Harry's Secret Investigations

Today Harry was working on his newest project, trying to learn about his family history. There were plenty of fairy tales about the Boy-Who-Lived, many of them in print. There was very little about the lives of his parents or grandparents or anyone else named Potter. Harry had had to ask about a public library (not a one) or archives at the Daily Prophet (open every second Tuesday from one to three).

Harry had a few newspaper clippings of his grandparents' deaths and his parents' marriage and a party hosted at Godric's Hall in Godric's Hollow. Harry presumed this was where the Potters had lived.

He wanted more. He wanted to go back further. He wanted names and places where they'd lived. Harry had even asked the goblins the last time he was in Diagon Alley, but there was no help.

To goblins, all the Potters were was a vault number or two. Inside them, there were no repositories of books or enchanted trinkets or collections of old letters. Nothing personal. Indeed, Books of Family Magic were strictly prohibited from being stored in a Gringotts vault.

Harry didn't ask why. He assumed it was a treaty or a bit of spite on someone's part, not wanting valuable magic protected (or stolen) by goblins.

Harry meandered through the stores, asked over the used bookstores in Hogsmeade, and found he had already been to both of them. One had had a few back numbers of the Daily Prophet for sale, but none as old as Harry would have wanted. He asked several people, none of whom recognized him, about other wizard stores, other places where old books or old newspapers might be sold. The answers weren't very helpful.

If it didn't exist in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, according to his sources, it didn't exist for public sale. Was there no wizard village in Wales? Just the mixed Godric's Hollow which had long ceased to have any wizard-only businesses.

Harry gave up for now. He purchased the materials for a potion he was considering making, one of the ones Snape should have taught but hadn't. Wit-Sharpening seemed very simple to make and useful for someone venturing into a ponderous tome for the first time.

Harry walked back to the castle under his cloak, but remained on the grounds for a time. He strengthened his Sunfire and his Water Globe and looked around for a non-soggy spot where he might work on the Fulmenifer. None. He donned his cloak once more and began his silent walk into the castle and upstairs.

There was a grate on the floor in the hallway on the fourth floor. The grate did stretch from wall to wall, but it was only a few inches tall. It didn't block his progress, but it did tickle Harry's curiosity.

Where had it come from? Harry looked at the wall where there was an opening now visible. He'd never noticed something like that before. The opening was huge, taller than him. Harry tried to lift the grate with his hand. No. He levitated it with his wand. When he got it almost back in place, Harry saw the grate seem to disappear into the wall.

Harry set the grate down again on the hallway floor and walked inside the opening. Now Harry felt small as the curved ceiling soared above his head. If he were twins, he could stand on his own shoulders to touch the top of the circular opening. Harry lit his wand with a simple Lumos and began walking. He could tell he was going up. The air smelled fresher. He found a junction with another pipe. He decided to turn around and go deeper down the pipe.

He lost track of time during his adventure, but his belly told him it was time to find some food. He turned around from where he was in the lower dungeon. He was nowhere near the end of the pipe, but the bad smells were getting worse.

Harry exited from the opened grate on the fourth floor, but this time two people were there to see him.

"Oh..." He was a bit too slow stepping back into the tunnel. He hadn't been wearing his cloak inside that pipe/tunnel. Silly of him.

"Mr. Potter, I've been meaning to find you, though I didn't think it would be so soon."

Harry adjusted to the brighter light in the hall. He knew that voice. "Professor Flamel?"

Just his rotten luck to run into a person who was actually tying to find him. If he hadn't been curious about this grate...

Harry looked at Flamel. He couldn't really make much out about the professor. He was old and... He was old. Harry looked for details. He couldn't tell how much hair the professor had or what color it was. He couldn't tell how tall the man was. It was rather disconcerting, whatever this magic was. He was a perfectly bland old man.

All the easier to hide while out walking around? There wasn't enough detail to distinguish him from any other man older than Vernon Dursley, at least to Harry right now.

.....

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