Chapter Text
The painting above was done by moi. It was a bit of an ode to Harry painting a tree at the lake and the first bit of color (in this case a hint of blue) coming into an otherwise monochrome world. It ain't the best thing ever, but here, a painting for you.
This mind-blowing world-building masterpiece was crafted by TNata. I loved how it looks like Harry is writing in a world that is inverse to Tom's. The art style is so charming and believable. The way the colors of the common room and fire are reflected in Tom's horizon is so cohesive. I love it and am humbled by it.
This stunning collection of masterpieces was made by R.A. This is an incredible look back at the first chapter. There's so much detail in every piece, like the shadow of Harry's arm on the diary, the crinkles of the paper, Tom's expression of shock. I cannot think of a better final piece of art for this work.
To everyone who has submitted fanart over the course of this fic, thank you.
They get the Kneazle first. Tom and Kreacher go shopping together and select the very best-looking one of the bunch from Miss Figg.
The Kneazle they select is incredibly well-manicured, with yellow fur and bright green jade eyes. She is fluffy in a pleasing way, and somewhat arrogant.
When Tom brings her back to Harry, she sits in Tom's arms uncomfortably and gives both him and Kreacher obvious once-overs.
When Tom sets her down in Grimmauld place, she explores thoroughly, sticking her nose into every item. She makes her way up to the attic where Harry is busy painting a dragon molting against a sunset.
When she sees Harry, he totally ignores her, utterly absorbed in his work. She falls in love with him at once and spends the day attacking Harry’s feet and steeling his paint brushes.
Tom watches the whole thing with arms crossed, concerned Harry will decide he does not need any Kneazles (and Tom) due to the distraction.
Instead, Tom finds Harry wrestling the feline on the floor, spots of paint on both his cheeks and her fur, laughing hysterically.
Harry’s laughs are a rare thing following the war, and Tom leaves the room well-satisfied.
They name the Kneazle Helga and she and Hedwig get into tussles all the time.
Tom interviews for the defense post.
McGonagall says, “No one has ever lasted more than a year. I know He-who-must-not-be– sorry, Voldemort, is gone, but we haven’t seen yet if that will make a difference to the curse. I would hate to place any former student of mine in a dangerous position. I realize the irony given the war and whatnot, but I do mean that.”
Tom takes off his glasses and slides them into his pocket. There’s no reason to hide his face any longer. “I am more than willing to take the risk.”
McGonagall sighs. “The post is yours come September, then. Your work with the defense club more than qualifies you, in my opinion. Get a mastery at some point. Until then, I suppose you can rest. I imagine you need it.”
Tom feels a disbelieving smile spread across his face. He gets to teach at Hogwarts, his first true home. He will get to meet brilliant young minds and shape them. He means to say something dignified but what comes out is, “Really? Oh, thank Merlin.”
McGonagall laughs at him. “Thank me instead. I’m the one giving you a job.”
Tom coughs. “Right. Thank you.”
McGonagall shoos him out of her office with a, “You’re welcome.”
When he comes home that night, he catches Harry around his waist and spins him around. “I got the job!”
From slightly down the hall, he hears Sirius scream, “YOU GOT THE JOB!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!”
Harry’s eyes sparkle and he tucks his legs behind Tom’s back. “Good. There’d be no one better than you.”
They have a feast for dinner and after, when Harry and Tom are tucked together on an ottoman, Harry says, “So, I’ve been looking at cottages.”
Tom picks up Harry’s hand and kisses his pulse point. “Have you?”
Harry squirms slightly. “It’s just that, with all the commissions I’ve been making, I think we could afford one. We could afford six or seven if I’m honest.”
Tom kisses up Harry’s arm to his neck. “I trust you. Pick somewhere you like.”
Harry pulls Tom’s face up for a kiss. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
The cottage they move to is a Tudor-style one at the outskirts of Hogsmeade. There’s a large backyard with a brook running through and a sweeping lawn.
Tom takes one look at it and says, “It’s perfect.”
Helga hides under the couch for the first day but comes around after she sees Hedwig happily flying around.
As a housewarming present, Luna gifts them a statue of a magpie's bottom. “It’s good luck,” she tells them seriously. She made it through the war but due to the cruciatus, she has a persistent tremor. It doesn’t seem to bother her very greatly. “Steady hands mean a lot less to me and my dad than life.”
On one game night, Harry just feels sad. There’s no reason for it. He’s been doing well, making lots of paintings and even more amounts of money, but these things come and go in waves. He finds himself looking into Hermione’s soul in an attempt to get away from looking at his own.
Hermione charms her card to transform into a floating man made of meatloaf and then out of her meatloaf man’s bum, another meatloaf pops forth.
She and Harry say, with the same smile at the same time, “For my next trick, I will pull meatloaf the food out of meatloaf the man.”
Hermione turns to stare at Harry in concern. Harry doesn’t much care for her concern and focuses on Ron. Ron and Harry say, “You always get so lucky for the pick-twos!”
George says, “Harry?”
Harry? He does look a bit peaky. “Mate,” says Harry with him, “You doing alright?”
Harry doesn’t respond. Ron feels progressively more confused. Does he exist twice?
Luna cuts in, “Harry? Do you know where you are?”
Harry continues to stare blankly ahead and Ron worries about him. Tom shakes his head and says, “That will be enough of that.”
He slides his hand over Harry’s eyes. Harry hears as if from very far away, “Come now, come back to me love.”
But he can't love Tom, he's Ron and he loves Hermione, right?
Harry feels himself being pulled against a firm chest and a whisper of breath in his ear. He comes back to his own feet slowly, focusing on Tom’s hand over his eyes and the feel of Tom’s heartbeat against his back.
When he finally remembers who he is and where his soul ends and everyone elses' begin, he turns into Tom’s chest and begins to sob.
Tom strokes his hand up and down Harry’s spine. “Shh, you’re okay. Sweetheart.”
Harry shakes his head. He says, “Sorry guys, I know – this is so – embarrassing.”
Hermione makes a wounded noise. “Harry, we’re all struggling. This is normal. Is there anything in particular bothering you?”
Harry says, “I don’t know. I just felt sad today.”
Tom manages to get Harry to sit down once more and Harry turns to face the group with puffy eyes. “Shouldn’t I be better by now? It’s been a year already. Shouldn’t I … dunno… feel okay now?”
Ginny smacks Harry lightly. “None of us are okay, stop trying to feel like you should be special.”
Draco nudges Ginny’s shoulder and says, “Yes, Potter. Your days of being the saviour are over and now you must deal with awful emotions like the rest of us humans.”
Harry wipes his eyes and loses game night terribly. He’s still sad for the next few days, but he and Ron go flying together and that makes the world seem a bit brighter.
***
The next five years are filled with too many marriages to count. Harry and Tom marry quietly in the winter with only Sirius and the Weasleys and their significant others in attendance. If they’d invited even one more person, it would have become a state-wide affair.
As it stands, their quiet wedding is written about for six months after it happens with many wondering about the meaning behind the sapphire rings Tom and Harry share.
“Are the sapphires meant to strengthen intuition?”
“Are they a nod to how Harry Potter and Tom Black are our modern version of Royalty?”
The truth is that the goblins ask Harry and Tom for their favorite gemstones, they both answer sapphire, and the goblins send them the rings as a wedding gift.
The wedding is in the Geneva Black manor, and Draco reads a speech filled with all the warnings he wrote to Harry back when he thought Tom was evil. Draco clears his throat and says, "He'll kill you Harry, and he'll enjoy it. He'll skin you alive and wear your hide like it's fashionable. He'll bleed your children dry and make you watch." Draco pauses dramatically as everyone laughs. Then, with a flourish and a little bow, he continues: "But I suppose it's worth saying that despite his being a psychopath, to the extent that he is able, he will love you for the rest of your life."
They drink a merry toast to that.
Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks marry next. Sirius is Remus’ best man and a year later, when Nymphadora is pregnant, she asks Sirius to be the godfather. Sirius agrees and he is present in Teddy’s life the whole way through, stone-cold sober and loving every second.
Ginny and Draco marry very publicly and spend lots of money on every last detail. While a few people yell out “Death Eater” when Draco says his vows, most people congratulate the two of them for being the best-looking couple maybe ever.
Ginny’s wedding dress, which reportedly cost a million galleons, tops lists around the world as the best dress ever worn. As a nod to the dress robes she wore to the Yule ball with Draco, white diamond butterflies adorn the gown, flapping their sparkling wings and creating rainbows everywhere Ginny moves.
When George marries Angelina, he asks Lee Jordan to be his best man. Molly cries hardest at that wedding out of all the weddings of her children, but she smiles the whole time too.
Hermione and Ron marry last. It takes Ron six years to convince Hermione’s parents that he’s worthy of her, and it takes Hermione six years to convince herself that she has time to get married. “There’s just so much to do! I’m helping re-house the elves, running for office, and helping re-design the great hall. I don’t have time to plan a wedding!”
In the end, Molly says, “I’ll plan it! I'll plan everything so just show up and get married already! Merlin.”
And Molly does plan it, and it is beautiful, and all the Grangers in attendance love every second, right down to the sugar-free cake that tastes delightful because of, well, magic.
***
Ari joins their house first. By this point, Harry and Tom are well into their thirties. Under Tom’s leadership, Hufflepuff has won the last eight house cups. Other houses complain that the Hufflepuffs who have Tom as their head of house act more like Slytherins than actual Slytherins.
“They’re nice about it, sure, but they’re cunning underneath that loyalty. They’re way too terrifying.”
One student tells the daily prophet, “Tom Black has a Basilisk as a pet. He calls him Ouroboros and all the Hufflepuffs pet the beast and love him and say he’s a sweetheart. Harry Potter comes by sometimes to visit the snake. Why does this not concern anyone else? This is abnormal Hufflepuff behaviour! ”
No one can ever be too mad about the Slytherin tint to Hufflpeuff because Tom is nearly everyone’s favorite teacher, although Neville is beloved amongst the kids who love herbology.
Harry gets a letter from Petunia one night.
Dear Harry,
There’s a child in foster care on the block. His foster parents are having a rough time with him. They think he’s evil somehow. I’m guessing it’s magic. He was removed from his last home for abuse I heard and his current foster home is about to send him back to a group home. I know it may be early, but you’ve talked about adopting. He could probably use a home. If you don’t feel comfortable taking him on, I might be getting older, but I’ll do it.
Love,
Petunia
Harry talks to Tom that night over the fireplace and Tom says, “Go get him. I’ll be back over the weekend.”
Harry goes back to Grimmauld and chats with Sirius about how Sirius is about to become an uncle and Sirius says, “You’re going to change that boy’s life.”
Harry thinks of having someone he loves entirely unconditionally and says, “With luck, he’ll change mine too.”
Harry meets Ari the next morning. Harry’s dressed in a simple blue sweater and jeans.
He convinces the muggles raising Ari that he’s been cleared by the state to come and take Ari, if they don’t want him any longer.
“He’s a right handful,” the muggle woman states. “He keeps messing with the television and we don’t know how.”
The muggle man sniffs, “We were only hoping to be temporary guardians anyhow. If you want him, he’s all yours.”
Harry is led to a small bedroom where a six-year-old boy is swinging his legs angrily on his bed. He gives Harry a judgmental stare.
“Are you supposed to be the person who takes me away?”
Harry sits down non-threateningly on the floor in front of the bed. From this height, he is much shorter than Ari. “If you would like, I would be happy to take you all the way home with me. We’re alike you see, and I would very much like to have you in my family.”
Ari looks at Harry. “You’re weird.”
Harry nods amicably. “Very much so.”
Ari says, “How are we, em, similar?”
Harry takes out his wand and makes a small firework in the room. Ari stares transfixed. “We’re both a bit on the magical side of things. I, like you, was raised by some people who didn’t understand. But I promise you, Ari, I and my partner will understand and we’d love to have you.”
Ari nods and says nothing else. By the end of the day, he’s home at the cottage and set up in a children’s room.
The next few weeks are referred to by all members of the Potter Black Weasley family as the dark ages. Ari seems to take offense to everything.
“I hate peas!”
“Try some spinach, then.”
“I hate spinach.”
“Have some ice cream then.”
“I HATE ICE CREAM.”
He refuses to do his homework, he refuses to take baths, and he refuses to try out the children’s broomstick Harry buys him.
At the end of three weeks, Tom is leaving home to go back to Hogwarts as the weekend is over, and he asks Ari if he’d like to come.
Ari grumbles but comes along.
He sits quietly during the defense lessons and absorbs everything with wide eyes. He allows Tom to sit next to him as they eat together at the high table. He giggles when older girls coo at how cute Professor Black’s son is.
When the day is over and Ari is about to be picked up by Harry, he asks quietly, “Is that what I am to you guys? Your son?”
Tom remembers wishing over and over that someone would take him home from the orphanage and be someone big, important, and who loved him. “Yes, that’s what you are to us. Our beloved son.”
Carefully, Tom tries to give Ari a hug. Every other time he’s done this, Ari has rejected the affection. Ari allows it and hesitantly raises his arms to clasp Tom’s back.
He settles in after that and is just the sassy and adorable addition the family needs.
Elias joins them next, one year later. Harry is taking a walk with Ari and Dudley and hears rumours of a ghost in Dorking. Harry follows the rumour and finds a little four-year-old boy scared mute and kept in a shed outside the home of people Harry never meets but does call the muggle authorities upon.
He brings the boy directly to St. Mungo’s and then after he’s been healed, takes him home. He does not care if the child is magical or not.
Elias takes to Harry immediately. He wants cuddles before bed and demands hugs and wants to be carried all the time. He likes to sit on Harry’s lap when Harry paints and toddle around after Ari whenever Harry is busy. He is also clearly a magical child to the extent that he can break down any charmed protections on food when he wants cookies.
He likes Tom too, and tugs on Tom’s sleeves whenever Tom is home hoping to be read a story. It takes half a year for Elias to begin speaking and when he does, he does so very quietly. They’ve been calling him Junior as a defacto name for the whole time he’s been part of the family.
The first thing he says is, “I’m Elias.”
Immediately after that, everyone calls him Elias or El-man and they move on. Elias begins to become more interested in hanging out with Ari and at first, Harry fields many complaints of, “Elias came into my room,” and “Ari doesn’t want to play with me,” but after enough versions of Harry saying, “That’s hard,” or, “Okay then,” and only stepping in to stop one child from hitting the other, they seem to pull through. Ari still gets mad at Elias and Elias still annoys Ari, but they begin flying on kid broomsticks together and giggling maniacally in the way that boys do.
Lily joins their family last. When she is six years old her pureblood family tosses her out the window of their two-story home hoping to see some accidental magic. Instead, her mangled body is brought to St. Mungo’s where her life is saved, but barely.
Healer Lavender Brown calls the authorities on her family for child abuse. She sets out some feelers to see if anyone in the wizarding world wants to adopt the girl. Standard procedure dictates that if she goes to the muggle world, all her memories need to be wiped. But no one wants to take a squib.
Despite the abuse she’s suffered, Lavender feels uncomfortable taking every memory away from a child like that. She ends up calling Harry Potter in.
“I know you have your hands full with your two kids so I’m not asking you to adopt her, it’s just that Harry Potter suggesting for someone to adopt a squib would do a world of good for her, you know?”
Harry scoops up Lily and says, “I think actually she will be coming home with me. Thank you, Lavender.”
Lily wakes up very warm and comfortable in a large blue-toned bedroom with stars in the sky. Tom and Harry explain to her very gently what happened and that they may be wizards but they want her very much.
She flinches at first and then slowly comes out of her shell. She ends up asking Harry after she loves him and knows he loves her back, “Could you name me? I don’t like being called for who I was…before.”
He says, “Would you like to be called Lily? It’s for your grandmother.”
Lily shakes and says, “I don’t think grandmothers like me very much.”
Harry pulls Lily into his lap and says, “Nonsense. Grandma Weasley likes you very much.”
“Grandma Weasley’s different .”
“Aunt Petunia and Cousin Dudley love you to death.”
“They’re muggles.”
“Well, your Grandma Lily was Aunt Petunia’s sister and she’d have loved you to death too. In fact, I’m sure she does.”
Lily mulls it over and says, after a while, “Okay. Lily it is then.”
She gets along well with her brothers. She and Elias are the same age and they play all sorts of tricks on Ari, like baking him cookies that look like worms or convincing Helga to rub her fur all over his bed. He gets them back by being taller than them and more self-assured. He also sometimes throws paper airplanes at their heads.
The cottage is warm and the family that Tom and Harry build inside it is beautiful. Their children play with Angelina and George’s, Hermione and Ron’s, and Cedric and Cho’s children and they all get along.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione stay close for the rest of their lives. There are some friendships, like the ones made because of taking down a troll, that simply never end. The game-night group over time becomes another kind of enduring friendship. They are the ones who fought and survived wars together. Bonds like that are hard to break.
Once per month at least, Harry and Tom take the children to Petunia’s house and she screams when the kids present her with various magical items and then spends hours and hours doting on them after she gets over her fear.
Dudley and his kids love Harry’s children, so Harry and Dudley and Tom will share a beer and watch the kids run around together.
“I wouldn’t have thought we’d end up friends like this when I was a kid,” Dudley says one summer evening.
Harry says, “Me neither.”
“It’s better though. This. It’s better than whatever I thought we’d end up like back then.”
Ari throws a ball of mud at Dudley’s son, James, and James responds by tackling Ari. Elias and Lily run to tackle James off of Ari and end up only adding to the weight. Dudley’s tiny two-year-old daughter giggles on the side.
Harry lays his head on Tom’s shoulder. “This is truly so much better.”
***
When Aunt Petunia is getting on in years, sixty years old and slightly terrified of the magical children who invade her home monthly even though she would never have it any other way thank you very little, Harry asks if he can paint her. He hasn't painted a single portrait since the memorial, but he wants to paint her. He wants to paint the beautiful inky soul who lived a life much harder than she had imagined when she was a child with pale spotless cheeks and a beautiful, living, little sister. He asks her if she’d like to be a portrait. She says no. She says that she doesn’t think her adult self would enjoy being in a portrait. “I have too many regrets” she tells him,” there’s too much grief, written into the fabric of my soul.”
“But Harry,” she tells him, “There is someone who would love to be painted by you.”
She looks at her mantle where there is a picture of thirteen-year-old Petunia with her arms around eleven-year-old Lily.
***
Petunia Evans is painted into a portrait full of fireflies and an unfenced lake house with humidity hanging heavy in the summer air, damp grass glistening with the morning’s thunderstorm.
When she was thirteen years old she became a casualty of a different war, one where children were told there was a world of magic -- real magic -- and they were not special enough to be invited. She was told that she was not powerful enough to go to that shining and scary new world with her little sister. Her spirit was poisoned in a casualty of regard and self-importance that was no less damaging than any other.
So thirteen years old, with no regrets and no grief in her soul, the girl who would one day become Aunt Petunia comes to Hogwarts in her summer portrait. She has bare feet and a jar full of fireflies.
The fat lady wants to retire to a life with Sir Greggory and the school needs a replacement.
Petunia becomes the portrait in charge of the Gryffindor common room. She learns everybody’s names and loves to help them study because she wants to learn all she can. She is steadfast in allowing ONLY Gryffindors in, and will never bend for any reason. (Tom would have hated her.) She brags about her younger sister who went to Gryffindor, the younger sister who’s drawn so much older and sometimes visits, walking across frames all the way from Longbottom manor to get to Hogwarts. Her sister comes to visit every Tuesday at midday, in fact.
She is beloved, that thirteen-year-old girl with bare feet and eyes reflecting the glow of year-round summer. Her dress flutters in the wind, her hair drips often from her dips in the lake.
She’s the best and final portrait of a person Harry Potter ever paints; this beautiful little girl with dreams as bright as stars. She’s fiery and brilliant and witty and joyful and loving and… she finally gets to live her dream. She’s a pioneer, Petunia Evans, the first muggle to ever go to Hogwarts.
_____
Harry grew up in a world where Slytherins were vilified, where children were kept out or put down because of their blood, where fear clung to classrooms and schools turned into battlegrounds. War robbed Tom and Harry both of childhood.
Harry never teaches his children how to fight wars. He teaches his children how to paint, fingers stained with pigment and mouths straining with grins. He teaches them how to bake and how to sneak cookie dough when their fathers aren’t watching them. He teaches them how to say, “I love you,” and they say it to each other and their parents every day. And they hear it, from their siblings and their parents, every day.
Tom teaches his children self-defense and how to love fiercely and loyally.
Tom plaits Lily’s hair in a gorgeous braid before she goes on her first date, 12 years old, and a light blush dusting her cheeks. He casually threatens her date, a 12-year-old muggle, that he will kill them should they ever, and he means ever, hurt his daughter. (He is not lying, he could get away with it). He follows her on the date the whole time, hiding obviously behind potted plants and being generally offensive to self-respecting spies. He sits with her on a red and gold couch when her date is over, undoes her braid with nimble hands, and pretends to be surprised as she recounts every tiny, wonderful detail.
Lily Potter-Black never once begrudges her siblings for their magic and they never once think any less of her for its lack.
Harry makes hot chocolate with his children the muggle way because it works goddamnit, and they call it the Lily and James special. His mother never got to see him grow up and Harry treasures every moment of watching his children get older: learning how to read, graduating primary school, and going on their first dates.
He remembers his mother saying, “You lived. It was worth everything,” and knows more than he’s ever known anything before that she would love these grandchildren she’ll never get to meet.
So he catalogs every beautiful moment and waits for when he’ll be able to tell her and his father all about them, in person, someday. Lily and James Potter never had the chance to go grey. Their son does.
Harry’s children and their whole generation grow up looking at portraits of heroic Slytherins, meeting the most amazing muggles on common room doors, and laughing in schools where their biggest worries are homework assignments and exams.
When this generation begins having children of their own, they stop worrying about if their kids will be squibs or about the families of muggle-borns. Magic and blood are not and have never been, after all, makers of worth. They think of Petunia Evans and Lily Luna Potter-Black and think, “I should be so lucky to have a child or friend like them.”
Tom Black is remembered as an educator, a headmaster, and a man who loved deeply. His Hufflepuffs credit him with their achievements and the way he looks at Harry ends a few marriages as people ask, "why don't you look at me like that?" He leaves a lasting impact on Hogwarts and ends the stereotype that Hufflepuffs are dumb doormats.
Harry Potter is remembered as a visionary, a loving husband and father, and the best artist to have ever walked this earth. It’s simply who he was: someone who could wield the pen in his hand like a wand - someone who used canvas and paper to build creations teeming with magic and beauty never before seen.
His masterpieces make the world stop and realize the cost of war. The wizarding world never forgets this war of souls, can never forget, not when the faces of dead students smile at them from every wall. They remember and they stop sending their children into battles. They stop leaving their children behind.
Harry Potter is remembered for paintings so beautiful they give survivors the space to breathe and appreciate and rest. There was never a fight bigger than this.
In time, his part in the war fades but his art and its impacts remain.
So yes, when history talks about Harry Potter and Tom Black, this is their legacy.
And the seasons turn year after year. Flowers bloom and wither, winters come and go. Scars fade and stretch with time. Hands stop shaking, wounds heal, memories remain. Children grow up talking to paintings of family they never had the chance to meet. Twin girls with bright red hair blow up priceless school artifacts and keep the memory of their uncle alive. Lavender Brown’s daughter catches snowflakes on her tongue and sits on the knees of her mother, thinking she’s the most beautiful woman in the world despite the bite mark that takes up half her face.
There is tragedy and there is pain.
There is, also, the victory that comes with remembering how to live again.
END