The Changing of the Guard

The Changing of the Guard (A "Harry Potter and the Legacy of the Light" Companion Piece) By: Gramarye

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The last thing [Harry] heard before his senses deserted him was a deep murmuring, and the thready voice saying in a low snarl, quite different from its original tone:

"Those blasted Muggles--good riddance to them."

-- "Harry Potter and the Legacy of the Light", Chapter Two

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I hadn't expected such a dramatic reaction, but then again from what I knew of Harry Potter he was not known for doing things by halves.

The boy's legs gave way beneath him as he swayed and started to fall backwards. The cage slipped from his slackening fingers, and thesnowy owl within let out a startled, angry squawk as the cage hit the ground.

Fortunately, I had set the trunk on the front walk before ringing the bell, and was able to break his fall somewhat. As he collapsed into my arms, Arabella threw open the door all the way.

"Get him in, get him in!" she hissed, grabbing for the cage. "The neighbours might see you!"

Manoeuvring boy, cage, and trunk through the narrow front doorway and into the tiny foyer was no small task, especially not with an elderly woman who seemed to be doing her best to block my every move. She slipped behind me and slammed the door the second both boy and belongings were inside, and immediately began to slide locks and deadbolts into place.

I stood and waited, holding him, until the last chain latch had slid home and she had turned to face me.

Her hair was starting to come loose from the mass of hairpins on top of her head, and wisps of grey were falling into her face and sticking out every which way. Her expression was flat and unreadable, but I noticed that she did not meet my gaze. Her attention was fixed on the unconscious child in my arms.

"Come along," she said brusquely, with a jerk of her head toward the back of the house. "You can put him upstairs."

* * *

My 'upstairs' was the guest bedroom Harry had used when he was younger. Living in a glorified two-up-two-down doesn't allow much room for visitors, but he'd stayed so often that it was easier to set up a bed for him than to put him on a couch with blankets.

Not that he would have minded either way. Anything was better than a cupboard under the stairs.

The floorboards creaked like a shot as Stanton started to climb the stairs behind me.

"Watch your head," I warned him, over my shoulder. "The ceiling's lower than it looks."

Dutifully, he bent his head, and held the boy closer to his chest.

We reached the top without incident, and I led him the few steps to the closed bedroom door.

"Through here." I opened the door and felt for the light switch. Since it was starting to get dark outside, and the bedroom was on the side of the house that only caught the morning sunlight, the room looked like the inside of a cave. Flicking the switch didn't help--with the lights on, the room looked like the inside of a half-lit cave.

I made a note to add brighter bulbs to my shopping list.

I'd given the house a good scrubbing only a few days before, so the room was dusted and the sheets on the spare bed were freshly laundered. I set to work at once, plumping pillows and turning down blankets, drawing the curtain and fiddling with the bedside clock, all nice domestic tasks that I could use as a cover to have a better look at both of them.

Stanton was impossibly immaculate. He looked none--good god, did his trousers still have the creases in them?--none the worse for carrying a dead weight up a full flight of stairs. And the bland look on his face didn't fool me for a second--I could feel his eyes on me the entire time, watching me as I ran about the room like some half- trained chambermaid.

Harry, on the other hand, looked a mess. He was wearing a shirt and trousers that had probably once belonged to his fat slob of a cousin. But even allowing for Muggle togs several sizes too big, he seemed to be swimming in his clothes. What was more, he was too thin, and his face had no colour to it. He looked like one of those awful leaflets they post in the shops with starving children's faces on them, hungry and haunted eyes staring at you accusingly from a smearily-printed sheet of paper.

I suddenly found myself feeling very glad that his eyes were closed.

Stanton waited until I'd arranged the sheets and pillows before laying Harry down on the bed. He made short work of things then, removing only the boy's shoes and glasses before pulling the bedclothes up to his neck. It was just as well--I didn't have any night clothes for him to wear, and we'd left his trunk downstairs.

There was something rather odd about the two of them, Harry lying in the bed and Stanton standing over him, doing little things to make him more comfortable. Adjusting the blankets. Loosening the collar of his shirt. Putting the glasses on the night table, the shoes beneath the bed. He soon finished tucking Harry in, but before he straightened up he paused, one hand resting on the boy's forehead.

"Sleep easy, child," he murmured, so softly that I almost didn't hear him at first. "You're safe here."

Harry made a little noise that sounded like a gasp or a sigh, and seemed to sink deeper beneath the bedclothes.

I had to ask the obvious question, of course, but for some reason it didn't want to come out. When it finally did, it sounded more like a frog's death croak than actual human speech. "Did...did you...."

"No," he said in the same quiet voice, not taking his eyes off the boy. "It's a natural sleep, fortunately. From the look of things, it's something he hasn't had in some time."

Now, I know for a fact that Stanton has no family of his own, but as his hand moved to brush the hair out of Harry's shuttered face he looked exactly like a father putting his child to bed.

At that point it was only a good half-century of rigorous training that kept me from shivering.

And the fact that he was wearing glasses didn't help matters, either. As he stepped away from the bed, he passed between me and the window, and the weak light from one of the table lamps caught and reflected in the lenses of his glasses.

Hell's bells. For half a second, he looked far too much like James Potter for anyone's comfort.

"....the clock round."

I blinked, and there he was, right in front of me. He'd been talking the whole time, and I'd been so busy woolgathering and seeing ghosts that I'd missed whatever it was he'd said to me.

"Eh? What was that?" Brilliant response, Figg. Now he'll think you're deaf, as well as mad.

"I said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he slept the clock round." He gave me a Very Concerned look. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing," I said quickly, and turned toward the door. He may think what he likes, but he'll see soon enough that I've not forgotten how to entertain company. Even his kind of company. "Come into the kitchen--you'll stay for tea."

* * *

It was not an invitation; it fell more along the lines of a royal command. I followed her into the hall and down the stairs, pausing only to pick up my briefcase from the front hall before following her into the kitchen.

The electric kettle on the kitchen countertop looked to be more of an electrocution kettle--it was sitting in a shallow pool of water that looked ready to overflow the counter and drip onto the floor. Muttering a few choice words, Arabella ripped the plug out of its outlet, then tossed a dishcloth at the kettle to soak up the spilled water. She grabbed a regular kettle and began to fill it from the tap, keeping her back to me the entire time.

"What a charming place you have here," I said, falling back on the usual social niceties to break her self-imposed silence. "I must say, it's very...." I turned a few possible adjectives over in my mind, and settled on one that I thought suited the situation best. "Muggle."

"Don't you start." She flung the kettle onto the cooker to boil and spun around, levelling a glare at me. "Now, what's going on?"

From the moment she had opened the front door, I'd been wondering if she had any idea as to what she was expected to do this summer. Her question merely clinched the matter.

Well. That would change things considerably.

"Your guess is as good as mine," I said, only half hearing myself. I would have to leave a note; there was no sense in waking the boy unnecessarily.

"My guess?" She squinted at me, and folded her arms across her chest. "Well, I don't have Harry Potter keeling over on my front doorstep every day, y'know. And I certainly don't have Will Stanton showing up with him and acting like a delivery man who's just popped round to drop off a parcel, either."

"Indeed." She was right, at that. "Would you mind if I sat down?"

* * *

I wouldn't have minded throttling him if I hadn't known that it wouldn't do me any good. The Boy Who Lived (and I hope they sacked the brilliant journalistic mind who first dreamed up that disgusting turn of phrase) was upstairs doing his best impression of a wet dishrag, and Stanton had the nerve to sit there and dig through his briefcase as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Perhaps he didn't realise the situation I was in.

"First of all," I said to him, trying to keep my voice low and even, "I get a letter from Albus Dumbledore, asking if I would be so kind as to let Sirius Black spend a day or two with me on the way to meet up with his old friend, Remus Lupin."

He had pulled out a sheet of paper from somewhere, and a pen, and now he was tapping the pen with his finger and frowning.

"Damn," he murmured, and glanced up at me. "I seem to be out of ink. Could I trouble you for a pen?"

There was a biro on the counter, the one I'd used to mark that morning's paper. I nearly snapped it in two before I could pick it up properly and hand it to him.

"Thank you," he said as he took it from me. He resettled his glasses on his nose, and started to write.

Perhaps I needed to make myself a bit more clear.

"And then, just as I've finished adjusting exactly twenty-seven distinctly complicated wards to allow a CONVICTED MURDERER to pass through them, I find out that Black's an Animagus, of ALL things, and I have to let a ruddy great DOG kip on my nice clean couch and do you know how much a beast like that SHEDS?" Stick to the facts, woman--he's not going to care about dog hair on your furniture. "And of course he up and vanishes in the middle of the night without so much as a by-your-leave, and he's not been gone two days when I get ANOTHER lovely letter from Albus that purports to be an explanation but makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and now I've got Harry Potter out cold in my spare bedroom and the bloody Watchman of the Light sitting at my kitchen table and he's not even LISTENING to me!"

"I have been listening, madam," he said, though he never took his eyes from the paper and the pen never stopped moving. "I only wanted to finish this note to Mr. Potter in case you'd rather I left...before the neighbours saw."

* * *

It wasn't easy to keep from smiling when her jaw dropped open.

I knew that I was being rather unfair to her. She had, after all, spent fifteen years living amongst non-magical folk, completely isolated, unable to use her power for even the smallest of tasks. And now she had been confronted by her old life just when the wizarding world was in a state of confusion--and a state of denial that there was anything to be confused about.

On the other hand, anyone who agrees to operate undercover ought to keep in mind that they will have to come out someday. Today had simply happened to be Arabella Figg's day.

The kettle went off just then, a whistling blast of steam that jolted Arabella out of her stunned immobility. Without a word, she picked up the kettle and poured a little bit of the boiling water into an old china teapot. She swirled the water in the teapot and emptied it into the sink, then repeated the process.

The splash of water and the clanking of spoons against crockery were the only noises in the room as I finished the letter. I took an envelope from my bag, slipped the folded sheet inside and sealed the whole thing. I glanced up to see Arabella gazing out the tiny kitchen window, fingering the edge of the faded curtain with one hand.

"Incorrigible snoops, the lot of them," she grunted, without any of the anger of a moment before. "Always peering through their lacy little curtains and poking their noses over your garden fence."

"It sounds tiresome," I commisserated.

She let out a short, barking laugh. "I can't believe I'm telling you this, but I've almost gotten used to it." Turning, she picked up an empty mug and waved it in front of my nose. "Black or white?"

"Black, no sugar."

I watched as she poured a generous amount into the mug and set it before me. "Thank you," I said. "That's most kind."

She poured for herself and added two spoonfuls of sugar from the bowl on the table. "Now you tell me," she said firmly as she sank into the chair opposite mine, "what's this all about? Did Albus send you?"

"Send me?" The idea of being regarded as Albus Dumbledore's personal courier service was hardly an appealing one. "Quite the contrary. I was heading into town today and happened to travel by way of King's Cross. Since the Hogwarts summer holidays started today as well, Mr. Potter was also at the station when I arrived." I sipped at the strong, scalding tea, letting it wash the taste of envelope adhesive out of my mouth. "Coincidentally, we happened to be travelling in the same direction."

"Hmph." The look on her face was deeply skeptical. "That's a likely story. Nothing's ever coincidence with YOU."

"We happened to be travelling in the same direction," I repeated, very deliberately, "so I offered to share a taxi. I was present when he was unceremoniously turned away from Privet Drive. I knew you were living close by, and I thought you would rather have him here with you than anywhere else." Which was mostly true.

Her expression grew stormy.

"Blasted Muggles," she growled. I couldn't tell whether she was referring to the ones currently living on Privet Drive or the ones who had left. For that matter, it could have easily been both.

"Quite. But for a boy who's supposed to be the saviour of the wizarding world, he really ought to be better supervised." It wasn't entirely my place to say so, but considering the fact that he had been left essentially to his own devices in the middle of a north London train station I felt that the point had to be made. "He would have followed me wherever I led him. I could have handed him over to Voldemort himself, and he wouldn't have known...or cared."

* * *

That did it. I wasn't about to sit with my hands in my lap and be lectured like a spotty-faced schoolgirl--not by THIS creature, certainly.

"Look, I heard they'd done a bunk," I snapped at him. "Sent in a report about it, too, through the usual channels. I thought that Albus had made other arrangements for him."

"Other arrangements?" He raised an eyebrow at that. "But you are Mr. Potter's legal guardian, am I right?"

Oh. Oh. So that's what he was getting at. Why couldn't he just SAY so and be done with it, like any sensible person?

"In Muggle eyes...yes," I had to admit. "But if Black is...no, that's a stupid question." I shook my head. "I'm left holding the baby in this, then."

He actually smiled at that, though the smile was mostly hidden behind the rim of his mug. "In a manner of speaking."

Well, whatever manner it was said in, it still made no sense. "I thought for certain Albus would have him live with those Weasley friends of his. At least until everything else was sorted out."

He took another sip and set his mug aside. "With the events of the last few weeks, could you blame him for the oversight? He is only human, after all."

I don't know what possessed me to say the first thing that came into my head, but I did. "Why does that sound like an insult, coming from you?"

His eyes narrowed, and I would've sworn that I could hear him bristle.

"Really, madam," he said coldly, fixing me with a frigid stare. "You know me better than that."

"Do I?" I'd meant my reply to come out in the same cold tone he'd used, but it didn't sound quite the same.

He studied me with that icy glint of his for few more seconds, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again a second later the ice was gone, as if it had never been there at all--and somehow that made my skin crawl more than his accusing stare had.

"I would hope so," he said, as easily as if the last half-minute hadn't happened. "But speaking of knowing, I must say that I'm a bit confused as to why you seem so surprised to see me. I would have thought that the perimeter wards you spoke of would have detected me."

I scowled at him, and drained my own mug. "My wards are designed to detect wizards and witches and any number of Dark creatures...not you." And that raised another unsettling thought--what else could have slipped past them? I'd nearly taken Black's sorry pelt off his back when he told me that he'd been the one who'd set off the wards two years ago, but it didn't change the fact that he'd still come far too close to Harry.

And there was that damnable hint of a smile again. "As there's only one of me, you can hardly be faulted for that."

"You know what I mean," I said, scooping up the mugs and half-empty teapot before shoving my chair away from the table. "You. Your sort, of which you happen to be the only one. And don't look at me like I've just been and gone and fallen asleep in your class--there's absolutely no reason for you to be following Harry Potter around. He's not your responsibility."

I turned the tap, and the water drumming into the sink nearly drowned out his reply:

"Isn't he?"

* * *

"Of course he's not yo--"

There was a clatter and a stifled crash, as if she had tried and failed to catch the crockery that slipped from her fingers and fell into the sink. She gripped the edge of the counter with one hand, and with the other she fumbled for the tap to turn off the running water.

The rush of water gurgled down the drain, and there was silence in the kitchen for a long moment.

"I'm a stupid old woman," she said at last, a statement that sounded more like a long sigh. "I should have guessed as much. Some guardian I've turned out to be, eh?"

"The wizarding world does not have the resources to fight the Dark Lord alone." I didn't want her thinking that she'd somehow been derelict in her duties. "Voldemort has called upon powers that only the Light knows how to combat--it would be perfectly logical for his opponents to seek the assistance of the Light."

She turned around and leaned against the counter. One corner of her mouth twitched upwards in a quirk of smile. "So what you're saying is that Albus decided it was high time to call in the professionals?"

"You can think of it that way, if you like," I replied dryly. "Though you must admit that my rates are better and I'm not one for long tea-breaks."

She chuckled at that, and looked a little less dour. "What a way to start the summer."

"To put it mildly."

A shadow suddenly crossed her face, and she glanced up at the ceiling. "Say, is he...all right? I mean...you know...all right?"

"That I don't know," I admitted truthfully. "He was in a bad way when I first met him, and today's events won't have helped matters any. But a summer spent with you will do him a world of good."

That said, I picked up my briefcase and stood, pushing in my chair. "And now I really must be going."

* * *

"Going?" Talk about an abrupt way to end a conversation. "Where are you off to?"

He clasped his hands on top of his briefcase. "I've done what I came for. Mr. Potter is home, or in as close to a home as he has at the moment. And with Mrs. Arabella Figg to watch over him, no one need fear for his safety and comfort."

I didn't know whether to blush or smack him for the flattery, so I simply said, "If you say so."

He held out the sealed envelope that held the letter he'd written. "Will you give this to him for me? And please tell him I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer."

"To Harry?" I took the envelope and turned it over in my hands. "What does it say?"

"That he should listen to every word you say and not make any trouble for you," he replied genially.

"Harry Potter, make trouble?" I had to laugh as I walked him to the door and started to undo all the locks. "You know full well that he doesn't have to MAKE it."

"Very true." He paused with his hand on the doorknob, and looked me full in the face. "Take care, madam. I'm certain Mr. Potter will have a number of questions to ask you when he wakes. You know where I can be found, if you have need of me."

"Let me see if I can translate that into something approaching normal speech," I said with a smirk. "'Watch your back, don't fuss the boy too much, and I'll be spending the entire summer shut up in my office.' That about right?"

"Close enough." He took my hand, and gave a little bow over it in the old-fashioned way that he had. (It reminded me of when I was a girl, of the way my father's friends would do the same thing when they left after calling at our house.) "Thank you for the tea, and good evening to you."

And he was gone, and the door closed behind him.

My mind was racing as I started to lock up, but I hadn't even turned the first deadbolt when all of a sudden I remembered that Stanton and Harry had both come in a taxi. That taxi would have been long gone by now--and it was a long walk to London.

Hastily, I opened the door, and called after him. "Should I call a--?"

But there was no one there. The street was completely deserted, without so much as a stray dog in sight.

"...cab," I finished, rather lamely.

Well, that was that.

Oh, well. No sense in worrying about him--he'd get to wherever he had to go all right. My concern was for the one upstairs...or rather, what I was going to feed him when he woke up and wanted to know what he was getting for breakfast.

But Stanton did have a point. Harry was his responsibility, and mine, too, and I knew what my responsibility was. Those blasted Muggles had treated the boy like dirt all his life, and now that he was in my keeping he was going to have a real summer holiday for once.

Hmph. Trust a Watchman to let you know when the watching stops and the doing begins.

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Gramarye [email protected] http://gramarye.freehosting.net/ May 3rd, 2003