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The Legacy of Regulus Black, the Story Continues By Gin110881
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Category: Alternate Universe, Post-OotP, Pre-OotP
Characters:Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Sirius Black
Genres: Action/Adventure, Humor, Romance
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: R
Reviews: 64
Summary: What happened to Harry and Ginny after their mysterious Portkey journey and how did the legacy of Regulus Black change their lives, up to the defeat of Tom Riddle? Becomes more and more AU during the story.
Sequel to The Legacy of Regulus Black
Hitcount: Story Total: 60113; Chapter Total: 5078
Awards: View Trophy Room
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Saturday, August 12th, 1995
Ginny woke up hearing footsteps in the stairwell. She hadn’t slept well last night. This time, though, it wasn’t because of her nightmares. The restlessness and concern about Harry's hearing had kept her awake most of the night. Every time she woke up and glanced at her watch, only a few minutes had passed. This time, however, she noticed the daylight shimmering through the drawn curtains. A quick glance at her watch confirmed that it was already 6:45 a.m. Apparently, she’d slept for a few hours. She stood up swiftly and put on her bathrobe. Silently, she tiptoed to the door, careful not to wake Hermione, she slowly opened the door and slipped out of the room.
As she walked down the stairs, she heard voices from the kitchen. She entered the kitchen and looked around. Harry sat at the kitchen table, already dressed for his visit to the Ministry. He listlessly pushed the scrambled eggs and baked beans around his plate. Her father was sitting in his usual place at the kitchen table, throwing one last glance in the morning edition of the Daily Prophet, while her mother was busy with the stove.
Murmuring a "Good Morning", Ginny gave Harry an encouraging look. Her heart beat a bit faster when Harry managed to answer her with a crooked smile. She sat down at the table and looked at her hands for a moment to fight her restlessness and prevent the tears from filling her eyes.
Finally, she plucked up her courage and looked at Harry. "I wish you good luck today." There was nothing more to say.
Harry seemed to understand. Giving her a nervous grin, he murmured, "Thank you."
Placing a cup of tea in front of Ginny, her mother interrupted the scene, asking, "What do you want for breakfast, Ginny?"
"Actually, I'm not hungry, Mum," she replied, looking at her cup.
"You must eat something, Ginny," her mother intervened.
At that moment, her father rose from his seat, folded his newspaper and put it on the pile of old newspapers on the sideboard. "Okay, Harry, it's time to leave, are you done?"
"Yeah, I'm done," Harry sighed and got up.
He walked to the door and turned briefly, raising his hand in farewell. Murmuring, "See you later!", he hurried after her father.
Ginny looked thoughtfully at the plate her mother had placed in front of her. It would be a long day.
*** Ginny & Harry ***
Ginny stared at the book lying in front of her on the reading table in the library. She'd chosen a random book from the bookshelf and had been staring at the same page for at least the last half hour without knowing what the book was about. She sighed and slammed the book frustrated.
Hermione, sitting on the sofa, absorbed in a book by herself, looked up. "The waiting is nerve-wracking, isn't it?" she said, giving Ginny a sympathetic look.
"Yeah," Ginny replied, glancing at her watch. "It's 9 o'clock, the hearing should begin just now. I hope it won't take long."
"Don't worry so much, Ginny. Professor Dumbledore is with Harry to represent his interests. Harry won't get into trouble," Hermione tried to soothe her.
"Harry never gets into trouble," Ginny replied nervously. "The trouble always gets to him."
Noises from the staircase interrupted their conversation. Ginny cocked her head and tried to identify the noises.
"It sounds like Bill has finally arrived," she said as she recognized her big brother's voice. Turning to the door, she muttered, "I'll be right back, I need to talk to him."
Quickly she scurried down the stairs and just saw her mother leading Bill into the kitchen. She followed them and waited patiently until her mother released her brother from a bone-breaking hug.
"Hey Bill," she beamed at him. "How are you?"
Bill turned around in surprise and smiled at her, "Hello Ginny, I'm fine, I hope you’re doing well, too?"
Ginny flew into her brother's arms and hugged him. "As good as can be expected in a crowded house with a bunch of annoying brothers."
"Oh, and now you’ve got another annoying brother in your hair." Bill laughed.
"You're my favourite brother, so you're never annoying," Ginny replied, laughing, then whispering in Bill's ear, "I need to talk to you. Soon."
"That's nice to hear, Firefly." Bill grinned.
Ginny freed herself from Bill's embrace and looked him in the eyes. "Well, come to think of it again, you are very rarely annoying."
Bill winked at her. "Because I'm very rarely at home?"
"Exactly," Ginny replied with a chuckle.
"But that's about to change now." Bill smiled roguishly. "I'm back from Egypt, we'll see each other more often now."
"Oh bugger." Ginny rolled her eyes, but couldn't hide a delighted smile. "No, seriously, I'm glad you're back." She hugged her brother again, whispering in his ear, "You can find me in my room, the only place with a bit of privacy in the whole house."
Turning to the door, she called, "See you later, Bill."
She headed to her room, hoping that Bill would soon come to talk to her.
Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long until there was a knock at her door.
"Come in," she called, relieved that it was really Bill who slipped through the door.
"What is it?" he smiled encouragingly.
"You know that I was away for a few days?" she asked carefully, relieved when Bill nodded.
"You have to tell me all about it. What Mum told me sounded pretty adventurous," Bill said, smiling.
"Oh, I can do that, and yes, it was adventurous, but sadly the story has to wait," replied Ginny.
"Oh, then it must be something important." Bill looked at her expectantly.
"It is," Ginny confirmed. "We've brought some very important things with us that belong to Sirius. Some things are so important that it's better no one knows about it."
"And why are you telling me about it?" Bill asked cautiously.
"We think Sirius needs help looking through these things and understanding them, and we think a curse breaker is just the right person to help."
"Who is we, if I may ask?" Bill looked at her thoughtfully.
"Harry and me," Ginny replied guardedly.
"Harry and you?" Bill asked with interest. "Is there anything else I should know about?"
"Not that I know of," Ginny responded, fixing his gaze.
"Okay," Bill replied.
"I'll let you know as soon as there's something to tell," Ginny continued. "But all what matters now is that you need to talk to Sirius. He's going to ask you to stay a bit longer after the Order meeting this evening, and Bill, I think it's very important. Please, listen to him, you can trust Sirius. But please don't tell anyone else about it; not before you’ve heard what he has to say."
Bill looked at her thoughtfully for a long time before he nodded. "Okay, I'll talk to Sirius."
"Thanks, Bill," Ginny whispered, hugging her brother.
"I think I better head back to Mum in the kitchen," Bill said, "before she misses me and sends a search party."
"Yeah, you’d better," Ginny confirmed sniggering. "As I said, privacy doesn't exist in this house. See you later."
After Bill left her room, Ginny sighed and slowly made her way back to the library.
She was glad that Bill had agreed to help Sirius, or at least to hear what it was all about it. She crept back into her chair at the reading table, looking listlessly at the book she'd tried to read earlier.
She looked at her watch. It wasn’t 10 o'clock yet. She was wondering what Harry was doing right now.
*** Ginny & Harry ***
"Lunch is ready." Ginny heard her mother's voice in the stairwell.
"We're coming," she called in the direction of the door, and gave Hermione a questioning look, "Are you coming?" Seeing Hermione nodding and getting up from the sofa, Ginny made her way towards the kitchen in the hope that lunch would bring some distraction.
When she entered the kitchen, her mother had already placed a large plate of prawn and tuna sandwiches on the table next to a carafe of chilled pumpkin juice. The girls took plates and glasses from the cupboard and arranged them on the table.
When they heard the noises of the boys in the stairwell, they sat down on their chairs and poured pumpkin juice into their glasses. Ron, closely followed by Fred and George, entered the kitchen and descended on the sandwiches like a pack of hyenas.
When her mother put a bowl of fruit on the table, Ginny grabbed one of the apples and bit listlessly into it. She was just too worried to be hungry.
Hermione had snagged a tuna sandwich before the boys had cleared the plate. She shook her head in disbelief at the tumult the boys were having at lunch. When she finished her sandwich, she took a few sips of pumpkin juice from her glass and asked Ginny's mother, "Mrs Weasley, is there any news from Harry?"
Ginny was glad Hermione had asked that question and was curious about her mother's answer. Unfortunately, she shook her head. "No, unfortunately not, but Harry should be back soon, after all, he's been away for hours now."
She had just turned her attention back to the dinner preparations when someone noisily knocked at the front door. The portrait of Sirius’ mother, Walburga Black, immediately started screaming and cursing all the unworthy inhabitants of Grimmauld Place.
"Who could that be?" Ginny asked in surprise.
"There's only one way to find out," her mother replied, making her way to the front door. As she passed by the portrait of the former landlady, she closed the curtains, making the noise immediately more bearable.
Ginny followed her mother into the stairwell and watched as she carefully opened the door a crack.
"Who is it?" Hermione asked, standing in the kitchen door next to Ginny.
"Alastor, Nymphadora, I'm glad to see you," Mrs Weasley greeted the newcomers. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
"We were just escorting this young man home," grumbled the strange-looking man in Auror robes Ginny suspected was the real Mad-Eye Moody and pushed Harry through the door. "Albus insisted that we take him home safely."
"I'm sorry, I didn’t want to cause you so much trouble," Harry apologized.
"Nonsense, Harry, it was nice to meet you." A pink haired girl in Auror robes smiled at Harry. "We're off again, duty's calling." She waved at them and turned to leave.
Harry waved goodbye to his escorts and trudged slowly up the stairs. When he reached the kitchen door, he looked at the two girls, took a deep breath and said softly, "Hey, I'm back."
"Harry, how did it go?" Hermione blurted out.
"Give him some rest, girls," Ginny’s mother chided them.
Harry gave her a grateful look and strode slowly into the kitchen, where the Weasley boys had just finished the last sandwich. He sat down in his chair and smiled relieved. "In the end, everything was fine."
When Ginny heard the news and the cheers of her brothers, she smiled in relief and sat down next to Harry. "Are you hungry?" she asked.
"I'm starving," Harry admitted.
"Tell us, how did it go?" Hermione urged him.
Harry grabbed a roast beef sandwich from the new plate her mother had just placed on the table and took a bite. Ginny noticed how her hunger returned and grabbed a sandwich, too.
After Harry had taken a few bites from his sandwich, he chased it down with some pumpkin juice and looked amused into the expectant faces around him.
“As you know, your dad took me to his office this morning. I was lucky that we arrived so early. We were barely in his office when a colleague of your dad brought word that the location and time of my hearing have been changed.
“It wasn’t just a hearing in the office of Madam Bones. Fudge insisted that the hearing has to take place in front of the entire Wizengamot…an hour earlier that it had been scheduled previously. We were lucky that we’ve been in the Ministry so early, so I was only five minutes late.
"Percy was there too, he was the secretary of the hearing, and an ugly woman, who looked like a toad. That hag, absolutely wanted me to be sentenced. Luckily, Dumbledore showed up just then. He was also earlier in the ministry. Obviously, Fudge didn't like that at all. Dumbledore brought Mrs Figg with him as an eyewitness. She was nearby when the Dementors attacked, and she confirmed that she’d noticed the Dementors. Fudge and this ugly woman claimed that she was lying…just like me, but at the end, Dumbledore convinced Madam Bones that I'm innocent. At the vote, most of the Wizengamot members believed him. Percy voted against me, just like Fudge and this toad.”
"Oh, Percy the traitor," Ron said with a motionless face. "Dad will be disappointed when he hears about it."
Looking thoughtfully, Harry took another bite from his sandwich. "The strangest thing was that Dumbledore completely ignored me after the hearing. He gave me a quick goodbye, and then he disappeared without even looking at me."
"Maybe he was in a hurry," Hermione said, shrugging her shoulders.
"Yes, maybe," Harry replied doubtfully.
The twins got up and headed back to their room to plan Merlin knows what.
Getting up, Ron looked around the table. "Anyone fancy a game of Exploding Snap?" Patting Harry's shoulder, he added, "to clear your head?"
Harry took a deep breath. "No, sorry, I'm dog-tired, I need to take a nap." When he saw Ron's disappointed look, he added apologetically, "Later!"
Ginny got up to put the empty plates in the sink. She suddenly stopped short when she spotted Harry's name on the front page of the Daily Prophet, lying on the top of the pile of newspapers on the sideboard.
"Crap," she cursed softly, silently hoping that no one had seen the article yet, and Harry would get some well-deserved rest before the next bad news would spoil his mood.
Unfortunately, Hermione already stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. "What's going on?"
"Crap, indeed," the girl hissed agitatedly when she read the headline. She grabbed the newspaper, spread it over the kitchen table and began to read.
When Ginny came back from the sink, Harry was already leaning over the table, skimming Rita Skeeters latest article.
A short glance at the front page was enough for Ginny to catch a glimpse of phrases like "attention-seeking liar" and "discredits Minister Fudge with his lies about You-Know-Who being back", to know that Harry would soon withdraw to his room, to brood for who knows how long.
While Ron tried to read the newspaper's headlines from the opposite side of the table, Hermione was busy inhaling in every detail of the Daily Prophet's articles, muttering incoherent things all the while.
Ginny took the opportunity and put her hand gently on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, we need to talk to Sirius."
Harry stared numbly at the paper in front of him and didn't move. Ginny grabbed Harry's shoulder a bit tighter and repeated a little louder, "Harry!"
When Harry turned around, stone-faced, she repeated, "We need to talk to Sirius."
When he looked at her uncomprehendingly, she explained, "We can't do anything about their lies, but we can do something about Tom, and we should start soon."
Harry met her eyes and slowly began to nod. "Yeah, let's talk to Sirius."
*** Ginny & Harry ***
Silently, they made their way to Sirius' room.
"I hope he's there," Ginny spoke as they walked down the hallway to Sirius's room. "Ever since we've been here, I've only seen him at mealtimes, and occasionally in the drawing room in the evenings."
"Let's see," Harry replied, knocking on the door. When there was no response from inside, he knocked again and carefully pushed the door open. The room was dim, the only light came from a crack in the curtains.
"Sirius! Are you here?" Harry asked into the semi-darkness.
When there was no reaction, he looked questioningly at Ginny, running his hands thoughtfully through his hair. "Where could he be?"
"Maybe he's with Buckbeak?" Ginny suggested.
"Yeah, maybe. Let's just have a look," replied Harry, shrugging.
Silently, they climbed the stairs to the next floor. This floor was mostly unused. Since their visit to Buckbeak a couple of days ago, they knew he was in the room at the top of the staircase. Harry turned the doorknob and smiled at Ginny in relief as he slowly pushed the door open.
Buckbeak lay on a haystack in the middle of the room, staring at Sirius, who was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, leaning against the wall, leafing through a book.
"Ah, visitors." Sirius threw them an amused look and made a gesture towards the floor next to him. "Do you want to sit down with us?"
"Hi, Sirius. Hi, Buckbeak." Ginny smiled at them while Harry grinned." So, this is where the two of you have been hiding."
Buckbeak watched with interest as Harry and Ginny settled on the floor next to Sirius.
Harry waved to Buckbeak. "I hope the old man doesn't bore you to death with his old stories."
"Oh, Harry, that's low," Sirius replied, offended. "I'm the only company my old friend here has. He is always happy when I visit him. You two are the first visitors we have here. So, what brings you here?"
Ginny gave him a serious look, pointing at the family journal lying in his lap. "Did you already take a look into the books? What do you think of Regulus' discoveries? "
The smile vanished from Sirius' face and he looked worried. "That's pretty dark magic if it's true what he found out, and I don't doubt he's right."
Harry leaned forward. "Do you think the information in the books and the Family Journal could help us to fight Voldemort? Regulus mentioned the possibility of merging soul pieces. This sounds quite useful. It doesn't seem to matter how many parts Voldemort has split his soul into. Once we have one Horcrux, we have all. I don't think he knows about this possibility, and it should remain this way. And best of all, we already have one of his soul parts. "
Ginny nodded in agreement. "It's definitely something we should investigate further." Hesitantly, she continued, "Sirius?"
"Hmm," he looked questioningly at her.
"Did you read the Prophet this morning?"
"Ah, so that's where you're coming from." Sirius took a deep breathe. "Yes, I read the Prophet and there was a lot of rubbish in it."
"Do you think we can do something about it?" Ginny asked him doubtfully.
"I have some ideas." Sirius grimaced. "But no really good ones."
"I'm used to the lies written in the papers about me." Harry shrugged. A short look at his face told Ginny that it was hard for him to remain calm.
"But it's not right that they spread such lies about you and claim that you are a liar who's just seeking attention," Ginny replied, agitated.
Harry looked at her. "This isn't about me. It's worse. They're telling people lies about Voldemort. If no one believes that he has returned, he can do whatever he wants, and what he wants is certainly not good."
"You're right," Ginny said thoughtfully, looking from Harry to Sirius. "If we can't do anything about the lies, we should do something about Tom himself."
"Who is Tom?" Sirius asked, puzzled.
"Tom Riddle is the real name of Voldemort," Harry explained. "When he was at Hogwarts, in the time he created the diary Horcrux, he still used his real name." Harry briefly summarized what happened in the Chamber of Secrets when Tom Riddle introduced himself as the future Lord Voldemort. Ginny followed Harry's words with interest, as these details were also new to her, as she had been lying unconscious on the chamber floor at that time.
Sirius looked at them appreciatively and grinned. "Seems the trip to the island was not your first adventure together."
Ginny blushed slightly while Harry looked at her thoughtfully. "You're right, Gin. If no one believes us that Voldemort is back while he's gathering his Death Eaters, then those who know he's back must do something to fight him." He looked from Ginny to Sirius. "And further researching the Horcruxes is definitely not the worst idea."
"Yeah," Ginny confirmed. "That's why I wanted to talk to Sirius when I saw all the crap in the paper."
"You said there are more books on the island," Sirius asked the two teenagers. When they nodded, he continued, "So I'd better prepare myself for a trip to the island."
"You should take Buckbeak with you," said Harry, looking at his four-legged friend. "There's plenty of space and fresh air for him. Kreacher will be happy to serve you on the island. The fresh air there will do you good."
"Oh, you two won't get rid of me so easily," Sirius grinned at Harry. "I won't travel to the island as long as you two are still visiting my house."
"Good idea," Harry replied. "There is still so much we need to talk about. I always have the feeling we've forgotten something." Harry contemplated for a moment and added, "You should charm a communication mirror for yourself, so we can stay in touch when we're back at Hogwarts."
"Oh, yes," Ginny interjected. "Before I forget, I talked to Bill. He promised me to help us. I told him you wanted to talk to him tonight, Sirius."
"Good." Sirius looked at her. "We'll need all the help we can get."
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