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SIYE Time:13:22 on 28th March 2024
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Harry Potter and the Serpent's Coven
By Angelripper

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Category: Post-HBP
Characters:All
Genres: Action/Adventure, Fluff, General, Romance
Warnings: Death, Sexual Situations, Violence
Rating: R
Reviews: 90
Summary: *** The author has been reminded via the e-mail address on file that this story is listed as incomplete and has not been updated in over 2 years ***

Harry Potter realises that returning to Hogwarts for his final year is the only way he will succeed in his quest to destroy Lord Voldemort. It is a year of darkness, horror and new discoveries. Ginny Weasley is not only the witch who possesses Harry's heart, but also the true source of his strength as a wizard. Together, they will find new powers within themselves and each other, and find that there are some things that even the darkest magic cannot break.
Hitcount: Story Total: 170253; Chapter Total: 4939





Author's Notes:
I think it's clear from the last two books that there is more to Aunt Petunia than meets the eye, so I just thought I'd expand on that idea.




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Having quite forgotten about the late hour, Harry slowly approached the Dursely’s front door. Before he had a chance to take the key out of his pocket however, the door flew open and he found himself being accosted by the desperate, sleep-deprived figure of Uncle Vernon.

“Got you, you little parasite!” he yelled, dragging Harry inside, “I should…oh, it’s you” he said in a disappointed tone.

Uncle Vernon had been keeping a careful nightly watch on his property from the living room window for nearly a week, having one morning found both his car and front lawn vandalised. This had continued into the early hours of the morning, causing Aunt Petunia to panic over her husband’s state of health, but he was determined to catch the perpetrators in the act. His family’s reasoning that the criminals would hardly be stupid enough to pick the same spot twice had of course fallen on deaf ears.

“What the bloody hell do you mean by prowling around at this time of night?” he demanded, resuming his air of authority.

Harry looked at his watch.

“But it’s barely 11 o’clock,” he protested.

Uncle Vernon narrowed his eyes and glared at his nephew suspiciously.

“I’ve allowed you quite enough freedom in the past boy, and all I ask under the circumstances is that everyone be indoors by nightfall!”

“You wouldn’t have cared if I’d stayed out all night,” Harry replied, rolling his eyes.

“Probably not, but you could at least have the consideration to return during daylight hours,” he snorted, turning his back.

As Harry reached the first stair, Uncle Vernon wheeled around abruptly.

“And if I find out that these thugs are any of your…kind having a laugh at the expense of normal, respectable people, there will be hell to pay!”

Harry looked vaguely amused by this remark.

“If they were any of ‘my kind’, you would know about it.”

This did nothing for his uncle’s mood.

“Just get out of my sight, before I call the police and tell them a little story of my own,” he warned.

His nephew was already halfway up the stairs to his bedroom.

The room was in a somewhat different state to what is usually was at this time of year. Barely a thing had been removed from Harry’s trunk besides the small number of books on the Dark Arts that were spread across his bed. Some were open with a few notes in the margins, and although some of them had been very recently ordered from Flourish and Blotts, all were showing signs of extensive use.

It had been a very anxious summer for Harry thus far, though he had more reason for anxiety than many. He was certain that either his shoes or the floor of his room would be worn all the way through before long, with the number of times he had paced up and down, deep in thought. How do you defeat a Dark wizard? Each and every time he had faced Lord Voldemort, it was more a combination of luck and blind determination that had saved him. The next time, it would all be different. He would not simply be trying to defend himself, or ruin the Dark Lord’s plans. The next time, he would either be a murderer or another casualty of war, and that was assuming that he even knew how to get as far as that opportunity.

Then there were the Horcruxes to consider; the objects in which Voldemort had concealed torn fragments of his soul, fragments from which he could be resurrected. As he hunted for them, he too would be hunted, and he had not the first clue about how one could destroy them. When he had destroyed Tom Riddle’s diary in his second year at Hogwarts, he hadn’t appreciated the properties of the object he was handling, and since Dumbledore, considered one of the greatest wizards who had ever lived, had lost the use of one hand in the attempt to destroy another Horcrux, a ring of Voldemort’s grandfather, he concluded that each one would have to be considered in a different manner.

Though he was assuming for the time being that Voldemort was unaware of this quest, the fact remained that he still wanted Harry dead. His followers would be looking everywhere, and Harry supposed that more drastic measures than immobilising jinxes would be needed when they found him. He often found himself glancing through chapters on the Unforgivable Curses as he pondered this, but would any of these be of use to him? These were the Dark Arts, and it was the Dark Arts against which he was fighting. Which brought him back to his original question — How do you defeat a Dark wizard? He now hoped that light would be shed on this matter in the lessons of which the new Hogwarts Headmistress had spoken.

As he lay on his bed with so many thoughts and feelings battling for attention, he was startled by the soft hooting of Hedwig, the snowy owl residing in the cage in the corner of the room. Harry blinked and looked at his alarm clock. It had just turned midnight. It was his birthday. Harry James Potter was seventeen years old, which, by wizard reckoning, made him now an adult. An adult who was accustomed to celebrating the occasion on his own. As he remembered fondly the gifts and birthday cakes that had been sent to him by the Weasleys in years past, and wondered whether he would be receiving any such pleasantries this year, he jumped as he heard a knocking at the door.

This was the first time a knock had not been accompanied with his name or a command being shouted impatiently. A little apprehensive, with wand drawn, he edged towards the door. As he reached for the handle, he wondered about the protection left on the house by Dumbledore. Then again, would anyone wishing to do him harm even bother knocking? He cautiously gripped the handle and opened the door.

What met his eyes on the other side was neither Death Eater nor Dementor, but Aunt Petunia. He hastily hid the wand from view and looked inquiringly at his aunt, who was looking a little nervous.

“Err…yes?”

She took a few short, quick breaths and gave a shaky smiled. This was also a first. Harry couldn’t remember any of the Dursleys ever smiling genuinely at him, aside from when he was being made an object of ridicule, but this looked as if she was actually happy for him. Nevertheless, her voice was still quiet and vaguely reluctant.

“H…h…happy birthday Harry.”

He stood facing her in a stunned silence. He had thought for a long time that his aunt, uncle or cousin Dudley didn’t even know when his birthday was, or if they did, they did a fine job of ignoring it.

“Erm…thank you,” he replied.

Aunt Petunia gazed awkwardly around her for a few seconds, then as if suddenly remembering, she indicated an envelope that she held in her hand.

“I…uh, brought you something,” she said, offering it to him.

Harry managed a grateful smile and took it.

“Would you err…mind if I came in for a while?” she asked rather humbly, “There are things I need to tell you.”

Harry had thought that after all he had seen in the world of witchcraft and wizardry, there was nothing in the world of muggles that could surprise him. That was until now. He nodded to her, walked across the room and cleared the books off his bed.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing politely.

His aunt sat down in silence and he sat beside her, still puzzling over what this could be about. Briefly toying with the idea that she had been put under the Imperius Curse, he looked down at the fairly thick envelope.

“Oh, go ahead, you can open it,” she said, trying to sound reassuring, “I understand that it won’t be the way you’re used to seeing things like this.”

Harry opened the envelope and saw that it was, for the most part, full of photographs. He understood what she had meant straight away. The people in the pictures were perfectly still, while in the photography Harry had grown used to seeing, they would have been animated in whatever they happened to be doing when the picture was taken. The first photo he pulled out was of a couple whom Harry had never seen before.

“Those are your grandparents, my mother and father,” she said, with a slight crack in her voice.

Harry realised that this was the first time he had really thought about his blood relatives any further back than his own parents and for a moment felt a little ashamed that he had never asked his aunt about them before. The next picture caught Harry’s attention very quickly. Though it was taken some years before any of the other photos he had himself, there was no mistaking the eyes that he saw every time he had looked in the mirror. All of a sudden, he felt a lump in his throat and a familiar stinging in his eyes. He blinked, swallowed hard, and looked back at the photo.

“That’s me and my younger sister Lily, your…mother,” said Aunt Petunia, feeling decidedly uncomfortable.

“You both look very happy there,” replied Harry, who shared her awkwardness in full.

“We were on holiday at the time, and yes, we used to be a very happy family,” she said, trying so hard to seem breezy and relaxed that Harry had rarely seen her so tense. Aunt Petunia closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and finally looked ready to say what was on her mind.

“Harry, there are things you should understand. We were a happy family. Our parents were proud of both their young daughters, both named after flowers that grew in their garden. I worked so hard to please them at every step of the way, and showed them that I could be a positive role model for my sister.”

Harry resisted the temptation to make a snide comment about how things turned out, and she continued.

“I was so pleased with the way things were, that I even tried to overlook some of the strange things she did. At first I thought she just wanted to express herself in a different way,” she said wistfully, before her expression and voice suddenly darkened, “But then our mother and father started making a fuss over her like they had never done before. Everything she did was special. There would be letters sent home from school to tell them what a wonderful pupil I was, a shining example to so many, but before long, they hardly noticed such praise. My sister, oh so special, oh so perfect, was getting all the attention!”

No matter how Harry had been treated by this woman in the past, and how sorely he wanted to interrupt, he also knew what it was like to let out anger and frustration, so he remained silent, merely staring at his aunt.

“With all her magical nonsense, being offered a place at a special school, our parents were overjoyed. But what of me? I worked even harder, did everything I could, but none of it seemed to matter at all! Lily was their only concern! I tried telling her that all those loony things she did with her spell books and hocus pocus rubbish would only lead to trouble, but she never listened to me. You know, time was in this country when someone like her would have been burned at the stake for the things she did! But oh, how the tables have turned. SHE WAS ‘SPECIAL’! SHE WAS A WITCH! AND YET I WAS THE OUTCAST, JUST BECAUSE I WAS NORMAL! HOW DO YOU THINK THAT MADE ME FEEL?!”

Aunt Petunia had turned away, but Harry could still see a tear running down her cheek. She wiped her eyes on her nightdress and went on.

“When I met your uncle, I knew I could finally put it all behind me. He just wanted normality in his life, just like I did. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a peaceful existence without extraordinary goings-on. I won’t say I wasn’t sorry when Lily died, but it was all because she was part of that world!”

Her face then seemed to soften.

“You must understand therefore, how difficult it was for me when we opened our front door one morning, to find my dear departed sister’s baby wrapped in a blanket and accompanied by a letter from a wizard by the name of Albus Dumbledore. Despite all the assurances in the letter, I couldn’t help the feeling that we had been put in danger because of what had happened to Lily, and bear in mind, we were only just getting settled after being blessed with Dudley.”

Harry stifled a laugh, wondering if the word ‘blessed’ was entirely appropriate.

“So let me tell you that there was a great deal of resentment on our part when we took you in, and I will not be blamed for that. And I’m sorry if you haven’t had the perfect life here these seventeen years, but rest assured, there was a reason behind it. I just thought it was time that you heard it all, and better from me than from your Uncle Vernon.”

This, Harry understood perfectly, but he now had a question to ask.

“What about the oath you made?”

Aunt Petunia gave him a brief, unenthusiastic smile.

“It was all in the letter. Because I was a blood relative of Lily’s, you would have some kind of magical protection while you remained here. There were two reasons why you never wound up in an orphanage back then. One was that Dumbledore assured us that we would be in no danger ourselves, though after poor Dudley was attacked the year before last, I began to have doubts,” she shot a dark look in Harry’s direction, “and the other was that I feared there would be worse trouble if we did not at least put a roof over your head. But that’s what we did Harry, and the fact is you are still alive. Don’t think that I’ve been completely unaware that your life has been in danger. No matter what you’ve been put through, I fulfilled this blood oath that your headmaster told me was so important, because now you’re seventeen-“

“And now you want me out of here, is that what you’re saying? Well don’t worry, because soon I’ll be gone for good!” he cut in.

His aunt looked vaguely shocked at this.

“Leave? Harry, I have watched you grow from a baby into an adult. It is the danger and grief that I think of when I look at you, and the fact that you just belong to a different world that has stopped me from treating you like a son. I’m not asking you to leave, and I never would.”

Despite his best efforts, Harry couldn’t stop a tear running down his own cheek.

“I won’t deny the number of times I’ve wished to be anywhere but here, but you’re right, I’m still alive. You have fulfilled the oath,” he said, drying his eyes on his sleeve. “But I will be leaving tomorrow anyway. The new headmistress will be picking me up in the afternoon.”

“New headmistress? You mean Dumbledore retired?“

“Err, yes” he replied, not wishing to provoke further discussion on the subject, “Listen, whatever danger I’m in now, it isn’t something that any of you deserve to suffer, so I’m leaving by my own choice.”

They both got to their feet, and Harry, not altogether sure why it seemed the right thing to do, held out his hand. Aunt Petunia looked down at it, and then held out her own hand to shake his, slowly and solemnly. Their eyes met in whatever understanding there could be between them, and with that, she slowly turned to leave.
She stopped as she reached the door, and faced him with what she hoped was an encouraging look.

“I’m sure you will make some young witch very happy one day,” she said.

Harry then smiled himself.

“Thank you,” were the only words he could find.

After his aunt had gone back to bed, he fell into an oddly peaceful sleep, dreaming of the red-headed witch to whom he wished he could give all the happiness in the world.
Uncle Vernon, meanwhile, had fallen asleep in a chair by the living room window, dreaming of pulling a pair of local youths all the way to the police station by their hair for damaging his property.
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