chapter 7:Fables is ON

James was smiling at him when he opened the door.

The kitchen was directly below Harry's room. It was a large space, lit by torches and candles that were unnaturally bright. Wooden countertops encircled half the room, with an old fashioned wood burning stove splitting them in half. Opposite the stove was another large fireplace just to the right of the doorway. Beyond the kitchen was an old, warn dining table with several chairs around it.

Sitting at the table was a boy. His face was almost the same as Harry's, a little more filled out, but then, Harry didn't get regular meals. The boy had the same messy black hair Harry shared with James. Harry's own skin was a few shades lighter than the boys, who had a healthy, sunkissed glow about him. Behind round glasses similar to Harry's own (but without the sellotape), even the shape of their eyes was the same. Really, the biggest difference between them that he could see, was that while Harry's own eyes were an unnaturally bright emerald green, the other boys were hazel.

Upon seeing Harry, the boy jumped up from his chair, and threw himself at Harry.

"You're here!" he shouted into Harry's ear. Even their voice was the same.

Cringing, Harry tried to pull away. Alex was gripping him too tightly though. Panic started to well up in him.

"Let him breathe," James laughed.

Just like that, Harry was free from the bruising grip.

"Harry, this is your twin, Alex," James said.

It took everything in Harry not to roll his eyes.

Alex pulled him towards the table. "I've been waiting forever to meet you," he said. Then he added, "Sit here." Alex was pointing at the chair directly across from where he'd been sitting.

The chair exploded into confetti just as he put all of his weight on it, dumping him onto the hard stone floor. Alex howled with laughter.

"Welcome to the family," he shouted.

Harry looked to James as he stood up, who was also laughing. "We're a couple of mischief makers in this house," he told Harry.

"Right," Harry said taking the next chair over, which thankfully didn't explode when he sat down. Pranking was a better alternative to beatings.

Dinner was herb roasted chicken with jacket potatoes and glazed carrots. It was the best thing he'd ever tasted. While they ate, Alex shot rapid-fire questions at him. Most of them, Harry didn't know how to answer.

Interupting Alex, Harry told James he thought he was a good cook.

"Dad's an awful cook," Alex laughed. "He can burn water! The elves made dinner."

"Elves?" Harry asked.

"House Elves." Alex said it like Harry should already know what he was talking about.

"Muggles don't have house elves, "James pointed out.

"Then who cooks and cleans?" Alex said, bewildered.

I did, Harry wanted to say.

James answered for him. "I'd imagine they do it themselves, the way most witches and wizards do. Granted, they don't have magic," then he turned his attention to Harry. "We are very fortunate to have our elves. There are four that serve us here. You'll meet them tomorrow, I expect."

Mentally, Harry added them to his list of things to learn more about.

Conversation continued through the rest of dinner in a similar fashion. Through Alex's clumsy questions, Harry learned a little more about his new world and how different is was from the one he'd grown up in.

They were eating pudding, a rich chocolate cake, when Hogwarts came up. James was telling a story about a prank he pulled his first night in the castle, and the damage it had done to one of the beds in the dorm room.

"They made me take the bed, all seven years in that bed. I carved my name into the headboard," he said.

"When we get there, we should try to find Dad's old bed," Alex said excitedly.

"You have to be sorted into Gryffindor first," James told him.

"What is Gryffindor?" Harry asked.

"One of the Hogwarts Houses," James explained.

"Dad was a Gryffindor," Alex said.

Harry thought that bit was obvious. "Hogwarts Houses," Harry asked.

"Students at Hogwarts are sorted into four houses. Each house has a common room, where the dorms are accessed from, that the students can spend their free time in. The entrance to each house is in a secret location. Each house is represented by a different animal. There's Gryffindor, which is a lion."

"The best house, and the one we'll be in," Alex said.

"Not necessarily," James pointed out, then continued, "Hufflepuff, a badger."

"A bunch of useless suck-ups."

"Ravenclaw, which if often mistaken to be represented by a raven. It's actually an eagle."

"Swots and bookworms."

"And Slytherin with their serpent."

"Where evil wizards go," Alex declared.

"ALEX!" James shouted.

"What?" he asked, innocently.

"Not all Slytherins are evil, and it's insulting to say that."

"Sure they are, all of them were Death Eaters."

Harry didn't know what a Death Eater was, but by the name alone, he doubted they were a pleasant lot.

"Andi was a Slytherin, as was Mrs. Longbottom. Are either of them evil? Was your grandmother evil? She was in Slytherin too."

"No," Alex sulked. "But Mrs. Longbottom is scary."

"And Black was in Gryffindor."

"Yeah, the traitor."

Harry wanted to ask who Black was, but the strain in James' voice when he spat the name was enough to hold his tongue.

They finished their desert in a tense silence. Harry ate as quickly as he could, and made to retreat back to his room, but James stopped him.

"Why don't we give Harry a tour," he said.

That perked Alex up. He agreed excitedly, and began dragging Harry from room to room. The grip on his arm was soft, but it made Harry uncomfortable.

On the ground floor, in addition to the entrance hall and kitchen, there was an impressive formal dining room with a table that could easily seat twenty. The drawing room was even more grand, with expensive velvet furniture trimmed in gold. James said they rarely used the rooms, but they were useful to have.

In the basement there was a large library wich connected to James's study. Across from his study was a large room with stone floors and walls. Shelves lined one wall, and counters the other. It was covered in a layer of dust. According to James it was a potions lab they never used.

"This place is really too much for just us," James told him as they made their way back up the winding staircase. "No one had lived here since sometime in the 1700s before Alex and I moved in. The rest of the basement and the entire second floor have yet to me touched. More than a dozen rooms between them. Cleaning the library took ages, and it took a whole squad of Aurors to prune the dark and illegal texts."

"Lily would have loved the library and the potions lab, but Alex isn't much of a reader, and I don't have time these days," James told him.

"Fables is on the wireless tonight," Alex said when they reached the first floor landing, and slipped down the short hallway to the left of the stairs.

"So, Alex's room is down that way," James said, pointing at the door that Alex had passed through. "And mine is through that door." He pointed to the only door on the right hand wall of the lounge. "Just knock if you need anything."

Harry agreed that he would, then escaped back into the bedroom he'd been given. While he was gone, someone had deposited some pajamas and another change of clothing on the bed for him.

With the door closed behind him, he hissed, "Morgan?"

She emerged from beneath the sofa, with Hiss and Corra following behind her.

"This is a strange place you've brought us to, Master-Speaker," she said.

"Strange," Hiss echoed.

Corra didn't say anything, but the young snake didn't talk much.

"It is odd," he agreed with them.

The snakes wound themselves up the legs of the bed and coiled up near the pillows.

"It's soft," Morgan told him.

Harry laughed. He quickly jotted down all the new things he'd learned about over dinner.

He changed into the blue pajamas, grabbed the book he'd been reading, and joined the snakes on the bed.

The blankets were heavy and warm. He flipped though the book to more recent events, looking for someone named Black and a group called Death Eaters. The last four chapters of the book covered someone called the Dark Lord.

With the snakes snuggled next to him, he read.

The Fall of The Dark Lord and The Boy Who Lived, Halloween 1981: