Disclaimer: Blah blah Rowling blah blah copyright blah blah blah blah.

This is a sequel to Harry Potter and the Sword of Gryffindor. If you haven't read that one, please read it first or a lot of the details in my AU won't make a terrible lot of sense. The events in this story shadow the events in Harry's Fourth year, or the GoF book but already quite a few things are different and they will continue to deviate even wider from canon as I go.

On the matter of reviews: please do.

Harry Potter and the Blind Seer of Durmstrang

Chapter 1

Harry Potter sat on the edge of his bed at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. He sat with head bent, listening to the noises of coming and going in the fourth-floor hallway. Excitement coursed through him, because today he was going home. For the first time.

Harry never considered himself to have a home before. Of course, Hogwarts had been home for a good part of the year for the past three years but somewhere in the back of his mind lurked the knowledge that it was still a school and much as he liked it most people had a real home.

The house on Privet Drive, occupied by his Dursley relatives had been even farther from a true home. Living there had been more like surviving. Between the dislike and neglect by the adult members of the family and the torment and abuse by Dudley, Harry had been more than pleased to leave it behind forever and dust the memory from his feet as soon as possible.

But today was different. Today was special. Today he would accompany his godfather, Sirius Black, to his home in London which would become Harry's home as well. Until last year he hadn't known he even had a godfather, his father's best friend. Black had been incarcerated in Azkaban, unjustly, and his escape and subsequent location of the true villain had taken most of last year.

Harry rolled the name of the house around in his mind. Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. Somehow it didn't sound very nice, but Sirius had explained to him the tradition of the ancient House of Black, which also hadn't been very nice.

Where was Sirius? Harry tensed, waiting. Sirius was supposed to come and retrieve him after checking out of his own room on the first floor where he was recuperating from werewolf bites. Harry had been down to visit him every day. He'd sat in an uncomfortable old chair whose four feet did not match one another in length so the chair rocked slightly when Harry shifted his weight. He'd sat, tipping the chair back and then forward, and then back again with a steady, monotonous click as he had talked to Sirius who lay pale and tired on the white bed.

Really, Harry hadn't needed to stay this long in hospital at all. At Madame Pomfrey's recommendation, he had undergone the procedure that was an attempt to save his already ruined retinas and so far it seemed to be totally successful, as the fourth-floor medi-wizard had informed him with a sprightly chipperness in his tone that annoyed both Harry and Sirius. "Totally successful" meant Harry could see as well as he did before the procedure, which wasn't saying much. But it also meant that the encroaching darkness that had been creeping up on Harry for the past months was held at bay a while longer.

Harry saw mostly light, he'd decided. Lights everywhere became his enemy, each one much too bright in painful, glaring brilliance that washed out detail and form. Color was a thing of the past; he saw now in monochrome as he had all year. Sharp edges, too, were gone and in their place a sort of misty, light haze hung over everything as if he walked in perpetual fog. At school last year he'd learned to use a white cane after he almost fell off a moving staircase that wasn't there and he'd also begun learning Braille after he discovered he couldn't read his textbooks even with the largest magnifier offered in the Shop of Requirement. To this end, Professor Lupin had been unexpectedly helpful and the plan was for him to board at 12 Grimmauld Place for the summer to continue Harry's "blind lessons" as he thought of them.

After the procedure on his eyes was done, Harry didn't have much to do in the way of recovery, but since his guardian resided in exhaustion on the First Floor, there really wasn't anywhere for Harry to go until Sirius was well enough to go home and take Harry with him.

And so, thought Harry, we get to today. The day I get to go home.

His eyes closed against the blinding sunlight from the window across the hall, Harry listened while each second stretched into oblivion, giving way halfheartedly to the one following it, unwilling to hasten its tortoise-like pace. Brisk footsteps echoed down the hallway but Harry knew those footsteps. They belonged to the gum-chewing nurse who had the morning shift on his floor. Another set of feet followed hers but again Harry frowned. The soft shoes belonged to one of the long-term patients who had apparently been let out for air again. Harry knew Professor Lockhart resided somewhere on this floor in that wing but he hadn't seen him, nor had he taken the initiative to seek him out; on the contrary, he preferred to avoid him entirely and he scooted over on his bed to be out of sight of the doorway in case the slippered feet belonged to him.

At last, Harry heard the footsteps he was waiting for and his heart gave an absurd little skip. The pace was slow, the gait uneven, limping, tired. Harry stood, his heart pounding, and unfolded the white cane that had become such an extension of his arm he would have felt as naked without it as he would without his pants. Opening his eyes slowly, he looked at the dark figure silhouetted against the glowing light in the doorway.

"Ready, Harry?" asked Sirius.

Rather than answering, Harry grinned. He had been ready his whole life. He bent and picked up the handle of his case then followed his godfather down the hall, matching his impatient pace to the slow walk of the injured man next to him.

[break]

Gloomy. That was the thought that came to Harry's mind upon entering his new home at Grimmauld Place. The long entrance hall in which he found himself had little in the way of light, but smelled mustily of dust and cobwebs. Harry tripped over something, which turned out to be an umbrella stand made from the leg of a troll. The noise he made woke a portrait of Sirius Black's mother who shrieked and carried on until Harry cringed, but Sirius himself ignored it as if from long practice.

Harry loved it. He loved the dim, shadowy hallways and creaking stairs. He loved the gloominess, the lack of penetrating glare that hurt his eyes. Sirius took him up to a bedroom on the third floor, along twisting corridors flanked by dark wooden balusters.

"This is your room, Harry," he said and Harry could not keep the grin off his face. A room of his own, not filled with Dudley's old things sat open before him, welcoming him into its own embrace. Sirius, not one to stand upon ceremony, left Harry to himself to settle in, mentioning in an offhand way that he'd be in the basement kitchen whenever Harry felt like joining him.

Harry closed the door and put his back to it, facing his new room. Through the dimness of closed curtains, he could see a large, looming canopied bed and higgledy-piggledy lumps and bumps of uncertain furniture set here and there. The dark paper on the walls he supposed had some sort of pattern which he could not discern and when he touched them, they merely felt smooth and brittle.

He decided to explore systematically, thoroughly. This was one place he wanted to feel completely at home, to know where everything was. Lupin had drilled into him the necessity of using organization and memory to simplify life or he'd be constantly losing things and wasting too much time trying unsuccessfully to locate them again. So he made a slow circuit of the room, looking at each item, touching it, determining its function and locating all of the items on top of each surface. He was pleased to find a heavy wooden bureau, a fireplace, a wardrobe, a nightstand with several drawers and a dressing table with a large mirror on the top. As his fingers touched the smooth, cold surface of the mirror, he smiled wryly to himself. He could see a blurred reflection in the half-light, could see the stranger in the glass move an arm when he did, but with no detail, no color and only shades of cloudy mist, it wouldn't be of any use to him at all.

Of more interest was the wingback chair in one corner next to a reading table with a small lamp.

Another thing Harry's search revealed was his Hogwarts trunk sitting primly under the window. Joyfully he pried it open and began rummaging through all of the things he had missed while in hospital. His fingers sifted through to the small items on the bottom: a beeping Snitch, sleeping, tucked into a benign-looking smooth ball; the Sneakoscope Ron had given him last year; his bubble magnifier, chipped along one edge.

Harry took out his Braille books and placed them on the low shelf of the reading table. He put his clothes into the bureau and the tall, forbidding-looking wardrobe. Opening the door, he wondered briefly if there might be a Boggart living in this one as there had been in Lupin's class room. But to his relief, only a couple of moth-balls dropped out.

It took Harry only a few more minutes to unpack his few belongings and he smiled as he surveyed his new room, seeing it now fully detailed in his imagination. His mind's eye had even painted in colors: the shabby velvet bed-curtains looked a deep, dark red and the patterned rug on the floor used mostly blues. He wondered what the scene depicted on the tapestry above the fireplace showed and he resolved to ask Sirius about it later.

Heading down to the kitchen, Harry decided to take his cane with him until he knew the house better. He suspected it would eventually live in the troll leg stand by the front door, but for now he needed to use it still. Not in a hurry to reach the kitchen, Harry gave himself up to the delight of exploration and getting lost, then figuring out where he was, then getting lost again. Sirius had told him that since this was to be his home, he was free to go in it where he liked. Harry felt pleased to be allowed to explore on his own rather than be babied and led around. He decided he and Sirius would get along quite well, if their beginning was any indication.

Harry took his time, poking into dim, dusty rooms, running his fingers along shelves of trinkets and edges of picture frames, enjoying the textures, the discoveries. Once, in the drawing room, he touched the long, velvet draperies and was bombarded by a swarm of doxies. He batted at the creatures and moved away so they would settle again in undisturbed peace in the dusty cloth.

The house, unoccupied during Sirius's imprisonment, had been terribly neglected. Harry's fingers found piles of dust everywhere and spiderwebs in nearly every corner. Yet in spite of the dust and disarray, Harry preferred it unequivocally over Aunt Petunia's spotless domain.

At last his wanderings took him down the last set of creaking stairs to the low, brick kitchen.

"Hello, Harry," greeted Sirius. "What do you think of your new home?"

"It's brilliant!" enthused Harry.

"I am sorry it is not well-kept," began Sirius and was interrupted by a low sound from one end of the room.

"Kreacher has kept it well enough," said the creaky voice that made Harry start with surprise. He hadn't expected a House Elf and looked around the room, trying to spot the small creature.

"Ahh, yes, Harry. Meet Kreacher," said Sirius wryly and Kreacher came reluctantly forward until Harry could at least make out his shape.

"It's nice to meet you," said Harry politely but was rewarded only with a sniff and Kreacher retreated again.

"Is your room all right?" asked Sirius and Harry nodded happily.

"It's brilliant," he said again, feeling as if he couldn't be happier.

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