[T/N, Thanks ~Kieron Haydon~ for joining the Hero tier on P@treon]
After the various congratulations required, Harry managed to get his friends alone long enough to ask them to accompany him to his room because he had to talk to them. Surely, they would not have reacted the way they did, if it had not been for how serious the situation seemed, not only was Harry exceptionally serious (in fact, they had never seen him so serious) but also, the way of saying it, it made them realize how difficult it was for Harry to explain what he wanted to tell them.
So, it was more of a group, very subdued, that entered the room a while later. They hadn't said much to each other during the ride, just the occasional comment and the occasional worried look at their friend. Perhaps those who were having it the worst at the moment were Athenea and Jonathan, after all, Hufflepuff's fundamental trait was loyalty...
"Well, Harry, what did you want to explain to us?" Asked one of the twins, acting responsible for the first time in his life.
The boy looked at all his friends, who had settled in different places in the room, all of them looking at him attentive and worried, eager to know what was happening. There was no turning back, he didn't want to turn back. He sighed and prepared to explain all his secrets.
"Me, you see... there have been things... many things that I have not explained to you." The nervous boy said.
"What sort of things, Harry?" Hermione asked.
"Things about myself... my life and my house." Faced with the questioning looks he received, he continued. "Surely by now you have noticed how few letters I receive from home, right?" Here the majority nodded, especially Draco, he received mail and packages from his mother every day and he did not understand why his friend did not receive the same or similar amount. "Things in my house... are not as people think. My parents and I… or rather, my family and I, we don't have a very good relationship…"
"You don't mean that they hit you, do you? Are they mistreating you?" Hermione asked scared.
At Hermione's question, everyone adopted faces of true horror. The abuse of a child was something practically unthinkable for those who belonged to families of wizards... for them, or rather, for the magical world, child abuse was one of the worst crimes that could be carried out and, in fact, they were punished, very severely. A child was such a blessing to them (since there were so few of them) that they were usually protected and cared for like a treasure.
"No!" Harry exclaimed, as horrified as the others. "They have never hit me! What happens is that you can say that for them, I don't exist... Normally, they don't even realize that I'm there... I'm someone of such little importance that it's not worth paying any attention to me."
"Harry... that..." Hermione began.
"But, whenever I have seen them with your brother, they seemed to be very good parents." Neville said astonished.
"Because they are with Brian." Said the little boy. "When Brian is around, I become invisible and since my parents never leave him very far from them, I am always invisible."
"Harry… that's called neglect and it's also a kind of abuse… one, even more terrible than physical abuse." Hermione stated, looking sadly at her friend.
The truth is that she wasn't the only one, all her friends looked really sad. How could they treat him like this? Couldn't they see how wonderful he was? How could they treat him as if he didn't exist? All of this represented something so inconceivable that it was difficult for them not only to understand but also to assimilate.
"Why did you go home for Christmas, then? I'm sure they weren't pleasant parties at all." Athenea asked. "And most importantly, why didn't you explain it to us before?"
"I went home because I wanted to see Remus... despite being Brian's godfather and not having any relationship with me, he is the one who has behaved best with me. To him, I'm not invisible...he was always there for me...he preferred spending time with me instead of Brian. When I was six years old, I had an accident trying to catch Brian's ball, I fell into a frozen lake and if it hadn't been for a muggle walking by, I would have died... It was Remus who was with me day after day while I was there at the hospital. It was he and not my parents who waited for me to regain consciousness and it was he who remained by my side...
"He's more your parent than the Potters, right?" Draco asked.
"Yeah."
"But that doesn't explain why you didn't explain it to us before."
"Because I was scared! I was afraid that you too would think I wasn't worth it and I would be left alone... You are my first friends and I didn't want to lose you."
"Oh, Harry..."
Before the boy could say anything else, he found himself in the middle of a very strong hug from the girls, and he felt a weight lifted off of him… they were not going to abandon him.
"What do you want me to tell you, Harry... your parents are stupid," Terry said matter-of-factly and the others nodded decisively, to which Harry smiled.
"That's not the only thing I wanted to explain to you."
"Isn't it?" They asked with surprise.
"No, there is more... I have not been completely honest about my abilities."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I have more abilities than those I usually show." He explained. "For example, I have not told you that I can sometimes feel people's auras, or that I am capable of controlling elemental magic, that I do not need a wand to do magic, that I can heal, that I have experimented with potions..."
"Sorry, can you repeat that again?" Terry asked dumbfounded.
Harry laughed nervously as he repeated the different abilities again, without even mentioning that he was also an Animagus... he best save that for last, when his other abilities had already acclimatized, something that would surely take some time to happen. The eight looked at him as if he had grown another head, something that was quite uncomfortable to tell the truth... especially because of Hermione and Terry who looked at him almost as if he were dealing with a complicated experiment or some kind of enigma.
"Harry, do you realize that there hasn't been a wizard able to see auras for six hundred years?" Terry asked.
"Until now, elemental magic was believed to be a myth?"
"Or that there hasn't been anyone capable of doing wandless magic at a medium level, much less a high level, since Merlin himself?" Draco added, impressed.
"Yes, of course I know," the boy said with some discomfort. "I've been studying about it since I discovered I could."
"And since when...?" Jonathan began incredulously.
"Auras, well, the truth is, magic without a wand well... emmm... I think I started using it when I was three or four years old. Regarding elemental magic, I started using it when I was six... Healing comes later, I discovered it about four months ago and potions... from the beginning of the course."
"And despite all this, your parents consider you little? They are much worse than I thought." Draco murmured.
"They don't know... when I was little I did tell them what I could do, but either they didn't pay attention to me or they thought I was lying... in the end, I stopped telling them... the only one who knows is Remus and when he found out, he told me that I shouldn't explain it to my parents."
It was necessary, even after that, a little demonstration before they finally believed him, and even then they seemed to be in shock. Harry briefly wondered if it would be a good idea to tell them that he was also a natural animagus. He feared that would send them straight to the infirmary, and perhaps he wouldn't have said it, or rather, shown it, if it weren't for the twins who looked at him suspiciously before stating that he was still hiding something.
He was right in thinking that it wasn't a good idea to explain it to him at that moment, so good thing Harry transformed into a phoenix. Terry and Hermione fainted from shock, Neville choked on a cup of tea and the rest looked on in shock. The only one who remained calm was Jonathan, and Athenea, although she was not as calm as him, was not as calm as the others.
"I'm not surprised, really." The Hufflepuff said, stroking his head. "I knew it from the moment I saw your tattoo. They always show the animal that has the most potential to be your animagus form."
"And Jonathan has been hinting at me since before Christmas... I thought he was something of a beast... but I didn't exactly expect this."
Harry returned to his human form and tried to wake Terry and Hermione to continue their conversation, something easier said than done, since both seemed very comfortable in their blissful unconsciousness. Later, after several failed attempts, he placed them in the bedroom and let them wake up whenever they wanted (he was not going to use an invigorate on them, it was a method that he greatly disliked).
When the Easter holidays began, there were many who stayed at Hogwarts in order to be able to use the school library and thus be able to finish the different assignments that had been given to them. Harry was no exception, although it could be said that his duties were the least of it. Most of them had only given him a symbolic amount so that he could review something during his free time, but considering the race against the clock that he was doing during the regular course, it wasn't much.
What Harry used to do during his free time was have classes with Fawkes, he had proposed that by the time he finished the course he would be able to use all his abilities as a phoenix. At the moment, Fawkes was teaching him how to use his healing powers on small animals and wanted to teach him before the holidays were over to be able to travel from an explosion of flames, quickly and safely. After all, who would guess someone would travel like a white phoenix?
Thanks to those classes with Fawkes, he was learning a lot about different magical creatures and his own form. The white phoenixes were much more powerful than the fire phoenixes... so their feathers were much stronger and more selective when it came to using them in a magic wand (Fawkes explained that no white phoenix would give a feather, because no one is strong enough to be chosen by the wand) and likewise, his tears would be able to cure anything except death and also almost immediately. At the same time, the different animals in the forest used to let him get close enough to be able to study them in-depth and become fascinated by them.
You could tell he was having the time of his life. He was able to do what he liked without his family intruding and without any type of interruption. So another place where he could be found was his own room researching and experimenting with the Wolfbane potion... he had added powdered bezoar and believed that it could considerably reduce the pain of the transformations, but for that, it would have to be tested on a living subject and although he knew Remus would be delighted, he didn't want anything bad to happen to him if it didn't work out. So he had decided to write to him and let him decide what he should do... he would only indicate that he believed he had achieved an improvement.
His letter would say absolutely nothing that could be understood as wanting him to test it, but not a total closure either... perhaps, Remus would put him in contact with another man who wanted to be the test subject. He sincerely hoped that was exactly his uncle's choice.
About two days before the school year started again after the holiday period, Harry was surprised at his breakfast by an all-too-familiar owl, which brought him a letter and a rather large package.
"Harry, what's wrong?" Athenea asked, the only Hufflepuff in her class who had stayed during the holidays.
"No, nothing... it's just that Gallia surprised me."
"Do you know her?"
"It's the family owl, I didn't think my parents would write to me." He said, taking the package and the letter from her, to put the breakfast plate in front of her so she could eat something.
"She seems to like you." Athenea laughed as she watched the bird cooing at her friend.
"Yes... I guess she missed me."
As he assumed, the letter was from his parents, or more specifically from his mother. In it, she explained that they had received the report of his grades and that they had surprised them. She didn't explain much and at no time did she show any signs of being happy about his results, something that was expected, and she also didn't ask him how his vacation had gone, also quite expected... the strange thing was that in the entire letter, there was not a single comment about how Brian and they had had a good time while he hadn't been there. Finally, there was a note that said that in the package were the books to start the new syllabus.
"What did they tell you?"
"Not much, really. Only that they have received the report on my grades and that they are surprised by the result. They also told me that in the package are my books for the third year."
As he spoke, he opened the package where there really was a large number of books, although at the moment they were not heavy. He guessed that they had put a featherweight charm on the package because there were at least nine or ten books there... and some quite thick, therefore quite heavy. Shrugging, he cast his own levitation spell and carried the contents back to his bedroom so he could begin putting them away.
[T/N, WhaaaaaaT???!!?!?! Mother Dearest is trying to curry favor with Harry behind everyone's back! Or is it old Albus? Anyway, we will find out eventually. If you liked this chapter then please leave a comment and if you don't then tell me why. If you have any please drop some stones and leave a review, If your so hooked that you can't wait then join the P@treon for advanced chapters.
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