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Harry Potter and the Junior Year Abroad
An Oak Among The Aubergines
By Ishtar
Chapter Nine
An Oak Among The Aubergines
No one mentioned the dreams to Harry the next morning, and he didn't bring the subject up himself. Ron was sprawled in the chair in a position guaranteed to give him a stiff neck, and Harry roused him and sent him off to his own room to get himself together. In the bright light of an August morning, the images of the dark hilltop began to fade away, and the sight of Hermione in shorts drove them out of his mind entirely. Wisely, Mrs. Weasley was alternating days with "things to do" with days in which the young people could do whatever they chose. The boys and Ginny spent the morning playing a fast and frantic pick-up game of Quidditch over the meadow. They were playing without a Snitch, with two of them acting as Chasers to one Keeper, and switching off places from time to time. Harry thought being a Chaser was fun, but rather harder work than being Seeker. Ginny was a natural as Chaser. Flying was the one thing that always made Harry feel all was right with the world. He always had the feeling nothing could touch him when he was in the air. Given how many times he'd been clobbered by stray Bludgers over the years, he knew perfectly well this was a fallacy, but it didn't change how he felt. The air was his element. They stopped playing when their growling stomachs insisted on lunch, which was served on the long table under the trees. Mrs. Weasley had long years of practice feeding growing boys, and it showed. The food wasn't fancy, but it was good, and there was a lot of it.
After lunch, Ron decided to take a nap since he'd been shorted on sleep the night before, and he sprawled out on a ramshackle chaise in the garden, a hat pulled down over his eyes to keep the sun off. Hermione and Mrs. Weasley went off to do a little work in the vegetable garden, and Harry decided to join them. Hoeing out the weeds in the sun was hot work, and he stripped off his T-shirt. Mrs. Weasley soon realized that she wasn't going to get much more gardening out of Hermione. Ginny came out to help and soon became less than helpful, as well. Mrs. Weasley gave the girls things to do that they could do while ogling Harry, shook her head smiling, and went back to transplanting some bush beans to replace the ripe ones she'd harvested.
Harry stopped hoeing and leaned down to look at something. "Mrs. Weasley, you've got an oak seedling growing in here among the aubergines. Brave little thing, actually. Should I pull it, or do you want to try to transplant it?"
"Let's save it," she said, coming over to look at it. "If we can find a good place for it, it will be your tree. A sign that you're part of the family. If you want to be, that is."
"What?"
"Look around, Harry. Arthur's family has owned this land for generations. With the birth of each child, with each milestone, a tree is planted. All these trees — some fruit trees, some shade trees, each one of them guarding and protecting the family and the homestead with their strength. The big walnut down by the river is Arthur's tree, and the hazel by the garage was planted when we got married. That one over there is Ginny's," she said, nodding at a young apple tree on the edge of a small orchard of older trees. "And that one's Ron's," she added, pointing at a fir tree that formed part of a windbreak and also shielded the house from the road that ran to the north. "We can put this near his, but not so near it'll shade it out … at the end of the meadow there. How about it, Harry? Would you like to be part of our family?"
"I think that would be … just wonderful, Mrs. Weasley."
"Then you'll have to call me Mum, like the rest of the children. Ginny!" she called. Her daughter put down the bowl of beans she'd been shelling and came over, Hermione in her wake. "Harry's found a little tree growing here, and we're going to move it to a more appropriate place. It will be his tree, and we're going to bring him into the family. Run over to the shed and get a shovel and a couple of buckets, dear, and the little knife and my hazel rod, that will be a big help." Ginny ran off, leaping over rows of spinach, and Mrs. Weasley knelt and stroked the leaves of the tiny tree, murmuring words of reassurance to it.
Harry explained to Hermione about the significance of the tree, and she started to sniffle. "That's so sweet! You'll really be part of a family. And an oak! That's a strong power tree, you know. Maybe it will have mistletoe someday."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure it will," said Mrs. Weasley, glancing at Harry's scar, "but not for a good number of years."
Hopefully without nargles, thought Harry with a grin.
In a moment, Ginny was back with the requested equipment. Mrs. Weasley took the knife and drew a circle in the earth around the seedling. "That should make a large enough root ball, I think. We're going to lose a couple of aubergines, though. Ah well, we'll just have the little ones for dinner tonight." She cut the purple fruit from the plants and asked Hermione to take them over to the back steps, and also to fill the smaller bucket with water while she was there. "We'll need to water in the tree once it's moved. Harry, would you dig up your tree and put it in the other bucket?" Harry complied, easily removing the little plant and a large chunk of soft garden soil. "Ginny, go wake up your brother. He'll need to be part of this. Arthur and the other boys can do their bit when they come home."
It was an odd procession that moved out to the meadow: Mrs. Weasley with the bucket that held the tree, Hermione with her water bucket, Harry with the shovel over his shoulder, Ginny dancing about excitedly waving the forked stick that was apparently her mother's "hazel rod", and Ron rubbing at his face sleepily as he brought up the rear. Once at the meadow, there was a delay while Mrs. Weasley took the forked stick and walked slowly about holding the two ends of the fork. At various places, the free end would dip down as if under its own power.
Hermione and Harry watched curiously. "I didn't know your Mum was a diviner," said Hermione. "It's not something you see much of these days."
"Oh, Mum's an old time Earth Witch," said Ron. "She'd be able to do magic with a stick and some plants even if her wand was broken. Even if she'd never gone to Hogwarts. It's a gift that shows up from time to time; I'm told even some Muggles are pretty good at it. Bill's really good at the divining part, it's one reason he did so well for Gringott's when he was in Egypt. He's more than a curse-breaker, he finds the treasure in the first place. Wouldn't be surprised if he got rich that way some day. Look, I think Mum's found the right place!" Twice now, the tip of Mrs. Weasley's rod had dipped at exactly the same spot.
Under Mrs. Weasley's direction, the four teenagers enthusiastically ripped up the meadow grasses and weeds growing in the chosen place. She cut a circle in the sod with the knife, and Ron used the shovel blade to lift the sod. In order to protect Harry's shoulder, she had Ron dig the hole for the tree as well.
"I can do it, Mrs. … Mum," said Harry, somewhat awkwardly. "My shoulder wasn't giving me any trouble earlier."
"Established sod and meadow earth are different from soft garden soil, Harry. You can put the soil back in the hole later if you want."
"Besides," added Ron, "this is a group project — all family members present have to do something, to make us all part of the magic. Mum found the place, I dig the hole, you put the dirt back, Ginny will do the watering. If Dad or Fred and George were here, they'd all do part of the work, too. For occasions where the entire family gets together, everybody would dig one shovel-full. A family our size, that makes a pretty big hole."
While Ron dug, Harry sat on the grass, idly crushing clumps of soil as they fell from the shovel. One of them resisted crushing, but instead of a rock in the centre, he found what felt like a disc of some kind. He cleared as much soil off as he could with his fingers, and then dipped it in the water bucket to finish cleaning it off. "Hey, look at this! It was in the dirt that Ron turned up." Hermione leaned over his shoulder.
"That looks like an old coin of some kind. Or maybe a saint's medal. Can you get it any cleaner?"
"I dunno, it's pretty badly tarnished. Feels like real silver. Maybe some silver polish when we get back to the house?"
"Why wait?" Mrs. Weasley produced her wand — from where? Harry wondered. He still hadn't gotten the hang of keeping the thing someplace invisible where you could grab it any time you needed it. Hence Professor Moody's annoyance with him keeping it sticking out of his back pocket. She tapped the coin with the tip of the wand, and the tarnish vanished. The silver coin shone in his hand. Harry held the coin up close to his face so he could see the detail.
"Hm. Looks like somebody's face on this side. Wearing a wreath on his head. And the other … whoa. A snake twined around a wand."
"Harry, that's the symbol of Aesculapius, the god of healing! That's probably the god himself on the front. May I?" Harry surrendered the coin to Hermione. "There's letters here, looks like Greek, not Latin — I don't know Greek, I'll have to look it up. What's this, a little pit of some kind?" She picked up a dried grass stem and poked at it. "No, it's a hole. This was pierced so someone could wear it as a medallion. Some ancient physician maybe? Or someone who had been healed by the god? This is so exciting!" She babbled on about how Aesculapius had been the son of Apollo and a mortal woman, how he had been taught medicine by the centaur Chiron, and …
Ron cut into her discussion, his voice flat and his eyes far away. "His skill in curing disease and restoring the dead to life aroused the anger of Zeus, who, being afraid that he might render all men immortal, slew him with a thunderbolt. Homer mentions him as a skilful physician, whose sons, Machaon and Podalirius, were the physicians in the Greek camp before Troy. Temples were erected to Aesculapius in many parts of Greece, near healing springs or on high mountains. The practice of incubation, sleeping in these sanctuaries, was very common, it being supposed that the god effected cures or prescribed remedies to the sick in dreams. All who were healed offered sacrifice, especially a cock, and hung up votive tablets, on which were recorded their names, their diseases and the manner in which they had been cured. Many of these votive tablets have been discovered in the course of excavations at Epidaurus, the god's most famous shrine, where games were celebrated in his honour every five years, accompanied by solemn processions. His worship was introduced into Rome by order of the Sibylline books in 293 B.C., to avert a pestilence. The god was fetched from Epidaurus in the form of a snake and a temple was assigned him on an island in the Tiber." During Ron's discourse, Ginny looked at her mother, who nodded. She scooped up a handful of water from the bucket and splashed it in Ron's face. "What?" he spluttered, shaking the water out of his face. "What was that for?"
"Ron, you were doing it again."
"Oh. Sorry." Somewhat shamefacedly, he returned to digging the hole, while Harry and Hermione both gaped at him. Hearing about his spontaneous recall problem was far different from seeing it in action.
"You know, that could be really useful in school if you can get it under control," said Hermione.
"Right. Maybe I could charge people to do their research for them. But more likely I'd wind up like Professor Binns, reciting hours-long lectures by rote with no way to turn it off. If Ginny hadn't stopped me, I'd have gone into the Egyptian origins of Asklepios as Imhotep, and then all the connections between snakes and healing in pagan days. I saw all the information lined up, just waiting for an opportunity to get out." He thrust the shovel particularly viciously into the soil. "It's been two months. I just wish it would stop already."
"Maybe you should sleep on it, and the god will show you a way to cure it," Hermione said impishly.
"Nah, all my dreams are about Quidditch. Harry's the one who dreams about snakes. D'you think this is deep enough now?"
"A little too deep. Here, let's put the sod back in, and a little soil … that's just fine now," said Mrs. Weasley. She drew her sharp knife again. "Scourgify," she muttered, and the knife blade gleamed clean. She held the blade against her own finger. "Weasley blood and Weasley line, I now claim Harry as a child of mine." She pricked her finger with the knife as Harry and Hermione gasped, and squeezed several drops of blood into the hole, where it was absorbed instantly into the black earth.
Ron solemnly held out his hand and she pricked his finger as well. "Weasley blood and Weasley line, I now claim Harry as brother mine." The drops fell silently into the hole and Ron stepped back, sucking on the wound, as Ginny held out her hand in turn, was pricked and recited the spell.
Mrs. Weasley then turned to Harry. "Normally this is done when the child is a few months old, so there are no lines for you. But we will need a few drops of your blood and a bit of your hair for surety." His hand shaking, Harry allowed her to prick him, squeeze the drops of blood into the hole, and cut a little of his hair with the knife. The black strands shone against the dark earth. Mrs. Weasley then held the tree in the correct position while Harry shovelled the loose soil in around it and packed it in. When the hole was full, there was still quite a lot of soil left. Ginny poured half of her bucket of water around the newly-planted tree, and the soil settled so that Harry was able to add more. Then Ginny finished watering it in. Mrs. Weasley mulched around the base of the tree with the green grasses that had been cut. "Weasley child, Weasley tree, protected now both shall be," she recited, then stood, brushing her hands briskly. "There, it's done. Harry, you're a Weasley now. I don't know if our blood magic is as strong as your mother's, but we'll make up in numbers what hers had in strength. I'll get Arthur and the boys to come out here this evening, and I'll get messages out to the rest of the family so they can do their bit when they can. We should have done this when Bill and Charlie were still here, but the time wasn't right, there were so many other people here."
"Plus we hadn't found the tree yet."
"True. An oak among the aubergines, that's a sign if there ever was one."
"I wish my family had traditions like that," said Hermione, quietly.
"Muggle families have their own traditions. Ask your parents if anything comes down in their lines. You might be surprised. You may marry into a family with traditions someday. Also, remember that every tradition starts somewhere. Some Weasley ancestor created that spell and spoke those words for the first time generations ago. The tree planted then probably isn't even standing any more. But what we did here is a continuation of that first casting. Perhaps you can be the first caster for your own family tradition, pass it on to sons and daughters."
They stood in silence for a moment, looking down at the little tree. In the quiet, Harry was the first one to hear the approaching automobile. "Incoming Muggle," he muttered. Ginny ran across to the edge of the road.
"It looks like the car that Stone lady drove the time she came out here with Dad," she called back. The rest of the group collected their equipment and walked over to the road, by which time Ginny had flagged down the car.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Stone," said Mrs. Weasley as Agatha Stone rolled down her car window, letting the air-conditioning out. "What brings you all the way out here?"
"This is by way of a surprise inspection visit. We Child Protective Services people are nasty, we like to sneak up on people like this, just to make sure things are going well. Additionally, I have some things to tell Harry about. May I just drive on to the house and wait for you in the garden?"
"Of course. We'll be along directly."
The car window was rolled back up and Agatha drove sedately off along the curved lane leading to the Weasley home. "We'd best hope Arthur's Wizzywig holds," said Mrs. Weasley, quietly. "I don't know how to Obliviate someone."
"What does that Wizzywig show?"
"Hm? Oh, old country house, maybe a little run-down but that's to be expected with so many children — modernized sometime in the last thirty years. The usual. I think he allowed for things like the chickens, that's to be expected out here in the country too."
"Pass me your wand for a second? I didn't bring mine out here." Mrs. Weasley passed her wand to Harry, who fired off a quick spell toward the tail of the car as it made the turn into the Weasley drive. "That should do it. I just reinforced, didn't add any details of my own — didn't want to have anything that conflicted. It was easier than I expected, too — I think that tree thing worked. It's like the place itself knew what I wanted and wasn't fighting me any more."
He gave the wand back to Mrs. Weasley, and soon they arrived in the front garden themselves. The Burrow didn't look any different to Harry, but he unfocused his eyes slightly and thought he could see it, the Wizzywigged illusion that Mr. Weasley had cast. And then suddenly he could see it completely, in all its glory and detail. It was a beautiful piece of work, and so realistic that he knew why Ms. Stone had no doubts about it. There was just enough truth in it to anchor it.
The social worker's car was parked in the drive near the Weasley Wedding Tree, as Harry was already beginning to think of it. Ms. Stone was seated on a garden bench under the tree, steadfastly not seeing the pair of gnomes that were hiding under the bench, or the fairy that was curiously investigating her hair ornaments. She rose to meet the approaching group. "Harry, you're looking well. Surprisingly well." Harry suddenly realized that he still didn't have his shirt on, and she was giving him a very thorough once-over. He was suddenly self-conscious.
"Erm. I'll be right back. I left my shirt in the vegetable patch."
"Wait just a moment. If you don't mind?" Agatha reached out and touched him lightly on the shoulder, then grasped his arm and led it gently through a swing and checked his range of motion. She also touched some of the places where Harry had had abrasions on his side and back, and finally turned his face so she could see clearly where he had been black and blue before. Harry was chilled inside. He'd forgotten to Wizzywig himself! As badly beaten as he had been, he should still have some traces of it, some bruising, some scabs and scars over the scrapes.
"Very impressive. You heal well, Harry?"
"Always have. It takes a lot to put a mark on me. See this?" Harry said, thinking fast and pointing at the thin scar that marked the basilisk bite. "I fell out of a tree I shouldn't have been climbing at school and almost put a branch through my arm. Now it's almost like it didn't happen. I've been doing the exercises and things the PT guys at the hospital showed me for my shoulder and knee, and they almost don't hurt at all any more."
"Have you taken him to see a local physician?" Ms. Stone asked Mrs. Weasley.
"Yes, we've gotten him appropriate medical attention. Plus I do a little herbal healing myself, so I've been using ointments on those scrapes, too. They do heal surprisingly fast with a little arnica and comfrey. With seven children, I've learned how to deal with minor emergencies over the years."
"I'm sure you have. Oh, sorry, Harry, go get your shirt by all means." Harry gratefully escaped around the corner of the house while Ms. Stone started to ask Mrs. Weasley more questions about how he was adjusting. He missed the looks of disappointment on Ginny's and Hermione's faces, but Ms. Stone didn't.
Once again decently clad and feeling much more secure, Harry rejoined the group in the house. Mrs. Weasley was in the kitchen putting up a pitcher of lemonade, while Ron, Hermione and Ginny were keeping Ms. Stone occupied in the living room. "May I ask what you all were doing out in the meadow when I drove up? It looked like you had quite a little project going on."
"Oh, we just planted a tree for Harry," said Ginny. "We were all out in the back garden and he found this little oak tree growing in the veggie patch, and he didn't want to just weed it out, so we saved it and planted it over there at the end of the meadow. We all have trees, Mum and Dad planted one for each of us when we were born, and now Harry has a tree, too."
"I think that's very nice," said Ms. Stone, clearly impressed. "So you think it's a good thing Harry is here?"
"Oh, yes. He was always so sad at the end of the year when we had to come home for summer, and happy to go back to school. And that's just wrong."
Harry sank into one of the overstuffed and slightly threadbare armchairs. "The only happy times I had during the summers were when I was allowed to come here a few times, and leave for school from here."
"And do you come here for the Christmas holidays as well?"
"Usually I've stayed at the school. There are always a few who stay, and some of the teachers stay, so it's not as bad as it sounds. A few times Ron has stayed with me. And Hermione here stayed one year."
"Harry, what would you do if you could stay anywhere you wanted? If you had control of some funds, for example, and could live wherever you wanted to?"
"Well, I hope I'd still be welcome here. This is as close to a real home as I've ever had, and just in the past week I've learned what I missed all those years."
Ms. Stone nodded, and shuffled some of her papers on the coffee table. "As you know, the police were doing some investigation into the matter of possible assets that might have been left by your parents. They were concerned that such assets might have been siphoned off by the Dursleys over the years; such things are not unheard of. What they found was that your parents apparently had several investment trusts at the Bank of England, which have remained untouched since their deaths. Apparently your aunt and uncle did not know of these accounts and never had access to them. Generally, if such a trust remains inactive for a certain period of time, it reverts to the Crown as unclaimed funds, but if an heir is found, it can be turned over. Under the circumstances, your parents' trusts can be turned over to you. Don't get me wrong, it's not enough to make you wealthy, by any means, but it will make you independent and able to live comfortably at least until you're done with University, if managed properly. And under the common law, at your age, you can certainly take control of these funds for yourself and live wherever you want, without further adult or Court supervision. Child Protective Services only needs to be involved where a minor is either too young to handle their own finances, or does not have independent means of support."
"Are you saying I don't need to be in a foster home or have the Court keep tabs on me?"
"Not once these funds are turned over to you. You will probably require the services of a solicitor to get it straightened out with the least delay."
"Does this mean I'd be considered adult?"
"Not quite. The term is 'emancipated minor'. You can do most of the things an adult can do already; the rest will come in the next few years. You can control your own chattel property, join the Armed Forces, get married if you want. You can leave school and get a job or go on to university of your choice. You can make your own Will, which I'd advise that you do at this point, as if something happened to you now, these funds would, in fact, revert to the Dursleys as your nearest blood relatives, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want that. I know at this age, you teenagers think you're immortal, but someone in your position needs to take precautions." Harry glanced at Ron over the top of Ms. Stone's head, and saw the other boy was as amused by the comment, under the circumstances, as he was. "You can control your own medical care, including choosing physicians and deciding on elective procedures. You can sign a power of attorney so an adult can sign contracts for you. At seventeen, you'll be able to get your drivers' license, and at eighteen, you can drink, gamble, vote, and sign binding contracts on your own. Generally get on with your life." She frowned in concentration. "You don't have much experience with money, I believe you said, so it would be advisable for you to get competent financial advice as to how to maintain your investments, budget, and that sort of thing. A good solicitor should be able to recommend someone, although you wouldn't be bound to take that advice, of course."
Harry was floored. The idea of being completely in control of his own life was so unexpected that he couldn't quite take it all in.
"Does … does this mean I'd have to leave here?"
Before Ms. Stone could respond, Mrs. Weasley answered with some asperity, "Of course not, Harry, you're family now. You stay as long as you want, just like Fred and George. Entrepreneurs they may be, they still come home for dinner. I just wonder how fast this can all be done. You'll be getting on that plane at the end of the month and be out of touch for a long time, remember."
"Wait … plane?" asked Ms. Stone.
"We got the good news a few days ago that Harry was selected for an exchange program through school," said Mrs. Weasley. "He'll be going to school in America this year. Oh, dear, didn't my husband call your office about it this morning? I thought that's what you were here to talk about, actually."
"No, I must have left before he called. Well, this changes things. I think we can get this done within the time limit if I push it. We can work through a Court-appointed solicitor for the sake of expediency, and then Harry can change his solicitor later if he wants. This makes it even more imperative that Harry have a Will, of course. He can work on that with the Court solicitor or his own as he chooses, and he doesn't have to wait until the trust funds are turned over to him for that. But I certainly have my work cut out for me." She paused and took a sip of lemonade. "This is, of course, assuming you want it, Harry. You do not have to take the emancipated minor route if you don't want to. If you prefer, you can stay a ward of the Crown and a foster child of the Weasleys, and your trust funds will be administered by Family Court and turned over to you at age eighteen. There are boys whose cases I oversee for whom I would not even suggest the emancipated minor route, and who are not capable of caring for themselves even at eighteen. But I think you are quite competent to make these choices for yourself, and the first and perhaps most important choice is whether you want to do it at all."
"May I … may I think about it a little bit? Just a few moments?"
"Of course. Take all the time you need. You may want to look over the current statements for the trusts to help you decide," she said, handing them to him. "While you're thinking, I'd like to speak to Mrs. Weasley privately for a bit, if you don't mind."
"Why don't we just step into my sewing room, then?" asked Mrs. Weasley. They took their lemonade with them and closed the door of the sewing room.
"Mrs. Weasley, from what you and the children and Harry have said, he's happy here, and I don't think he's going to leave even if he does take the emancipation option, am I correct?"
"We wouldn't ask him to leave. We took him in because we love him, and would have done so even if CPS was not involved. I won't pretend the support stipend wouldn't have been nice — my husband's Ministry salary is generous but doesn't stretch far with seven children, and there were some rough patches when we had five of them in school at the same time. I realize we won't get that if he becomes emancipated. But we won't toss Harry out on the street if we don't receive it. I don't think he would want to leave right now, either. The boy desperately needs some constancy in his life, and I don't think he'd voluntarily leave the only shelter he has. Emancipation or no, he needs some time to learn to stand on his own and become the man I know he will eventually be."
"That's what I thought. I know we discussed the impact on your family before, but then I hadn't seen the way your daughter Ginny looked at Harry. Or that other girl, Hermione, I think her name is? What's her relationship to this family, anyway?"
"She's a schoolmate — a classmate of Ron's and Harry's, and a friend of Ginny's, for all they're almost two years apart in age. They're good friends."
"From the looks of Ginny and Hermione, they're both thinking of being more than Harry's … friend. He's a very good-looking boy. Especially with his shirt off."
Mrs. Weasley pursed her lips in thought before answering. "Ginny has had a crush on Harry since the day the boys met, when they were eleven and she was ten. Now she's fifteen and beginning to realize what the real situation is between boys and girls. Hermione, I think, is more interested in my son Ron than in Harry, but it is entirely possible that she hasn't made a decision as to which one she's really interested in yet. I think she only today noticed how Harry's filled out. He really was quite atrociously thin before. Ron noticed Hermione some time ago but hasn't made a move because he doesn't want to risk cutting Harry out. And Harry, bless him, has been so wrapped up in his own problems that he hasn't even realized that the girls might find him attractive. I think he only started to notice them recently, and he doesn't have much self-confidence yet."
"This could be a very volatile situation, you realize."
"Ms. Stone, I have guided five sons through adolescence now and haven't lost one of them. Girls aren't all that different. Harry will be in America for the next year and away from all of the others. Until then, I'm keeping a weather eye out for situations developing. But so far there hasn't even been as much as stolen kisses behind the garage. And believe me, I'd know. I don't think anybody will be shagging anybody else in the bushes this summer, anyway. These are all good, sensible — and yes, innocent — children here. I made sure my own know the facts of life, as I'm sure Hermione's parents have told her. None of them is rushing to try it out, though. Next year they'll all be of the age of consent and things will work out as they work out. I'm not going to try to keep them apart if that's what they want, just make sure there are no untoward consequences. I'm sure you know as well as I do that trying to force young people apart is often the way to push them together."
"So you wouldn't object to Harry seeing your daughter?"
"Not once they're both of age, no. They're at the same school for ten months a year, so there's nothing I could do to prevent it in any event. Come to that, I wouldn't mind having him as a son-in-law. He's a good boy, and there are far worse ones out there for Ginny to choose. Or maybe Harry will meet someone on this American trip. Or maybe they'll both find someone else in University. For that matter, he could even turn out to be more interested in Ron than in the girls. I don't think that's likely, but you never know, do you?"
"No, Mrs. Weasley, you never do. You never do." Ms. Stone sighed and finished her lemonade. "I think on that note, I should go see what Harry's decided."
She found Harry in the living room. The girls had gone upstairs, and Ron sat in a chair in the corner, being quietly supportive but not disturbing him. Harry was going through the trust statements, obviously trying to figure them out, not just checking bottom lines. "Do you have any questions, Harry?"
"No, I think I understand it all, it's just all so sudden … and it looks like there's rather a lot here."
"That's the wonder of fifteen years of compounded interest. You won't continue to get those earnings once you start drawing on the trust funds for your support, you realize."
"I know that. If there's one thing I learned with the Dursleys, though, it's how to make do on the minimum necessary, so I think I can stretch this for quite a while." He put the statements in a neat pile on the table. "I think I'd like to take the emancipation option. I know I have two years of school to go and all, but there are some things I'd like to do, and it'll be easier if I have access to some money of my own. Just to have some spending money on this American trip, if nothing else." He looked up at her with a wry smile. "I promise I won't spend it all on wine, women and song. I don't drink, I wouldn't know what to do with a woman if one were dropped in my lap, and I can't carry a tune in a bucket."
Ms. Stone laughed. "Maybe you can afford a few voice lessons. I'll get started on the paperwork first thing tomorrow, since it'll take me the rest of the day just to get back to town. You'll have to come in to see the solicitor in a few days. I assume you can just come in to town with Mr. Weasley when he comes to work?"
"Yes, I did that once before. Just let him know when I need to be there, I guess."
"Good. I'll contact him when I've got things set up." She bundled most of the papers into her briefcase, but left a set of copies of the statements for Harry to continue reviewing. Before she left, she shook Harry's hand formally. "I'd just like you to know that I think you're doing the right thing, and that I think you will be a credit to your new family. If you want to stay in contact after everything is turned over to you, if you need some help organizing things, I'd be glad to help out. Given how many of my cases go, it's a pleasure and a relief when things work out as well as this for one of my clients."
"I … think I'd like that. Thank you."
He watched through the front window as her car disappeared down the drive. When she was safely gone, he and Ron turned to each other, grinning. "This is going to be so cool!" he shouted. "No Dursleys, no Court supervision … Yes! I am free of the Muggles!"