as the blood rushed to his face, though the rest of his
body felt icy cold.

They stayed in that position for a long moment, Harry clinging to his
chair and Mrs. Figg standing over him, a frozen tableau.

When she finally spoke, her voice was very soft, but as hard as stone.

"In those ten years, Harry Potter, there were no fewer than seventeen
violent attacks on various towns in Britain, resulting in the deaths of
fourteen people. The Muggle papers described them all as 'unrelated
incidents of violent crime', but there are definite similarities between
each one." There was no sympathy or sorrow in her eyes, just a cold
acceptance of unpleasant facts. "Muggle news doesn't normally get
printed in the Daily Prophet, but these events were. Shall I show you
the clippings, Harry? Would you like to read them?"

Suddenly, Harry's plate, scattered with the remains of his half-eaten
breakfast, was the most fascinating object he had ever seen.

"It isn't coincidence. They were looking for you." An emotionless
statement.

"Why didn't they ever find me? I mean, if they spent so long looking,
and tried so many times...." Harry trailed off weakly as he came to
the awful realisation that he had just wedged his foot even farther
into his mouth.

"I'm ever so glad to hear you place so much faith in my ability," Mrs.
Figg snorted derisively. "This entire area is heavily enchanted with
protection spells. If another witch or wizard besides myself--and you,
of course--were to come within a five mile radius of this house, I'd
know it. It acts as an early warning of sorts. Your Weasley friends
nearly gave me a heart attack when they popped in without warning.
But that's how Arthur Weasley always was--less foresight than a
lovesick squirrel."

She looked back at the sink, filled with the grease-covered skillet
and plates. "If you're done with that, give me the plate," she said
pointedly.

Harry hastily shoveled a few more bites into his mouth, then handed
the nearly-empty plate to Mrs. Figg. She took it without a word,
and turned her back on him.

Feeling rather at a loss, and in desperate need of something to do with
his hands, he fumbled for his glasses and slit open the sealed envelope
that lay next to his plate. He pulled out a letter on thick creamy
paper, written in Professor Stanton's flowing hand.

Dear Mr. Potter [it read],

By now, I assume you've learned what your living
arrangements will be for the summer. Rather
unorthodox, I admit, but it may actually be more
beneficial than you realise. Arabella Figg knows
what she's doing. I doubt you could be in more
capable hands.

My reason for writing is to give you a few words
of advice to help you during this summer. Please
forgive the hasty introduction, but I have little
time and much to write.

First, spend as much time as you can indoors.
Avoid going outside if you can help it. This is
more for your guardian's peace of mind than your
safety, but for heaven's sakes don't tell her I
said that.

Second, let your friends know where you are, but
do so discreetly. Send a letter by regular post
to Miss Granger, telling her that you are not
living with the Dursleys any longer and that all
communications must go to your new address--by
Muggle post only. Stress the need to keep any
contact to a minimum, at least for the time being.
Enclose a copy for Mr. Weasley so she can owl it
to him. Don't worry about messages from your
godfather or anyone else. If your Headmaster
Dumbledore wants them to know where you are,
they'll know soon enough.

Third, do your homework. Now, before you roll
your eyes at me for sounding like a sour old
schoolmaster, hear me out. This coming year will
be one of the most academically, physically, and
emotionally challenging years that you will ever
face, and there is a grave danger that you could
fall behind in your studies if should you happen
to be...shall we say, 'overtaken by events'. This
cannot happen. If you want help, by all means go
to Arabella Figg--she'll be overjoyed to work with
magical studies again, and you couldn't find a
more knowledgeable instructor outside of Hogwarts.

Last, take your time and enjoy the holiday. Rest
up and get your strength back--you may have need
of it sooner than you think.

Until we next meet, I remain,

Will Stanton

Harry folded the letter, and returned it to the envelope.

He looked over at the sink, where Mrs. Figg was still doing the washing
up. She seemed to be putting more effort into the scrubbing than was
necessary, and the plates rattled loudly under her hands. The running
water drummed in a faint staccato rhythm on the metal of the sink.

"Mrs. Figg?" he said, slipping the letter into his pocket.

"What is it, Harry?" she replied shortly.

Harry put on his best confused face, and let a hint of wheedling enter
his voice. "Umm...well, I have a huge essay for Transfiguration that
I need to write, but I don't know where to get started. I want to get
it done as soon as possible, because I have so much else to write for
my other classes. Could you...if you're not too busy...maybe, could
you help me with it, later?"

She stopped dead in act of wiping down the countertop. The soppy
dishrag dropped from her hand, landing with a wet plop on the worn
surface. When she turned around, she was positively beaming, the
brightness of her smile making her wrinkled face look years younger.

"Why didn't you say so, you little brat? Come on, get your parchment,
get your quills and your textbooks! I'll be there in a minute, once I
finish drying. Oh, what I wouldn't give to be allowed to use a bloody
Lavatio spell on this mess!"

As Harry ran up the stairs to collect his school supplies, he came to
the firm conclusion that despite Voldemort's sudden return to power
and the imminent danger that threatened the wizarding world, having a
Dursley-free summer holiday was, at least for now, well worth the
inconvenience.