After the various congratulations of rigour, Harry managed to get his friends to leave him long enough to ask them to accompany him to his room because he had to talk to them. Surely, they would not have reacted in the way they did, had it not been for the seriousness that seemed to permeate the situation. Not only was Harry exceptionally serious (in fact, they had never seen him so serious before), but also, the way he said it made them glimpse how difficult it was for Harry to explain what he had to tell them.
Thus, it was a rather subdued group that entered the room a while later. They hadn't said much to each other during the journey, only a few comments and worried glances directed at their friend. Perhaps those who were having the worst time at that moment were Athenea and Jonathan; after all, the fundamental trait of Hufflepuff was loyalty.
"Well, Harry, what did you want to explain to us?" One of the twins, acting responsible for the first time in his life, asked.
The little boy looked at all his friends, who had arranged themselves in different parts of the room. They all looked at him, attentive and worried, anxious to know what was happening. There was no turning back now; he didn't want to go back. He sighed and prepared to explain all his secrets.
"I, you see... there have been things... many things that I haven't explained to you," the little boy said nervously.
"What kind of things, Harry?" asked Hermione.
"Things about myself... my life and my home." Before the questioning eyes he was receiving, he continued. "Surely by now you may have noticed how few letters I receive from home, right?" Especially Draco; he received mail and packages from his mother every day and didn't understand why his friend didn't receive the same amount or similar. "The things at my house... they are not as people think. My parents and I... or rather, my family and I, we don't have a very good relationship..."
"You don't mean to say you're beaten, do you? Are they mistreating you?" asked Hermione, scared.
At Hermione's question, they all took on expressions of genuine horror. The abuse of a child was something practically unthinkable for those who belonged to wizarding families... for them, or rather, for the wizarding world, abuse was one of the worst crimes that could be committed, and in fact, they were punished very severely. A child was such a blessing for them (since there were so few) that they were normally protected and cared for as a treasure.
"No!" exclaimed Harry, as horrified as the others. "I've never been hit! What happens is that, for them, I don't exist... Normally, they don't even realise that I'm there... I'm someone of such little importance that I'm not worth paying any attention to."
"Harry... that..." Hermione began.
"But, whenever I've seen them with your brother, they seemed to be very good parents," Neville said, stunned.
"Because they were with Brian," the boy said. "When Brian is close, I become invisible, and since my parents never let him far away from them, I am always invisible."
"Harry... That's called negligence, and it's also a kind of abuse... one, even more terrible than physical abuse," Hermione said, looking sadly at her friend.
The truth was that she wasn't the only one; all his friends looked at him truly sadly. How could they treat him like this? Couldn't they see how wonderful he was? How could they treat him as if he did not exist? Everything was so inconceivable that it was difficult for them not only to understand, but also to assimilate.
"Why did you go home for Christmas, then? Surely they weren't pleasant holidays at all," Athenea asked. "And most importantly, why didn't you explain it to us before?"
"I went home because I wanted to see Remus... despite being Brian's godfather and having no blood relationship with me, he's the one who has behaved best towards me. To him, I am not invisible... He was always there for me... he preferred to spend time with me instead of Brian. When I was six years old, I had an accident trying to catch a ball from Brian; I fell into a frozen lake, and if it hadn't been for a Muggle who was passing by, I would have died... It was Remus who was with me day after day while I was in the hospital; it was he, and not my parents, who waited for me to regain consciousness, and it was he who remained by my side..."
"He's more your father than the Potters, right?" Draco asked.
"Yes."
"But that doesn't explain why you didn't explain it to us earlier."
"Because I was afraid! I was afraid that you too would think that I wasn't worth it and I would be left alone... You are my first friends, and I didn't want to lose you."
"Oh, Harry..."
Before the boy could say anything more, he found himself in the middle of a very strong embrace from the girls, and he felt as if a weight lifted from his shoulders... they were not going to abandon him.
"What do you want me to tell you, Harry... your parents are stupid," said Terry casually, and the others nodded decisively, which made Harry smile.
"That's not the only thing I wanted to explain to you."
"Isn't it?" they asked in surprise.
"No, there's more... I haven't been entirely truthful about my capabilities."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I have more abilities than I usually show," he explained. "For example, I haven't told you that I'm able to occasionally feel people's auras, or that I'm able to control elemental magic, that I don't need a wand to do magic, that I can heal, and that I've experimented with potions..."
"Excuse me, can you repeat that?" Terry asked, astonished.
Harry laughed nervously as he repeated the different abilities, not mentioning that he was also an Animagus... He saved that for last, when his other skills would have acclimatised, something that surely would take some time to pass. The eight looked at him as if he had grown another head, which was quite uncomfortable... especially from Hermione and Terry, who looked at him almost as if he were a complicated experiment or some kind of enigma.
"Harry, do you realise that there hasn't been a wizard able to see auras for six hundred years?" asked Terry.
"That until now, elemental magic was believed to be a myth?"
"Or that there has been no one capable of doing magic without a wand to a medium level, much less high, since Merlin himself?" added Draco, impressed.
"Yes, of course I know," said the boy with some discomfort. "I've been studying about it since I found out that I could."
"And since when...?" Jonathan began incredulously.
"The auras, well, the truth is always been, the magic without a wand, well... um... I think I started using it when I was three or four years old. With regard to elemental magic, I began to use it when I was six... Healing is later, I discovered it about four months ago, and Potions... from the beginning of the term."
"And despite all this, do your parents consider you a small thing? They're much worse than I thought," murmured Draco. "But much worse."
"They don't know... When I was little, I did tell them what I could do, but either they didn't pay me attention or they thought I was lying... In the end, I stopped telling... the only one who knows is Remus, and when he found out, he told me not to explain it to my parents."
It was necessary, even after that, a small pause before they had yet believed him, and still then they seemed to be in shock. Harry wondered briefly if it would be a good idea to tell them that he was also a natural Animagus; he feared that it would send them straight to the infirmary, and maybe he wouldn't have said, or rather, shown, if it were not for the twins who looked suspiciously before stating that he was still hiding something.
He had reason to think that it was not a good idea to explain it to him at that time; as soon as Harry transformed into a phoenix, Terry and Hermione fainted from shock, Neville choked with a cup of tea, and the rest looked on in amazement. The only one who remained calm was Jonathan, and Athenea, though not as much as he was, was not like the others either.
"I'm not surprised, really," the Hufflepuff said, caressing his head. "I knew it from the moment I saw the tattoo. It always shows the animal that has the most potential to be your Animagus form."
"And Jonathan has been hinting at things to me since before Christmas... I thought it was something beastly... But I didn't expect precisely this."
Harry returned to his human form and tried to wake Terry and Hermione to continue the talks; something easier said than done, since they both seemed very comfortable in their blissful unconsciousness. Subsequently, after several failed attempts, he placed them in the bedroom and woke them up when they were there (he wasn't going to use an Enervate on them; it was a method he disliked very much).
When the Easter holidays began, there were many who stayed at Hogwarts in order to be able to use the school library and thus be able to finish the different assignments that had been given to them. Harry was no exception, although he could tell himself that his duties were the least of it; most of them had only put a symbolic amount as long as he would revise something during his free time, but compared to the race against the clock that he was doing during the regular term, it was not a lot.
What Harry used to do during his free time was to have lessons with Fawkes. He had proposed that by the time he finished the term, he would be able to use all of his capabilities as a phoenix. At the moment, Fawkes was teaching him to use his healing powers with small animals and wanted to teach him, before the holidays were over, how to travel from a flame explosion: fast and sure; after all, who would suppose that anyone would travel as a white phoenix?
Thanks to those lessons with Fawkes, he was learning a lot about different magical creatures and about his own form. The white phoenixes were, in themselves, much more powerful than the red fire phoenixes... so their feathers were much stronger and more selective when used in a magic wand (Fawkes explained that no white phoenix would give a feather, because no one is strong enough to be chosen by the wand), and likewise, his tears would be capable of curing anything except death, and almost immediately. At the same time, the different animals of the forest used to let him get close enough to be able to study them in depth and be fascinated by them.
He could tell that he was having the best time of his life. Being able to do what he loved without his family interfering and without any interruption. Thus, another place where he could be found was his own Room, researching and experimenting with the Wolfsbane Potion... He had added powdered Bezoar and believed that it could significantly reduce pain in the transformations, but for that, it would have to be tested on a living subject, and although he knew that Remus would be delighted, he didn't want anything bad to happen to him if it didn't work out. So he had decided to write to him and let Remus himself decide what to do... He would only indicate that he believed he had achieved an improvement.
He would put absolutely nothing that could be understood as him wanting Remus to try it, but neither a total closure... perhaps, Remus would put him in touch with another man who would like to be the subject of tests; he sincerely hoped that was exactly his uncle's choice.
Approximately two days before the term started again after the holiday period, Harry was caught at his breakfast by an all-too-familiar owl, who brought him a letter and a pretty big package.
"Harry, what's wrong with you?" asked Athenea, the only Hufflepuff within his year who had stayed during the holiday.
"No, nothing... it's just that Gallia has surprised me."
"Do you know her?"
"It's the family owl. I didn't think my parents would write to me," he said, taking the package and the letter, to put the breakfast plate in front of him so that he could eat something.
"It seems that he likes you," Athenea laughed as she saw how the bird was making caresses towards her friend.
"Yes... I guess he missed me."
As he supposed, the letter was from his parents, or more specifically, from his mother. In it, she explained that they had received the report of his marks and that they were surprised. She didn't explain much and at no time did she show any signs of being happy with his results, something that was expected, and neither did she ask him how his holiday had gone, also quite expected... The strange thing was that in the whole letter there was not a single comment on how Brian and they had had a good time while he hadn't been there. Finally, there was a note that said that in the package were the books to start the new syllabus.
"What do they tell you?"
"Not much, really. Only that they've received the report on my grades and that they are surprised by the result. They also say that in the package are my books for the third year."
While he was talking, he opened the package where there was indeed a large number of books, although for the moment they did not weigh much. He assumed that they had put a featherweight charm on the package, because there were at least nine or ten books... and some quite thick, therefore quite heavy. Shrugging his shoulders, he cast his own levitating spell and took them to his bedroom so he could start storing them in their place.