FRIENDS FOREVER
Summary: In the summer after fifth year Harry is contacted by his childhood best friend and is asked a favour that will change is life forever.
Disclaimer: I own Danielle and Luke but everything else belongs to JKR.
CHAPTER ONE
Harry sat under a tree in a nearby reserve brooding. He had been brooding for nearly two weeks now, ever since he had practically gotten his godfather killed and Dumbledore had forced him to return to the place he hated more than anywhere else on earth – his aunt and uncle's home in Surrey and the way he was feeling now he wasn't sure that he could ever be happy again. He was getting almost daily letters from his friends and the Order saying that they were all sharing his pain over Sirius' death but rather than comfort him they just served to depress Harry even more and to infuriate him. They may be upset but at least they got to be together where they could support each other and talk it through while he was stuck in muggle hell with people that would like nothing more than to see him die a slow, torturous death.
Give him Voldemort any day.
Harry wanted to talk about it but at the same time he didn't. In some ways he would prefer to talk to someone that was totally removed from the situation and hadn't known Sirius at all. He didn't want someone that would tell him that none of it had been his fault – because he knew that it was – but he wanted a neutral party that would help him sort through the mess and work out how he was supposed to go on. He loved his friends to death but he was painfully aware of the fact that they were going to attack him with platitudes about how Sirius wouldn't have wanted him to be upset and that he had to pick up the pieces just like that and move on.
There was a rustle of leaves beside him and a small child, maybe six or seven years old scampered away from him as fast as his little legs would take him. Harry watched him go and sighed ruefully; all too aware of the fact that he wasn't going to get the support he was desperate for, especially here in Surrey. The Dursleys had seen to it years ago that everyone in the neighbourhood was scared of him – not that he was going to get any support at all. When he finally got away from this hellhole he would be taken to the Burrow or Grimmauld Place and then back to Hogwarts, both of which would be filled with people who would be quick to throw sickening sweetness his way.
Life really sucked sometimes and this was without a doubt one of those moments.
He tensed and automatically reached for his wand as there was another rustle of leaves behind him. He checked and saw that the little boy from before had gone and rejoined his friends on the other side of the park. Surely they wouldn't have left any one of their number behind him – after all they were all supposed to be terrified of him. Best case scenario it was some other unsuspecting muggle – worst case scenario it was a deatheater. Thanks to the extra wards that Dumbledore had placed around Privet Drive Voldemort's supporters shouldn't be able to get anywhere near the house. The headmaster had acted like Harry should be grateful for the fact that even though he had to go back to Privet Drive he could still venture twenty five whole meters further away from the house thanks to the extra wards. The old man would be in for a shock if he ever ventured into Harry's mind because of all his friends and the Order it was Dumbledore that Harry was harbouring the most bitterness for. Come to think of it Harry wouldn't but legimincy past the old man. Dumbledore interfered in every other aspect of Harry's life so why would he stop at Harry's thoughts?
The leaves rustled again and he heard a branch snap. Harry jumped to his feet and pulled his wand clear out of his pocket. If it was a muggle they were going to be in for a hell of a shock and he didn't feel in the slightest bit guilty about it – after all they shouldn't be spying on him. "Who's there?" he demanded in a cold voice. More rustling leaves were the only response that he got. "Don't make me come in there and look," Harry snarled. "Believe me I'm not in the mood to play games and if I have to come in there you'll regret it."
Finally the branches parted and a teenage girl clutching a bundle that he realised was a baby. She looked really ill and Harry was pretty sure she was too sick to cause him any harm but he didn't lower his wand yet. It could be some kind of elaborate ruse to attack him when his defences were down. The girl looked at him with tears in her eyes and a tiny smile tugging at her lips in spite of the fact she looked close to collapse. "Harry," she whispered.
Harry wasn't sure whether he had just had his suspicions that she was a deatheater and happily trying to kill him confirmed or whether she was on his side and was just glad to see him. Either way he had definitely seen her somewhere before – she was hauntingly familiar, especially her sky blue eyes that if she was healthy Harry imagined would be glowing. "Who are you?" he asked, however he spoke much more gently than he had before and lowered his wand even though he didn't put it away yet.
The girl spoke in a whisper. "Don't you recognise me, Harry?"
It was on the tip of Harry's tongue to sarcastically snap that if he recognised her he wouldn't be asking her who she was but she looked so sad and tired that he couldn't bring himself to hurt her even more than she clearly already had been and he was at last convinced of her sincerity so he slipped his wand back into his pocket. "I'm sorry, no."
"It's okay," the girl said dejectedly. "It's been a while. I think the last time we saw each other was a few days after your ninth birthday."
The truth beat down on Harry with the force of a bomb. "Danielle?" he gasped. "Dani, is that you?"
She nodded. "Hi."
When he was a kid Danielle Walters had been the only person in Surrey that hadn't allowed Dudley to frighten her out of being Harry's friend. From the time when she and her parents had moved into Privet Drive when she and Harry had been five she had been Harry's only real friend and probably the only reason he had gotten through his troubled childhood. The Walters house had been a sanctuary for him when things had gotten too bad at home, Dani was the one person that had spoken to him in the playground at school and her family would do things for him that his relatives never would have dreamed of. He'd gotten his first real birthday presents from them and it had been Mrs Walters that had accompanied him on his first day of middle school. All that had changed though, a few days after his ninth birthday. The Walters family had vanished without a trace, their house emptied out overnight and Harry had never heard from them again; until now.
"Dani, what happened to you?"
She carefully lowered herself to the ground, carefully cradling the baby in her arms and gestured for him to sit next to her which he did. "You're a wizard," she said bluntly. Harry turned around to look at her so fast he thought his head would snap off. Seeing his suspicion Dani quickly continued. "And I'm a witch."
Harry gaped at her. "Seriously?"
Dani nodded miserably. "Deadly. I'm a half-blood. Dad was a muggle and mother a pureblood. She was an aurour; I don't know whether you would have heard of her – Evelyn Walters."
"Oh my god. Your mother is the Evelyn Walters?" In the months after Barty Crouch Junior in disguise had suggested he should be an aurour he had read up on the practises of the elite dark wizard catchers, in particular the various books that had been written by Evelyn Walters who in the early days of the first war had looked for a while like she could be the one that would end up defeating Voldemort but that was before the bloody prophecy about him and his parents had been made, of course.
"Yeah," Dani told him. "The day we disappeared dad was killed by deatheaters and mum and I ran away to France. I wanted to try and get a message to you but there just wasn't time."
"It's okay," Harry said, gently laying a hand on her arm. He had been desperately lonely after she'd left and life in Surrey had never been the same again but he knew all to well what it was like to lose people you love to the wand of a deatheater and couldn't bring himself to condemn her for something that had been very definitely outside of her control. He eyed the baby in her arms – a boy that looked absolutely nothing like her except for the blue eyes – curiously and desperately wanted to ask questions about it but didn't think that she was ready to talk about that yet so went down a different track altogether. "So you went to France. What happened there? Did you go to Beabeautons?"
"Yeah. You don't know how much I wanted to get in touch with you when the Triwizard disaster was going on but it just wasn't safe," she said. "All I could do was watch you on the picture link that Madame Maxine transmitted to us back at the school."
"So what changed?"
Dani looked down at the sleeping baby and sighed sadly. "He did," she said quietly with a trace of tears in her voice. "This is my son. Mum and I may have gotten away from the deatheaters all those years ago but they never stopped looking for us and nine months ago they found us. Mum was killed and I……I was…….." She broke down in tears and looked down at the baby leaving Harry in no doubt what had happened to her. He seethed with anger and promised himself yet again that he would do whatever he had to do to end the war. Terrible things like this weren't going to stop happening until Voldemort was dead and the deatheaters at least rounded up but preferably just as dead as their master. "The deatheaters haven't stopped looking for me, either," Dani continued. "They want me dead but before they catch me I'll probably already be gone. I'm sick, Harry. I don't have that much longer."
"Oh hell," Harry said softly. "Dani, I'm so sorry."
To his surprise she looked utterly serene. "Don't be," she said calmly. After everything that's happened to me death doesn't scare me. "What does frighten me is the thought of what's going to happen to the baby after I'm gone. In spite of the way that he was brought to me I do care about him and want the best for him."
"What are you going to do? Where are you going to send him?" Harry said, almost afraid to ask. Even so Dani's answer shocked him to the core.
"I want you to adopt him."
The End: There's the first one done – please tell me what you think. Next Harry struggles to make a decision about what will happen to the baby.