The Grangers' home was in an decent neighbourhood, on the outskirts of London. As could be expected of two dentists with only one child, they were not hurting financially. The house itself was a two-story building, with a fair-sized yard behind a seven-foot-high white fence. As they pulled into the drive, Harry spotted a gleaming brass plate by the front door, engraved in cursive script with 'Alexandria'.
Upon entering the house, he could see why. Even Harry had heard of the legendary library of that name, and all through the house were shelves upon shelves of books. Cookbooks in the kitchen, dental and medical texts in the study, educational books in the lounge... the green-eyed catboy had only seen so many books in one place a handful of times before. He did notice that those rooms also had a leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare on the shelves. Once they were inside, dragging their trunks 'with difficulty', and the door closed, the kitty couple performed levitating charms and drifted their belongings upstairs.
The upper floor of the building consisted of one corridor, with six doors leading off it, three on each side. Hermione happily gave him a quick tour. "Those two doors lead to the bathrooms," she said, using English so as not to confuse her parents. They'd already dropped the glamours that had held all the way from the station. "This door leads to the master bedroom, that one's mine, and that's the guest bedroom."
After he'd put his trunk in the guest room, Harry stretched. Looking around he saw that unlike any other room in the house, with the possible exception of the bathrooms (although this was Hermione's home, and he wouldn't put a knut on it as a bet) there were no books on the shelves. It looked barren, almost sterile in comparison. Making his way downstairs, he found Michael Granger in the kitchen, sipping at a mug of coffee.
"Umm, Mr Granger," he began, only for his mate's father to wave the title aside.
"Call me Michael, please, Harry," the older man said. "From what I've heard, you've more than earned it. What's up?"
The green-eyed boy leaned on the bench. "Is there some reason why the guest room's shelves are empty?"
Michael chuckled. Of all the things he'd thought might be troubling the lad, he settled on that. "That would be because we don't dictate someone's reading choices. Now, Samantha used to favour High Fantasy books, Lord of the Rings type stuff, but a lot of her books are references we use for our work. I prefer military thrillers and science fiction, especially the ones that actually use science. The shelves in our rooms reflect this. For guests, the rules are a little different. You can borrow a book from anywhere in the house to put on those shelves, if you put it back when you leave. If you have books of your own you don't mind sharing, you can those up there." At this point, his wife and his now feline daughter entered the kitchen. "And let me tell you, Harry, if you are dating my daughter, you will wind up owning books of your own. Why don't you start with these two." He slid two of his own favourite books, old classics of sf in his humble opinion across the bench to Harry. "The Grand Master of Science Fiction wrote these two, and you might enjoy them." Seeing the young man, for all that the youth was covered in fur and lashing his tail, gather himself to turn down the gift, Michael cunningly blocked the protest. "If you have to, think of them as a sort of thank you for the troll, and for choosing not to let our girl be alone."
As Hermione hugged him from behind, Samantha saw the books and was for a moment taken quite aback. "Michael, aren't those your signed copies?" she whispered to her husband.
"Shush, dear. Now Harry," he continued as the catboy quietly marvelled at the first books of his own he'd ever possessed that didn't involve school work, "it should go without saying, but I'm a little protective of my daughter. We've had things explained to us by your teachers as well as they could, and I can't say I'm happy about this... this heat thing that my kitten has been going through." Privately, he mused on the irony of his daughter's childhood nickname.
Harry swallowed nervously. He'd known and dreaded this conversation. He was twelve, for Pete's sake, he should be too young for this. Over the past few months, he and Hermione had managed to avoid repeating the occasion wherein they'd woken up in the same bed, but it had been a close run thing. "We're... not the happiest about that, either, sir." Harry felt that this topic called for a lot of respect being shown. "We know we're too young for it, but... How do I say this?"
Hermione mewled in his ear. Tell him about the inner cat, love.
Can't you do this? Harry asked her. No, never mind, I know it's up to me.
You can explain, I just seem to lecture. Hermione had gotten a good handle on what her own faults were, even if she still hadn't made much progress on fixing them yet.
Watching the two cat children mew back and forth, the older Grangers were certain the two were talking to each other. When Harry sighed deeply, a signal they both recognised as the male half of a couple admitting defeat from long familiarity, their certainty was justified.
"The two of us are still getting used to our instincts, what we call our 'inner cats'," Harry said, in a soft voice. "Most of the time, we're in control. Oh, there are minor things like purring, grooming and the desire to chase small, fast objects, but for the most part, we're still the same. Except..."
"When our daughter is in heat," Michael said in a flat tone. Luckily, the catboy knew that the dentist wasn't angry at him directly. "At which point you're both animals, right?"
"No," Harry stated. "I refuse to believe that. We still have choices. The dreams, I can deal with, and I left my wand with you two so I don't perform a Schroedinger Charm on one of those nights. I love Her-my-honey, but I'd rather not be spayed with a dental drill, thank you very much."
"Hmmm," Michael muttered, fully aware that both halves of the kitty couple could hear him, and pretending to scrawl in an imaginary notepad. "Good idea, I'll have to remember that one. I know you two have to fight your instincts, and the Healer, Pomfrey, wasn't it? She told us she'd given Hermione some potions to help prevent disasters, so if your control slips, the damage won't be too bad. I don't like it, I think you're being forced to grow up too fast, but short of locking you both in cages for five nights every month, I can't do anything but accept it. Just be warned, young man, if you break her heart, or hurt my kitten in any way, I'll nail your arse to my living room wall." The last sentence was growled in a manner a lion would have been envious of.
"I'll do my best to avoid that, sir," Harry replied, then grinned. "After all, that would be a catastrophe."
As the pun sank in, Michael heard his family, as well as Harry, burst into laughter. "I knew it, I'm the straight man," he muttered.
Harry awoke early the next morning. As no-one else was awake, he softly padded downstairs and began to familiarise himself with the kitchen layout, before he started breakfast. "They're not the Dursleys," he thought to himself, figuring out proportions in his head. "Divide by three, add a third of that, because the Grangers aren't going to starve me... I should probably fudge a little on the side of caution though..."
As the emerald-eyed catboy moved around the kitchen, selecting ingredients and making preparations, he failed to notice as Hermione and Samantha paused in the doorway, slightly surprised. Harry had been here less than a day, most of that being asleep or shown the upper floor of the house, and here he was, moving through the unfamiliar kitchen as if he'd grown up there, almost dancing through an incredibly choreographed set of manoeuvres that were worth seeing for their own sake, that just so happened to leave food behind. And such food! Pancakes, tuna omelettes (they noticed Harry glancing into an open cookbook every now and then), orange juice, tea (coffee for Michael) prepared exactly how they liked it, and to top it all off, a jug of milk sat beside everything, with two glasses waiting to be filled. Michael himself, lured downstairs earlier than usual by the smells emerging from his kitchen was stunned by how good everything was.
"Harry, this is amazing," he praised between bites. "I've been in restaurants where the food wasn't this good." As Harry began to clear away the dishes, Michael waved at him to stop. "Fair division of labour, my lad. You cooked all this heavenly nosh, the ladies can manage the dishes, and you can teach me the recipe." The emerald-eyed feline blinked, as his mate collected the crockery from his hands.
"Daddy's right, Harry," she said. "He does most of the cooking around here, Mum's all thumbs in the kitchen."
Samantha raised her voice in attempted defence of her skills. "I'm not that bad, I'll have you know."
Hermione looked up at her mother, and smirked. "Mum, last night when you tried to prepare the rice, you managed to burn the water. You're a terrible cook! Just as well you're a marvellous mum."
Harry cleared his throat. "Michael, Samantha, I wish to ask a favour of you," he said. "I'm concerned with what happened with the Dursleys at the station, and Lucius Malfoy has already tried to grab Hermione and me for being 'magical creatures'. So I want to go to Diagon Alley and Gringotts to see what I can do about this. Diagon Alley because that's where I can find books on Wizarding laws," he grinned as he saw his mate's amber eyes light up at the mention of books, "and Gringotts so I can fund, and ask for help finding, a good solicitor or legal team. Can you give me a lift?"
Getting to Diagon Alley was the easy part, he realised. As Harry and the Grangers scoured the shelves at Flourish and Blotts, they were coming to the reluctant conclusion that someone didn't want people to know what the laws were. They'd managed to find a few books that covered the laws, but the books in question were over three hundred years old! They would almost have to be hideously out of date. Making the purchases, they moved on.
Gringotts was far more likely to bear fruit, they found. The goblins were not friendly, of course, but given the wording of some of the laws in the three century old books, the kitty couple couldn't blame them. On the other hand, one of the treasures Hermione had found was a book on goblin etiquette...
The goblin culture was a warrior culture, and when denied by the treaties that past wizards had forced upon them the usual outlets of such an upbringing, had channelled their aggressions into the financial sectors. After all, economics could be considered a different kind war, could it not?
The goblin who was the teller at desk five that day would later be considered one of the most fortunate of their kind. Indeed, he came to bear the name Festergrip the Fated until the end of his days, but that's a whole different story to tell. Suffice it to say, he never would have imagined the course his life would take even five minutes before. He'd finished dealing with some outraged wizard-brat who wanted to withdraw some of his allowance from a vault he'd already run dry, and was somewhat shorter of temper than usual when he called out "next!"
"Greetings, honoured teller, may your foe's blood become your gold," said the young wizard before him. A green-eyed boy with wild, messy black hair, and a lightning bolt scar on his brow... or so it appeared. Shock at the customary greeting to a stranger had paralysed Festergrip's wits for a moment, which gave him a little time to recognise that he was seeing a glamour. The little witch with the bushy brown hair was also glamoured, but the two adults were not. Overcoming his surprise, the goblin replied.
"May your enemies' den become your own. How do you know that greeting, young wizard?"
"I hope I got it right, sir," Harry said. "My... best friend Hermione," here he gestured to the little witch, "found it in an old book on goblin etiquette. We still have to finish reading it, so we'll probably make some mistakes, but we're just starting to learn."
"Forgive my surprise, young ones, but this is a very different experience for me. To most of your kind, we aren't even people."
Hermione's answer was straightforward. "You can think, you can communicate, you're people."
"If you don't mind, sir," the emerald-eyed boy said, "we're here for business matters involving my relatives. There's also a few other legal matters we'll have to deal with, too, and I'd like to seek advice. Independent resources have turned out to be thin on the ground, you see."
"I see," said the goblin. "Exactly who is seeking this legal advice? Before you protest, I can see that you two are under glamours. Given that I can't see who is under these glamours, you'll understand my hesitance."
"Ah." Harry thought for a moment. "You see, Teller Festergrip, that's part of the problem. Due to certain events, Hermione and I need the legal advice for what we are hiding beneath these charms. It is a lengthy tale, but if you wish to hear it, this lobby is not the venue for the telling. As for the rest, my name is Harry. Harry Potter."
Harry's name was sufficient for Festergrip to kick their request up few levels, and the tale he'd been invited to hear was sufficient, by goblin traditions, for him to remain 'in the loop', as it were. He was by no means the only goblin involved now. There were five others in the room, and two humans. One was the curse-breaker who'd shown such promise in their Egyptian branch, one Bill Weasley, who'd requested, and received, a temporary transfer to assist with a family emergency. When Harry and the Grangers entered the room, he looked around. He'd had a little time for himself and Hermione to read the etiquette of this situation, and something was nagging at his mind. "Excuse me, Teller Festergrip," he said. "I wish to consult as to a point of etiquette with someone born to it, if I may."
As the goblin teller moved closer, the messy-haired wizard realised what was nagging at him. "Teller," he asked, "I've read that promotions in your society are rare and grueling, and take at least a decade to go through. Is my information correct?"
"It is," Festergrip replied, uncertain why the young wizard was asking.
"Have there been any such promotions in the past year?"
"There have not, but why is the information relative?"
"A few moments, teller, as I would hate to be mistaken and offend your nation, clan or person. Is the rank of cart-goblin sufficient to attend this meeting, or am I likely to need to go to my vault today?"
Truly curious now, Fester grip answered the youngster. "No, and if you did, we would send for one then."
"Last question, I promise, but it's the big one." Harry said. "Why is Griphook, the goblin who took me to my vault last year, present in the chamber?"
Looking around, Festergrip saw what the young wizard meant. "That's not Griphook, Mr Potter." It was as well to assume the lad was truthful until he was proven a liar, even if they did have preparations in place for that situation. That is Lawmaster Gripsack, an in-clan cousin if I remember correctly. They do look alike. He is part of the legal team currently assigned to the Potter estate, for financial law and as goblin liaison. The young woman over there is his partner, Miss Meredith Twist, she handle what your Ministry calls criminal and wizarding law."
A snort of laughter escaped Michael Granger. As all attention in the chamber settled on him, the man explained. "I don't think most muggle lawyers would so open about their legal strategy. I mean, Gripsack and Twist? Ouch."
Every male in the room winced as their minds caught up to Michael's.