MetaFic

Number four Privet Drive was a perfectly ordinary house. Other perfectly ordinary houses flanked it, and a matching set of rather similar dwellings gazed impassively at number four from across the street. The street itself was not remarkable in any particular way, nor were the streets surrounding it. In fact, Little Whinging in general was rather plain. Blocks of similar houses stretched out, staring at the streets from behind uniformly well-kept lawns. All this ordinariness in itself was unnatural and might well have caused the collapse of reality as we know it, were it not for one of the four people who lived in number four Privet Drive.

For this was the dwelling place of one Harry Potter, a most remarkable young wizard. Known to the Wizarding world as The-Boy-Who-Lived, young Mister Potter had faced the greatest Dark Wizard of the time on occasions too numerous to mention. Each time he had escaped, and more than once he had thwarted the plans of Tom Riddle, the self-styled Lord Voldemort. Yet Voldemort had exacted a terrible price from young Potter during their last meeting. The death of Sirius Black, his godfather and one of the last remaining strong links in this world to his late parents, was a high price to pay for a simple mistake, but there it was.

Harry Potter lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, though he did not really see it. Instead, he saw a vision of his godfather, struck in the chest by a curse from Bellatrix LeStrange, falling repeatedly through the veil in the Department of Mysteries. Harry knew that part of the blame for Sirius's death lay with him, but he also realized that Voldemort, Dumbledore, Kreacher, and even Sirius himself bore some of the blame as well. As for Bellatrix, well, Harry knew that if there really was a Hell, there was a special place reserved in it just for her. Harry intended to see that she found her way there as soon as possible.

Harry wiped away a stray tear and tried to clear his mind. He wasn't worried about Voldemort. Since their last encounter the Dark Lord had left Harry's mind alone. Dumbledore had told him it was his love of Sirius that had cast Voldemort out, and Harry supposed this must be true. Though he wasn't feeling very charitable toward the Headmaster at the moment, he knew Dumbledore would not lie to him about something so important. Harry assumed it was his love of Sirius, and in fact the love he felt for all of his friends, that was keeping the Dark Lord at bay.

Harry realized that this was the power he held of which Voldemort knew not. And while Harry had no earthly idea how something so intangible as love could help him defeat the Dark Lord, he knew he should at least take stock of his feelings for those around him. In a flash of scholarly insight that would have made Hermione sigh, Harry realized the thing to do was to start a list. It seemed silly, but it would give him something to focus on as he counted the hours until he could leave Privet Drive and return to his own world.

He took a clean piece of parchment from his trunk and fished out his last bottle of ink. He would have to ask Hermione or Mrs. Weasley to send him some soon; what little he had would not be enough to finish his summer homework. He decided that the thing to do would be to write down the person's name, then add his thoughts. As he started in with the list, he found to his surprise just how many friends he really had. Not just the Weasleys and Hermione, but people like Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood as well.

Harry grimaced as he finished the list. He knew he had treated Ron and Hermione pretty badly last term. He made a solemn promise to make it up to them somehow. With a strange quirk of his mouth, not quite a smile but very close indeed, he thought perhaps it was time to enlist some add in getting his two stubborn friends together. He would write to Ginny about just that matter tomorrow.

The thought of the youngest Weasley made Harry smile in earnest. Ginny had come as a surprise to him last term. Fierce and funny, a fabulous flyer, and a blatant teller of lies if the need arose, she had done the one thing no one else had dared to do all last term.

She had yelled at him.

A lot.

He had deserved it. For the hundredth time, Harry cursed himself for forgetting her ordeal in her first year. How could he have been so callous, when all Ginny had ever done was hold out a hand in an offer of friendship? Sure, she had her crush in her first year, but -- but she had defended him against Malfoy in Flourish and Blotts, and she had never made a spectacle of her feelings toward Harry. And she had managed to arrange for Harry to speak to Sirius one final time. He would always owe her a debt of gratitude for that one beautiful thing she had done for him. Where Ron would have shrugged and told him there was nothing to do about it, where Hermione would have chastised him for being reckless, Ginny had simply made it happen. In fact, he realized, she had quietly been there lending her support the entire term.

Harry was glad to count her as his friend.

Harry blinked in confusion. The word friend made Harry's chest feel a little odd, as if it did not quite fit.

Harry shook off the feeling, attributing it to something odd he must have eaten, and continued his internal monologue.

The adults in his life where another matter entirely. Dumbledore had failed to give him the information and tools he needed to avoid falling into Voldemort's trap, and Harry knew it. Still, he wondered what he would have done in Dumbledore's place. He understood that the adults wanted desperately to protect not only him, but his friends also. What they failed to see was that their protection was actually harming them. Harry and his friends were in the thick of things, for better or worse, and the sooner Dumbledore, Mrs. Weasley, and all the others came to grips with that, the better.

Harry also knew that if he wanted to be treated like an adult, he would have to start acting like one. In that vein Harry resolved to clean up his act and pick up the pieces of the mess he had made, no matter how difficult the task, and no matter how long it took.

He refused to completely trust the adults in his life because historically the adults in his life were not terribly trustworthy. Certainly not the Dursleys, nor the endless parade of either incompetent or evil Defense Teachers. Only Lupin had proved valuable in that field, though Barty Crouch, in his disguise as Mad-Eye Moody, had taught them several useful hexes and jinxes, as well as his class on the Unforgiveables. He refused to trust Snape, no matter what Dumbledore insisted, and he was not sure how much he trusted Dumbledore these days. The Ministry and the Press had caused him nothing but grief, and even Mrs. Weasley, whom he loved dearly, would smother him in unwanted protection if he allowed her.

Harry sighed. He wished he could be like Hermione, who seemed to trust the adults to always do the right thing, but he just could not. And if he could not trust them, then how in the world could he expect them to trust him?

He knew the only thing to do would be to act more like an adult in the hopes that the adults would get the message and start treating him like one.

"Boy!" his uncle's voice rose from downstairs, "get down here and do the dishes!"

"Coming, Uncle Vernon," Harry cried down the stairs.

While the Dursleys were pretty much leaving him alone this summer thanks to the warning from the Order at King's Cross, he did not feel the need to unduly antagonize his aunt and uncle.

As Harry started in on the dishes, his Aunt Petunia walked into the kitchen. "Mrs. Garrity at Number Nine wants her gutter cleaned. You're to be over there tomorrow morning at nine sharp and no funny business, do you understand?"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry replied while standing up to his elbows in sudsy water.

"Good." She seemed like she wanted to say more, but changed her mind and stalked out of the room.

Harry smiled to himself. Mrs. Garrity always slipped him extra money, as she knew full well his aunt always kept what she paid them for his work. Plus, she usually supplied lemon-aid. It was not the best way to spend his day, but it was better than being cooped up in his room.

Harry finished the dishes, then returned to his room to write his letters. He knew that Lupin was supposed to check on him tomorrow and wanted to send the letters out with him. Hedwig was simply too distinct; she would be spotted and possibly injured if Harry sent her out too often. With a last sigh he trudged back up the stairs, intent on finishing his correspondences.

There was a note from Ron waiting for him on his bed when he opened the door. He popped it open and read it. He chuckled at first, hearing how Ginny had stormed into an Order meeting, wand drawn, to give Dumbledore a piece of her mind. His mirth quickly turned to anger when Ron told him that Ginny had now been missing from Grimmauld Place for three days and no one would tell him anything, except to say that Ginny was safe. Ron speculated that Mrs. Weasley had bundled her off to a nunnery. Harry's eyes narrowed. He would find out from Lupin what was going on, even if he had to do it at wand point.

Harry chuckled to himself. That was definitely not the adult thing to do, pulling a wand on his favorite professor, but he decided it was what he was going to do anyway.