Harry was chatting with the portrait of a Potter who had added the fourth floor onto Godric's Hall. Harry hadn't even noticed a fourth floor from the photographs.
"Oh, they added a fifth floor a century later. I advised on that, but someone else had to build it," Jameson Potter said.
Harry went and found the rubbings he'd taken of some of the rune stones he'd found.
"Perhaps you know about some of these. Maybe you can help me..."
"You been taught your runes yet, Harry?"
"I'm starting this year."
"You've been two years at the school and they're just now showing you the runes? A disgrace. My grandfather never held with shipping us off to a foreign school. But he died and my father shipped us off to have peace with my mother, who had been taught at Hogwarts."
"Shipped? You mean you took a ship on the water to get to Hogwarts?"
"That we did."
How different from taking a train up from London.
"When you've learned your runes and learned them well, I will help you work out how to improve what we did. For it wasn't done as well as I know I could do now. I was but a boy when we had the runes swapped out. I lived to my seventieth year. So I dare say we can do better. Perhaps your teachers will know better and teach you better. Soak it all up."
"I will," Harry said. He folded the onionskin sheets. He intended to take them with him to work on them. He didn't fear them being seen by anyone because he knew he wouldn't just copy what had been done. He was building a home from the first stone. He would relay the protections in just the same way.
Sirius came into the 'Portrait Room' of Harry's tent. "Harry, you're going to be late. It's a tight connection in London."
Harry rose from his chair. "Jameson, I'll talk to you at Yule or next summer, for sure."
"No, no, go out into the world. See it before you come back to rebuild. See the world, Lord Potter."
Lord Potter... How strange. He was thirteen, but he'd been Lord Potter – a courtesy title, not anything real – since before he was two.
Sirius walked Harry to the train station in Godric's Hollow. Sirius was staying for a while, perhaps to exorcise some of his own demons. He'd created a matched pair of mirrors so that he and Harry could speak. They would never attempt to be father and son, but friends was likely as was mentor and apprentice.
The train to London was an early, early morning affair, filled with men in suits who looked like they hadn't slept. Harry had allowed Sirius to owl-order him a new trunk that could shrink, which Harry now carried in a school bag. He had also sent Hedwig directly up to Hogwarts as the jostling of a train made her unhappy. Harry looked like an ordinary kid, with nothing obviously magical about him.
The train arrived at Paddington Station a little before nine. He needed to get to King's Cross before eleven – and hopefully find some food along the way.
Harry arrived at Platform 9 ¾ with a little time to spare. He wasn't the best yet with the Tube, though he had found an egg and bacon butty at a stall and enjoyed it.
Harry walked through the barrier.
The Hogwarts Express was a glorious thing to look upon on the First of September. He stood and looked at it for a time before he climbed aboard.
He relaxed in the seat. Just three days earlier, he would still have been doing something strenuous by this time of day on his land. Harry hoped Sirius would be okay, not holed up talking to old portraits all the time.
His godfather mentioned one of his friends, a Mr. Lupin who was usually referred to as Moony. Perhaps Sirius would get in contact now that he was out of St. Mungo's.
It felt good to sit in the compartment and do nothing for a few minutes. Harry had been so busy over the summer, he was glad for the break of heading to school. Funny. His daily work would change from lifting stones to performing school tasks. But the summer had been good for him. He was taller now and stronger. He was tanned and his magic was far more developed.
A girl passed by in the corridor and seemed not to see Harry.
"Hermione? Hermione, would you like to sit?" Harry asked.
She turned around, blinked a few times, smiled, and pulled her trunk inside. "I found Neville on the platform. Let me make sure he knows where we are."
"The more, the merrier. Were the Weasleys there?"
"Not that I saw."
"Everything is rush, rush with them."
Hermione ducked out and Harry did his best to get her trunk out of the way. Then he remembered he was a wizard who had spent the summer improving his levitation charm.
When Hermione returned with Neville, she blushed more than once when she looked at Harry. Had he grown an extra nostril or something?
Finally her strangeness ended. Hermione offered lovely tales of southern France, from Lyon to Nice to Marseilles, where she had spent part of her summer. Neville had spent some time in Holyhead, on Anglesey, in Wales. Though he hadn't seen the Holyhead Harpies playing Quidditch.
Ron, when he arrived, had boastful stories of Cairo and Pharoah's Lane and a cursebreaker's dig where his oldest brother had taken them to visit.
.....
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