The Old Cliché

“Out onto platform 9¾ stepped a young man. He carried no luggage, beside a leather satchel over his shoulder. He was tall, at just over 6 feet, with dark unruly hair and emerald eyes hidden beneath James Bond type sunglasses. He was dressed well, clearly in high-quality navy blue robes.

The man's name was Lord Harrison James Black-Potter.”

Or, the title just describes the fic really well. It’s that really cliché one.

Chapter 1

Out onto platform 9¾ stepped a young man. He carried no luggage, beside a leather satchel over his shoulder. He was tall, at just over 6 feet, with dark unruly hair and emerald eyes hidden beneath James Bond type sunglasses. He was dressed well, clearly in high-quality navy blue robes.

The man's name was Lord Harrison James Black-Potter.

Not that anyone else knew that. He was more commonly known as Harry James Potter. And the Harry Potter that they knew looked nothing like the one on the platform.

Harry walked confidently up onto the train, his expression neutral, meeting no eyes. Not that there were many eyes to meet, anyway. There were still 45 minutes before the Hogwarts Express was due to leave, so the rush to arrive had not yet begun.

He found an empty compartment near the front of the train, at the opposite end to the one he usually took, and closed the door, casting a few charms and leaving a note outside. Once that was completed, he removed his shrunk-down trunk from his trouser pocket and tapped it with his wand, resizing it before hefting it up effortlessly onto the rack above him. With that done, Harry slid his sunglasses up on top of his head, removed a book from his satchel, and began to read.

About half an hour later, Harry placed his open book on the seat beside him and gazed out of the window, searching for familiar faces.  The members from the Order of the Phoenix were easy enough to spot, as they were skittish, turning their heads from side-to-side, looking for something. Presumably for him.

He next noticed a large group of redheads appear on the platform. The Weasleys were early for once, and Harry's heart leapt to his throat as he caught sight of a brown-haired girl among them.

Hermione.

Harry had been scared to admit, even to himself, the true feelings he held for his best friend. He had been in love with her since 4th year, when she had stood by him as the rest of the world felt against him. It had taken him weeks to work out the feelings that had arisen, and even then he did not want to accept them, for fear that she would reject him and their friendship would be ruined.

But things had changed since Sirius' death. He had changed. Gone was the Gryffindor Golden Boy - malnourished, scrawny, trusting, loyal and meek who did as he was told. In his place was a man. A man with Slytherin tendencies and gallons of self-confidence - tall, strong, imposing and independent.

Harry Potter had broken free from the manipulations that ruled his life, and there was no going back.

About two hours after the train departed, Harry was quietly sitting alone, reading a book on Runes when the door to his compartment slid open. He smirked and greeted his visitor without looking up.

"I see you finally found me."

Hermione huffed, "Well, a sign that says 'If you can read this, and if you're Hermione Granger, you can come in' does not really make it particularly easy. And that's excluding the fact that it was written in German - which you neglected to tell me you knew, by the way.

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me," he responded, glancing at her over the top of his book. His breath caught in his chest. Hermione seemed to get more and more beautiful each time he saw her. She simply blew him away.

She raised her eyebrow, "Oh? Such as?"

Harry lowered his book, "Well, firstly, my name isn't Harry James Potter."

Hermione was surprised, “What is it then?"

"Harrison James Black-Potter."

Her eyes widened, "But, then why did…?"

He shook his head, "I don't know, 'Mione, but a lot of things changed this summer. I changed. Sirius - Sirius' death was only the catalyst."

Hermione tilted her head, looking over him anxiously, "Alright. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

Harry sighed, "It started with a letter. I was at the Dursleys, moping around in my bedroom and feeling sorry for myself, when a letter arrived with an unknown owl. I was cautious, but I took it and opened it up. It was from Gringotts, notifying me that Sirius' will reading would be taking place the next day, and that the letter would act as a portkey there - I simply had to tap it with my wand."

Harry paused for a moment, "So, the next morning, I took the portkey to Gringotts. I was shown into an office where I met a goblin called Sharptoe, who explained that Sirius had left them instructions along with his will, specifically ones regarding me. They said that Dumbledore would, most likely, try to prevent me from coming, claiming I was grieving or some sort of nonsense. Sirius arranged that I would go under one of the goblins' disillusionment charms - so that no one would know I was there."

"But, why wouldn't Dumbledore want you to go?"

"I'm getting there, 'Mione, keep your hair on. Anyway, that's what I did. I won't go into all the bequeaths but the gist of it is that, besides leaving some money to Remus, he made me his heir. It turns out that he blood-adopted me as a baby - making him my second father. It also means that I'm able to take over as Lord of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Black and Potter.”

“Lord!?” Hermione cried.

“I’ll explain it later. There’s something else I need to tell you first.” He took a breath to ready himself, “In his will, Sirius also left other instructions for Gringotts. They were told to give me an inheritance ritual, which would show any blocks on my magic or abilities, as well as any spells or potions I might be under the influence of.” Harry grimaced, “The results showed an 80% block on my magical core, as well as blocks on any natural shape shifting abilities and mind arts.”

“Harry!” she exclaimed, “That’s terrible! Who would do such a thing?!”

He looked at her, a serious expression on his face, and answered simply, “Dumbledore.”

Hermione was flabbergasted, “What? Why-why would he do that? How do you even know it’s him?”

Harry leaned back in his seat, “Sirius had had suspicions since Snape began Occlumency training with me. Naturally, everyone has some mental defences, even very weak ones, but the way I described my experiences, he realised that I had absolutely none. He knew the only person who both had access to me and had the power to block my abilities was Dumbledore. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remove the blocks from me himself, nor reveal his suspicions without alerting Dumbledore, so, as a precaution, he left me a letter in case anything happened to him. I read it after the will reading. It explained Dumbledore’s manipulations, and gave me some advice on what to do next. I asked the goblins, as Sirius suggested, to give me a purging potion, which removes all spells and enchantments placed on a person, as well as see one of their healers. They granted both requests.” He chuckled at the memory, “The healer was shocked when she ran her tests and discovered I hadn’t had any of my shots - neither muggle nor magical - and so promptly gave them to me. She healed all fractures and broken bones I had received from my years at the Dursleys, and gave me a potion regimen to heal my malnourishment and regain the height I had lost from it. She also fixed my eyesight.”

Hermione smiled, “I thought you had grown. But, you mentioned something about being a Lord earlier?”

Harry nodded, “Yes, another thing Dumbledore kept from me. You see, the Wizengamot - sort of like the muggle parliament - is made up of three groups: the ministry officials, such as Fudge and the department heads, the Order of Merlin recipients, and the Lords and Ladies of the Most Ancient and Most Noble and the Noble houses. Well, what Dumbledore neglected to tell me is that the Potters are one of those houses - The Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter, and as I am its last remaining heir, I should have received my Lordship and been emancipated when I turned 15. In addition, it turned out that I had already been emancipated, as when I was entered into the Triwizard Tournament I was declared a legal adult simply by being in it - it was a condition of the contract. Also, I was tried in an adult court last year. That means that the Ministry themselves were admitting I was an adult.”

“But, if you were declared an adult after the tournament, surely you shouldn’t have been tried in the first place?”

Harry smirked, “Of course. But Dumbledore wants me to remain under his thumb. He doesn’t want me to gain my independence.”

“But why?”

“Ah, that’s the big question, isn’t it? Well, the answer’s quite simple. Or, maybe not so simple, depending on how you look at it." He shook his head, "Anyway, a few months before I was born, Dumbledore witnessed a prophecy predicting Voldemort’s downfall. It went like this; 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…' As you can guess, the people referred to in the prophecy are Voldemort and myself. The night it was made, Voldemort had a spy nearby, who reported the first part to him. That’s the reason he came after me that night. He tried to kill me so that I could never ‘vanquish’ him, but in doing so he caused his own downfall. But, as you can tell, the prophecy is open to many interpretations. Some bits are pretty much set in stone - such as the so-called vanquisher being born at the end of July to parents who had gone against Voldemort three times. That could have been either myself or Neville.  The next bit is a bit more complicated. The mark, most likely, is my scar,” he gestured to it, “but the ‘power the Dark Lord knows not’, well, that’s a bit less obvious. It could be literally anything. Dumbledore seemed to think it’s love, which, I think, is a load of rubbish. How could anyone use love to defeat Voldemort? Hug him to death?”

Hermione snorted.

“Exactly,” Harry nodded, smiling, “Anyway ‘neither can live while the other survives’. The direct interpretation, obviously, makes no sense, because I'm alive, and so is he. But, another interpretation could be that I used to have a piece of Voldemort’s soul in my head.”

“You what?!” Hermione screeched.

“It’s how he survived,” Harry explained, “He split his soul into different pieces and stored them in different objects - such as the diary in second year. The piece in me was destroyed when I took the purging potion. It suddenly felt like my head was splitting open and I fell to the floor screaming as this gross black goop leaked from my scar. Anyway, the goblins reckon that he made about 6 others. The problem with that is that you have to destroy each one before he’s gone for good. We’ve got two now - myself and the diary.”

“So that’s why you had those visions last year.”

“Yep.”

“But, what does this have to do with Dumbledore?”

“Well, he took the interpretation pretty literally. He presumed that either I would kill Voldemort or he would kill me. He also knew about the horcrux.”

“The what?”

“The soul-piece. That’s what it’s called.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, well, the reason Dumbledore sent me to live with the Dursleys, blocked my abilities and put me through tests each year was so that Voldemort could, in the end, kill me, and therefore the horcrux in my head, before Dumbledore killed him and claimed all the glory.”

“Harry, that’s ghastly! He was raising you like a pig for slaughter!”

“Glad to have you on my side, ‘Mione.”

They sat in silence for a bit, mulling things over.

“What do we tell Ron?”

Harry quirked an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“Exactly that,” Hermione replied, “You know he can’t keep a secret to save his life, but he’ll get suspicious if we keep it from him. So, what do we do?”

Harry shrugged, “Don’t know. He’s your boyfriend, so you tell me.”

“What?! Harry, whatever gave you the impression that he’s my boyfriend?”

He looked up at her, “Well, you love him, don’t you?”

She stared at him incredulously, “God, you’re an idiot! I don’t love Ron, Harry, I love you!”

She gasped at her own admission, as if she hadn't meant to say it, covering her mouth with her hands and refusing to meet Harry’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that - I didn’t mean -”

“You love me?” Harry interjected, shocked, sitting up and staring at her.

“Well, yes,” Hermione admitted, blushing, “I’m sorry, I should’ve told you earlier, but I didn’t want to risk our friendship and I know you don’t think of me that way -”

She was cut off as she looked up to find Harry gazing into her eyes and taking her breath away. They wordlessly inched closer, their eyes drifting closed, before meeting in the middle. The kiss was everything she’d dreamed it would be, her hands tangled in his hair with his arms around her neck. After what seemed like hours, they broke apart for air, breathing heavily and continuing to gaze into each other’s eyes.

“I love you too, ‘Mione,” Harry whispered.

Hermione's heart soared.

Chapter 2

Harry and Hermione walked out onto the platform at Hogsmeade hand-in-hand. Harry was grinning giddily, and Hermione kept looking down at their intertwined fingers, as if hardly believing that it was actually happening. They were holding hands! Sure, they’d done it before, but this was different.

“Hermione!”

The couple turned as her name was called, to find the red-haired member of their trio running towards them. He stopped short when he caught sight of Harry, and the hands that held the pair together.

“Er- who’s this?”

Harry barked out a laugh - reminiscent of his late godfather,  for reasons he had yet to explain.

“Really, Ron? You’ve known me since first year, yet you can’t recognise your best mate?”

Ron’s eyes bulged in surprise and recognition, “Harry?! Blimey, mate, you look - you look… different. What happened this summer?”

Harry shrugged, “A lot of things. I went to a healer, for one.”

“Oh.” Ron frowned, at a loss of what to say.

The silence lingered for a minute, before Harry shrugged and began walking toward the carriages, “Come on, we don’t want to miss the ride.”

Ron and Hermione glanced at each other with a smile, and a shake of the head, before following him to the thestral-led carriages. They climbed into one beside Neville and Luna, whom they greeted with a smile, before the carriage lurched and began it’s climb towards the castle.

They held a pleasant conversation on the way, talking briefly about their holidays but not going into much detail. Hermione and Luna exchanged glances, however, when the younger girl caught her holding Harry’s hand.

Noise died down, however, as they entered the great hall together, but Harry barely noticed. He was too busy staring at the silver-bearded man sitting at the centre of the teachers’ table. Dumbledore himself looked pale at the sight of Harry, as if his whole world had just crashed. Needless to say, there would be some major changes at Hogwarts that year.

Harry helped Ron and Hermione lead the first years up to the dorms after the feast.  Some of them, as always, had heard of him and his exploits before, and looked up at him in awe. He simply ignored their looks, as he had so many years before, and showed them the way with a smile, eagerly chatting with some of the bolder ones - which turned out to be most of them, as they were Gryffindors after all.

Once they reached the common room, he gave a brief goodnight  kiss to Hermione before heading up to be with a smirk on his face, planning a ‘surprise’ for her in the morning.

…::-::…

Hermione was woken up by the feeling of something licking her face

“Eeugh!” She cried, shoving the thing off her. She opened her eyes to catch a glimpse of a dark black Alsatian that barked once before disappearing out of the dorm. She hesitated a moment before chasing after it.

…::-::…

Meanwhile, in the boys’ dorm, an Alsatian raced up the stairs and clambered back up onto his bed, where he swiftly changed back into Harry and threw the covers over himself, pretending to be asleep. He knew Hermione would come looking for him, so it would be best if he had an alibi.

Sure enough, only a moment later, the bookworm herself entered the dorm and threw back the curtain surrounding his bed.

“Harry!” She screeched, startling not only him but all the other occupants of that dorm into wakefulness.

“I’m up, I’m up!” He cried, putting his acting skills to the test as he shot out of bed and blinked his eyes open wearily, his hair a total bird’s nest. Hermione stopped short at the sight, her breath catching in her throat.

She shook her head to clear it. It really wasn’t the time for that.

“Would you care to explain why I was woken up by a dog licking my face this morning?”

Harry exchanged glances with a now-wide-awake Ron, who looked at him before shrugging. He looked back at Hermione.

“A dog? What kind of dog?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, not quite believing his innocent act, “A black one -Alsatian, I think.”

Harry shook his head, “Sorry, ‘Mione, but I only woke up when you came in.”

“Oh really? What’s your animagus form then?”

Her boyfriend’s  eyes widened, caught off guard by the question, “Wh- what are you talking about? I’m not an animagus.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, a smirk playing on her lips, “Well, I know a way we can check that. You see, I happen to know a spell that forces a person to change into their animagus form. It also indicates whether they have actually completed the transformation before. They glow green if they have and red if they haven’t.”

Harry was beginning to sweat. He looked to Ron for help. His best friend seemed to catch on and tried to prevent her from going any further.

“Hermione, come on, Harry’s only just woken up. He's been here the whole time, right guys?”

He looked to his dorm-mates for back up. They all mumbled their concurrence.

Hermione seemed to contemplate it for a moment, causing Harry to relax slightly… before she whipped out her wand and cast the spell at him.

She did it so suddenly there was nothing Harry could do to avoid it. Before he knew what was happening, the spell had hit him, and he felt the, by now, familiar change come over him. A second later, a great, black Alsatian stood where he had been, glowing emerald green, the same colour as his eyes, with a faint white mark on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt.

A stunned silence filled the dorm for a few moments. Hermione smirked, satisfied.  Ron, Neville, Dean and Seamus simply stared, speechless. The dog - Harry - growled quietly, and seemed to roll his eyes, before leaping off the bed and onto his girlfriend, knocking her over. He wagged his tail and barked, looking at her sheepishly.

Hermione just laughed, and shoved him off, “Get off me, you mangy mutt.”

The dog barked at her once again, before turning back into Harry.

It was then that McGonagall came in, “Would you care to explain why some students felt it necessary to tell me that there was a dog in the girls’ dormitory?”