eiahmon | A Gracey's Chance Chapter 6

Title - A Gracey's Chance Chapter 6
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.
A/N - To hear the piece that Edward plays on the pipe organ, go here.

Choking...can't breathe... lungs burning...tears...I'm coming, Elizabeth.

Can't breathe...

Can't breathe!

I want to die!

Five year old Edward Gracey sat straight up in his bed, a strangled scream coming from him. A few second later, he heard footsteps coming from his parents' room.

"Edward? Are you alright?" His father sounded frantic, and he realized then that he was shaking.

"Daddy," Edward sobbed as he reached out to him, and he felt his father sit down on the bed beside him and wrap his warm arms around him. Edward buried his face in Daddy's nightshirt and cried.

"Was it that same bad dream again?" Daddy asked, and Edward nodded, still crying. He'd had the dream for as long as he could remember. He never saw anything in the dream, but he could feel something around his neck, and he couldn't breathe. He also felt really sad, like he did when his pet kitten got run over by a car, but it felt much, much worse.

Daddy picked him and held him on his lap for a few minutes, while he calmed down., and then he was picked up and carried down the hall to his parents' room and tucked into their bed. Mama was still asleep; Daddy said that she was sick, and she never woke up when he cried at night anymore. Daddy laid down beside him, and Edward snuggled close, comforted by his parents' presence.

"Goodnight, Edward." Daddy said softly, and Edward sighed softly and went back to sleep.

*****

"We're gathered here today, to say goodbye to Hermione Jane Potter. Though her life had been so tragically cut short, she lived her time here to its fullest..."

Seven year old Edward could only barely hear the words of the man talking over his mother's coffin over the sounds of his own sobs. He was sitting on Daddy's lap at the gravesite, crying his little heart out, while Daddy's arms held him. True, his mother hadn't been in his life all that much during the previous year, ever since she had gotten sick, but he still loved her and missed her all the same. He didn't know what had been wrong with her - he had heard the word "cancer" on multiple occasions but hadn't known what that meant, and now she was gone.

Daddy's arms tightened around him for a brief moment, and he heard him whisper:

"It'll be alright, Edward. It hurts now, but it will go away in time. " Edward hid his face in his father's shirt and tried to ignore the voice in the back of his mind that kept telling him that pain like this never went away.

*****

"When are you going to move on, Harry?"

Edward, now aged 10, perked his ears at the sound of Aunt Ginny's voice coming from their small dining room.

"What are you talking about?" He heard his dad reply, and he crept down the hallway to better hear the conversation. He was supposed to be doing his schoolwork, but this sounded like it would be much more interesting. He crouched down just around the corner from the dining room and tilted his head to listen.

"It's been three years, Harry. When are you going to find someone else?"

Edward felt the temperature drop in the room, like it always did when his dad was truly angry. “I don’t see how that’s any of your concern, Ginny.”

“Edward needs a mother, Harry, and you need someone to keep you company.”

“Edward and I are fine; we have each other, and we don’t need someone else.”

Aunt Ginny huffed. "Well has he at least shown accidental magic yet? He's due to start Hogwarts next year, you know."

"Edward is not going to Hogwarts, Ginerva."

Edward winced; Dad only called Aunt Ginny that when he was angry with her, and it occurred to him then, that he'd been angry with her a lot since Mama had died.

"Decided to send him somewhere else? I suppose it's a good thing. Hogwarts doesn't accept squibs anyway."

"Edward is not a squib, Ginerva."

"Why else would you not send him to Hogwarts? I mean why would you adopt a muggle brat?"

Edward shivered at the coldness in Aunt Ginny's voice and at the sudden, sharp decrease in temperature He had always felt that some of the Weasleys had not fully accepted him, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Ron specifically, but to hear it spoken so coldly...

“Edward is non magical, Ginerva., not that it makes any difference. He is still my son, and you will not speak of him that way.”

“First you go and marry Hermione, and then you got adopt a muggle brat? What were you thinking, Harry?”

“I was thinking that I wanted a child to love, and when I found Edward, I knew that he was what I was looking for.” Dad’s voice was below freezing at that point. “Now, get out of my house, Ginerva. You are no longer welcome here until you learn to speak without insulting my wife and son.”

“C’mon Harry, you know I didn’t mean it. Why don’t you leave the kid with Mum, and you and I can go out for a bit.”

“I said leave, Ginerva. I’ll not say it again.”

Edward heard a second, angry, huff, and a second later, he heard stomping footsteps towards the front door. He heard the door open, and then slam. A second later, his father called out.

“You can come out now, Edward.”

Edward flushed with embarrassment as he walked into the room, where his dad was sitting at the table. “How did you know I was there?”

His dad gave him a wry smile. “I went through Voldermort’s second uprising. It required me to be acutely aware of my surroundings at all times.”

Edward nodded; he knew of the war that had engulfed the magical world and of his dad’s role in it. He did not know how his dad had killed Voldermort, and truthfully, he didn’t care. He was just glad that the monster could never come back.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t I have magic?”

“Because you just don’t. The Graceys were never a magical family, and so far, the line has not produced a magical child.”

“Then why did you take me?”

Dad looked at him for a second, before he got up from his chair and came around to sit down in front of him. “Edward,” he said gently, yet firmly as he placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders “Your mother and I chose you because we love you. We found you there, all alone and so very sick, and we couldn’t bear to be parted from you. We chose you, never forget that. We. Chose. You. Magic ability meant nothing to us then, it means nothing to me now. All that matters is that you are happy, healthy, and well cared for.”

Edward nodded and swallowed a small lump in his throat.

He knew the story of his adoption, how his birth parents died suddenly without warning, and how no one had noticed until his adoptive parents came to look at an old house they had spotted. How they had found his 18 month old self inside, nearly dead from dehydration and very, very ill. How they had stayed with him while he was hospitalized, and how they had taken him home once it was learned that he had no family to take him in.

His dad opened up his arms, and Edward stepped into the embrace, and he allowed himself to savor the contract; he knew just how lucky he was. If his parents had been a day later in coming to see the house, he likely wouldn’t not have lived. After a moment, his dad let him go.

“Now, young man, what have I told you about eavesdropping?”

“Dad!”

*****

Edward looked around the nave at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. He hadn't really wanted to go see it; it was just a giant church in his eyes, but his dad had insisted that every Londoner needed to see it at least once. To the now 13 year old Edward, it meant just a boring few hours looking at an old building.

Boring at least, until he spotted the pipe organ. He knew that he should stay away from it - he was certain that it was off limits to the public at large - but his feet seemingly had a will of their own, and he was standing in front of the massive console before he could convince himself to walk away. Before he could stop himself, he sat down on the bench and tentatively reached out and lightly touched the keys. A faint whisper of sound escaped from the pipes, but it was loud enough to attract attention, for he heard footsteps on the stone floor coming towards him.

He sternly told himself to get up from the bench and leave the organ before he got into trouble, but his couldn't resist reaching out and putting his hands on the keyboard one last time. He gently depressed a few keys, and he smiled at the sound that they produced.

"Hey, boy! What are you doing there? Get away from there!"

"Edward! What are you doing?" The second voice belonged to his dad, but he ignored it, in favor of closing his eyes and launching into a song.

Elizabeth so loved this piece.

All sounds behind him ceased as the opening bars of C. M. Widor's Toccata filled the nave. He didn't know how he knew what the song was - his dad was not a lover of that kind of music, but he somehow knew, just as he somehow knew which keys and pedals to use as the music enveloped the cathedral.

Even though his eyes were closed, he thought he could see flickering candlelight through his eyelids, and he could smell the humidity of an afternoon rain shower. Hadn't been sunny when he had walked into the cathedral? Strange, the acoustics seemed.. off, as though he was in a much smaller room on a much smaller organ, and when had he learned to play the organ anyway?

Four minutes and thirty eight seconds later, he removed his hands from the keys and opened his eyes as the last few notes faded away. The sights, sounds, and smells of the cathedral rushed back to him, and he heard yelling voices, angry, yelling at him, and a pair of hands came down on his shoulders. He tilted his head back to see it was his dad, and he was a little unnerved to see the frown on his face. It wasn’t an angry frown, instead of it was a thoughtful one.

For you, Elizabeth.

“Dad?” he asked, suddenly confused. Where was he? Why was he sitting at a pipe organ? He didn’t know how to play an organ. And why was he so dizzy all of a sudden?

“Dad?” he asked again “What happened?” And then all the lights and colors around him swirled into one, and he fainted.

*****

“Get the hell out of my house, Dumbledore! I’ll not say it again!”

Angry voices greeted 18 year old Edward as he walked into his front door after school one afternoon. He went up to his room to drop his books on his desk, before he went downstairs to get a snack. The voices were coming from his father’s study, where he managed the massive Potter estate. It was also where he gave Edward lessons on estate management, which were for two reasons. One was that Edward was the sole heir to the Potter fortune, and two was that he had the Gracey fortune and property to take control of once he was of age. He’d been startled to learn that he came from a wealthy family, and he was very eager to see Gracey Manor. His dad had promised to take him once he was old enough.

“Be reasonable, my boy. Edward is a muggle! Muggles cannot inherit from magical families.”

“Then I will pull it from Gringotts and put in a regular bank. I will not cut my only child out of my will because some stuffy old pureblood aristocrat has a stick up his ass!”

“He’s not your son, Harry, no matter what some fancy documents say. He is not related to you by blood. The prominent purebloods didn’t appreciate you marrying a muggleborn, and they are furious that you have a muggle child.”

“And since when have I ever given a damn what those racist bastards thought? I left that world for a reason, Dumbledore, and I don’t intend to return to it.”

“Any backlash is entirely your own fault, Harry. I tried to warn you.”

I tried to warn you, but you wouldn‘t listen. Edward winced aa pain lanced through his skull, and he stumbled for a moment before he regained his footing.

“Suuuure you did.”

“Your union was unsuitable.”

Edward let out a low moan as the pain in his head increased, like someone had it in a vice. He sank to the floor just outside the kitchen door and clutched his head in his hands.

Your union was unsuitable.

But I loved her!

“Edward?”

Edward raised his head to see his father kneeling down in front of him, looking at him in concern. “Are you alright?”

“I’m alright, Dad.” Edward replied groggily, and he tried to stand up, but the room spun around him, and only his dad’s arms kept him from falling. He heard a malicious chuckle from Dumbledore.

“Looks like whatever ritual you used, Harry, wasn’t suitable.”

“Get out, Dumbledore!” Edward heard his dad say. “Get out of my house or I will throw you out!”

"The truth is painful, my boy."

"Damn you, Dumbledore! Get out of my house!"

Damn you. Damn you all to hell!

Edward was vaguely aware of Dumbledore exiting the house as if some invisible hand was pushing him from behind. Despite the pain in his head, he couldn't help but grin. It was rare that his dad demonstrated his wandless magic, but he loved seeing it.

"Dad?" he asked groggily "What did he mean by 'ritual'? Why would I have anything to do with a ritual?"

His dad cast a low powered Ennervate at him to wake him up and bring him back to full awareness. He then took him by the arm and began to lead him towards the study.

"Come," he said quietly "It's time for you to know the full story."

Chapter 5 -- Chapter 7

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