Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Children of the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 12412 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Four
“I need to talk to you, Potter.”
Harry blinked. He recognized Cormac McLaggen, but he couldn’t think why he would need to talk to him, and right in the middle of breakfast, too. But he leaned back at the Hufflepuff table and shrugged. “All right.”
“Not here.” McLaggen darted his eyes around. He got a little white when Cedric Diggory stood up and began making his way over. Cedric was only a third-year, but he was still taller than McLaggen, and he had a leopard familiar. “It’s about—it’s about something private. Your family.”
“Do you know Harry’s family?” Cedric was looming behind Harry and scowled. Nebulous, his familiar, was bronze, but he had a threatening growl, and he put his paws on the table and reared up until he was almost McLaggen’s height. “Wouldn’t have thought it of you. Don’t they all live in the Muggle world, Harry?”
“Yes.” Harry frowned a little. Cedric was acting like McLaggen had come over here to bully him, which wasn’t the case. And if it was a private matter, then they should talk about it in private, although Harry couldn’t imagine the circumstances where McLaggen would have come to know either Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon. He stood up. “It’s all right, Cedric. I’m going to go talk to him.”
“Alone?”
“Of course not. I have Golden.”
Cedric opened his mouth, and Harry honestly thought he was about to say that wasn’t enough. Then he nodded and said, still with a scowl, “Well, let me know if you need anything, Harry.” He went back to sitting down.
Harry could see his other friends watching worriedly from their House tables, but he waved at them and went away with McLaggen. Golden was slithering beside him, glowing brighter than ever as a few of the runes on his back lit up. McLaggen didn’t seem stupid to Harry, and he wouldn’t attack.
When they were out in the corridor, McLaggen pulled Harry around a corner and cast a charm that Harry didn’t recognize. He watched in interest as it lit the air around them blue. “What’s that do?”
“It tells me if there’s anyone following us or anything like that,” McLaggen said, and tucked his wand away. He was staring intently into Harry’s eyes. “You know I have lots of connections in the Ministry?”
“No.”
McLaggen looked thrown by that. “Oh. Well, I do.” He petted his lizard for a second when Antonio poked his head out from under his hair. “And my family has lots of important people in it.” He started sounding more confident again. Harry petted Golden’s head and waited. So far, this didn’t sound like it had much to do with him.
“They were all outraged when they heard about what happened to you.”
“What happened to me?”
McLaggen coughed and nodded grimly to him. “You don’t have to pretend in front of me, Pot—Harry. I know how awful it must have been living with those Muggles. You said yourself that they pushed you down the stairs, and manhandled you, and tried to take food away from you.”
“They tried. Golden stopped them, mostly.”
“No one’s familiar has that many defensive runes on them unless it wasn’t ‘mostly,’” McLaggen said flatly. He looked upset. “Anyway, I wanted you to know that an investigation’s started. It has to be hush-hush for now, but it’ll get out in the open soon enough. They just need to collect enough evidence on the Muggles to keep you from having to go back to them.”
Harry hesitated, his hand resting on Golden’s scales, and over a rune. McLaggen was all concerned about him, but it seemed to Harry that there was someone else who needed help more. “What about Professor Quirrell?”
“What about him?” Again McLaggen looked thrown. Harry really hoped it wasn’t because he had a golden familiar and he cared about Professor Quirrell. That was just sad, the way everyone he met expected people with golden familiars to care only about themselves.
“I want them to start an investigation to help him.”
McLaggen stared. Then he shook his head. “Why would my relatives want to help him? He’s an adult, he can help himself. Besides, he only has a bronze rabbit.”
So at least part of it is because of where he stands on the hierarchy. Harry folded his arms and glared. “Then I’ll refuse to let them help me.”
“You can’t. What are you going to do?”
“Wait until someone comes to talk to me, and then say I was joking and you misunderstood. Or just that you misunderstood,” Harry added, seeing the wide-eyed, horrified way McLaggen was looking at him. When he thought about that, Harry knew why. It would be horrible to joke about people hurting someone.
“You—they would take your word, because you have a golden familiar.”
“Right.” Draco had insisted that Harry read a lot of books about the history of golden familiars that were mostly depressing, but Harry remembered that part. Unless he willingly took Veritaserum or he contradicted Pensieve memories or something like that, they would have to believe him when he spoke. They’d have to take his word and not doubt it, or only say they did in private. And that was really bad manners.
McLaggen just stood there with his hand on his lizard. Then he burst out, “Don’t you want to be helped? Uncle Tiberius said—”
“I want all people to be helped.” Harry stood up more strongly and looked McLaggen right in the eye. “For whatever reason, none of the adults here are helping Professor Quirrell. Maybe because they can’t see the snake or they hate him, I don’t know. But I know. I want to create a world where people with all colors of familiar are respected, McLaggen. I can’t take special privileges for myself if I want to do that.”
“But.” McLaggen sat down on the floor suddenly. “That means you might go back to those filthy Muggles and suffer some more!”
“But you only care so much because I have Golden. Don’t you?”
“Well.” McLaggen looked at Golden, then at him. “Yes.”
“So that’s not the best reason for caring,” Harry said, and sighed a little when McLaggen only shook his head as if he didn’t understand. “I want to help Professor Quirrell. You said that your relatives in the Ministry are powerful. They should be able to get an investigation started, shouldn’t they? They wouldn’t want a dangerous or sick professor around their children.” Or a possessed one. But Harry didn’t know if he was yet, which meant he would keep his mouth shut until he knew.
“They’re going to be upset when I come to them twice in a row.”
“Say whatever you want. I trust you to know what you should say better than me.”
McLaggen looked a little cheered-up at that, but not happy. He stood up and studied Harry with his head on one side. “I have no idea why you’re so different from the way I was told people with a golden familiar would be.”
“Growing up in the Muggle world. The hierarchy doesn’t matter to me.”
“What does?”
“People.”
McLaggen looked baffled, but he nodded and walked off, only raising a hand once when it seemed as though Antonio would overbalance and topple off his shoulder. Harry went back into the Great Hall and just had time to eat a little more at the Hufflepuff table before it vanished and they had to go to classes.
“I’m fine, Cedric,” he told Cedric patiently when he tried to examine him.
Cedric only nodded and turned to talk to a few of the older Hufflepuffs. Harry shook his head and left with Neville in tow.
They caught up with Hermione outside the Great Hall, since they had Potions with the Ravenclaws this morning. “Harry!” Hermione was practically bouncing next to him. “What did McLaggen want?”
“He wanted to rescue me.” Hermione looked puzzled, and Harry just shook his head and said, “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
Hermione nodded slowly, and then looked over her shoulder. “I thought the fourth-year Hufflepuffs had different classes right now.”
Harry looked himself. The two boys were some of the ones Cedric had been talking about. He shrugged. “They can do whatever they want. Come on.” He started walking briskly, but of course Golden flowed faster than he did. That always ended up happening. Harry smiled fondly at Golden, and received a blunt head pushing into his hip.
Hermione kept looking at the boys, who followed them down to the dungeons, up to Snape’s classroom door, and then turned around once they entered. Harry shrugged again when she tried to say something about it. Honestly, he thought Cedric might have chosen the boys to guard him or something.
But it was a silly thing to suspect. His friends and people like McLaggen had good reason to worry about Harry. Older students in Hufflepuff didn’t, and Harry said hello and good-bye to Cedric and that was about it. Most likely, the boys had followed them down to watch Golden. People did that all the time, to see what a golden familiar looked like and how he moved.
If people could just see that I was ordinary, it would be so much better for them and for me, Harry thought wistfully as he took his seat and prepared to set up his cauldron.
*
Hermione pushed her hair out of her mouth and waved to Terry Boot, who she’d been studying for their Transfiguration exam with. “I’ll be back in a minute, Terry. I see someone I want to talk to.”
“All right,” Terry muttered, with a shrug that made his bronze butterfly familiar have to fly up and then resettle on his hand. Hermione smiled. The other Ravenclaws had already come to terms with her tendency to have friends in other Houses, even though most of them were pretty standoffish and only made friends in Ravenclaw. It helped a lot that Hermione had a silver familiar, she thought.
“Which is silly,” she told Regina, who chattered in agreement. “Just because they think that familiars show magical strength…I would be impressive even if you were tin! And Harry is just a natural leader anyway.”
Regina nipped her, probably for the tin comment. Hermione turned a sharp corner around a bookshelf and surprised McLaggen just as he was taking down a book on defensive Charms.
“What do you want, Granger?” he asked gruffly.
“I know that you said something important to Harry the other day,” she said. “And then I saw you walking away from him, looking dumbfounded.” That wasn’t unusual around Harry, but Hermione liked to know why. “What happened?”
McLaggen’s eyes started to gleam as he looked at her. Most of the time, Hermione would be wary. It usually meant that the student whose eyes were gleaming wanted her help with homework. But in this case, it was probably something else. So she set her feet and looked back at him undaunted.
“You’re smart,” McLaggen said. “And you have a silver familiar, and you’re a Ravenclaw, not someone in Harry’s own House they might think was being influenced by him. Not in my House either, come to think of it. Maybe you could convince my relatives.”
“Of what?”
“Come on, Granger, and I’ll tell you.”
Hermione followed McLaggen, a little worried that she might be betraying Harry, but not really. If it was anything terrible, then she would just walk away and not engage with him.
She was smart, and Regina would eat his lizard if he tried anything.
*
Jan: Harry will try that if he can, but it's by no means his primary goal right now.
Boudreaux: Yes, the word complete was a mistake! Thsi was originally a one-shot, and then I started adding the other chapters much later. Glad you like it!
- 9
- 10
- 11
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Children of the Sun