01/08/1989
Harry, 9 years old
Tuesday, August 1st
Dear diary, my dad is the best in the world!
A long time ago, I told him the story of my ancestors that I had heard in secret when James told it to Xavier. The story about a certain Brahma Pamli and Lady Magic's gift.
I always thought it was a children's tale, just to put my older brother to sleep, but dad took it seriously and with his contacts he started investigating the Pamli family. It turns out that this family spread quite a bit, but it was the Peverell line that later gave rise to the Potter family.
Unfortunately, there are no more magical Potters in India, but the Kumar family, the main magical branch, also descends from the Peverells, and dad managed to get in touch with the head of the family!
Apparently, it's a common surname in the Muggle community in India, but the magical family has only two lines. The Lower Kumar or "young" family, which is a third-generation magical family, and the Upper Kumar or "princes," who descend from royalty and managed to maintain a kind of noble title, but it's not like at home, with all the Lords and Ladies.
There they have a king, the Maharajadhiraja, who reigns over 10 houses, which are like minor kings, one of them being the Kumar house, to which I am distantly related.
Surprisingly, another house is the Patil house, from which come the Patil twins, Padma and Parvati, whom I met at Xavier's birthday party.
Despite all this royalty, the concept of blood purity is almost nonexistent, as they often have more than one wife and many children, at least one of whom ends up marrying a Muggle-born or even Muggle. A clear example is Mehtab Kaur, who is related to me, as she is part of the magical Kumar family.
She married the last Muggle Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh. She is 67 years old, and her eldest daughter, Heminder Kaur (the only one who inherited magic), welcomed us at the international Portkey arrival lounge.
She is a very kind woman and explained to me all about this family and how we are related. She let me ask her all sorts of questions and tried to tell me a little bit of everything; it was great!
Physically, we don't look much alike, maybe the tone of our hair, but the resemblance to the rest of my family and James was obvious. The Potter hair comes from here, according to Hemi, it comes from the same Ignotus Peverell, so that type of hair has been tormenting generations for many years.
Hemi tried to tame her hair with a dupatta, a kind of fabric scarf with beads and colors typical of here, but it was obvious that it was a great effort.
We all took a family-sized flying carpet (I think I prefer brooms), and we arrived at the main mansion of the family, where we were greeted with a grand banquet! According to Hemi, it is a tradition to celebrate the reunion with distant families.
The best part is that no one commented on my skin color or my lack of messy hair (everyone had the same hair but in different shades! There were even a couple of blondes and a red-haired girl!), in fact, everyone seemed jealous of the silkiness of my hair, especially the girls. Dad and Julius said it made a lot of sense because women tend to worry more about that kind of thing, but Luna always has her hair wild and free in the wind or in messy braids, so I don't know if I believe them.
Vanraj Kumar is the name of the head of the family. He is an older man, with the typical hair of everyone around here but whiter than I have ever seen on a person, it looked like a cloud... But the most surprising thing about him was his green eyes, they were easily two shades darker than mine, but they were green!
I thought that was all that would surprise me about him, but no! After spending at least a couple of hours at the celebration, we were brought before him, and dad gave him some gifts (a bottle of elfish liquor and a jar of bloommiki honey that we got in Japan), and suddenly a large white snake appeared and wrapped itself around the old man's shoulders. But that wasn't the surprising part, no, the surprising part was that Vanraj spoke to it in Parseltongue, Parseltongue!
Celty immediately emerged from among my clothes to see what had surprised me so much, and without much thought, I told her what had happened. Everything stopped, no one made a sound for a good 5 seconds, which I really felt was an eternity... and then everything exploded into cheers and the music played even louder.
Vanraj smiled at me and told me that they believed the Parseltongue gift was lost, as none of his descendants had inherited it, but now they could rest assured that it had not been lost forever, but had ended up in another branch of the family, which gave them hope that one day the gift would return to them.
Then, to my embarrassment, he offered me one of his great-granddaughters as a future wife. Dad told him that due to a family inconvenience, I was already married to Draco, but that didn't seem to discourage the old man, instead he said that I could always take one of his great-grandsons or great-granddaughters as a second wife or husband.
My Draco didn't take it well, and honestly, neither did I. From what little I understand about being married, it's ideal to be with someone you like and to live with that person for the rest of your life. And I think just with My Draco is enough for me. Imagining living with someone else 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, seems extremely tiring, what if we get bored of playing?
Draco is quite annoying when he's bored, and I don't know if the boys or girls that the old man was offering me would be just as annoying or worse. I really appreciate how My Dragon leaves me alone when I tell him I just want to read for a while, but what if that supposed other wife or husband won't let me read in peace?
No thanks, so I refused and told him that there was only space for My Draco. Vanraj laughed and told me that if I was sure, he would leave me alone, after that he left me alone with that topic and we proceeded to speak in Parseltongue about some writings that his ancestors had left him in Parseltongue about a type of magic specific to Parselmouths. We spent several days there, and Grandpa Van taught me what he knew about Parseltongue magic, which focused more on the healing aspect, and allowed dad to copy the writings so that I could read them better at home.
Grandpa Van decided to give us proper names from there as a gesture of goodwill and acceptance into the family, he called me Harit, which means green or related to nature (according to him because of the color of my eyes and my love for magical creatures), dad was called Sunil, which means dark (it made me laugh because it alluded to dad always dressing in black).
Luna was called Chandrika, which means little moon (she loved it), the twins were decided to be called Krishna twins, based on a Hindu god known for his mischievous and playful nature. But individually Forge is Lalit, for being the more flirtatious of the two, and Gred is Natwar, for being the one who always starts the mischief.
Julius was called Ashok, which means without sorrow, and it was Grandpa's way of wishing him a better life (I don't know how he found out about Tom, but Grandpa Van seems to know everything). And Draco was named Arjun, which means bright or white, and well... that explains itself. (My Dragon is the brightest person of all)
The cool thing is that written Parseltongue can be taught, so now all my friends and dad have decided to learn it to have a secret way of communication.
Draco said he would learn to speak Parseltongue, although there is no precedent for it being possible, I will still help him in any way I can. (My Dragon really loves learning new languages and challenges)
We visited the Muggle area in the company of Hemi's family, and they told us the story behind each monument we saw (they were better tour guides than the actual Muggles who did that). My favorite was the Taj Mahal; I found the gesture for which it was built to be beautiful, but the Muggle area was a bit ugly, the magical part was much cleaner, and the great building had a brilliant white shine.
According to magical legend, the architect was a wizard who had fallen in love with the wife of Emperor Shah Jahan, to whom this mausoleum is dedicated, so this wizard did everything he could to make it the most beautiful building possible and added the magical area so he could visit it without being judged.
I also received some gifts for Anna, Xavier, and mom, but none for James. Still, they told me that my brothers were invited to come whenever they wanted.
We spent my birthday in a grand celebration, and the whole family (and when I say whole, I mean WHOLE) was present, and they gave me many gifts; the best part was dressing up in traditional clothes and spending it all together.
I am extremely happy... I'm sorry if I stain some pages with my tears, dear diary, but I can't help it, I never thought I would be so accepted and loved by my biological family (even if it's a bit distant). I would have loved to share all this with my other brothers... someday... someday I will bring them, and we will spend it together with the whole family…
See you
Goodbye.