Disclaimer: JKR's, not mine (moonsign)
Voices from the Walls of Hogwarts
It was a few days before school broke up for Christmas. Harry was sitting at the desk in his living room, attempting to do the last of his marking before the end of term so he could spend the holidays searching for ways to help his family gain bodies so they would stop cluttering up his head. This, he thought morosely, had to be the only time in human history that anyone had that particular task on their 'Things to do at Christmas' list.
Still, it would be a relief to have his mind to himself again. James and Sirius had developed and irritating habit of playing mix and match with his memories when they were bored. It was only after he had received some very odd looks from fellow teachers in the staffroom that he realised (already halfway through recounting the events of his second year after much begging from the staff), that he had probably never battled a basilisk that turned into a snitch, which he then swallowed and regurgitated in the form of a pink pygmy puff which Ginny named Boris.
As a result, he had to rerun memories in his head in order to discern whether they really happened, or if they were simply too ridiculous to be true. The downside of this method was that most of the events in his life were too ridiculous to be true. At one point he had firmly stated that there was no way he would have been thick enough to follow a stampede of terrified spiders into the Forbidden Forest on Hagrid's orders, only to escape from a herd of rampaging Acromantulas in a flying Ford Anglia. At this point, Lily and Remus took their partners in hand and forced them to reassemble Harry's memories in the correct order again.
Harry sighed and chewed on his quill, realising with resignation that if he couldn't get his wandering mind under some kind of control, he'd never finish his marking in time. He glanced over to the other two occupants of the room.
Alex and Daniel sat on the brightly striped hearth rug in front of the fire playing chess – or at least they had been playing chess until Daniel had glanced up as though someone had called his name. Now Alex sat patiently on one side of the board, picking a thread in the rug as he watched his friend - who appeared to be having an intense, if silent, conversation with the stone wall.
"That must get frustrating," Harry observed, laying down his quill and looking at the gangly little Gryffindor sympathetically.
Alex shrugged and looked at Daniel with a fondly exasperated expression. "I'm used to it now. The other day he made us late for Herbology because he stopped for a chat with the Whomping Willow. He said it wanted to tell him about a car, and a wolf, and a dog who turned into a skeleton and then broke a boy's leg."
Harry felt a shiver run up his spine. It was at times like this that Daniel went from being an oddly eccentric little boy to something much more real and frightening. "Why did it tell him that?" he asked, aware that his voice was a little hoarse.
Alex looked embarrassed. "Well, he said he'd asked Hogwarts to tell him about you, sir. And it said it could tell him lots of stories, and so could the Whomping Willow. It said the Willow was part of your family's..." he screwed up his face. "Hurt-idge."
:-Heritage,-: Remus put in, in his patient-professor voice.
Harry looked at Daniel, whose large black eyes were focused with peculiar intensity at the wall. "Yes," Harry said to Alex. "It is."
Daniel looked up then, giving his head a little shake and running a hand through his springy strawberry-blonde curls.
"Alright, mate?" Alex asked, reaching over the chess board to give Daniel a friendly nudge.
Daniel's mouth pulled itself into a small but fairly disturbing half-smile as he nudged Alex back. "Time?" he asked, as always using the least amount of words required for the question.
