Brand New Day

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Chapter 12
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Authors note:
I’m experiencing some “good old” computer problems (like we all do) so I had to send mine to the shop, which means there could be a few (a lot) more mistakes this time. Sorry. I’ll fix them later.

******

Harry was nervous. No, that was an understatement, he had been nervous earlier when he convinced Tonks to come with him to Diagon Alley to, supposedly, buy Ron a gift and a few books to himself. Now, he didn’t wanted to think about it. He left Tonks at the twins store and hurried to the Leaky Cauldron pulling the hood of his robes to hide his face before stepping into the street.

The Leaky Cauldron was almost empty, but Harry recognise a few of the patrons, he had seen them often enough in his visions to do it. He counted at least five Death Eaters but Merlin only knew how many he didn’t.

“No backing out now” Harry said to himself as he made his way to the privet rooms.

The one used for his birthday had a ‘reserved’ sign at the door. Harry hesitated only a second before knocking. He could hear steps inside and low voices before the door opened. Voldemort was already there, sided by a hooded figure in expensive deep green robes and two Death Eaters in the normal Death Eater attire.

“Ok, It’s official, I’ve lost it.” though Harry walking in the room showing a courage he didn’t feel like having at the moment.

{“Harry, welcome. Please have a sit”} said Voldemort and Harry sat down looking around the room. {“How are you in this fine morning?”}

{I’m just fine, Thank you, Tom} Harry answered just as polite {and you? no problems getting here I hope}

{No, everything was fine}

{“Ok, we played the polite bit, could we get to the point now?”} Harry said while placing the petrified form of the rat on the table {“I understand you could help me in solving a little mystery I stumbled upon”}

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed looking at the rat and a evil smile spread on his face as he pulled his wand. Harry discreetly let his wand fall in to his hand preparing himself for any curses thrown at him, he just couldn’t bring himself in to trusting Voldemort so easily.

{“Ah! Yes. Quite an interesting... mystery, we have here. We should start by bringing Mr. Pettigrew back, but before we do that, how about we set a little game?”}

{\"I have no desire to play games, specially with you, I came here because...\"} Harry could not bring himself to say it, he could not admit the possibility of them being family. It was too ground shaking.

{\"Yes, because. There are a lot of possible ways to complete that sentence... let\'s see if I can guess a few of them\"} said Voldemort with half a smile on his face, Harry could feel his body getting more and more tense as he heard the other man speak {\"you came because you finally put together the hints about only family being able to tap in to your bond with your familiar and you know I can do it, you came because the old man said Snape is your father and you know I have him with me right now, you came because you found out about where the rat\'s real loyalty lies and that made you realise a lot of what has been told you may be a lie and you came because your boyfriend may be in danger... but not from me, what makes me, in a twisted way, the best option for his protection... how am I doing so far?\"}

{\"Well\"} Harry chuckle {\"nobody ever accused you of being anything less than very intelligent\"}

The Dark Lord gave a short laughter {\"Now, about that game I was talking about... once we start talking to our rat friend here, pretend nothing he says is a surprise, don\'t show him that you didn\'t know something he might say, don\'t show that you believe him or that you doubt him. He will try to measure his answers by your reactions. Don\'t give him hints. Can you do that?\"}

{\"I believe I can, but I need to know if... Snape, is alright\"}

{\"Oh, he is alright. He will be coming in this very room in a few minutes to administer Veritaserum to the rat. Don\'t act surprised at his entrance\"}

{\"Does he know he is my... well, you know\"}

{\"Yes, he found that out not a week ago with the help of a dear friend of mine, but I must say I\'m still a bit mad I was not informed at the same opportunity\"} said Voldemort petting the hand of the hooded figure at his side.

{\"and you? What makes you able to tap in to my familiar bond?\"}

{\"Well, how can I say this? Your grandmother was... well, we were young, I was reckless, there was this fair and... but I never knew about your mother until very recently\"} Voldemort was being careful not to say anything that would jeopardise the little thrust he had earned so far from the boy, it would be best if he didn\'t know his grandmother was an unwilling participant on his mothers conception just yet, he knew he would have to tell him that, maybe even today, but that was one piece of the truth that had to be very well placed or he could lose the boy for good.

\"Perhaps is time we do what we came here to do, isn\'t it?\" He said switching to English and with a wave of his wand the rat started to shake on the table and transformed in to the disgusting little man Harry remembered from the Shirking Shack. “Harry, if you would be so kind to release him from your spell.”

Harry removed the spell, allowing Pettigrew to move and keep his wand ready. The rat man stood up immediately, climbing off the table and backing up against a wall. He looked at every person in the room, Potter looked ready to commit murder and was looking at him instead of Voldemort, not good. The two Death Eaters were wearing masks and were probably blindly faithful to the Dark Lord, no help there. He could not see the face of the person sitting next to Voldemort, but this one had to be important to be allowed to be sitting so close to the Dark Lord, all he could tell at the moment was that it was not Snape, this one had a much smaller figure, either way it didn’t help his situation. Finally, Pettigrew looked at the Dark Lord, his best chance of getting out of there alive.

“Master” he said kneeling down.

Voldemort merely looked at the rat man, not bothering to answer. The hooded figure leaned over to the Dark Lord and whispered something in his ear. He nodded. The hooded figure got up and walked to the door, followed by one of the Death Eaters, who opened the door for the figure to pass and closed afterwards, remaining by the door with his arms by his side.

\"Great, now I\'m surrounded\" though Harry \"I guess I\'ll find out the hard way if he has been lying.

Pettigrew kept looking between the Dark Lord and Harry Potter, trying to figure out what was going on in that strange meeting and why was he there. Potter must have brought him here, no one else knew about Grimmaud Place, but did it mean? How much did he knew? Pettigrew knew he was on dangerous ground and prepare himself to play the best he could, depending on how much the boy and the Dark Lord knew he could still come out of this one. He tried to remain calm.

The door opened again, attracting Pettigrew and Harry\'s attention. The hooded figure came back in holding a small vial, Harry could see now that it was a woman but he didn\'t gave much thought to the matter because right behind her another figure appeared. Snape.

Snape came in to the room with his heart beating faster than never before. His son was there. His and Lily\'s. After sixteen years he was going into a room where he would meet his son. He only wished it could be the first time, after all this time treating the boy as an annoyance, how could he expect his son to want him as a father? He would look upon him with disgust and anger and not want to have anything to do with him, it would take weeks, months, maybe even years to get closer and he could not blame anything on the boy, it was all his doing. The way he mistreated the boy in his class. Merlin, Why did he do it?

Harry saw Snape, his father came into the room and stand by his side. Merlin, he looked mad at something. He hates the idea of being my father, I can tell, he wishes it was anybody but me. How can I ever get closer to him?

“Please, we are all friends here, Let’s sit” said Voldemort from the other side of the room.

They all sat around the table. Harry and Snape at one end, Voldemort and the mysterious woman on the other and Pettigrew somewhere in the middle.

“Peter” Voldemort started all of the sudden, making the rat man jump in his chair. “How was your visit to the Order of the Phoenix secret headquarters? Did you have a good time? Humm?”

Pettigrew looked nervously around the room, not knowing what to answer.

“Oh, I see, that was a hard question… let’s see if I can make this any easier. Why do you claim to have been loyal to Dumbledore for the past twenty years?… no? Let’s see… What news were you bringing to Dumbledore yesterday?… still too hard?… Why didn’t you tell me Snape here was a spy?…”

“I had no idea, Master…”

“No idea? How odd! And here I believed that if you ever found yourself in a room with the old fool, the werewolf, the mongrel, that Potter, Lily, a few more members of that blasted order and Snape walked in to announce that he had taken the dark mark and now they would be able to know more about my plans you would at least suspect something was amiss. No? Oh, well, my mistake”

“Master…” wormtail started to say only to be cut by Snape.

“Why? Why did Dumbledore took Lily away from me? We were happy, we were going to get married and have a baby. What could he profit from this?” Snape already knew the answers to these questions, but he also knew that it would be easier for Harry to accept reality if he heard what really happened from someone else who was there then from him.

“We did you a favour!” said wormtail jumping to his feet and moving closer to Snape “Maybe I can still make an ally out of him, the boy will be mad at me, nothing new here, but I can get Snape on my side and he will help me get out of this one before the Dark Lord kills me or I just might create enough confusion to sneak out of here”.

“A favour?” said Snape raising a brow, he could feel Harry tensing up by his side and placed a hand on his arm under the table so Pettigrew wouldn’t see it, silently telling him to hold still.

“The girl was a slut, Severus. Every boy at Hogwarts had her, the baby could have been anyone’s. We wouldn’t let you tie yourself to the likes of her. Sorry, Harry, she was no good that one”

Harry felt his blood begin to boil and Snape’s grip on his arm grew tighter.

“So, because Dumbledore had my best interest at heart he ‘took’ her away from me…”

“Yes, so you wouldn’t get hurt by that…”

“and ‘gave’ her to his faithful lap dog, Potter and at the same time made me take the dark mark and became a spy… so I wouldn’t get hurt. Is that it?”

Harry couldn’t take any longer, he jumped to his feet, wand in hand ready to curse the rat in to oblivion. Everything happened too fast in the next seconds, just as soon as he as up Harry felt two strong arms holding him back while his wand went flying in to Voldemort’s stretched hand.

Seeing his chance, wormtail made a run to the door only to fall, face first to the floor, under a full body bind spell casted by one of the Death Eaters.

“Harry, no” said Snape holding him tight “No, son. That’s what he wants. He will do that a lot, lie to us in order to try to save himself. Your mother was the nicest person I’ve ever met, she was kind and sweet to everybody but she never let anyone take that kind of liberty with her. I was the only one she ever dated and Pettegrew knows it. I loved her more than anything in the world”

Harry relaxed in the embrace, letting his father pull him closer.

“Dumbledore said it was very hard to make you forget her and that it also took a potion to make her forget you” Harry said turning his head to look at his father’s face for the first time.

“It did?” Snape felt a lump in his throat. Somehow it was nice to know they had fought not to forget each other.

Their attention was caught by the Dark Lord moving closer to the binded form of the rat man.

“Peter, Peter” he said shaking his head. “Now, that was a mistake. Not your first, I admit, but you see… I don’t like you talking about my daughter like this. Crucio.”

For the first time in his life, Harry didn’t feel sorry for someone being held under crucio. He simple let his head rest at his fathers shoulder, wrapping his arms around the older man and waited for Voldemort to lift the curse.

Voldemort kept the rat man in pain for almost a minute. He wanted to go longer, but there were more pressing matters at the moment and time was running short. He was happy to see that Harry was hugging Severus back, the meeting was already going better than expected. He walked over to the two man, letting his Death Eaters deal with wormtail.

“Harry” he said softly “There is a lot more for us to talk about it and a lot more to extract from the rat, but I feel it would be best for us to take one step at the time. Dumbledore will already sense that you are troubled and you know how dangerous that can be”

“I want to know everything”

“And you will” said Snape still holding Harry “I promise. We will resume our oclumency lessons and you’ll learn how to hide everything in your mind so Dumbledore won’t know what you know, then I’ll tell you everything. Can you accept these terms?”

Harry looked at Snape, his father. He hated not knowing something and he had always been mad about it in the past, but for the first time he had a reason wait for the whole truth. He needed to know how to hide it from Dumbledore and he could see how dangerous the situation really was.

“You’ll tell me everything?”

“As soon as you master occlumency” repeated Snape.

“You will know the whole truth, Harry. I’ve already promised you that” said Voldemort.

“Ok” Harry agreed and then he remembered something “Oh, I told the Order Voldemort knew you are a spy and that he had summoned you. Lupin went after you at Hogwarts but you were already gone… I said wormtail had been summoned too so Dumbledore would be too suspicious why he wasn’t at the garden”

“Good” said Voldemort “Severus, you were tortured but managed to prove your loyalty, Pettigrew however failed but he died before you could discover if he was realy a spy or not… one Death Eater got carried away while casting curses on the rat. I punished the man of course, but now the rat is dead and whatever secrets he knew he took with him. Harry, you didn’t see anything else. Let’s not have you lying in from of Dumbledore any more than is absolutely necessary. Understood?

Harry and Snape nodded, still holding each other as if they were trying to make up for the lost time. Snape’s hand was moving up and down Harry’s back in a comforting manner. Harry felt glad for the support.

“Now, Harry, perhaps is time for you to be getting back, we don’t want to raise any suspicious just yet. Do we? Just one more thing” said Voldemort pulling a small box from one of his pockets “this ring is a portkey to my house. Our family house. If you find yourself in trouble over there, come to me. I’ll won’t tell you not to get in any trouble… even I know you better than that, but I want you to have a safe way out at any case”

Harry couldn’t help but smile, who would expect a grandfather attitude from Voldemort himself. He took the box with the ring, slipping it in his pocket as the Death Eaters picked up wormtail from the floor and apparated away.

The hooded figure stood up and came closer to the three man handing the vial she was still holding to Snape.

“What is that?” asked Harry.

“Veritaserum” answered Voldemort “We were going to use it today, but it would have been too much for you to hide. Don’t worry, that will be plenty of opportunities to use it later. Well, we will be on our way” he said taking the hooded figure’s hand, with her other hand the hooded figure uncovered her head and Harry could not hide his surprise.

“Professor Trelaway?”

She simply smiled and kissed him gently on his face.

“Hello, dear. I do hope you came to see us soon. I’ll tell you my story then… oh! And don’t worry. You are not going to die anytime soon” she said winking her eye at him.

“Severus, don’t hold him here too long. We will be waiting for you at the library” said Voldemort right before he and Trelaway disappeared.

“Is she a Death Eater too?” Harry asked

“No, she has just became a ally, as a matter of fact. She was the one who helped me remember your mother, Harry. You can trust her… I think. I’m still not sure she is completely sane” Snape said with half a smile making . Harry smiled too, but he soon frowned.

“You don’t have to go right now. Do you?”

Harry wanted to remain with Snape for a little longer, he just couldn’t bring himself to thrust Voldemort yet and the thought of leaving his father alone with the Dark Lord was not very calming, even if his father had been the bane of his existence at Hogwarts.

“Nonsense, Harry” said Snape... his father, Severus Snape, with a smile “I assure you I’ll be in no real danger, the Dark Lord values his family way too much”

“and now you’re family and he would never hurt you?” asked Harry raising his eye brow.

“No, I’m afraid not” said his father laughing softly “He would still curse me in a heart beat, but *you* are his family and he wants you by his side, that’s why I’m safe”.

“You are safe as long as I give in to him” Harry said bitterly

“No, I’m safe as long as he knows he has a fair chance of getting close to you and that you are willing to get to know him before turning his back on him for good” said his father putting his arm around Harry’s shoulder “He is still ruthless, Harry, make no mistake on that, he won’t even try to fool you in believing something different, but he is not the mad man you were led to believe”

“I don’t know...”

“Make no decisions now, Harry. Give yourself some time, get to know him better, get to know *me* better, learn the whole truth, then we’ll see what happens. How is that for a plan?”

“Yeah” sigh Harry “I can live with that”

“Good, now we are running out of time, you will would soon be missed and this place will be crawling with members of the order. It’s time to go back. We will see each other soon”

Noticing that was an argument he could not win Harry said his good byes and ran out of the Leaky Cauldron. He went in the first store he found, it was a jewellery store and bought Ron a gold pendant in the shape of a snitch. It was hollow and you could put two pictures inside of it. Harry quickly found a number of a teens magazine with his picture on it and cut it, adding it to the little snitch. Now that he had Ron’s gift he ran back to meet Tonks and apparate back at Grimmaud Place, they were just in time for lunch.

*******

Right after lunch Mrs. Weasley announced she wanted to go back home. They had been away to long and there were thing that needed taking care of back at the Burrows. It was decided that she would go back with her boys to get everything ready and later that evening Ginny, Harry and Hermione would join them when Mr. Weasley went home from work.

Harry stood in near the front door as the four Weasleys prepared to leave. He hugged Ron tight, noticing Hermione looking the other way with a strange look on her face... she was almost smiling and there was a strange glow in her eyes. In a moments decision he discreetly made Shadow crawl from his arm to Ron’s.

{“Shadow, Go with him. Keep him safe for me”}

{“Don’t worry, Master. I’ll take care of your mate for you”} said Shadow curling around Ron’s arm.

“What did you say to her?” Ron asked just a bit uneasy with the idea of having a snake on him even if it was Shadow.

“Merlim, I hope he never finds out how or from whom did I got Shadow”

“I asked her to protect you. She promised me she would. Keep her with you, will ya?”

“Don’t worry, love. I just going home, we’ll see each other in no time” said Ron stepping out side with the twins “We’ll see each other tonight”

Molly hugged Harry, kissing his head. “See you Tonight, Harry dear”.

“Sure, Mrs. Weasley. See you tonight” said Harry feeling his heart heavy and a sense of growing danger nagging him. He watched the four of them apparate away before turning back, once again he notice the strange satisfied look on Hermione’s face.

“So... Harry, do you want to play something?” she said, the odd look was gone.

“Hum... sure. How about chess?” Harry felt it would be better to keep a close watch on his “best friend”.

“Ok” and they went upstairs to play while Harry kept checking on Shadow through the bond making sure everybody was alright.

Harry had no problem maintaining a civil conversation with Hermione, pretending to enjoy their time together as they set the board to begin their game when all of the sudden Harry heard Shadow start yelling in his mind. He made a hasty excuse to Hermione saying he had to run to the bathroom and ran upstairs.

He quickly went through his options. Dumbledore was probably watching the floo network, Hedwige was not fast enough to get help. He could not disappear was Hermione was keeping an eye on him... how could he send a message? He scribbled a few words as fast as he could and ran to Ginny\'s room.

\"Ginny, I need you to trust me and do something for me now, I don\'t have time to explain\" Harry said bursting in the room making Ginny jump from the bed were she was laying with a book.

\"Harry, what happened?\"

\"No time, here, take this note and this ring, it\'s a portkey, once you arrive I want you to deliver this note to... Merlin, she will faint if I say Voldemort or a Death Eater... either Snape or Trelaway, It doesn\'t matter who is in front of you when you arrive, say it\'s from me and it is urgent, please don\'t hesitate, no matter who is in front of you it will be a friend\" Harry said in a hurry while pushing the girl downstairs and through the front door \"Ginny, it\'s a matter of live and death. Do.Not.Hesitate. Understand?\"

\"Don\'t worry, Harry, but you own me some serious explanations after this\" said Ginny putting the ring on and apparating away.

\"You have no idea\" sighed Harry heading back inside to play with Hermione as if nothing had happened.

*****

Answer to the reviews:

The Original Pe: Tks for the e-mail and the offer, sorry it took so long to answer. Did you receive it, by the way?

Kiayea: Tks, tks, tks. Please keep reviewing. I’m trying to keep everybody involved in the plot, just remember that it is all happening in a somewhat shot period of time.

Priss368: My thoughts exactly. How is it going so far? Which reminds me, I haven’t explore the “bag of tricks” yet... oh! The possibilities.

T-chan: I have to admit, me neither, but as I was writing it came to me that I don’t remember seeing Hermione going bad (well, once, but the author never finished the story), so I decided to give a try, let me know how do you think it is working.

c: Tks. I have to revise the whole thing again and I will be correcting the mistakes I find (or are brought to my attention), It’s just that I don’t want to do it without having a chapter to update or the story will show up on the top of the page having nothing new to it and I hate when that happens.

Eloradanin: That’s the plan, tks for the stars and the review.

Amber: Tks. ; )

harryhollow: Oh! I did try, but something happened and the msg was not send. I\'ll try again next time. Sorry.