Chris listened more than talked during the first part of the dinner. Piper had opened the door enthusiastically and hugged Wyatt. She had made a move to hug Chris but Chris took a step back on reflex and she held herself back but Chris could see the hurt in her eye. He felt awful about causing it but to be honest he didn’t remember anyone but Hermione hugging him and he had acted on instinct afraid of the unknown or how to act. Where you supposed to hug back? He’d watch Wyatt more attentively the next time so he’d know.

His Aunts had also proceeded to hugging Wyatt as if they hadn’t seen him for years instead of just the week they’d been away but had contended to shaking Chris’s hand, probably taking into account what happened with Piper. Though Chris could swear that the Aunt that was introduced as Paige had to hold Phoebe back.

There was a table in the small living room of their quarters that had been set up for them and Piper had quickly ushered everyone to seat. And the dinner started with very mild conversation about how classes were and what had happened in Magic School that week. Chris learned that Paige was half-Whitelighter and had taken over Leo at Magic School and that Phoebe was an advice columnist in a prominent newspaper. He heard stories about his six cousins and the two acting grandfathers, or as Paige joked, rivaling grandfathers. Which where Victor, who was Piper and Phoebe’s father and Sam, who was Paige’s.

“The kids are too close with each other, and they just decided to call them both grandpa. Since neither Coop nor Henry have living parents we never minded. But they’re always competing,” Phoebe snickered at some of the older men’s antics when trying to prove which was the coolest grandfather.

“I was afraid of how I’d get the food,” Piper confided during desert. “But then I told Dumbledore that I wanted to have dinner with my sisters and he directed me to the kitchens. It’s amazing! I’d never seen house-elves before. I felt a little overwhelmed.”

Chris had never met the Hogwarts house-elves and these days he had learned to be very careful when mentioning them to Hermione but he figured he could relate to Piper if they were anything like Dobby.

“Well,” Paige said with an expression of bliss. “If they all cook like this, I’m not complaining.” Chris noticed that Piper glared at her and it was a second before she hastily added, “Nowhere near as good as you, but good.”

“Mom’s a little bit vain when it comes to her cooking,” Wyatt whispered to Chris who nodded. Aunt Petunia liked being praised for her food. And Chris had to admit that she did cook well. Cooking was one of the chores Aunt Petunia usually shared with Chris, she didn’t usually do it all by herself unless Chris had been occupied with another chore but she never really trusted Chris to cook the food alone. It was also one of the chores Chris actually enjoyed, even with Aunt Petunia hovering and tutting.

“By the way,” Leo chuckled. “You apparently have a fan there Chris.”

“I’ve never met the Hogwarts’ house-elves,” he said surprised.

“Oh, this one was new there, he said,” Leo explained trying to remember. “Piper wanted to know if they knew what you liked to eat. We told Dumbledore Wyatt had invited you. We didn’t want anyone making a fuss about you missing dinner. What did he say his name was?”

“Dobby,” Piper grinned. “He kept calling you the great Harry Potter.”

“Dobby? Dobby is working at Hogwarts?”

“You know him?” Phoebe asked him interested.

“Yes,” Chris nodded. “He was the Malfoy’s house-elf, I er-helped him get rid of them at the end of second year. He tried to save me from the Basilisk and Riddle’s diary.” He decided not to go into the details about house-elf slavery as to not turn this dinner into a recruitment center for SPEW. As a Muggle raised, and mainly the Dursley’s house-elf, he did agree with Hermione and had been appalled at the slavery. But he thought Hermione was going at it the wrong way. You can’t just come from another culture and start criticizing everything from the Wizarding world without a care in the world. And the way she was going about it was quite antagonistic. You had to be smooth. People don’t like change and their instinct reaction is to get defensive. That’s something he learned with Aunt Petunia too. Whenever she wanted changes she would go at Uncle Vernon quite smoothly. A comment here, another there and at the end make it look like it had been all his idea. His Aunt would have made a fine Slytherin in his opinion.

“What’s a Basilisk?” Wyatt asked curiously.

“Er- never mind. S’ nothing,” Chris shrugged.

“Leo doesn’t look like it’s nothing,” Paige pointed out at Leo who was gaping at Chris with his fork hovering mid way to his mouth.

“S’ just a snake,” Chris tried to change the subject.

“The largest snake in the world which can kill with its stare,” Leo blurted.

“WHAT?” Piper shrieked. “Why, why would you be involved with that?”

“Uhm, er- wasn’t exactly my fault,” Chris tried to shake the now shocked looks of all the people at the table. Why did he open his big mouth?

Leo slowly put down his fork and knife and crossed his arms on the table. “Why don’t you explain to us what happened?”

Chris sighed and bit his lips nervously. Really, why didn’t Sirius or Remus explain it to them? He cautiously started the tale of his second year, which led to a lot of pacing, ranting and to both Chris’s and Wyatt’s, who had moved to the couch, amusement; swearing. Unfortunately he made the mistake of mentioning that that was the second time he had met Voldemort which led to him explaining his first year, deftly avoiding how he learned he was a Wizard, no need to bring the Dursleys up, and the Quidditch matches, Wyatt had begged him not to let Piper know about Quidditch before he had flown, and that led to even more pacing, ranting and to Chris’s shock Piper hugging him without restraint. He had just stayed stiff and unmoving until she decided to let him go. When she did, he felt awkward,  at the same time that he hadn’t know how to react he felt as if something was missing after she let him go.

Wyatt, Chris was very thankful to him, had managed to calm everyone down, after all, what was done was done and if they didn’t want Dumbledore to find out about Chris they couldn’t very well barge in and explode him limb by limb as Piper had suggested.

So, in a somewhat tense mood Phoebe had turned to Chris asking about his empathy and Chris had explained how he knew what people where feeling since he was little and asked if he could block it out.

“You can. I learned with my husband’s help. He is a cupid and Empathic too. Since he had dealt with his powers longer than I he helped me when I was pregnant with my first child. I think that because Prue had it from both sides she must have had some empathy even in the womb and I was channeling it and having my empathy being boosted. I was going nuts. Before that I could only feel what people close to me were feeling, but then. I could sense the whole floor at work. So he taught me to shut everyone out. I can teach you too. It’s nice to be alone with ones feelings every now and then,” she winked at him and he smiled. “But it’s something you have to be doing actively so it’s tiring to keep it up all the time. I just use it when tempers are flying high.”

Chris nodded seriously, “But I can learn right? It would be really useful when the school is hating me. Gets annoying to feel that everywhere I go.”

Phoebe smiled sadly at him, “Tell you what. I brought some books from Magic School on meditation. You have to learn that first. So I’ll tell you what to read and next Friday I’ll come with Paige again and we can practice some meditation. When you can get in a state to calm your own emotions we can start with you blocking everyone else’s. It’s hard to do that. Especially with someone so young. But I’m sure you’ll manage,” and she knew he would because even before they took the potion Future Chris had an iron grip on his emotions and she could very rarely get a wisp from him.

Chris smiled excited and Phoebe smiled pleased and turned to give Paige a smug look when she noticed Paige frowning at Chris.

“I didn’t imagine the dress code here being so rigid,” Paige commented sizing Chris’s school uniform up. Wyatt had dressed casually, too casually for Piper’s taste for what she had wanted to be a flaunting dinner. His t-shirt had been an old one he loved and that Piper had tried to get rid of many times. Chris on the other hand had showed up in his school uniform, tie and all, minus the robe. Paige had always been against uniforms in Magic School, too stifling she said. So even though no one had commented, trust her to decide to.

Chris bit his lips nervously but didn’t answer. Piper on the other hand frowned, “I’ve seen the other students dressing casually after class. But now that you mention I’ve never seen you dressing casually Chris.”

Well duh, like he needed to give Malfoy more ammo! He never used his clothes in school, unless he was sure his robes were completely covering them.

“Chris?” Piper prodded. “Why didn’t you put on something casual?”

“You said to dress nicely,” there, he refused to give any more explanation than that.

Piper chuckled, “Yes, nicely. But I didn’t mean a tie. I was thinking more on the lines of a newer t-shirt and jeans,” she shot Wyatt an annoyed look and Wyatt just smiled back at her innocently.

“If Chris likes wearing his uniform let him,” Wyatt tried to save his brother. He was getting some vibes of embarrassment and nervousness from the boy.

“Sure he can, I was just wondering why,” Piper mused. “If you like your uniform it’s more than okay for you to use it.”

Well, like was a strong word. It was more like he didn’t have much else to wear. Sure Mrs. Weasley had bought him dress robes but that was a bit too much for the occasion, Chris had thought.

“Okay,” Chris said vaguely. But Phoebe had narrowed her eyes at him.

“You don’t like them, so why wear them?”

“Aunt Phoebe,” Wyatt warned. Trust the Empath to but in.

Chris shrugged, but Phoebe pressed on, “Whatever your embarrassed about don’t. We won’t judge.”

The mortification coming through the bond was drowning Wyatt, they would have to start learning to block each other out. He was sure the only reason Chris hadn’t figured the bond out was because he must think it was part of his empathy. Maybe Aunt Phoebe’s lessons would help.

“I’m not,” Chris tried to smile feebly. “S’ just Piper said to dress nicely.”

A horrible thought went through Leo’s mind, “Do you have nice clothes to wear?”

And everyone in the room knew the answer even without being able to know what Chris was feeling just by the awkward and embarrassed look in his face.

“I see,” Piper said coolly.

“It’s just I don’t want to spend too much because my vault is all I have and-“

“You misunderstand me Chris,” Piper said calmly, “This is neither your fault nor your responsibility. Your guardians,” and Piper spat the word out as an insult, “get an allowance for you every month, that from what Sirius told us, is more than enough to provide for you comfortably. Sirius also said you actually have more to inherit than your trust vault but you’ll only be able to access that once you are of age, until then he is the executor. Regardless of that, your guardians should have seen to that you had proper clothing. But we will remedy that.”

And what would be done to remedy that Chris never did find out because out of the blue, Paige commented. “You talk funny,” as if the tension hadn’t been high in the room and Chris had the impression she did it on purpose.

“I could say the same about you,” he smirked.

“Touché”, she nodded towards him but Chris could see she was amused. He figured that to her it might be even weirder her nephew having a different accent since she was used to hearing Future him talk in an American accent. Whatever reason she had for making that comment it did break the tension and led to lighter conversation. All in all Chris had to admit he had a good time with them. He especially liked how Paige didn’t refer to Leo and Piper as ‘your mom and dad’ which Phoebe did a few times but stopped after a pointed look from Paige. Chris had no idea why Paige did it but he was glad for her help. He wasn’t ready to see anyone else other than James and Lily as mom and dad.

---

As soon as the boys left Piper went directly to the Fireplace and threw a handful of powder in it. Paige and Phoebe were about to make fun of the strange behavior when Piper crouched down and put her head in the fire and they jumped to stop her just to be stopped by Leo.

“It’s okay. The fire won’t hurt her. Remus showed her how to use it.”

And although all they could see was Piper’s butt sticking out of the fireplace they could hear what the people on the other side were saying.

“You never told me about the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk and-“ Piper was ranting without even taking the time to say hello when she was interrupted by two shrieks from Remus and Sirius:

“There’s a Basilisk?”

“There’s a Chamber?”

“You didn’t know?” Piper asked. “But you told me what happened in his third year.”

“And that’s all we know!”

“Remus,” Leo supplied to the bewildered sisters.

“I heard rumors that he had gotten himself in a bit of trouble his first two years but that’s all. I thought he had gotten caught out of bounds out of hours! You know, kid’s stuff!”

“Piper,” the other voice who had to be Sirius said. “Why don’t you step through so you can explain this properly?”

“Just a sec,” Piper pulled her head out of the fireplace and asked her sisters. “Will you wait till we’re back?”

“Sure,” Paige nodded and Piper and Leo took more powder and with a yell of “Lupin’s cottage” they were both gone. Phoebe stared at the fire and then turned to Paige.

“That was weird. And coming from us that is saying something.”

Over an hour later Piper and Leo came back. Apparently Sirius and Remus’s reaction to the tale of Chris’s first two years had been quite similar to their own. Leo had then made an excuse that he was going to shower to give the sisters some alone time but before he left Paige stopped him.

“Just a second Leo. Did Wyatt mention anything he sensed from Chris?”

Leo stopped mid way to the bedroom and shook his head, “No, why?”

Paige looked at his sisters and Leo, “Because I sensed something different from him. Different from what I was used to sensing from future him.”

“Can’t that be the blood adoption?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t know. I mean- I sensed Chris, and he was Chris- but you’re right there was something more to Chris, but then there was something else too. Like another presence that had nothing to do with him,” Paige struggled to explain.

“Another presence?” Piper asked worried.

“Yeah,” Paige nodded. “Like he had two souls in him or something. But it was weird, because when I focused on him. Chris, you know, what is him, was the strongest presence and the other one was faint, and it was isolated- and –er,” Leo notice she wasn’t sure of herself, or maybe afraid of what she’d say. After all these years Paige had a much higher grasp of her Whitelighter side and if she said that the presence was isolated to just a part of Chris than it was.

“Where Paige?” Leo asked dreading the answer. After the story about the diary with a piece of Voldemort’s soul his mind was jumping to one only conclusion and if she said what he thought she would say they were in big trouble.

“His scar,” she winced.

“What, what does that mean?” Piper asked Leo frantically.

“I’m not sure. I need to look something up,” He looked at Phoebe and Piper. “Do you two mind if Paige and I pop by Magic School? I know a book there that might help.”

“No,” Piper shook her head. “Go!” she urged them and Leo walked away with Paige, all his thoughts of resting flying out the window.