120 Chapter 117

Harry looked around the quaint little magical tea shop they were sitting in. It looked very homey, with its burning fireplace and its earth brown colors. The patrons seemed to be of the elderly kind, each minding their own business. A wooden sign hung outside, visible only to wizards and witches, with 'Rosa Lee's Teabag' written on it.

After getting over his shock and going over to the couple in the station, they had introduced themselves to Harry as Nick and Ellie Potter. They'd shrunk his luggage and then promptly flooed over to this tea shop to have some food and talk about the guardianship issues. For the moment at least, Harry had decided to go along with their charade.

He needed to find out why they were lying to him and what their intentions were in getting his guardianship.

His thoughts came back to the present and he looked back towards the couple sipping their tea in front of him. His eyes fell onto the Daily Prophet on the table, which loudly proclaimed the death of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel this morning.

He idly wondered how funny it all was for them.

Maybe he could make it slightly less so.

"Its a shame how the Flamels passed away," Harry said.

Looking a bit thrown off at the odd comment, Nick looked down at the paper before answering, "Yes. I do suppose it is. They did contribute quite a bit to the magical world. Truly legendary names."

Harry nodded and schooled his expression into childlike intrigue. "Hey! Funny coincidence isn't it? Your names are pretty similar to them. I mean if I had to guess nicknames for the Flamels, I'd probably come up with something like your names. Odd huh?" Harry flippantly commented and sipped on his tea, using Gamer's Mind to avoid showing his smirk.

They frowned a bit, looking at each other, almost as if they were having a whole conversation through their eyes. Harry had no doubt that they were. Being as old as they were, they had to be very proficient in mind arts, and talking to each other without words must be child's play for them.

"Yes, I do suppose that's quite a coincidence." Nick finally said after a few quiet seconds.

Harry smiled as he sipped his tea. It was so much fun to mess with people hiding their identities. First Vance and then Flamels. It had been a while since he'd used his abilities to prank someone, and it was fun.

"So Harry," Ellie finally asked after a small while, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions. We'd be glad to answer any we think we can."

Deciding to go along with it, he asked, "Well…I don't really know anything about you. And I've never even heard about any French branch of the Potter family."

"I'm not surprised you haven't." Nick said "Our lot have mostly been farmers and potion ingredient suppliers since the 1400s. Ever since then our entire clan lived a very isolated life. We were considering moving back to England when we heard about you being up for adoption, so we sold most of our land there and moved to London."

"So are there others? In the family?" Harry asked.

"No." Ellie's face seemed to wilt, "Just us. Everyone else has passed away."

Harry grew somber, catching the hidden meaning in the sentence. He stayed silent for a second before changing the subject.

"So what do you do in London? For a living" Harry asked.

"Nothing much really. Ellie wants to write a book and we've got more than enough quid from the land sales, so rest assured we won't be facing money issues anytime soon. I'll just be stuck in the apartment doing house stuff and helping you with schoolwork eh?" Nicholas said with a smile.

Harry smiled a bit before asking something that he felt a bit curious about, "Apartment?"

"Oh yes!" Nick perked up. "Your Headmaster mentioned that you didn't know a lot about the wizarding world outside the school and Alley. I reckon I should get to be the one to tell you about all this stuff. We'll be living in a wizarding apartm-"

"It's getting late now Nick." Ellie interrupted, looking at the clock on the wall.

"Ah yes, yes. I'll tell you along the way Harry," Nick said. They quickly paid for their food and headed towards the floo, towards their new home.

They emerged from the floo in a small room. A man in green robes; looking more like a valet than anything else; gave Nick a tip of his hat as they opened the door and walked out into what looked like the corridor of an apartment building floor. Harry looked at the numbers of the apartments as he passed them on their way to 206B, which was their home.

Nick explained that since most wizards didn't have ancestral homes or manors, they lived in apartments that were built into the thirteenth floors of many muggle buildings by wizarding contractors. Since the number 13 was a magically powerful number, the concealment spells always took very well, making muggles simply think that those buildings didn't build thirteenth floors.

The building owners usually came down with a severe case of triskaidekaphobia, the fear of number thirteen, and forgot they ever built a thirteenth floor in their buildings.

"Wizarding contractors are obligated by the ministry to pay the owner of the building of course," Nick assured Harry, assuaging his concerns of the muggles getting the short end of the straw.

Then, much to his joy, Harry came to know from Ellie that this apartment in which they lived in was only a few minutes away from Charing Cross and the Diagon Alley.

"A lot of the shopkeepers from Diagon live here in our building," Nick said as he pressed his wand to the lock of Number 206B, "since it's pretty close from here. For example, Florean Fortescue, the owner of the ice cream parlor in Diagon. He lives in 208B. We're neighbors to the best ice cream maker in the country. How amazing is that!"

Harry gave him that. It was pretty amazing. However, it only took one glance at the inside of the apartment before Harry convinced himself that Undetectable Expansion charms were undoubtedly just as amazing. If not more so.

The apartment was massive on the inside. It was actually a full-fledged house with two floors.

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