A Gracey's Chance Chapter 4

[eiahmon]

Title - A Gracey's Chance Chapter 4
Rating - PG
Summary - Twelve years after Voldermort's defeat, Harry receives a letter from an old friend, with a most unusual request.
Disclaimer - I only wish I owned Harry Potter, and if I owned Haunted Mansion, the story would have been told in a much better way.

4.

The runes and lines that linked them thrummed to life as Harry began to chant, and they began to glow white, dim at first, but quickly brightening. Gracey stood in his place, looking nervous, and yet so hopeful that Harry felt a twinge of pity for him. Why had no one else attempted to help him before?

The first part of the spell was the most difficult; giving life to a lifeless doll. Harry would have to fight Nature herself for it to succeed, since the life of a homunculus was unnatural. Once he had fought through that, the second part, where the soul joined the body, would be easier, as long as the soul in question was truly willing. He spared another glance at Gracey's hopeful face and though that there were no problems there. Once the ritual was completed, the homunculus would no longer be as such. Instead it would be a normal human child.

Harry looked at Hermione, watching closely, for a moment, before he was forced to turn his attention back to his spell casting, when Nature took offense to what he was doing. With a grunt of exertion, he threw almost all of his power into the spell, determined to not let this fail. He had promised Gracey that he would be leaving this place, and he intended to keep that promise.

Two hours of fighting later, Nature conceded and backed off, and Harry couldn't keep the grin off of his face as he began the second part. He sent a smile to Gracey, who tentatively smiled back, before he began the next part of his chant. The line between Gracey's circle, and that of the body he would soon inhabit, which had been quiet up until then, began to pulse with light. The pulses moved from Gracey to his future home, and Gracey began to fade, as he was drawn downward into the runes and sent on through the line. He began to fade and become less corporeal, and he quickly dissolved into that blue-gray smoke. The pulses raced along the line faster and faster, before they stopped, and the small body was engulfed in light for a second. Harry resisted the urge to look away and kept chanting until the light from the runes and lines died, showing that the ritual was complete.

Harry blinked the spots caused by the bright light out of his eyes to see the child lying still in the center of his circle. He was not moving at all, and for a heart stopping moment, Harry thought that the ritual had failed. He took a hesitant step forward, and it was then that the child's blue eyes opened, the little face scrunched up in anger, and he began to squall. Relieved, Harry dropped boneless to the floor as the exhaustion from the ritual casting rolled over him like a wave, and Hermione ran up and scooped the little one up into her arms.

"Hush, Edward," she cooed as she smoothed the child's blond hair back from his face "Mummy and Daddy are right here." She looked up at her husband.. "Give me your handkerchief, Harry." He fumbled for a moment before he handed it over, and she handed little Edward to him, before she tore the handkerchief in half. She then transfigured one half into a nappy, which she charmed to be leak proof, and she then transfigured the other half into a soft red romper suit. Harry, who had babysat a few times while living with the Dursleys, took over from there, and soon, Edward was dressed and nestled comfortably in his arms. The baby had stopped his fussing, but Harry knew that it wouldn’t last.

“He needs some milk.” Hermione declared, and after looking at her husband, she added “And you need to sleep.”

“Matti,” Harry called softly, and with a crack!, one of the house elves that he had hired to care for Black Manor appeared. Unfortunately, the sound startled baby Edward, who began to fuss again.

“What can Matti do for Master Harry Potter sir?” Matti asked over Edward’s crying.

Hermione answered, as Harry was focused on quieting Edward down. “We need a bottle for Edward here, Matti, and once you have gotten that, could you find a bedroom here in this house and clean it up so we can use it, please?”

“Right away, Mistress Hermione, ma’am.” With that Matti vanished with another crack, which only set Edward to crying even louder. Hermione cast a low powered muffling charm on him, to mute the sound of the elf’s coming and going, and a few minutes later, Matti returned, holding a nursing bottle full of milk in one hand. She handed the bottle to Harry, who immediately offered it to Edward, and then she vanished again, in search of a place for them to sleep.

Edward eagerly accepted the bottle, and Harry smiled down at him. He could easily get used to this. Edward’s blue eyes gazed up into his while he drank the milk, and Harry looked up at his wife and grinned.

“I have a new love in my life.” he announced, and Hermione laughed and scooted closer to them.

Matti returned then. “I have founds a room for you, Mistress Hermione, ma’am, and I's cleaned it for you. Will yous be needing anything else?”

“Could you lead us to the room for right now, Matti?”

“Rights this way, Mistress Hermione, ma’am.”

“I’ll wait here, Mione.” Harry said as she got to her feet. “Edward’s not done yet.”

“I’ll come back in a minute, love.”

Harry nodded and turned his attention back to Edward as Hermione followed Matti out of the room. "Looks like it's just me and you now, little one." Edward’s response to that was to spit the nipple out and yawn. Harry couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face, and he was immensely glad that he had decided to see what Marcy had wanted. The sly old woman must have had the ritual that he had just done in mind when she asked for his help. It also explained why she had not done it herself. As the one that had, for all intents and purposes, brought Edward into the world, the two would share a bond that would only strengthen and grow with time. Because he would be raising Edward as his son, it would take the form of a close parent/ child relationship. Edward would grow to love Hermione as a mother, but he would never be as close to her as he would be to Harry.

Edward yawned again, closed his eyes, and fell asleep, and Harry was contemplating finding a soft spot of floor and doing the same when Hermione reappeared. She snickered at him, sitting on the floor in the center of an empty ballroom, holding a baby in his arms as he tried to keep his head up. She carefully took the sleeping baby out of his arms and prodded him into standing up. He let her lead him out of the ballroom, up the stairs, down a long corridor, and finally into a spacious bedroom that he was frankly too tired to really pay much attention to.

He flopped down on the bed, took a brief second to take his shoes off, before he snuggled into the mattress. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Hermione putting Edward down in a cot that someone had evidently conjured, before his eyes closed, and he succumbed to slumber.

*****

The following day, Harry sent a quick letter to Bill Weasley via Matti, and within a few hours, the pair were looking over old maps of the Gracey property that Hermione had found in the library and discussing the best way to ward the place. They both agreed that Creature Repulsion wards, Stasis wards, and Weather wards were a must for the old house to tide it over until it could be properly fixed. Bill also recommended fire suppression wards for the simple fact that weather wards couldn’t keep out everything, and rogue lightning strikes do happen. The surrounding land covered a good deal of acreage, which would require anchoring stones for a Fidelius to take hold, and Bill estimated that it would take at least a dozen of them, with the largest one being in the center of the property. Large granite stones would work best, and granite was in short supply where they were at, so they would have to get them from somewhere else.

Harry called for Matti again and sent her on her way with instructions for acquiring the needed stone, and while they waited for that, he and Bill put the wards up on the house itself. Once Matti returned, along with several other elves, each levitating a single massive granite block, Bill showed them the maps and told them where to place each block. Once the stones were in place, he and Harry carved the anchoring runes into them. Harry had to take a break from carving when Hermione showed up and handed a fussing Edward to him, citing that she could not quiet him no matter what she did. So Harry swapped places with her. He went inside the house to care for Edward, while she stayed outside to work with Bill on warding.

By nightfall, the regular wards were set and going. Only the Fidelius remained to be cast, but its anchors were ready and charged. They would cast it in the morning. For the second night, Harry tucked Edward into a conjured cot after a bottle and a nappy change. Matti had gone and gotten them some of the basic necessities that he would need to last until they could take him home. When they were back at home, they would go shopping to get everything else he needed.

In the morning, Harry and Bill cast the Fidelius over the Gracey property with Harry as the secret keeper, which ensured it would not be disturbed until Edward was ready to reclaim it. It also had the side effect of wiping the memory of the house's location from the minds of the Evers family. Hermione spent some time in New Orleans, looking them up, and she went to their home to buy the house from them and fetch the deed. She didn't have to do that, but Edward had given them the house, so she and Harry felt better knowing that they had legally acquired it. Once she had done that, she headed to the airport to book them a return flight home. Portkeys were unsafe for infants and toddlers, so they had to return home the muggle way.

While Hermione was out and about, Harry spent his time in the bedroom, seated in a comfortable chair, holding Edward in his arms. Unless he was in need of a bottle or a clean nappy, the child was quiet, content to sleep the day away in Harry's arms. Because he had been "born" in the body of an 18 month old, Edward's development would appear to be behind, but he would easily make up that missing time in a few years. By the time he started school, his physical growth and his development should match up.

Hermione returned in the mid afternoon, and Harry fed Edward, rocked him to sleep, and handed him off so he could go speak to a few people about taking Edward home and adopting him. After Voldermort's defeat, he had spent several months traveling to other countries and helping them to update their defense programs, and he had gotten to meet some of the higher ups in the United States Magic Department, so. he hoped that he would be able to call in a few favors to get things started and to get permission to take Edward out of the country.

To his relief, he was able to get in to see Mathew Thompson, the Secretary of Magical Defense, who coincidentally was from New Orleans, and had heard of the curse of Gracey Manor.

"So you helped him out, eh?" Thompson said with a grin "About time. I always felt sorry for that poor guy." A few hours later, Harry left Thompson's office with a passport for Edward and guardianship papers, giving full custody of Edward Gracey to Harry and Hermione Potter. Thompson also got the adoption wheels started.

They spent one more night in Gracey Manor, this time with Edward sleeping between them on the massive bed. In the morning, they closed up the house, checked the wards one last time, and departed for the airport to fly home.

Chapter 3 -- Chapter 5

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