Bonded chapter 77

Chapter 77 -

Harry let out a small sigh as he discreetly escaped from the train platform. The school year had finally ended. Fleur had gone back to Beuxabatons, but the two would be keeping in touch via Hedwig who - thanks to some added symbiote help - was now capable of flying from England to France and back multiple times a day without rest. And like every other year he had ever spent in Hogwarts, the experience wasn't complete without Voldemort and/or one of his followers doing something to mess things up for him. Harry wasn't really in the mood to spend hours in a train compartment while other students walked past while staring and whispering about him as if he couldn't hear. In his current state of mind, he knew that he wouldn't be putting much effort into stopping Venom from eating the lot of them.

Right now, he really wasn't in the mood for teenage drama. He already had more than enough problems in his life without all of that. Once he was far enough away from prying eyes and far enough away from the Hogwarts wards, he apparated away. The plan had been for him to meet Sirius at the Tonks house, and then the two of them, along with the Tonks family, would be moving in with Sirius in his house, Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Harry was hoping to use the opportunity to spend some time with some of the few people he genuinely liked while Venom continued looking through Voldemort's memories. The symbiote, in a rare show of patience, decided that he was going to examine each memory individually so that he didn't overlook anything. But before that, they had decided to make one more stop, which was why Harry was now standing underneath an old overpass.

Taking in a deep breath, he began walking, dressed in all black shoes, jeans and a hoodie that he wore with the hood up. Mentally recalling why exactly he had come here in the first place.

(.)

"So, how's the memory search going?" Harry asked.

'I can tell you the exact amount of times Voldemort had wet himself when he was eleven years old,' Venom mentally replied. 'Spoiler alert, it's more than you might think.'

'Good to know.' Harry dryly replied. 'Anything else?'

'First, I focused on specifically learning all of his magical knowledge,' Venom revealed. 'I know every spell he knows; all of his magical knowledge is ours.'

'Are you serious?' Harry asked with a mental laugh. Harry had many, many negative opinions about Voldemort. But the one thing he could admit without prompting was that Voldemort was a strong wizard. 'Terrible, but great,' was the description that Ollivander had used when he had told Harry about how his original wand shared a core with Voldemort's wand.

'Deadly serious,' Venom replied back in a pleased tone. 'We'll have no problems passing exams now, believe that. Now, I am focusing on his memories. It won't take long before we know his every little secret.'

'Good,' Harry grunted. 'He needs to pay.'

'I learnt one particular spell that could help with that.' Venom replied.

(.)

Harry shook his head lightly as he stopped outside of his desired destination. A place he had sworn he would never go back to, a place he never ever wanted to see again: Number Four Privet Drive.

'I can't believe we have to come back to this shit-stain,' Venom growled from within Harry as they both noticed a weathered 'For Sale' sign in front of the house. 'It looks like nobody's brought it yet,' Venom said in an amused voice. 'I'm not the only one who can see that it's horrible.'

'I think the fact that two people were murdered here probably didn't help matters,' Harry responded in a knowing voice. The people of Privet Drive were similar to the Dursleys in lots of ways, not all of them, of course, but a lot of them. There were a lot of people like his Uncle Vernon, people who didn't want change and were happy with the old ways while also judging anyone who dared to be different. And, just like his Aunt Petunia, there were several people in this neighbourhood that had nothing to do with their lives beyond gossiping. He was sure that by now, there were probably dozens of rumours that had been passed around the neighbourhood like presents. He could imagine a few of them already, he was sure a few probably suspected that the Dursleys' 'troubled nephew' was at least partly responsible for what happened to them.

Funny how they were right.

Taking a small look around, Harry saw that, thankfully, nobody was around. Most people at this point were likely either at work or too busy in their homes to notice him. He walked forward to the house and placed his hand near the doorknob. A single black tentacle came out of his wrist and entered the keyhole. A couple of seconds later, a clicking sound was heard, and Harry opened the door and walked in. The tentacle on his wrist got longer and closed the door behind Harry before retracting back into his body.

Harry let out a small growl as he looked around. Despite having spent so much time away, the house was just the same as it had been before. It had the same stuffy atmosphere, the same depressing aura, as if there was no joy or happiness to be found in this place. It sometimes felt like this house was the basis that the dementors had been created from. Memories flooded his brain as he recalled many, many bad memories. Bad memories of being beat in the hallway, being accused of cheating because he got higher grades than his dumbass cousin, being locked in the cupboard so many times that he repeatedly wondered if there was any point in getting out of it in the first place.

"You sure we can perform the spell properly?" Harry asked out loud. A moment later, a tentacle popped out of Harry's shoulder, and Venom's head appeared on the tip of it.

"We should be able to," Venom hummed thoughtfully. "What about you? Are you sure you want to go with this plan? We don't have to, I know you don't want to be here."

"It's fine. I'm kind of looking forward to destroying this place," Harry said with a wicked grin.

(.)

"Harry!" Ted said happily as he opened the door and found Harry standing there. "Good to see you, lad," He said, shaking Harry's hand. "You know, when I was told that you would be apparating here by yourself, I initially thought it was a joke. But I suppose that when you can fight you-know-who at your age, a little apparating isn't that impressive in comparison. Though fair warning from your lawyer, legal adult or not, you're not allowed to apparate without a license, Harry."

"Better not get caught then, eh?" Harry said with an amused smile.

"Atta boy," Ted said, eyes twinkling as he invited Harry in and closed the door behind him. "Now, Andi and Nymphi are already at Sirius's place, we'd better get there now. Won't have the chance to do it later, only about an hour and a half left."

"What do you mean?" Harry couldn't help but ask.

"Old Dumbledore insisted on coming around and taking a look at the protections of the house," Ted said with a roll of his eyes. "He wants to add his own protections to it as well, otherwise, I don't think Sirius would have let him. He plans to add a fidelious charm to the property, though I suppose you don't know what that is, right?"

"I..." Harry paused for a moment as he received a rush of information via Venom. "Um...Actually I do. It's a spell that hides a secret in the soul of a person who will be the 'secret keeper,' and only that person will know about it. So, long story short, if we cast the spell on the property, making its location a secret, then nobody will know where it is except for the secret keeper and those that the secret keeper has told."

"Blimey, are you sure you aren't a Ravenclaw?" Ted asked in an impressed voice as he took out an old pen. "But yeah, that's more or less the gist of it. If we got there after the spell was performed, then we'd have to ask someone for the secret before we could find the place."

"Is Sirius going to be the secret keeper?" Harry couldn't help but ask. "Or you?"

"I'm not sure. Why?" Ted asked as he held out the pen for Harry.

"It doesn't really seem fair for someone other than Sirius or his family to be the secret keeper. I can't help but feel like old Dumbledore will want to be the secret keeper," Harry admitted before he reached his hand out. He gripped the other side of the pen and suddenly felt himself get whisked away by the familiar feeling of a portkey. A couple of seconds later, he felt himself land in a dark alleyway. "This...this isn't Sirus's house," Harry noted intelligently.

"Yep, portkeys can be tracked, so we're actually a very long distance away from Sirius's house," Ted explained. "The general gist of it is that from here, we're going to apparate to a couple of random places, and then we're going to apparate somewhere relatively closer but still far from Sirus's house so that we can then take the knight bus to somewhere a little bit closer and then walk it for twenty minutes or so to Sirus's house."

"Huh?" Harry blinked hard. "Why?"

"Blame Moody," Ted said with a shrug. "That's the plan he came up with to prevent us from being followed by any potential stalkers. Portkeys can be traced, and the floo system in Sirius's place was damaged and is still being repaired. Moody made me promise to do this instead of just apparating there like I wanted. So...get ready for a lot of unnecessary travel."

(.)

"We're here," Ted announced as they entered the home via the front door.

Upon entering, Harry found himself inside a very long hallway lit with old gas lamps and a horribly large overhead chandelier. At one point, it might have been really nice, especially with the ornate portraits on the walls, but now it was gloomy and cobwebby, with the wallpaper peeling off and the carpet worn thin. Much of the decor in the entry hall was in the form of serpents, naturally, though there was also an umbrella stand made from the severed leg of a troll. It was near that leg where he found Tonks climbing off the floor with an embarrassed look on her face. Meanwhile, Andromeda was facepalming behind her while Sirius was there in a shouting match with the largest portrait while trying to wrestle some disobedient curtains over it. In it was a rather ghastly looking woman who was mainly repeating the words 'mudblood' and 'blood traitors'.

"Disgrace!" The woman screeched so loud that Venom growled inside of Harry. "Disgrace! Mudbloods! Blood-Traitors! All fouling the house of Black!"

"FUCK THE SHUT UP!" Sirius roared at her.

"The other way around, Sirius," Tonks chimed in helpfully.

"SHUT THE UP FUCK!" Sirius roared once more before finally getting the curtains closed around the portrait, silencing it. "BIIITTTCHHH!" Sirius added victoriously once he was done.

"So, this is entertaining," Harry said mildly, letting the others know he was here as they apparently hadn't noticed he and Ted entering.

"Harry," Sirius brightened at once, along with the other two. The man rushed forward and pulled Harry into a tight hug that Harry happily returned. "Oh, it's so good to see you again, Pup."

"Good to see you too, Sirius," Harry said once they let go. He was then greeted by a hug from Andromeda. "Mrs Tonks," Harry said.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Harry, call me 'Andi' when we're not at Hogwarts," She told him after letting go.

"Call her anything but that; it'll let her know how I feel." Tonks cut in before pulling Harry into his third hug. "Are you okay?" She whispered into his ear.

"Just dandy," He whispered before the two let go. "So," He spoke up. "Who's the bitch?" He asked, gesturing to the portrait.

"Oh, her," Sirius growled. "That, my dear godson, is my thankfully departed mother. A vile woman whose grave I would piss on a second time if I didn't think she wasn't worth the hassle of travelling to the graveyard and finding it. I'll just tell you now that the portrait of her is relatively tame in comparison to the real thing."

"Ah, super-bitch," Harry nodded understandingly.

"Can we please attempt to watch the language, at least?" Androemda said with a long sigh.

"Sorry," Harry apologised.

"Anyway, the curtains keep her quiet, thank Merlin, though she ended up waking up once more when Tonksie over here tripped for the third time today and woke her up." Sirius continued.

"It's not my fault!" Tonks protested. "The stupid troll leg moved, I swear."

"Uh-huh," Sirius nodded absently at that, ignoring Tonks's pout as he turned to look at Harry. "Anyway, Pup, glad you could make it. Hope there weren't any problems on the way."

"Nah, smooth sailing all around," Ted assured him. "Either way, perhaps we should head over to the kitchen. I'm starving."

"I could go for a bite," Sirius grinned before wrapping an arm around Harry's shoulders. "Andi's made food. It turns out that the potion master is good at cooking. Who'd a thunk it? Thank Merlin for that, or we'd be struck with Kreacher's food."

"Who is Kreacher?" Harry couldn't help but ask.

"He's this grouchy, old house-elf that hates Sirius's guts along with ours," Supplied Tonks.

"He was the family house-elf," Sirius added as they all started heading towards the kitchen. "Took after my mother who hated me; therefore, he hates me. I'd be sad about it if I didn't hate the old bastard myself."

(.)

"I apologise for the delay," Dumbledore said as he arrived later that day. "There was a bit of a problem regarding...Harry?" He blinked, noticing that Harry was there. The group were all in the kitchen, having just finished their food when Dumbledore arrived. "I thought that you were still on the Hogwarts Express?" Dumbledore said in a questioning tone.

"I had picked him up personally," Ted cut in.

"Ah," Dumbledore nodded understandingly. "I suppose that it's a good thing that you did; it saves me the trouble of arranging another meeting with him. Harry, there has been some news that I feel you should know."

"Sir?" Harry asked questioningly.

"Your old home, the Dursley's house, it had been attacked," Dumbledore revealed.

"So? What does that..." Harry trailed off before a thoughtful look came over his face. "You think Voldemort did it?"

"It would appear so," Dumbledore replied. "The entire house was destroyed from the inside, the roof was blown apart, and the dark mark - Voldemort's mark - was found hanging over the house, seemingly a warning or a threat to you. Many obliviators had to be called, and needless to say, it doesn't help our minister's strong belief that Voldemort is dead."

"Not to mention when you also add in the attack at the World Cup," Andromeda added. "I suppose Fudge is probably going to try to this spin this in some stupid way and blame someone else."

"Most likely," Dumbledore agreed. "I myself have my own doubts regarding if this was actually Voldemort. The man was many things, but stupid he is not."

"Seemed pretty stupid to me." Harry commented. "Still, how come you don't think it's him? The dark mark is his mark; who else knows it?"

"I'm not saying it isn't him, just that I'm not entirely sure," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "Right now, those in charge of us are actively denying his existence. He has a great opportunity to work without direct opposition, it seems a bit odd that he would not take it."

"He might not be stupid, Headmaster, but the man was definitely not sane." Harry pointed out. "He tortures his own followers not even a minute after meeting them again."

"True," Dumbledore hummed doubtfully. "True."