Yeah. Since someone has come around and been bugging me to post this, I figure I might as well. Let me know what you think I guess.

Joindre Chapter 05

• Rémission •

Quiet time was definitely not forthcoming. From the moment Harry stepped into his own home, he knew it. Gabrielle was there, he could hear her in the back room. However, he ignored her because he had to think first. So, he immediately headed to his own room and deposited his overcoat on the bed. Winky had a system for his clothing and hated it when he hung up something that he'd worn, even coats. She had a place for them, and always spent time cleaning them before she put them back into the closet. Harry had only made the mistake of doing it himself once, and after living with the affects of an angry house-elf, he had allowed himself to lay them out on the bed instead.

"Harry," Gabrielle called from outside his door. "Dinner's on the table."

"I don't feel like eating tonight," Harry said, just loud enough to be heard. "I think I'm going to take a walk."

Harry moved to open the door that led out back, so he could escape without passing by Gabrielle. Winky seemed to be ready for him too and she was standing there with a particularly nasty smirk on her face. "You is eating tonight, at the table. You is only just getting better and if you wants to stay better you is going to eat."

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Winky raised her hand and pointed, dropping her head and not looking at Harry. Harry was well aware of what that meant, that she was not about to let him do anything about it, she'd made up her mind and there was nothing that was going to keep her from getting her way.

"Fine Winky, I'll eat."

Three minutes later, sitting down at the table, Harry tried to keep from looking at Gabrielle. She kept smiling so brightly, and, though he knew she was keeping her Veela charm to a minimum it was still difficult to see anything else.

"So, Gabrielle," he asked as casually as possible, still not feeling very good about what had transpired between he and Jamie earlier in the day. "Have you found an apartment yet?"

Gabrielle shook her head.

"Have you looked?" Harry asked immediately.

Before Gabrielle responded, he could see that she was thinking, which meant the answer he was about to hear probably wasn't what he wanted to hear from her.

"Since you got sick..." she hesitated and Harry could see she was sad. Which oddly enough, made him feel sad, but it wasn't enough to keep him from being angry that she hadn't even bothered to look.

The whole room temperature dropped several degrees, which made Harry even angrier at himself. In the fight against Voldemort there had been many things he'd done to himself, and some of the side-effects were strange, even for wizards. The most prominent one was, often times when he felt extreme emotions, things and people around him were affected in odd ways. That was why he had buried himself deep down inside, and tried to be as emotionless as possible.

"Sick or not, I'm sure that you had some time to go out and look for a place to stay. After all, you seem to have found a job for yourself in under a day – which is quite a feat in itself," he said irritably. "Find a place. If I have to make it bigger, or make it safer, I can do a few magical charms, as long as I'm not required to spend several hours doing it."

"Yes Harry," Gabrielle said quietly, her eyes glued to the table. "I'm sorry about the problems I've caused."

"Just get out of my life. I'll fix it all by myself," he said angrily, then stood and left the table in silence. Gabrielle and Winky said nothing as the front door slammed behind him.

"Why did it turn out this way?" he asked himself, looking both directions before deciding it would be best to take a stroll towards a nearby park.

It was a quiet night, and brisk, but not very chilly. It certainly wasn't as cold as the house felt before he left. Searching his memories, Harry wondered if he should release some of the things he'd locked up about Dumbledore. The old man, while manipulative, had never led him astray, and Harry wished he could speak to him now. What would he say?

Harry imagined him strolling next to him, a dish of lemon-drops in his hand. He was smiling, looking distinguished as always, however he didn't speak. He just nodded forward and they walked, side by side. When Harry finally came to the park he sat down, glanced around, and then spoke. "What am I going to do?" he asked, perhaps speaking to himself, or perhaps the image of Dumbledore his mind had conjured.

The old man just smiled wistfully and offered Harry a lemon drop, which of course Harry declined. He leaned back, his eyes sparkling and looked up at the stars. Then, the image changed. Firenze stood at the edge of the bench, looking up at the clear evening sky. "Venus is bright tonight," he said gloomily.

Harry stared as the figure changed again, this time to Ron. "Never should have let it go this far," he said, as if it made any sense at all. "Everyone misses you."

"I miss everyone too," Harry said, his anger changing to sadness.

Hagrid appeared next, looking particularly rough. "Just Harry is it?" he said with a smile. "Well, just Harry it is then."

Harry closed his eyes, remembering the first time he'd seen Hagrid, how startled he'd been, how everything had been more like a dream, a fantasy, something he'd wanted so bad he made it come to life. "You'll never find what you're looking for if you don't look," it was Hermione's turn. She looked fresh, new, and older. Even Ron hadn't changed much, but she had. She was smiling brightly, and had a book in her hand. "Sometimes the answers aren't where we think they are though," she said, holding up the book. "Not everything can be found in a library."

His own words, he'd told her a few days before she'd died trying to save someone, probably himself, from Death Eaters. She'd been buried in books, trying to find the answer to Harry's dilemma, trying to make sure he lived instead of Voldemort. He had been trying to get her to leave the library, and he'd said those exact words, and even at that time it had echoed of Dumbledore. Now, now they just made him cry. He cursed the fact that not all of his memories were suppressed, that he couldn't just make his past disappear completely.

He couldn't help it, tears just pored down his cheeks. He knew she'd died, knew she'd been trying to save someone, knew that, in the end, she'd been a hero. He'd been there, he knew that much. He'd blocked the memory though, and pretended that he hadn't. Something had happened there, something he couldn't handle.

The weather made a turn for the worst as he cried and rain began to fall, large droplets of them, soaking the ground around him, making it even harder to suppress his mood.

Hermione faded and Ginny took her place. She smiled, but it didn't look like Ginny, not the Ginny he remembered. She looked both sad and happy, she almost looked like the memory of his mother he'd once seen in Snape's pensive, though she was taller. "You have a family, remember that."

She'd told him that during his last year at Hogwarts when he'd been ready to give up because his friends were dying. "I know," he said in a quiet whisper. She hadn't meant just the Weasley's either, even though they were his family. In some ways, the whole population of Hogwarts had been his family too, even if he didn't get along with them all, or even know them all.

Then, Neville stood there. He wasn't smiling as Ginny had been, instead he had a grim look of determination on his face. "It's never easy, is it?" he commented. "Facing the past, and the future, it's something that causes an ache in your heart. You and I understand it better than most."

Indeed, Neville was right, it wasn't easy. He'd never been 'just Harry', not since the day he was born. A prophecy had controlled his life even before he was born. And, it had created him, and made him the person he was now. Even after it had been fulfilled, he couldn't leave its grasp for long. Because of the prophecy he was powerful, he was famous, and because of the prophecy he had to leave. Words had done this, every bit of it had been because of a handful of words spoken over twenty years ago.

"You know," he heard someone say, and turned to see that Sirius was standing there, a Sirius he'd never known, one that wasn't a day over twenty. His tears continued to fall, and with them, the rain. "It all turns out for the better in the end, you just have to let things work themselves out," he said, something Harry never would have imagined his counterpart in life to say. But he stood there, grinning like a maniac, and every bit the Sirius Harry had imagined.

Standing finally, Harry looked away. Sirius was dead, so were Neville, Ginny, Hermione, Ron, Hagrid and Dumbledore. The things he was imagining were just that – images that had been constructed in his mind.

"They're as real as you need them to be," someone said and Harry turned to see that the Sirius he'd seen wasn't Sirius anymore, but himself. He was sitting, looking younger, he'd wasn't even growing whiskers yet, and had a nice clean face instead of the moustache and goatee he had taken to wearing for the last few years. "Don't let the past trap you," the imagined figure said.

Harry turned away and began walking down the street, but he knew the image was following him. "Leave me alone," he hissed.

The shadow just laughed lightly. "I can't," it said. "I'm trapped, here, with everyone else. You've locked us away."

Harry froze mid-step. "No," he said. "You're just my imagination." He said, and then continued forward briskly.

"Perhaps you're right, we're just figments of a barren mind that lacks any imagination whatsoever, a mind that has cut itself off from the rest of the world, a place that's a black hole of misery. Where..."

"Shut up already," Harry muttered and the figure quit talking. He glanced over as he walked, and the figure was still their, trotting alongside him.

"She wasn't right for you. I don't think she wouldn't have taken the whole 'magical me' thing real well. Or, for that matter, the fame, and fortune, none of it would have gone over particularly easily. Even if you wouldn't have told her it would have weighed down on you and, in the end, it would have destroyed what you thought you had.

The rain had turned into mist now, and the hastened walk slowed as Harry's house came into view. He wasn't sure if he could go back in just yet.

"I want it to be normal," he said to the figure. "I wanted to just have a normal life, without everything odd happening around me all the time."

"And what, move back to Privet Drive? You could have a perfectly manicured yard, with a normal car, and normal neighbors who have nothing better to do than trade rumors about each other? Your house would be just like everyone else's, your garden a picture of perfection. You could wake up every Saturday and read the paper, take out the trash, mow the lawn, wash the car and then be lazy and sit in front of the television until dinner."

Harry knew what he was trying to tell himself. He couldn't just be normal, no matter how much he tried. The garden would always be full of odd plants, with a few strangled weeds. There would always be a garden gnome or two, even if Winky had a habit of 'properly disposing of them' as she called it. Now that Harry knew what she meant by that he was quite sure he'd run them off himself now, when Winky wasn't looking of course.

He didn't have a car, in fact, he was rather against them. He'd been in them a few times since he'd moved away and had grown to despise them. They were restrictive, slow, and deadly, hardly something he wanted to have in front of his house. He rather enjoyed walking, or taking slightly more magical forms of transportation. His broom was still hidden somewhere deep in the closet, away from prying eyes.

The neighbors he had were generally normal, and even though he tried, he never got on well with them unless he acted unlike himself. Everything about the picture was wrong.

"Then, after you have two and a half kids, they could mow the lawn for you and you could spoil them rotten with every present they could ever need. That is, until they're old enough to be invited to a magical school, where they'll find out they're not exactly as 'normal' as you want them to be."

Harry thought about this as well. He'd always known that if he did have a family, like he wanted, and had children of his own, it was most likely that they would be magical. If they were magical, it wouldn't take long for them to find out who their father really was, and then everything he'd created would topple down yet again.

Looking at his house, Harry wondered if he could go back. Inside was a life he'd created for himself, a scripted life with nothing that was real, nothing except for the two occupants, who were exactly the sort of people he'd hidden himself from. At least Winky had tried to live the life he'd created. And Gabrielle... he sighed. He was beginning to wonder if it was Gabrielle he hated, or himself. Somehow he'd become his uncle, not exactly, but close enough that it was disturbing him.

"There, I've done my part," the figure next to him said. "Don't leave us trapped here." Then, like Dumbledore had appeared, the figure faded away into the darkness, leaving Harry standing on the street in the evening, looking towards his house.

Harry almost cried again, not out of sadness, or happiness, he just felt like crying. However, he held it off. He nodded resolutely to himself, took a step forward, and realized he wasn't quite ready to go back in. He knew he needed to apologize to Gabrielle. While she did need to find her own place, he also knew that she'd spent every bit of time she could with him, trying to help him get better. He was ashamed he'd been so cold to her. He also needed to talk with Jaime. Even if he couldn't patch things up to repair the relationship they'd once had, he would like her to know that she had mattered, and he'd never once done anything to intentionally hurt her.

A little girl lived next door, and Harry recalled he'd seen her one day, running in and out of the make-shift playhouse that had been built in their side yard. That was before Harry had put up a fence to keep the neighbors from seeing the oddity of his backyard. The girl was older now, and probably didn't use it, but he wondered briefly if that playhouse was still there. Slipping stealthily up his front yard, Harry came to the fence and stared into the neighbor's back yard. He could see a vague outline of a shack and he nodded. He walked towards it, and felt it over with his hands until he found a doorway.

Inside it was small, but not tiny, easily large enough for two adults to sit in comfortably. However, it felt familiar, like a long-lost friend, the tight, enclosed feeling, the spider webs near his head. Even the smell of old wood. He smiled and leaned back, wondering if he was really going to go back to everything he had run from. Was it something he was strong enough to do? He wondered, just before he dozed off.

•

"Good lord," he heard someone say, and he opened his eyes to unfamiliar surroundings. He turned to the voice, and saw the man that lived next door, Jonathan Freeman, staring at him through a doorway of some sort. His mind turning a complete blank as to where he was, Harry looked around again, and then remembered the night before.

"Hello," he said, smiling and feeling somewhat embarrassed he'd been found here.

"Don't tell me you got kicked out of your own house," Jonathan said with a look of something between horror and amusement. "I mean, I've heard of people sleeping in the dog-house, but I never knew it to be so literal."

Harry crawled out of the little shack and then dusted himself off, glancing up to see that it was still quite early in the morning, and so he wasn't going to be late for school. "No, that's not exactly what happened. I just needed to go for a walk, and I... er... locked myself out. Everyone was asleep, and I really didn't want to be a bother–"

"Well, that's a whole lot better excuse that I would have come up with," Jonathan replied, more amused now than anything. "Though, if I'd been kicked out of my house, I would have been sleeping in a hotel, not a rotten old playhouse."

"It was quite comfortable," Harry assured the man. "Actually, it reminded me of being a kid again, and, as weird as it sounds, I slept extremely well."

"Do be sure to knock on our door the next time," Jonathan said, then laughed. "Though, I still wonder how you got kicked out of your own home, when you don't even have a wife."

Harry didn't even try to correct the man again, he just smiled and politely thanked him for waking him. When asked, Harry assured him he'd be able to get breakfast on his own and then walked up to his front door and stepped inside.

He barely had time to close the door before he was met by Winky. He was knocked to the ground, with the little elf crying and pounding on his chest before he knew what had hit him. When he looked up, he could see Gabrielle, looking a lot like any other woman, staring down at him, her eyes red with tears. "You're alright?" she asked quietly, and Harry nodded.

Gabrielle nodded and disappeared into the other room, leaving Harry to deal with an expressive house-elf. "Winky is thinking she made Master leave," she bawled into him, still pounding, though much weaker than when she'd started. "Winky is thinking Master is going to leave her, or make her life like Master Crouch did. Winky is very scared."

Harry couldn't help but feel stupid and he wrapped his arms around the little elf. "I'm sorry Winky," he said as remorsefully as possible. "I didn't mean to scare you, I just sort of dozed off while I was thinking about everything."

The elf quit beating him, but continued to bawl for several minutes until she was only sobbing dry tears. Harry let her go and picked her up, staring into her large eyes. "Winky, I would never hurt you, I'd never leave you, don't ever worry about that, alright?" he said. "Even if you get on my nerves sometimes, it's not going to make me turn against you."

Winky nodded mutely, and then sniffed. "Harry is wanting breakfast?" she asked tentatively. Harry smiled. "If you're up to it, then I'm about ready for it," he said and watched as Winky scurried away. If there was one-thing about house-elves that never changed, it would be that they loved work. Winky was going to be fine, and, if she got her mind off of it soon enough, she might forget it by tomorrow.

Looking down at his shirt, Harry shook his head. He needed to change, and shower, but he also needed to do something else first.

Walking down the hallway, Harry found Gabrielle had her bags opened, and nearly completely packed, which, considering how much she had, must have taken a considerable amount of time. More time than he'd been back. "What are you doing?" he asked, startling her.

She turned, and he could see she'd somehow regained some of her beauty, but looked a good deal less like a Veela still. "Packing," she said heavily. "I have decided I will stay in a hotel until I have found another place to live."

"And your money problems?" he asked.

She looked towards the ground. "I am sure that the banks around here will be able to tell me where I am to change currency."

"You're not going back then?" Harry asked. "To modeling. I would have though that you'd have given up much easier."

Gabrielle looked at him with a glare he'd never seen come from her, it was both exciting and scary. "I will not give up so easily Mr. Potter," she said resolutely. Harry almost laughed, he couldn't help but smile though. She was so strong-willed. Even most Veela's would have given up the prize by now, nothing was worth so much difficulty, or so they seemed to think.

"First, you still can call me Harry," he said lightly. "I don't think we've grown less acquainted with each other in the past few hours, have we?" Gabrielle lost the piercing stare, but continued to look at him without blinking. However, her eyes were of surprise now, instead of anger or resolution. "And, I noticed you were leaving without even giving notice, I didn't say you had to leave today, did I?" he asked. "It would be rude of you to leave and stay at some musty old hotel while there is a bed here for you until you've found a proper place."

"But..."

"No buts. You are staying here until you find somewhere else that suites your needs. I will not force you to leave because of some stupid comment I made in anger."

Gabrielle's face lit up and she jumped on Harry, who was able to keep himself upright as the Veela hugged him tightly. Repeatedly thanking him. This time, Harry didn't try to hide his emotions as he felt a warm bubbling feeling inside him. He did smile.