When Pomfrey assured him that he wa

When Pomfrey assured him that he was not about to keel over, Harry felt rather stupid for immediately assuming the worst.

"Okay then… I'm not dying, that's good. But there is something wrong, or we wouldn't be having this conversation…"

'Darn it… I hate situations like this…' – the boy thought morosely – 'How do I convince her not to tell Dumbles about whatever it is she discovered?'

'$Calm down, little masster…$' – came the mental voice of his new familiar, making Harry jerk a little – '$Sshe iss a healer, iss sshe not?$'

'Yes…' – he thought back at the basilisk, a little uncomfortable at having her able of hearing all his thoughts.

'$Then it matterss not if sshe'ss willing to tell the old wizard the truth or not, sshe iss under oath to not tell anyone without your verbal permission…$'

Harry was now really glad for having Savanna in his mind, since the ancient basilisk seemed to know a lot about magic, which wasn't all that surprising considering she was Salazar Slytherin's familiar and was almost a thousand years old. He then turned his attention to madam Pomfrey and noticed that the witch was giving him a concerned glance:

"Sorry, madam Pomfrey, I was a bit distracted. There is something I think you might need to know, being the one in charge of my health during the school year and all that… but it is something extremely private and frankly I can't risk it getting out…"

"Oh, Mr. Potter, no need to fret. I did take my healer's oath you know, I can't willingly or even under torture disclose any secret of yours without losing my magic."

"Really?" – he was actually rather horrified at the thought of either Dumbles or Voldie torturing anyone just to get information about Harry, but he preferred to have his secrets protected.

"Yes, really, Harry." – she gave him a warm smile – "And I'm quite willing to give you an additional oath of secrecy to put you at ease."

Harry blushed slightly. He had no idea what to do. On one hand he wanted the security of knowing without a doubt that whatever she knew about him wouldn't get into wrong hands, on the other hands he really wanted to trust the woman. His moment of silence, however, took the decision out of his hands as she gave the oath without a shadow of hesitancy. Harry thus did the only thing he could do – he accepted the vow. The boy gave Pomfrey a grateful smile.

"Thank you, madam Pomfrey." – he said – "It's not that I don't trust you… it's just that…"

"That you feel more secure knowing that your secrets are safe with me, Harry, I understand." – assured him the medi-witch – "Now then, I have something important to tell you, so please listen without interrupting. You can ask all of the questions after I'm finished. Can you do that?"

"Of course…" – replied Harry, feeling the unease creeping back. He knew he wasn't dying, but somehow he just knew that whatever he was about to hear would be just as bad, if not worse.

"Now then, the easiest things first: I've requested professor Snape to brew some nutritive potions to negate the effect of the malnourishment. I'm not going to ask that you tell me who is responsible for this, but I am going to help you get better."

Harry gave a sigh of relief. The last summer wasn't so bad and Harry hoped that his relatives were coming around finally, thus he decided to keep his home life to himself. After all if they just pretended he wasn't there, then he'd be able to do whatever he wanted to, that was not something he was willing to give up.

"Thank you." – he said, when it became clear that the woman wanted a reaction from him.

"On to the next matter, then..." – Poppy wasn't very happy that Harry didn't confide in her, but she knew he had his friends and should he need an ear, he'd have more than enough volunteers – "It seems, mister Potter, that whatever happened to you down in that chamber, triggered your inheritance, which is most likely the reason why you slept so long."

Harry knew he was not supposed to interrupt, but what the medi-witch just said was strange and he had absolutely no idea what it meant:

"Inheritance? What do you mean?"

Poppy gave the child a rather stern look for interrupting, but then she saw the total confusion on his face and had to fight the urge to hit herself on the head. How on earth did she forget that the child was muggle-raised?

"Well, Harry, you see… you come from an old pure-blood line, despite your mother being a muggle-born. Thus like many other pureblood witches and wizards you had the potential to come into a creature inheritance. See there are many types of magical creatures that can mate with humans, thus after a wizard or witch marrying a creature, the family of that wizard or witch carries the blood of the creature. And once in a while a descendant of such a marriage is powerful enough to come into the creature inheritance. Mind you this usually happens when the child turns 15, or in some cases 16. Due to whatever accident you had in the Chamber of Secrets, your inheritance was triggered early. Understand so far?"

The boy gave a dazed nod, his mind still in the process of wrapping around the new information he was told.

'$I'm ssorry, young masster,$' – hissed Savanna through their mind link – '$It wass probably my bite and the phoenix' healing that triggered this…$'

Harry made sure to calm down his familiar and while he did that, he calmed down as well, realizing that this would have happened to him eventually.

"I think I got it, madam Pomfrey." – he told the medi-witch.

"Good." – beamed the plump witch and went on with her explanation – "Now I can't really tell you what sort of inheritance you've come into, you'll have to discover that on your own. I'm quite sure that since you came into it early, the physical changes will not start until the summer, which is most likely a good thing if you don't want other people to know. As soon as you have an opportunity to do so, you'll have to go to Gringotts and order a family tree. This will help you find out the possible creatures you may have become. Once you figure out the possibilities, it'll only be the matter of researching the creatures and comparing them to the traits you develop. If you need anything, don't hesitate to write me."

"Thank you, madam Pomfrey." – replied Harry, still a bit dazed.

"My pleasure to help, Harry. Now run along, you've missed enough classes as it is."


The walk back to the dorms was like in a fog. At times only Savanna's hisses of 'stairs' or 'wall' stopped the clearly shocked boy from walking into the said wall. One time he almost fell down the stairs. Thus he really was lucky when he dropped onto his bed. Sleep came to him at once and though it was quite weird, he even had pleasant dreams, not the usual Dursley, or Voldemort related nightmares.


While Harry was getting his much needed rest, one Arthur Weasley was busy organizing a trip to St. Mungo's for all of his children. Of course it wasn't very easy, since the children wanted to know why it was needed and Molly was hard to work around. Now many people think Arthur to be a weak person who let his wife do all the thinking for him, but it was not exactly like that. You see, Arthur Weasley has been taking suppressant potions ever since he married Molly Prewitt. He'd known the woman was not good for him, but she was the one person his family chose for him and with no mate on the horizon, he agreed. His life was good, or so he believed, until one day he received a frantic letter from Fred and George.

/flashback/

Arthur Weasley was getting himself a glass of water when he saw a barn owl fly in through the kitchen window. The man frowned at the bird as it flew up to him and held out its' leg. Arthur untied the message and gave the bird a bit of water. He opened the letter and read the missive, rage building up in him as he read it.

[Hi Dad!

The new school year has been rather weird so far, even worse than the previous one. We're sure Dumbledore didn't make this knowledge public, so we're telling you now. Ever since Halloween something has been attacking students. One girl, that muggle born Hermione Granger that Harry and Ron saved from the troll, was even killed and some kids got petrified. All of this and only after Hermione died our headmaster warned the student body to be more careful. As far as the rest of the school is concerned, she fell from the stairs. But us, Fred and I, along with Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom, Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy, know better. We were there when they found her body. True enough, she fell. But she was dead before she fell from the stairs.

Anyway, gruesome strange things aside, we have a bigger problem. Ron. He had an accident and was brought to the hospital wing, once Poppy performed some diagnostic charms, it was discovered that Ron was repeatedly raped while under the Imperius curse. Since Ron has been in a coma since the accident, Severus Snape, our potions master, used this thing… don't remember what it's called to look inside his mind and found out that it was DUMBLEDORE who's been doing this to our brother. We have no idea how long this has been going on, or if anyone knows about it, but we feel unsafe with just the possibility that the old bastard could have done this to someone else.

Yours,

George & Fred.]

/end of flashback/

It took a lot of planning on Arthur's part but he managed to get Ron into a clinic that specialized on mental trauma in Spain. Of course it cost a lot of money, so Arthur finally had to give up his position in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts department and accept a better paid position in the DMLE. This brought on a huge argument with Molly and one night he overheard his wife's conversation with Albus through the floo. It hit him hard to know that his wife, the person he had been taking a suppressant potion for, had known about the old bastard raping his son. Still it was not as bad a hit as the one when he went to Gringott