Harry came to in the living room. He vaguely wondered what he was doing in the living room, of all places, but he remembered getting drunk with Tonks, and assumed his time travelling was just a dream. Content to not have Voldemort-oriented dreams for once, he walked into the kitchen. The Dursleys would be wanting breakfast soon. He started up the stove, and cracked some eggs. The stove looked kinda funny, but Harry shrugged it off. Maybe Vernon got a new one during the ten months he had been away. He finished frying the eggs and went on to the bacon he knew Vernon would want. After he had finished those, he heard footsteps behind him.
"Don't bother yelling at me," he scowled. "Your breakfast is done. I'm going back to my room without taking any, okay?" He waited for a response, but did not hear one. He turned to face his relatives and gasped. There was some unknown woman in her nightgown, gaping at him. She had flowing blonde hair, reminiscent of Fleur Delacour, and green eyes, oddly similar to his own, except her eyes were wide in shock. I didn't know Vernon had a mistress... very odd, and very disturbing... especially since she's so pretty. She shrieked in alarm. He heard footsteps racing down the steps, and the figure rushing down to see what the kerfuffle was, was neither Vernon, Petunia, nor Dudley. It was Charles - his grandfather. So it wasn't just a wonderful dream after all. Charles tried to calm his wife - Harry's grandmother - down.
"It's alright, love," he said soothingly. "This is the young man from last night, remember?" She looked at him as if to say, 'I'm not stupid, you twit'.
"It's not that, Charles," she said. She had a melodic voice, a pleasant cross between Luna's airy tones and Tonks' Cockney. "He was expecting his relatives... he said he didn't take any food, as if he wasn't allowed, he made breakfast as if it were expected of him... he said it as if they didn't allow him food!" Charles looked at Harry.
"Is this true?" Harry blushed, not wanting to appear weak in front of anyone.
"Yes," he murmured. Charles looked furious.
"What kind of people are your parents?"
"The dead kind, actually." Charles blinked.
"Then who do you live with?"
"My aunt, er - Marjorie," Harry suppressed a shudder. "and my uncle, uh - Vernon." He didn't see why he shouldn't say Vernon; after all, Petunia wasn't married to him... yet.
" Vernon," Harry's grandmother snarled. "He sounds like that SOB Petunia's been dating." Oops...
"Now, now, Liz," Charles said.
"Sorry, dearie," said Liz.
Charles looked between the two of them. "Oh, Liz, this is Harry. Harry, my wife, Elizabeth."
"Sorry about the fright, ma'am," Harry said apologetically.
"Quite alright, young chap. Thank you for making breakfast." The trio ate in peace until the Evans sisters descended. Lily smiled at Harry, who returned it, but Petunia scowled at them both.
"The freaks shouldn't be eating normal food," she said as she took a piece of bacon. She took a bite and swallowed. "Thank you, Da," she said sweetly.
Charles grinned. "Actually, it was Harry here who made the bacon, isn't that right?"
"Yes," agreed Liz. Petunia paled.
"He could have done things to the bacon!" Harry took his chance.
"And what if I did do things to the bacon?" Harry asked rhetorically. Petunia's gaze flickered between her parents in fear. Lily smirked.
"That's disgusting," she said. "It sounds like -"
"Lily." Charles looked at her for a long moment. Fantastic, Harry thought. Me mum's a pervert.
"Thank you, Lily," Liz said disgustedly, pushing back her plate.
"Just joking, Mum, Da. You know that."
"But it's not appropriate discussion for the breakfast table. And we have company..." Lily flushed red.
"Oh," she said meekly. "Sorry."
Harry blushed too. "Uh - that's fine." stood up from the table.
Liz turned to Harry. "What will you do now?" she asked.
"I dunno," Harry shrugged. "I guess I'll just go to the Leaky Cauldron, or something. I don't want to impose, or anything."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Liz and Charles simultaneously. "Impose... don't be daft, boy!"
Harry smirked. "And just last night you had me pegged as a rapist." Charles had the decency to be apologetic.
"I'm so sorry about that..." he said quickly, but Harry waved off the apology unconcernedly.
"A reasonable reaction, to be sure. An invader, mysteriously -"
"freakishly," Petunia interrupted nastily. Harry blinked, Liz looked aghast, and Lily visibly desired to hex the Hell out of Petunia.
"Er, yes, anyway, appearing in your daughter's room..." Harry trailed off, the tension begging to be cut by a knife. Lily did the honours.
"Maybe you should have done things to the bacon," she muttered grinning. Hands smacked their owner's respective foreheads loudly, and the adult owners of those hands groaned.
- - - - -
Harry sat utop the hill at the local park, his only refuge from the horrors of the Dursleys. The Evans' weren't bad, they were brill. But Harry wanted some time alone to ponder. But one Lily Evans seemed to want to deny him the luxury of solitude, as she climbed the hill, and collapsed on the grass next to him.
"Hi," she said. "What are you doing to my park?" Harry raised an eyebrow.
"Aren't we getting a bit familiar? I mean, just yesterday, I was a peeping Tom, and now, I'm your best friend."
"Dream on, peeping Porter," Lily laughed. "But you're a nice bloke, and you've got the most in common with me 'round here, so, ya know... so what'cha up to?"
"Thinking," Harry said.
"Amazing!" announced Lily. "You look like a Potter, but you can think!"
"Who's this Potter you're going on about?" Harry asked innocently.
"He's this prat who thinks he's Merlin's gift to women," Lily said, her eyes darkening. "He's arrogant, and daft, and show-offy, and I don't like him one bit. But I don't want to talk about him. What about you, where do you go to school?"
"I go to Beauxbatons," Harry lied uneasily. He just realised he had backed himself into a corner; he knew nothing about Beauxbatons, save for the carriage and Madame Maxime. "But I wanted to go to Hogwarts, just like my parents did.
"Really?" Lily asked interestedly. "What's Beauxbatons like?" Oh, bugger, thought Harry. His brain was going a mile a minute, trying to think of what he could say.
"Well," he shrugged. "It's just the same as Hogwarts, I s'pose. You've got all the standard classes like Charms, and Defense. Headmistress is nice, though. Madame Maxime. Met her on my first day; she had to give me a translation stone."
"Translation stone?" Lily asked.
"Well, yeah. I mean, you don't hear me speaking French, do you? All it is, is a palm-sized smooth stone with a special rune on it. Unfortunately, the translation stones are only capable of translating between two different languages. So if some bloke showed up from Spain or something like that, I couldn't understand a word he'd be saying."
"I wonder if other countries have translation stones," Lily said. Harry shrugged again.
"Don't ask me; I'm not exactly worldly. All we've got is the school - there's no little village like Hogsmeade nearby."
Lily narrowed her eyes. "How'd you know about Hogsmeade?"
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Vernon are magic, right?" Inwardly, he laughed at the irony of the pair of magic hater being described as magical. "They took me up there for my cousin's birthday when they couldn't find a minder. And that was about it. They'd have prolly liked to have pushed me 'round in a pram so I couldn't actually see anything."
"Terrible people, your relatives," Lily said sullenly. Harry gave her a small smile.
"Not all of them, I'm sure. Mum and Dad must have been a decent pair of folks for Vernon and Marge to hate them so much, yeah?"
Lily leaned over and kissed Harry on the cheek. Harry went rigid in shock, and began to gape. Lily giggled - giggled? "That's hoping that you never have to go back again. Oh, Mum told me to tell you that you're welcome to stay at our house, if you want. Supper's at six sharp. Except when it's late. And we're watchin' the match tonight. It's Manchester U against Reading. In my opinion, footbal's better than Quidditch anyway." She ran back down the hill, and Harry continued to sit and stare at the sky.
Such a peaceful time, and a peaceful place. Harry wasn't so sure he wanted to go back, now. Sure, he'd miss Tonks and Ron and Hermione and everyone, but here... this was almost heaven. This was living, being able to walk down a street and have no one know your name. And Harry wanted it to last forever.
And that's when it happened.
My chapters aren't very big, are they? This one was only around 1500 words. I'll try to work on that a bit. Don't forget to review, please. They're like cookies; too many and I get fat, too few, and I get thin, and rail-like.