Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Katherine glanced at the newspaper the owl had brought. “SPECIAL EDITION: BRITAIN CELEBRATES 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY DAY” Katherine vaguely remembered hearing about the defeat of Britain’s dark lord five years ago when she was in school. There’d been a lot going on though, it was her OWL year, and balancing that with her quiditch practice had kept her busy enough not to worry about what was going on on the other side of the globe. Even if her parents were from Britain, they were muggles, and not paying particular attention to the wizarding community where they lived, much less where they had left years before. Now that she was done with her charms mastery and had time to breathe, it seemed like a perfectly good time to find out what she hadn’t been paying attention too. So as she ate her morning cereal in her small Baltimore apartment she began to read.

The front page had an overview of who Tom Riddle was. Apparently he had threatened Britain once before, but had been stopped by a fifteen month old boy, Harry Potter. Tom Riddle had tried to kill Harry Potter, but somehow the curse had rebounded, leaving Harry Potter with a scar and the moniker “The Boy Who Lived” and Riddle without a body. Apparently Riddle regained a body 13 years later, started reorganizing his followers, and eventually it broke out into open war. Riddle even took over the British Ministry of Magic and their education system while being opposed by the general populace and two secret societies: The Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army. Eventually things came to a head and a battle took place at the premier institute of magic in Britain, Hogwarts, where Harry Potter (now 17) defeated Riddle in a one-on-one dual.

Katherine flipped through to a page further back, to read how Britain had recovered from the war, when her eye was caught by a photograph of what at first glance appeared to be her father when he was younger. Second glance revealed a number of differences, the man in the photograph carried himself differently, less proud, more wary. His eyes, were different, more like her mothers if she was honest. And between his bangs she could just make out a scar on his forehead. The caption read: “Harry James Potter, frequently called “the Chosen One” seen here at memorial services for those who died in the first and second wars against Tom Riddle.”

Katherine paused, was this man a long lost cousin. But his first name was name was Harry, that was too big a coincidence. Katherine wasn’t actually the oldest in her family, she was the oldest that had lived. She was supposed to have had a brother two years older than her, but he died in a a house-fire when her mom was pregnant with her; he’d been fifteen months old. His name had been Harry.

Had her brother somehow survived the house-fire and been placed in foster care, only for his foster parents to be killed? Were her parents lying? She didn’t think so, the grief was too strong whenever the child they lost was brought up. Could there possibly be an innocent explanation that didn’t involve either too much coincidence too be believable? Hadn’t her brother been named after a relative? Perhaps there was a distant cousin who also wanted to name a child after that same relative.

If Katherine hadn’t gotten her charms mastery, she might have let that explanation stick. But learning about memory charms, how strong they can be, how much they can rewrite, leaned her in a more paranoid direction. There was one thing she was sure of, this was going to take a lot more research before she present her suspicions to anyone, least of all her parents. Well, at least she didn’t have work today and could devote time to the research.

***********
Katherine stepped into Baltimore’s Library of Magic and wondered where the best place to start would be. The Library was located underneath the National Aquarium and the Inner Harbor, getting to it without using the flu network was a real pain in the neck (it involved making sure no one was watching and then walking behind the outdoor seal pond), but thankfully Katherine’s apartment was on the floo network.

There at the library she found what she was looking for, several biographies of Harry Potter. She chose one titled “The Authorized Story of the Boy Who Lived” by Luna Lovegood. It seemed the least sensationalist of the books available, and claimed that the man himself had assisted in it’s writing and publication.

Katherine was able to check it out from the library and on returning home to her apartment began to look at her find. She thought the best place to start would be the beginning, links to her parents were most likely to show up in his childhood, weren’t they?
“Harry Potter was born in Godric’s Hollow on July 31st, 1980 to James and Lily Potter (nee Evans).” Same age as her brother Harry, interesting. “His parents were both members of the Order of the Phoenix, dedicated to opposing Tom Riddle, known as Lord Voldemort or he-who-must-not-be-named.” A photograph appeared below, of a baby and a couple. If it weren’t for the fact that it was a wizarding photograph and Katherine was muggleborn she would have sworn it was of her parents.

Quickly she read on. She read how Voldemort had come for the Potters, intending to kill Harry. How the theory went that Lily Potter’s loving sacrifice had saved her son. After that Harry had been left with with muggle relatives, (“And of them, the less said the better”) because his mother’s blood had protected him. She stopped at the part of the biography when he got his Hogwarts acceptance, and skipped ahead to look at recent photos of him.

There toward the back of the book was a wedding photo. It was the same black haired look-a-like of her father, next to him stood a beautiful red-haired woman in a elegant white dress. In the color photograph his eyes looked even more like her mother’s.
Katherine closed the book and thought for a while. There definitely seemed to be some-type of massive conspiracy going on, the question was were her parents in on it or had they had their memories altered.

It didn’t seem likely that her parents had been in on it. They still grieved too much for their lost child, and if they knew they had magic they wouldn’t be living as muggles. That meant that an extremely complex memory charm had been performed on them at some point. Theoretically, there should be traces of it. Katherine wasn’t sure who to trust in this, so going to an expert was out; luckily memory charms had been covered in depth in her mastery program.

Now seemed like a good time to visit her parents.

Chapter Text

Katherine sat drinking tea at the kitchen table in her parents’ house, wondering how to broach the subject. Probably best just to dive right in.
“I want to check to see if anyone has ever cast a memory charm on you two.”
“What brings this about?” Her father asked.

“Let me show you.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the book, and flipped to the first photograph she had bookmarked, the one of Harry Potter with his parents as a baby.
Her parents stared at it, trying to make sense of the wizarding photograph.
“If that weren’t a wizard photo I’d swear that’s of Harry. It’s even our old wallpaper in the back,” Her mother said. “Things aren’t quite, making sense.” She got an unfocused look in her eye, beside her Katherine’s father looked vacant. “There wasn’t a fire, but the house was destroyed, from the curse. He found us, the fidelius—the plan—it failed—-”


“Where’s Harry?” Her father asked. Her mother sprang back to herself and focused.

“Okay, so I guess I don’t need to lift the memory charms. Do you two remember everything? Could you confirm your names?”


“Lily and James Potter. Do you know what’s happened to Harry?” Lily said.

“I can’t seem to recall anything from after Voldemort came to our door. Did he kill Harry? Why did he mess with our memories instead of killing us?” James said.

“Let me see if I can fix that, maybe I do need to lift the charms after all.” Katherine pulled out her wand and after an intense bit of wand work, her parents’ eyes glazed over, then refocused.

“Fucking Dumbledore” James swore. “That bastard stole Harry from us!”

“James.” Lily was using a warning tone that Katherine recognized.

“We need to find him. That puppet-master has gone WAY too far!”

“We need to take this carefully. We don’t know how deeply rooted this conspiracy could still be! We can’t just go charging back to Britain without even our wands to rescue Harry.”

“Guys, if I could interrupt? To answer your first question, Harry seems to have grown up alright. He’s really famous over there; looks a lot like you do by the way Dad. Now, who’s Dumbledore? What do you remember him doing now that the block is off?”

“Dumbledore was the Leader of the Order of Phoenix, it was a secret group for fighting against Voldemort. I can’t recall exactly, but Voldemort came, Harry did something and Voldemort disappeared. Dumbledore showed up, he must have been the one to cast the memory charm.” James said.

“With Dumbledore involved we need to tread, really, carefully.” Lily said. “We may not have any allies in the Order. And I doubt any Deatheaters will be itching to help us.”

“There are those in the Order we’ll be able to count on: Sirius, Remus, Alice and Frank probably. Peter was probably killed by Voldemort,” James said the last piece sadly. “I wonder how he figured out he was the secret-keeper?” Katherine knew the look on her mother’s face, it was the ‘I can’t believe you’re buying what that salesman is selling’ look, but just what exactly it was that Lily found so unbelievable Katherine wasn’t sure.

“It’s been over twenty years. Let’s do our research before we make any plans. We can start by getting wands, Katherine maybe you could help us with that?”

“Uh, sure. Should we go now?” They cleaned up the dishes and then Katherine side-alone apperated her parents to the roof of a what appeared to be a warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
It would have looked like an ordinary warehouse, were it not for the giant sculpture of a pineapple that stood twenty feet tall standing next to them on the roof. “I’ve never understood the reason for the pineapple being here.” Katherine commented to her parents.

“Do they get a lot of deliveries by flight? It sure distinguishes it from the muggle rooftops nearby. The fact that the locals brush off the existence of a twenty foot tall pineapple is what amazes me,” Lily said.

“Actually the flight thing makes sense, even in the worst weather this stands out from pretty far away.” James said. “Let’s get what we came here for.”
They took the door from the roof to the stairs and entered into the Baltimore Wizarding Mall. Trying to keep from being distracted by the noise, the colors and the chaos of the mall, Katherine led them toward the wand shop.
*********

The three were each able to apperate back to Lily and James’ house separately (Katherine was very glad that her parents did not splinch themselves, being as out of practice as they were), and the planning continued.

Or at least, the planning would have continued, had each person not been trying to pull in a different direction. Katherine was attempting to encourage her parents to research Harry and the recent war before leaving, but didn’t seem to be making any headway in that regard (she didn’t even think they had processed how famous Harry seemed to be and that there were entire books written about him.) Lily and James were at least united on getting to Britain, but their strategies to reunite their family then diverged, with Lily saying to approach things cautiously and James saying to dive straight in.

Katherine didn’t think either of them had actually fully realized that Harry would now be almost twenty-three. That he probably had no memories of his parents, and by now he’d probably made a life without them. He might not appreciate people he’s never met showing up out of no-where wanting to be a family, and even if he did it wasn’t going to be easy.
A part of her wondered if she’d done the right thing by bringing her suspicions to her parents and restoring their memories.

Chapter Text

Unfortunately, Katherine couldn’t get the next couple of days off work. Even worse, her parents could start their leave immediately. This meant that they would be alone, unsupervised, wrecking Merlin knows what kinds of havoc in Britain, for four days before she could join them. Hopefully they didn’t do anything too terrible, she’d heard horror stories about the British wizarding justice system and she could just imagine her father doing something rash like cursing Dumbledore (who with their luck was probably Minister of Magic now or something) and getting fed to demeanors.

Since her parents would be going over by themselves, it would have been suspicious had she requested an international portkey for them when as far as anyone knew they were muggles. And no one wanted Lily and James to try and apperate that far. It would have to be muggle transport. Luckily, they had up to date passports, even if they were in the names of Charles and Marie Cooper. So plane tickets were bought. Katherine’s younger siblings, Robert and Heather, were notified that their parents and sister were going to be out of town, but not to worry and they’d be back in time to pick them up from Salem when school let out in six weeks.

So just the day after she discovered her older brother was still alive, Katherine apperated with her parents to BWI airport. They said goodbye at security (Katherine missed the days when you could go all the way to the terminal to say goodbye) and her parents went on their way.
****
It was a long flight. It wasn’t that eight hours was so absurdly long (although it was), but knowing that her Harry was somewhere at the other end of the flight made it seem even longer to Lily. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been this anxious in her life. How had Harry grown up? Had Sirius been the right choice as a guardian? He’d always seemed to take his godfather duties very seriously, and he was crazy about Harry, but he did have his quirks. She wondered how the years had changed Sirius when another thought occurred to her. He wasn’t the only one the years would have changed.

Harry would be twenty-three on July 31st. The last time she had seen him he had just learned how to say “Padfoot” and to summon his stuffed stag. What was he doing now?

****
By the time they landed, Lily and James were both too tired to apperate. With minimal discussion, they decided to get a hotel and rest, before beginning *something* (having still not agreed on a plan of action yet) in the morning. They took a taxi from the airport to a nearby hotel and checked in under the names of Charles and Marie Cooper.

They settled into the hotel and went to sleep. The next morning Lily woke shortly after James. It was around 11 am, (they’d slept late due to the time difference) and she took a shower before they discussed what to do next. “Shall we go to that cafe down the street for breakfast figure out our next move?” Lily asked.
James nodded and they left.

The cafe was a quiet place, not too busy, but not too empty either. It had a warm color scheme, wood floors, and an area with arm chairs, though they chose to sit at one of the small circular tables instead. Lily pulled a notebook out of her purse and over tea and breakfast they began to plan.

“The first thing we need to do is find Harry,” James said. “Maybe getting in touch with Sirius next, to figure out the lay of the land and who we can trust.”

“Maybe we should get in touch with Sirius first? Figure things out? He’ll also know the best way to break the news to Harry, seeing as how he was probably the one to raise him and all.” As much as Lily wanted to find Harry immediately, she was nervous, and knew the more information they had the better it would be.

“That might be better. How do you think we should get in touch with him? We can’t exactly walk into Diagon Ally’s post office without alerting people that we’re back.”

“We could with a glamour. I bet if I changed my hair and eye color and put on a cloak I’d be fine. Meanwhile you could check his old flat, he’s probably not still there, but maybe they’d have a forwarding address for him. Just in case he’s got wards against unwanted owls.” Lily said.

Chapter Text

Lily set off through London toward the Leaky Cauldron; her hair was glamoured brown and her eyes blue, a tiny charm around her face kept people from thinking too hard about whether she looked familiar. She reached the Leaky Cauldron and pulled the door open.

The pub seemed much the same as ever. Instead of Tom behind the bar there was a young woman, someone called her “Hannah”, and the decor seemed a little less dreary. All in all though, it felt in a way like coming home and finding the house had been cleaned while you were out.

Lily continued through the pub and into the ally behind. For a moment she was afraid she wouldn’t remember the right brick to tap, but after a couple of tries the archway opened up, just as she had remembered.

Diagon Ally, was much the same as before, but again, brighter and nicer than it had been during the war, more like what she remembered on her first trip when she was 11. Most of the shops were still the same, though there was one that she didn’t remember from before, and given how outrageous the paint job, and the insanity that seemed to be spilling forth, she thought she would have remembered it. It was a large building and in a giant sign were three Ws all linked together. The sign below that said “Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes.” Hadn’t Gideon and Fabian’s sister been married to a man called Weasley? But what on earth was a “wizarding wheeze?” Well, no time to stop and find out, besides, Sirius would undoubtedly know. So back to finding Sirius.

She and James had decided that buying an owl seemed more sensible than having to go to the post office every time they wanted to send a letter, so she opened the door to the Owl Emporium.

James meanwhile was headed to Sirius’s old flat in muggle London. James doubted that Sirius had kept his flat, it was a small one bedroom and with Harry to raise he would have wanted more space. But just incase there was a ward against unwanted owls, which could be the case since apparently Harry was kind of famous or something, this might give them a forwarding address.

James came to the building where Sirius’ flat used to be and pulled the door open. He checked the list of names at the mailboxes, flat 23 was listed as belonging to a Jane Lawson. Probably not Sirius then. Maybe the manager had a forwarding address.

James stopped in at the small manager’s office (exactly where it had been the twenty some years prior when he’d been with Sirius as he dropped off the lease papers) and asked the manager if he remembered if the an old tenant, Sirius Black, in 23 had left a forwarding address.

“23, when would he have left, do you know?” The manager asked. “It wouldn’t have been around twenty or so years ago would it?”

“Probably, why?” James said apprehensively.

“I can’t remember if Sirius Black was his name or not, but twenty or so years ago the tenant in 23 got himself arrested. They said he was a mad bomber, blew up a whole street full of people. Cops all over the place. Funny ones too. Anyway, if he’s the one you're looking for I’d look in prisons, probably high security ones from the fuss they were making. And if he’s not I don’t keep forwarding addresses past two years anyways. Office is too small.” The manager went back to the paper he’d been reading and James left, a little shocked at what he’d heard. It was probably the tenant after Sirius who’d been arrested. The manager hadn’t been sure of the time frame after all, and Sirius likely would have moved right after getting custody of Harry. That would have been twenty one years ago, so it seemed likely the *next* tenant had been the one to get arrested. And although Sirius might have been wilder in his youth, he’d straightened out after he realized what the potential consequences could have been for the Whomping Willow incident. Even more so after Harry was born; there was no way he’d do anything worth arresting him over, certainly not blow up a street full of people!

He met Lily back at the hotel and they wrote a letter to Sirius.

“Padfoot,

I know I’m the last person you expected to hear from, but I’m not dead. Don’t tell Harry yet. We need to meet and I’ll explain everything. I’ll meet you where Moony was born again.

Prongs”

They sent if off with the owl, and hoped Sirius didn’t have a ward against unwanted owls.

Chapter Text

James and Lily ate lunch at the cafe they’d had breakfast at. James thought about whether he should tell his wife about the strange things the apartment manager had said about the arrest of the tenant of flat number 23, but decided against it, it’s not like it had anything to do with them, after all.

After lunch they walked to an alley and apperated to the Shrieking Shack. Not much had changed since the last time James had been there, the same broken furniture, same creaky wooden floor. The only thing different between now and the last time James had been there was the thick layer of dust covering everything. With a few flicks of her wand, Lily charmed the dust away, and the two Potters settled down on the floor to wait.

Six hours and several card games later, they were forced to confront the possibility that Sirius wasn’t coming. “Maybe I should head back, see if he’s owled back?” Lily said. James nodded. “I’ll send a patronus if we’ve heard back. You let me know if he shows up.” She spun and disappeared with a crack.

James was well into his third solitaire game when a silver doe appeared and spoke in Lily’s voice. “The owl returned, never delivered the note. Come back to the hotel and we’ll plan what to do next.”

###

“He must have an owl ward” James said.

“Or something’s happened to him, didn’t Katherine say that there had been another war recently?” Lily said. “I was having trouble processing anything other than Harry being alive. I’ll write Alice, I’m sure she’ll be able to fill us in one what’s going on. And if something has happened to Sirius she and Frank would have taken Harry anyway.”

James really didn’t want to contemplate the idea that something had happened to his all-but brother, so he pushed the thought out of his mind and watched Lily write a note to Alice.

"Alice,

Things are complicated, I’ll explain in person. Meet me at the bench where we used to study during the summer, tomorrow, noon.

L.E.P "

Lily wrote “Alice Longbottom” on the outside of the note, then sent it off with the owl.

The owl returned without a reply (but also having delivered the letter) an hour later, and took off again with a note for Remus.

##
Lily was awakened the next morning by the tapping of an unfamiliar owl at her window; she opened the window, and let the strange bird in. She took the note from the owl and began to read.

"“L.E.P”

I have no idea who you are or why you are writing cryptic letters to my mother, but I’m afraid she can’t reply. If you need to discuss any business matters involving her, please address owls to myself, as I handle all of her affairs. If you are interested in a personal visit, please call on St. Mungo’s during normal visiting hours.

Thank you,
Neville Longbottom"

Well, that was, strange. Why was Alice in St. Mungo’s? Why was her son answering her mail?
Lily was still contemplating this when the owl she and James had bought (they really needed to name it) flew in through the still open window. A quick look at the owl showed the letter to Remus was still attached and undelivered.

###
“We need to come up with a new plan.” James said.

“Agreed. Do you think we should just write Harry himself and hope he doesn’t have an owl ward?”

“No, this isn’t the kind of thing you say in a letter. We should start checking out the old Potter properties, hopefully he’s living in one of them, the wards should let us through them. We’ll show up, introduce ourselves, and figure things out from there.” James felt a thrill of excitement, he just had to check out a few of the old properties, and in no time at all he’d be reunited with the son he’d once thought lost.