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Chapter Text

The world had just begun to materialize around Harry again.  He was sitting on a bench.  He could feel the grooves in the warn wood slats before he could see them, but they were comforting nonetheless.  There was something about the ridges and valleys of the grain that made the bench feel real in this otherworldly wasteland, where everything was too bright, too white for him to make out.

He was still running his fingers across the the worn panel when Dumbledore sat down beside him.  Up. Down.  Always perpendicular to the grain, never with it or against it.  Even in the afterlife, it was best to avoid splinters.  

Except apparently this wasn’t the afterlife, not yet, which is why the Headmaster was here in the first place, and not his parents or Sirius.  Whatever he was saying about the piece of Voldemort’s soul that was beside them and the remaining horcruxes, it wasn’t giving ‘eternal rest.’

Harry decided to cut to the chase.

“I have to go back haven’t I?”

“Oh, that’s up to you…” Dumbledore said cryptically, as he was want to do, peering at Harry from behind half moon spectacles.  The hand that wasn’t keeping him grounded to the bench reached up to touch his face.  Sure enough, he was sporting glasses too, the same ones he’d had for years now by the feel of them.  Even the left hinge was still bent out of shape.  Wha kind of an afterlife is this?

Not one you’re meant to stay in, clearly.

“I have a choice?” Harry asked, skeptical of anything Dumbledore said to him but somehow doubting that the old Headmaster could out and out lie in limbo.

“Oh yes.  We’re in King’s Cross you say?” Dumbledore looked around at their surroundings for the first time, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that they were actually in a place until just then. “I think if you so desired you’d be able to board a train.”

“Where would it take me?” He asked but he already knew the answer. Or as much as anyone could know the answer before they got there.

“On.”

He knew he wasn’t supposed to pick that option, everything about the headmaster’s moralizing speech that followed made that much clear.  Still he couldn’t help looking out across the platform to the tracks where the train would be coming in.  He ran his thumb along the grooves in the bench as Dumbledore told him more about how help would always come to those at Hogwarts who deserve it.  He wondered what Myrtle had done that made her undeserving of help.  Or Colin Creevey, whose body Harry had stepped over on his walk down to the forest.  He kept his eyes on the platform in front of him as the old man finished his soliloquy, focusing on the repetitive, calming sensation.  

Up. Down. Up. Down.  

A train pulled up, as colorless as the station around them, and Dumbledore’s speech ended.  This must be the test he had to pass.  Stay sitting here, while the train “on” rolls away.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

Through the windows of the compartment, Harry caught a flash of color.  Or was it the absence of color?  Hogwarts didn’t offer classes in art of physics so he wasn’t really sure but whatever he was looking at beyond the train was black. Black and solid, and shifting slightly?  As if adjusting from one foot to the other?  He stood to get a clearer view and through the train caught sight of a boy.

No, not just a boy .

He was looking at himself.  His hair was longer and he looked almost taller?  More solid? Certainly more healthy than Harry himself, although this other Harry was deathly pale, even in the white light of the station.  It was a pale he didn’t realize their bronze skin could achieve, but somehow, even from a distance the pallor was clear.  He was dressed in black trousers and a button down that was cheekily left open a few buttons, exposing more chest than Harry could ever remember showing in his life.  He would almost believe that it wasn’t him at all, except this second Harry was leaning against one of the brick columns.  Leaning against the column and nervously running his thumb over the grooves in the brickwork to anchor himself.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

Harry’s eyes drifted up to the boy’s face and suddenly their eyes were locked, and Harry realized he never should have left the safety of the bench.  There was a hooking feeling behind his navel and then his world seemed to turn upside down, the station swimming and twisting around him as if he was viewing it from impossible angles.  The last thing he felt was the rough rub of brickwork beneath his thumb before everything went black.

“Haz! Harry!”

He sputtered awake, sitting up with a gasp and sending the person who had been standing over him sprawling in the wet grass.

“Oh thank Merlin,” the man? boy? gasped, “If I hadn’t just spent the last twenty minutes losing my shit because I thought you were dead I’d kill you my fucking self.”

Harry thought knew that posh voice, but the context made no sense… where was Voldemort?  Where were the Death Eaters?  

“Haz!” The boy demanded and he turned, to look Draco Malfoy straight in the eyes, which were… oddly red rimmed?  Like he’d been crying… Maybe for Crabbe?

“Did you hear me? I said you almost died!”

“Well yeah, I think that was sort of the point?” He said stupidly, because why was Draco Malfoy yelling at him for being killed by Lord Voldemort?  Wasn’t he kind of working for him?  Surely he’d heard the announcement.  

Draco it seemed had not heard the announcement because his face fell and he looked… well, he looked devastated.  

“Listen.  I don’t know what the bloody fuck is going on with you and your family right now, but it’s nothing to fucking kill yourself over!”  He was shouting there, at the end, as if the thought of Harry taking his own life was genuinely driving him a bit insane.  “And how would that have made me feel, huh?  You finally convince me to drink Pensieve Potion, and you go and intentionally overdose!  Circe’s left tit, I could strangle you right now!”

“You drank Pensieve Potion?”  That seemed wrong, and extremely ill-advised… who knew what remnants of memories were left swirling around in that other-worldly liquid?

“Because! You! Talked! Me! Into! It! You! Twat!” Draco said, slapping him after each word to emphasize his rage.  Merlin.  This is your brain on drugs, apparently…

“You shouldn’t do things just because other people say they’re cool, Malfoy,” Harry said, sounding snobbier than he’d meant to but still trying to figure out what the bloody fuck was going on.  Why would Malfoy do drugs with him? And what had he said about his family?

“I really am going to murder you.  Come on, get up, we need to get back to the castle before anyone sees.”

Harry was about to start in about the fact that there was an army of Death Eaters, werewolves, and quite possibly giants between them and the castle, making it highly unlikely that no one would see, when the trees cleared and…

They looked across the pristine great lawn at a perfectly intact Hogwarts castle.

Not a blade of grass was out of place.  Not a single scorch mark was on the walls, even the windows were intact.  

“I don’t understand…”  Harry began.

“Nor do I, truth be told,” came a hard voice from their right and Harry whipped around, pushing a flatfooted Draco behind him with more force than was strictly necessary.  His wand was in his hand and a blasting curse was on the tip of his tongue when he caught sight of the man who’d spoken and all the fight went out of him.

He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on here, but something told him it would be a really bad idea to hex James Potter right now. 

Chapter Text

“Come on. You’re lucky your father still has a soft spot for you and called me when he saw you two sneak out on the map instead of leaving you to get caught by McGonagall. I’m not sure even Sirius’ goading could keep her from expelling you after this one.”

There was a lot to unpack there, starting, really, with the fact that the man in front of him was alive and talking to him at all, but the only thing that stuck in Harry’s (admittedly addled) mind, was the first bit.

“My father? Aren’t—aren’t you my father?”

James let out an exasperated sigh, shooting Harry such a look of bitter disappointment that he almost took a step backwards at the force of it.

“So you’re back on this again. It’s unbelievably uncool of you Haz, I expected better.”

Harry, truly unsure of what the fuck was going on, looked at Malfoy in confusion, who for some annoying reason was also looking at him as if he’d done something truly beyond the pale.

He was clearly in some other dimension. Hermione had talked his ear off about them after he’d suggested getting a time turner to help them in battle - something about Cresswell’s Quandary on Pocket Dimensions that left him talked into a corner but no clearer on why it had been ok in third year but wasn’t now. 

“Oh good you found them! Prongslet, Lucito, you can tell me, how fucked up are you this time?”

At the familiar voice, Harry’s head snapped up.  Sirius. His godfather was here -  alive and healthier than he’d ever seen him.  He was in his familiar uniform of black muggle jeans and a black teeshirt. Unlike the Sirius Harry had known, this version of his godfather had full, rounded shoulders and a defined, muscular torso filling out the contours of the tee.  On his tattooed arm right below his sleeve was a lime green arm band that was a perfect match to the distinct color of the Healer's robes at St Mungo’s, and around his waist was a wand holster and a utility belt holding a dozen small potion vials.  But Harry didn’t have room in his head to dwell on any of that because his godfather was here and alive, and that was really the only thing that mattered.

“Sirius!” Harry heard himself cry before launching himself into the older man’s arms.

“Woah! Ok Haz, ok.  So it’s that kind of fucked up?”

Harry, almost grateful for the excuse, just clung to his Sirius tighter.  In front of them, James let out an exasperated sigh that made Harry feel like the world’s biggest prat. It was annoying, how much of a disappointment he felt like within two minutes of meeting his dad, all because perfect-life-him had to run around getting high with Malfoy. 

“Allllright, Pronglet appears to be out of commission - cousin? Care to enlighten us?”

Draco looked down, ashamed, and honestly, Harry thought, his temper rising, he should be - who drank fucking pensieve potion?

“Harry?” James said, giving him his sternest look, and Harry came clean immediately.

“Malfoy said something about pensieve potion.”

“I said! It was your bloody idea in the first place!”  Draco sputtered indignantly.

“Harry James Potter, I cannot believe you–” James began, but weirdly, Sirius cut him off with a raised arm, his eyes roaming over Harry with concern.

“It can wait Jamie,” he said, suddenly all business as he extracted two potions from his belt, handing one each to them.  Draco paled visibly at the potion, but Sirius gave him a stern look and growled “bottoms up” and the Malfoy heir drank it without argument. 

White wisps of memory began to pour out of Draco’s mouth, ears, and nose. A couple even seemed to worm their way out of his eye sockets, overflowing his lashes and streaming down his cheeks like tears.

It looked thoroughly unpleasant, but as James fixed him with a glare, Harry felt there was nothing else for it. Preparing himself for a world of weird, Harry tossed the potion back in one swig.

Nothing happened.

“Huh,” Sirius said, cocking his head at Harry in clear confusion.

“Maybe it’s a dud potion?” James offered.  Next to him, Malfoy, who had stopped emitting memories, turned and vomited on the lawn. Neither Marauder seemed at all phased.

“Could be… it’s a Black Brew though…”

“Maybe if you give him another…?”

Harry rather thought it wasn’t working because whatever memories this version of himself had ingested were still on his counterpart’s mind and not his, but he didn’t get the impression that would help his cause so he remained mum.

“Mmm… I don’t know… too much purge potion can have nasty side effects too… Que penses tu mon loulou? Veux-tu réessayer? ”

Harry stared blankly before realizing that everyone was looking at him.  Apparently, the question had been aimed at him.

“Er… merci?”

The stares just became more concerned.  That was evidently not the right answer.

“What else did he take, Draco?” Sirius said sternly, looking at Harry as if he was a particularly difficult puzzle.

“Nothing!”

“There was no difference between what you took and what he took?” James said, moving around to look in Harry’s eyes for signs of intoxication.

“Well…”

Both older Marauders looked first at Draco then at him expectantly. Harry, having no idea what his alternative self might have taken, just looked at Malfoy somewhat helplessly.  

“…well? Haz are you going to tell us or are you going to make your best friend snitch on you?” 

“I honestly don’t know,” Harry said mildly. All of this was above his head.  There hadn’t really been time for drugs on the run, and even when he was at Hogwarts danger always felt so imminent that he hadn’t even tried smoking gillyweed that one time Seamus and Dean had gotten their hands on it. 

Draco looked heavily annoyed and almost hurt at being put back on the spot. A part of Harry wanted to explain himself to the other boy, but he had a feeling proclaiming that he was a different Harry from an alternative universe would only further alarm everyone there. After an awkward stare down, he just shrugged at Draco apologetically.

“Really? Fine, if you’re going to be such a dick about it. Harry took exactly what I took, he just… put in memories about Etienne before he drank his.”

The last bit came out as a rush and Draco looked down guiltily. James clenched his jaw in clear anger and Sirius just gave him a look that almost seemed to be full of pity.

Who the fuck was Etienne? 

James took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes as if exhausted by the very idea of everything that was going on. Finally he looked back up at Harry, his eyes more sad and resigned than anything else. 

“Please. Please tell me you were just pretending not to understand Sirius in order to make some kind of point.”

Should he tell them now? They’d just think he was fucking high out of his mind…

“I’m not. I’m sorry. I think… I think it might be a lot more complicated than me just needing a purge potion,” Harry said quietly. James’ eyes were boring into his, but Harry had no idea how to give him what he was looking for. Finally, he sighed again.

“Guess there’s nothing else for it then. Let’s go see your father.”

As they trudged up to the castle Harry tried to ignore the fact that everyone else was annoyed at him and enjoy how much better this was than the world he’d just arrived from.  

His father was alive.  He’d just seen his father’s shade when he held the resurrection stone as he walked into the forest.  Even distracted as he was, he couldn’t help feeling shocked by how young his parents looked.  The last time he’d seen their shades he’d been fourteen, and they’d looked like adults then. But in the forest they’d looked almost like peers, youthful sacrifices cut down before their prime just as he was about to be.

But not this James Potter. The tawny skin around his hazel eyes was creased in the corners, and his infamous Potter hair had started to grey near his temples. This James Potter had aged into the mantle of fatherhood. Now if only Harry knew who the fuck he shared that mantle with.

As they reached the Entrance Hall James turned, heading for the spiral staircase that headed towards the dungeons, and Harry stopped dead in his tracks.

“You’re fucking joking.”

“Language, Haz. And I promise you, I don’t find this a bit funny and your dad won’t either.”

“Nope. Veto. If going downstairs means I find out that Severus Snape is my father then I’m staying right the fuck here, thank you very much.”

They all looked at him in confusion.

“Why would Uncle Sev be downstairs?”  Draco asked slowly, as if Harry was the kind of insane that required calming tones and no sudden movements.  

Sirius, it seemed, had the opposite idea. He stepped in front of Harry, putting one hand on each of his shoulders and staring directly into his eyes, a look of deep concern etched across his patrician face.  Harry was torn between wanting to avoid his Godfather’s piercing silver gaze and feeling like he needed to soak in every moment of being in his company.  What if, when they went downstairs to meet this unnamed ‘father’ they figured out how to send him back?  Would he go hurtling back to the Forbidden Forest, and wake up surrounded by Death Eaters with Voldemort standing over him?  Would this end up being nothing more than a dream before death claimed him for good?

No, Harry didn’t look away, even as he felt tears begin to well in his eyes at the overwhelming emotions he felt.

“It doesn’t make sense…” Sirius said quietly, as if thinking out loud, “you see delusions with pensieve potion for sure, but not like this…”

He sighed, looking past Harry’s shoulder for a moment where he was sure James was hovering nervously.  Then, seeming to make up his mind, he looked back at Harry.

“You know I wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t important, Harry,” Sirius said, his voice as earnest as Harry had ever heard him, “but would you let me take a look in your mind, just to see what we’re working with? I promise I won’t–”

Before Harry could think of a response, Sirius’ words were cut off, by a loud shout of “Absolutely not!” coming from the staircase that they’d been about to head down before Harry threw a strop.  He turned to see a man striding towards them.  He had black curls and the same devastatingly handsome features as his Godfather, although his build was slightly slimmer and his jaw was more pointy than square, giving him an almost ethereal look.  He was glaring daggers at Sirius, a flush of anger spreading across his alabaster skin.  Harry should probably have kept his mouth shut, especially since he still hadn’t figured out how he was trying to play this, but at this point his mind was so fried from everything that was going on that he found himself talking before he could stop himself.

“Is that Regulus Black?”

The man stopped in his tracks, his eyes flashing first at Sirius, then at James, and finally at Draco, where they rested and narrowed.

“What the hell have you done to my son?”

Chapter Text

Regulus Black was… intense.  He’d taken them down to the potions lab - which apparently was his domain in this universe, not Snapes. As soon as they arrived he took over Sirius’ spot, staring him directly in the eye like he could see all the way down into Harry’s soul if he tried enough.  His eyes were somehow exactly the same and yet entirely different than Sirius’. Holding his gaze was a bit like staring into the sun, and Harry couldn’t decide if he liked it or not, except that he knew he was extremely envious of other Harry who seemed to have not one but two fathers that loved him more than words.

“You say he had no reaction at all to the purge potion?”

“None.”

“C’est possible qu’il soit expiré, non?”

“Not unless you started mislabeling your brews which I doubt.  And besides, you and I both know expired potion doesn’t stop you from reacting, it intensifies it,” Sirius said, seeming more like an adult than Harry had ever seen him. Was this the life his godfather had missed?  Being the kind of healer you could actually go to with your problems without shame? Just the thought made Harry’s eyes sting.

“Regardes - il ne comprend rien,” Sirius said in a low voice. 

Regulus’ eyes widened a bit, making Harry start.  Had that been addressed to him?

“Sorry, I… er…”

“It’s alright,” Regulus said in a soothing voice. “I just want to check some things, is that alright?”

Harry nodded, and Regulus, seeming suddenly calmer than he had a moment ago pulled out his wand.

“Siri… sois prêt.”

All of a sudden, Regulus’ eyes seemed to sharpen and he fixed Harry with a look that was immeasurably colder than the one he’d leveled at Draco. The younger Black Brother pointed his wand before Harry had time to think.

“Incarcerous!”

“Woah, woah, woah!” James exclaimed, non-verbally casting a shield between Harry and Regulus so that the ropes the younger Black Brother had flung in Harry’s direction fell to the ground uselessly.  “What the hell was that about?”

“This is not our son, James,” Regulus said, his voice trembling with emotion, silver eyes blazing with fury.  “I don’t know who he is, or why he’d impersonate Harry, but this is not our son.”

James was gaping at his husband but Sirius had drawn his wand and now had it trained on Harry as well.  Apparently in this world, he trusted his younger Brother’s judgment completely.  As inconvenient as it was, given his current predicament, a small part of Harry felt glad for Sirius. They deserved better than they got in his world.

“I am Harry Potter,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that.  If you need to, I don’t know, monitor me for the next hour so you can be sure I’m not Polyjuiced or something, then I’ll sit right here and let you.  But I am Harry.”  Sensing that Sirius was the tie breaker here, he locked his eyes on his Godfather for the last bit, who after glancing at Regulus and James, just gave a curt nod.

“Ooookay… here I am, sitting down in this chair,” Harry said, lowering himself slowly into one of the desks, eyes still locked on Sirius’. Regulus, wand still pointed at Harry, stepped forward.

“We’ll need your wand.”

“Yeah… I don’t think so,” Harry said, annoyance flaring up for the first time.  Regulus might be his step-dad in this universe, but in his he was a barely redeemed Death Eater, and Harry was not going to disarm himself completely for his sake.

“Reg, come on, let’s–” James began, but the younger Black Brother was already casting.

“Expelliarmus!”

This time Harry was ready for him, summoning a desk in between them so that the spell went ricocheting off, sailing into a shelf full of potions ingredients and shattering them in an explosion of glass, unidentifiable liquids, and noxious fumes. Draco let out a cry of alarm, casting a modified bubble-headed charm in the direction of the explosion and encasing the spill in a large wavering bubble. 

The door opened, but the cloud of fumes and debris was blocking Harry from seeing what had caused it.  He didn’t have time to focus on that anyway because the next thing he knew another Incarcerous flew his way, coming from Sirius this time.  It hit him, but Harry was able to keep his wand pointed straight in front of him as the ropes wrapped themselves around him.  In a stroke of Fred and George inspired genius he transfigured the heavy ropes into candy floss, pulling his way free from the pink spun sugar and throwing up a shield just in time to catch another stunner from Regulus. 

Harry pushed himself out of the chair he’d sat in moments ago.  A third Incarcerous flew at him, this time snaring him around the shins, lashing them to the legs of the chair. He began to tumble forward awkwardly, and shot the only spell he could think of at Sirius, hitting him with a silent levicorpus and feeling no small amount of satisfaction as his godfather’s body jerked into the air, dangling from one foot helplessly.

“What the bloody hell are you all doing?”

Remus Lupin’s voice broke through the mayhem, momentarily surprising Harry enough to cause him to lose his balance.  Legs still bound to the chair behind him, he toppled forward gracelessly, barely managing to cast a cushioning charm before he landed face first on the stone floor.  Even with the charm, he caught himself badly with his left arm, and he heard a familiar pop as his shoulder dislocated on impact just before he crumpled all the way to the ground.

He looked up to see the werewolf whose corpse he had cried over less than an hour ago glaring around at everyone in the room before casting a particularly contemptuous look up at Sirius. 

“This is not the intervention we discussed.”

Sirius, though upside down, somehow still managed a haughty look as he rolled his eyes at the werewolf.  

“That’s not Haz.”

“You drinking again, Black?  It must be really bad if you can’t even recognize your own godson.”

Ohh… this Remus was spicy. But didn’t like Sirius for some reason?

“Whoever it is is using polyjuice.”

“You’re mad.”

James came and knelt by him, his hazel eyes wary.  “Give us your wand, and I’ll fix that shoulder for you,” he said quietly.  Annoyed and irrationally hurt, Harry popped the shoulder back in himself, gritting his teeth through the pain and keeping his furious eyes locked on his father as he did so.

“I’ll take care of myself and keep the wand, thanks.”  James’ eyes widened at the pop of Harry’s shoulder, grimacing as if he was pained by the sight, and then peering at Harry as if he was trying to figure him out. Remus scoffed, and rounded on Sirius again, as if this was all his fault.

“Obstinate, refusing help, and self-destructive.  Sure seems like your godson, Black.”

“Oi!”

“Sorry Prongs, but really, why else are we here?”

“Will someone let me the fuck down?!”

“Liberacorpus!” Regulus cast, and Sirius fell to the ground in an undignified heap.  Regulus, though, had already turned his attention to Remus.

“Remus, could you be so kind as to tell us whether or not that… person smells like my son?  I find that I rather lack the patience to wait out polyjuice.”

Remus turned his gaze on Regulus, looking somewhat alarmed by the request coming from the younger Black Brother.  Whatever his relationship was with Sirius in this world, he apparently liked Regulus, and it seemed as if an entire silent conversation passed between the two of them before he sighed and stepped towards Harry.  Harry’s emerald eyes locked on Remus’ lighter moss colored ones, and he let himself relish the familiar, calming sight of the werewolf.  

Like Sirius, this Remus looked to be in significantly better shape than the one he’d known.  He was missing at least half the scars that had marred his face in Harry’s world and there was significantly less gray peppered through his amber hair.  His robes were practical but well constructed, and the keyring he had attached to his belt looked like the one Harry knew a number of the more senior professors to carry.

Was Remus a professor here?  Did this Harry get to have him for seven years of Defense Against the Dark Arts, rather than a rotating cast of people who were trying to kill him or make his life miserable?

Other Harry really did have it made.

“Harry,” Remus said cautiously, “I know we haven’t gotten on for… quite a while now.  However, it would put your fathers at ease, and maybe dispel this idiot’s wild conspiracies if I scented you right now.  Will you consent to that?”

“Of course, Moony,” Harry said, quickly.  The werewolf’s eyebrows raised, and Harry wondered, belatedly, if he called him professor at school.  Regulus’ eyes narrowed, and Sirius scoffed.

“See?  No one’s called you Moony since we were married.”

“You were married?!”  

Harry knew he wasn’t helping his own case, but really what the fuckkkk…

Remus’ gaze sharpened, but taking Harry’s earlier response at face value, he stepped forward, gently bending his nose to the crook of Harry’s neck and inhaling deeply.  Harry squirmed as shivers skittered down his spine.  

“Sorry… tickles,” he said, blushing and doing his best to banish the slight flare of interest that zinged through his body.  Jesus Christ, pull it together Potter.

Remus gave him a strange look, eyes scanning over his face like everyone else’s had and Harry shrugged at him helplessly.

“It’s him… usually when it's polyjuice I can pick up a hint of bloomslang and the imposter.  But it's just him, the only other person I can smell on him is Draco.”

Draco flushed scarlett and Harry wondered why for a moment before a thought hit him like a freight train.  

Surely… he and Draco didn’t…

“What about drugs?” James asked, coming around to stand next to Remus, looking down at him.

“Nothing.  Well unless you count… he smells like he was using a pensieve recently but surely they wouldn’t…”

Harry looked away at that, embarrassed even though he hadn’t been the one to do it.

“Harry James you didn’t, ” Remus gasped. 

“Sorry.”

Everyone seemed surprised by that too, and really, why was he such a dick in this world?

“It really is him?”

“Unless someone’s figured out how to mask polyjuice from werewolves, yes,” Remus said, although even he didn’t sound confident.

“Mmm… best wait it out, just in case.”

So they waited an hour.  Then when Harry didn’t transform, they tried another purge potion.  When that didn’t work, they tried a wit sharpening draught, peppering him with questions almost all of which he couldn’t answer.

A part of him felt bad for not coming clean, but after the reaction they’d just had Harry was in no rush to tell them he was actually from another universe and had somehow body snatched their Harry who was either stuck stumbling around the afterlife or… Merlin forbid… stuck in Harry’s universe.  

Harry hoped not, for his sake.  Even though he was clearly a twat.

He should tell them, he should try to get back, but…

…he didn’t want to leave.  Even exhausted and annoyed, every single person in this room was trying to take care of him.  To fix his messes, to right his wrongs, as if it was just…normal. Something they did, no matter how fed up with him they were. He’d never experienced anything like it.

So for the first time in a long time, Harry did something he’d refused to even let himself consider in years.

He put himself first.

Chapter Text

Harry left the potions lab in a daze, sometime around three in the morning.  He told them all he was fine, really, but then instantly contradicted himself by going to climb the stairs, only to have to be reminded that he had been sorted into Slytherin House.  

Because of course he had.  

He and Draco insisted that they were fine to walk back to the Common Room alone, while James and Sirius concocted a plan to stick around for the rest of the week to keep an eye on Harry.  It was Lupin, surprisingly, who needed the most convincing with that, finally acquiescing to provide them with an excuse.  Something about a Defense Against the Dark Arts version of capture the flag that they’d invented when Remus had first started teaching.  It sounded fun, but Harry was too tired to think about that as he mumbled a good night (which was apparently too polite to not be seen as further evidence of his uncanny ailment) and stumbled into the Slytherin Common Room.

Silently, he followed Draco up to their bedroom, surprised to find that the Slytherin upperclassmen were housed in doubles rather than the five to a room dormitory they slept in in Gryffindor.

Injustice.

He stumbled in after Draco, shutting the door behind him ready to fall into bed and sleep until someone physically dragged him out of bed.  When was the last time he’d slept on a proper mattress?  Grimmauld?  No they’d all camped out together in the sitting room like idiots not realizing how long it’d be til…

Every thought fell out of Harry’s mind as he looked at Draco Malfoy, who’d stripped down to tight, no - straining - black boxer briefs and was now stretching his lythe frame across what Harry was pretty sure was his bed.

What.

The.

Fuck.

“You don’t deserve nice things after the absolute bullshit you pulled tonight, but you know how hot it makes me when Lupin gets all wolfy like that.  When he scented you?  Good gods, I was practically feral.”

Harry was still staring at him, utterly lost for words, as Draco snaked a hand down into his briefs and gave himself a long, luxurious stroke.

“I’m not doing any work though.  Not even the prep, so you can either fuck my thighs or get over your aversion to prep.  Consider me a pillow princess for the night.”

“I– I’m not…my aversion to what ?”

“Oh cut the shit Haz.  I know it’s you and I know there wasn’t shit else in what we drank besides Pensieve Potion so whatever amnesia, gaslighting, game you’re playing with your fathers and their friends you can cut out in here.  Now take off your clothes and get in bed.”

He stroked himself again this time leaving the head of his cock peeking out of the elastic waistband of his briefs and Harry’s mind well and truly short circuited.

He had died earlier that night and now he was in a bedroom with Draco Malfoy who was nagging him to get in bed and fuck him into the mattress.

And he was…

…apparently really fucking into it?

It’s not that he didn’t know that he was attracted to men.  He’d figured that out when he’d met Cedric Diggory.  And Bill Weasley…

And Sirius Black when he was drunk and being very honest with himself even though he knew that was every kind of wrong.  

Come to think of it Lupin too, especially when he wolfed out tonight and breathed on his neck like…

Woah.

Christ.

Apparently he wasn’t just gay, he was flaming.

“Potter.” Draco interrupted his mental spiral, propping himself up on his elbows with an annoyed huff.  “Get. In. Bed.”

He shouldn’t, right?

But also…

Slowly, Harry shucked his trousers - and really who wore trousers rather than jeans when they didn’t have to, what a wanker - but left his tee shirt on. He came around to sit… just to sit on the bed, looking down at Draco.  He’d looked at the blonde plenty over the years, but he’d never seen him like this, brows only slightly creased in annoyance and silver eyes bright in the low candle light.  Gods he was fucking pretty, and when the fuck had that happened?

Was Draco Malfoy pretty?

“Malfoy…” he began, surprised to hear his voice coming out in such a husky tone.  “I wasn’t lying when I said I’m Harry but I’m not… I’m not the Haz you know.”

Draco looked at him, doubt maybe flashing across his eyes for a second before he arched an eyebrow in challenge.

“Well Not-Haz-Harry, do you know how to suck dick?”

…uhhhh did he?

No. No he did not.

His self-doubt must have shown on his face, because Draco snorted.  “So that’s the kind of game we’re playing.  Do you want me to teach you, pet?”

And fuuuuccckkk if that didn’t make his dick jump in his pants.  Draco, of course, noticed.  He gave Harry a knowing, lopsided smile.

“Its ok baby, I’ll talk you through it.  I’ll talk you through all of it, hmm?  Tell you when you’re being a good boy for me?”

Jesus fucking Christ, why did that sound so hot?

Harry looked down at Draco again, trying to will his self control back into place but the taller boy just pushed his briefs down below his hard cock, and gripped himself, still arching that fucking eyebrow at Harry.

“Come on love, I’ll show you what to do with this cock.  All you have to do is ask, baby.”

And Harry’s self control snapped.  With a moan he crashed their lips together, claiming Draco’s mouth.  The boy beneath him let out a gasp of surprise, his lips parting, and Harry’s tongue darted inside.  He threw everything into that kiss, seven years of pent up frustration with the Slytherin, his confusion about what the fuck was going on, his absolute uncontrollable lust for what was being offered.  He found that he’d somehow crawled on top of Draco, and his hips were now pinning Draco’s to the mattress as he rutted his still covered cock against Draco’s bare one, loving the contact and begging for more.  He finally broke the kiss and began peppering bites and open mouthed kisses down the blonde boy’s neck and jaw.  He was gonna mark up that perfect porcelain skin, he was gonna…

‘Ha–Haz! Wait, stop!”

Harry stopped immediately, Panting and looking up at Draco’s face.  The Malfoy heir looked properly debauched, pink lips swollen, face flushed with passion and the burn from Harry’s stubble.  His usually immaculate hair was sex touseled and his pupils were blown wide, leaving barely a sliver of quicksilver ringing his eyes.  

God, Draco was soo pretty.

“What, what’s wrong?”  Harry panted out.

“You kissed me.”

“I– You just offered to teach me how to suck dick! What do you mean I kissed you?”

“Haz… Harry, I need you to tell me.  Really now, not when you’re trying to put your parents in their place, but for me, when it’s just us… do you actually not know why kissing is… unusual for us?”

Harry fixed his eyes on Draco’s begging him to take him seriously, while also already mourning the undoubtedly phenomenal sex he was about to have. “Draco I really, really, don’t.”

The blonde exhaled shakily, as if he was trying to breathe his way through the horniness that was still fueling both their bodies.  He glanced back up at Harry, locking eyes with him before his gaze flicked down to Harry’s lips.  

“Ugh fuck…” Draco breathed out, before surging up and kissing Harry once more.  For everything Harry had poured into his kiss Draco seemed to be doubling it, kissing him with such a passion that Harry felt like his heart was fit to burst.  Then the blonde broke the kiss and threw his head down on the pillows eyes looking up towards the heavens like he was begging for salvation.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck! I don’t know what the shit you did Haz, but now I’m going to die from sexual frustration and it’s all your fucking fault.”

“What?”

“Well I can’t conscionably fuck you when you actually have no idea what’s going on now can I?  God damn druggy bastard. I’m. So. Horny. And. It’s. All. Your. Fault.:

He punctuated this last sentence with petulant blows to Harry’s chest which annoyingly, did nothing to dampen his burgeoning attraction to the taller boy.

But Draco was right.  Harry wasn’t Haz, and he had no business fooling around with Draco until he actually understood what that meant.  Groaning with his own sexual frustration, Harry pulled himself off the other boy, staggering, erection still fully on display, over to the other bed before collapsing on it.

“Stay over there,” Draco said petulantly, “I can’t be held responsible for what I do to you and your born-again-virgin mouth if you come back over here.”

“But isn’t this your bed?”

“The fact that you don’t know just shows how much we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Right… ugh you’re right.  Goodnight then, Draco.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but sleep it off.  If you wake up with a fucking clue about who you are I expect a thorough dicking down come morning.”

“Christ, don’t say things like that, I’m rock hard already.”

“Good.  Sleep poorly.  Suffer. And stop cursing like a muggle, you’re starting to actually worry me.”  

Then with a Nox, Draco extinguished the lights, and rolled over, giving Harry his back.

Harry had no idea why kissing him had been so suspicious that it had done more to convince Draco that he was an imposter than hours of interrogation, but once again Harry was positive that other Harry and his bullshit personality were to blame.

His last thought before he fell into a fitful sleep was that he hoped wherever other Harry was, he was having a shit time.

Chapter Text

Haz was beginning to think the pensieve Potion might have been a bad idea.

It hadn’t started as a bad idea.  

Or not that bad of an idea.

It was his dad’s fault after all.

Don’t think of him as dad.  Call him father.  He hates that, remember?  It reminds him of Orion, which is how he’s acting so it's what he deserves.

It had been ten months since Regulus had ruined everything between him and Etienne, again .  Ten months since he’d shown how overbearing, how fucking vindictive he could be just because he didn’t get his way.   

It was a miracle that Etienne had even wanted to speak to Harry again after the shit Regulus pulled during the Triwizard Tournament, but this time…  

Harry hadn’t realized how bad it had been until he’d snuck out over Easter Hols.  He hadn’t even been able to goad Draco into that one - apparently he drew the line at using muggle transport to leave the country.  But he’d been desperate enough to go alone, and after taking a train under the channel (muggles are insane) he’d and apparated in short jumps until he finally landed in the Wizarding Quarter of St. Malo.  His nerves had been so worked up by that point that he went straight to the apothecary where Etienne worked, even though it was peak hours.  If the older wizard wanted to cause a scene that was fine, Harry could take it.

He’d always taken whatever Etienne had given him, he wasn’t about to chicken out now.

But when he’d arrived in the shop, expecting Etienne’s anger, he’d been met with blank professionalism.

His first kiss, his first time, his first love… gone.

His father, his psychotic, controlling, Toujours-Asshole of a father had wiped Harry from Etienne's memories.

He’d been too angry for the Chunnel after that.  Haz nearly caused an international incident apparating from Cherbourg to Portsmouth.  When the Aurors had come, he'd stayed quiet - he was still a Black after all and they did not resolve family disputes through the authorities.  Pops had needed to call in a dozen favors to bury that stunt, but Haz didn’t give a fuck about that because Regulus had ruined his life and he would never, ever, forgive him.

So he drank more than he should, and smoked more than he should, and told himself that he wasn’t taking advantage of Draco with the strict ‘just sex’ arrangement they’d struck up when Haz’s shock finally faded into acceptance and the loneliness became too much.  

But his dreams were still of Etienne.

So when he found the pensieve in the Room of Hidden Things he hadn’t hesitated.

Melting into those memories had been ecstasy at first.  He’d started with the ones from that past summer, and they were just as hot as he remembered - all salt and skin and the exhilaration of having successfully snuck out.

But when the ones from fourth year had started, he’d been… 

He had…

Well Fourth Years really are quite small, aren’t they?

Seeing the way he’d shivered when Etienne scraped his stubble across his neck and whispered mon minou hit differently looking at his rounded smooth face, still sporting those kid glasses he’d worn.

I still wanted to look like James then.  It was weird, that's something he thought he only wanted when he was a kid kid.

He didn’t want to rewatch this bit, actually.

Only it wasn’t a ride he could get off, and then he’d started to panic and…

The clenching in his chest was overwhelming.  He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t cry out, he couldn’t…

The memory had faded away and then he was standing.  He couldn't make out any of his surroundings at first, couldn't even say really when the black void had become while blankness but...

Slowly, shadows started to emerge.  He could feel something, something beneath his fingertips that was rough.  Almost like brick and mortar, but the smaller ones. 

He moved his hand, catching the grooves of the brick.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

Things were starting to get clearer now, and he was standing... standing against a barrier in King’s Cross?  

At least it looked like King’s Cross, a ghostly white outline of the train station he’d made a pilgrimage to every September for the last seven years.  He could hardly make out the contours of the station around him, but he could feel the brick beneath his fingertips and he used that to steady himself, running his fingers back and forth across the bricks.  

Up. Down. Up. Down.

A train pulled up in front of him and he knew, viscerally, that he did not want to get on.

I’m not ready. 

A part of him was beginning to understand what this was, where he was, but he wasn’t, he couldn’t…

Gods when his dads found out…

He couldn’t do this to them, he didn’t mean to, it was just supposed to be fun… 

I don't want to die. 

A flash of color caught his eye through the gap in the train cars.  A flash of unruly Black hair that he’d know anywhere.  

Pops.   His whole body sagged with relief.  They’d come for him, of course they did - his dads would fight the devil himself rather than let him die.  If James was here then Regulus had to be close by, probably threatening Saint Peter or the Ferryman or whoever was in charge here…

He’d been about to leave his spot against the barrier he was using to ground himself when he locked eyes with the man across the platform and his stomach dropped in dread.  Green eyes stared back at him rather than the reassuring hazel he’d been expecting.  That wasn’t his Pops that was…

But why’d he have a huge cut across his forehead?  

Then Haz felt a hooking behind his navel and the world turned upside down again and he was enveloped by darkness once more.

When he came to, the first thing he saw was the beautiful, severe, face of Narcissa Malfoy.

They must be in so much fucking trouble if his dad had already called Cousin Cissy.  She looked worse than he’d ever seen her - pinched and nervous in a way he’d never seen her before.  

He shifted slightly, but she gripped his shoulder hard and some base instinctive part of him told him that the look she was giving him meant he was not to move. She leaned close to him, and damn, Draco’s mom was as gorgeous as he was, bad mood or not.

“Draco… is he alive?”  She whispered it so softly Harry almost didn’t hear her.  What the fuck?  Was there some reason they couldn’t speak?

Not having any idea what the fuck was going on, but not wanting to talk if he wasn’t supposed to, Harry slipped into her mind.

Of course.  He didn’t take as much as me, he was perfectly fine when we walked down he was…

Stone barriers came down in Narcissa’s mind, forcing him out.  She stared at him as if he’d just grown a second head.  I mean sure it was definitely rude to slip into Legilimency like that, and yeah he’d made a big stink after last summer about no one using mind magics on him anymore, but she was the one who started with the whispering and she was a Black so…

“He’s Dead!” She cried out, and Harry almost jumped at the cheering that went up around him.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Stay still Potter.  Playing dead is your only chance.   Narcissa's voice echoed through his mind.

His only chance?

His only chance of what?

A high-pitched voice that chilled him to the bone cut through the cheers.

“The Boy Who Lived!” the voice crowed, venom dripping from every syllable.  “Powerless to stop Lord Voldemort.”

Harry’s mind went blank.

His dads never talked about the war.  He’d only really heard about it from Sirius when he was in his cups, and even then, only in snippets when he got weepy after Remus left, when he’d gone to James for support.  He knew from the Orders of Merlin they had stashed in the attic, and from the whispers that had followed him his whole life how central his parents and their friends had been to bringing down the Dark Lord.  He knew the war had brought his mom and dad together and then split them apart just as easily.  He knew it was the war that ultimately cost Lily Evans her life.

The gossip he overheard in public was always about that.  That or the final duel - the one that had seen Grimmauld Place burned to the ground but had left Voldemort laid out dead on the Islington pavement.  The Muggles still thought it had been some kind of a terror attack that had taken out the row of townhomes - Dean had told him a whole election had been called after the Prime Minister failed to get to the bottom of it.  

But when Sirius ranted he spoke about other things.  A diary. A ring.  And once, in a way that made Regulus silence the entire first floor of their house to prevent Harry from overhearing… a cave.

While he'd never found out what that was about, he knew one thing for sure, one thing both his dads had promised him whenever he had nightmares as a child, one thing that he could see with his own eyes in the faded grey tattoo on Regulus’ forearm - he knew Voldemort was dead.  Gone.

But as huge rough hands lifted him to the jeers and laughter of at least a dozen voices around him Harry chanced one quick glance around him.  His eyes landed on an unnaturally pale figure, robed in flowing black robes.  From his angle Harry couldn't see his whole face, but even from the side he could tell it was monsterous.  Where a nose should be there were nothing but slits, and even from the side he could tell that the man's eyes were a glowing red.  In his long, skeletal fingers he clutched a wand Harry would recognize anywhere as having belonged to the former Headmaster. 

He wasn't sure if the creature in front of him was Voldemort or Dumbledore returned from the grave, but since everything he'd thought he'd known before was now turned on his head, he really really only knew one thing for sure. 

He knew he wanted his fucking dads. 

Chapter Text

He knew, rationally, that this was Hogwarts.

He knew the grounds like the back of his hand, could recognize everything from the slope of the lawn they were climbing to the chilly dewy pre-dawn air, even the crunch of rocky soil beneath Hagrid’s feet as he carried Harry up towards the school.

But it still didn’t make any sense.  Because every time he snuck a peak at his surroundings, all he could see was destruction and chaos.  The charred body of an acromantula to his left, the bloodied remains of - oh gods was that a student - to his right.

How.  How could this be happening?  Where were his dads?  Where was Remus?  Why wasn’t Sirius here?

He knew that nothing would keep them from being here.  Nothing but…

It was too much even to think about.  He couldn’t break down sobbing when he was playing dead.

But he could feel the drops of the tears coming from Hagrid as they cascaded down on him. This was all so fucking wrong.

Their group finally reached what was left of the courtyard and it was all he could do to stop himself from gasping.  

He understood now why the muggles had believed that a bombing had caused the destruction at Grimmauld.  The courtyard certainly looked like a muggle war zone - like it had been decimated by massive, impersonal ordinance rather than the casting of spells.  Chunks of the paved stone floor had been torn up, leaving gaping wounds pocked through the courtyard, some with crumpled forms in them that Harry didn’t dare look at.  The marble colonnade looked like someone had taken a massive club to it - with whole columns missing or toppled over.  There were suits of armor littering the floor interspersed between prone bodies and pools of dark liquid that he suspected might be blood.

Haz never realized magic was capable of this level of indiscriminate obliteration.  

“Harry, no!”

The sound of his voice being called with such anguish almost sent his eyelids flying open.  Had that been Hermione Granger?  He never knew she liked him at all let alone enough to cry over him like that…

He chanced a peek again and saw… Holy shit was that Neville?  Carrying a fucking sword?

He looked like he’d been through hell but also… when had he gotten so… is svelte an appropriate word to use on a battlefield?

But then his eyes fell on Draco, and the moment of humor he’d been feeling was gone.  Draco was staring at him, white as a sheet.  He looked pinched, and his black robes were covered in… was that soot?  But it was his eyes that spurred Harry to action.  

Draco was looking at him as if all the hope in the world had just died.  

And he couldn’t leave his best friend like that.

The man, Voldemort or someone insane enough to think he was Voldemort, was talking now, saying that too much magical blood had been spilt already.  

What had happened since he’d taken the pensieve potion?  It was only supposed to last a couple of hours, how… how could so much destruction have happened while he was out of it?

And where were his dads?

He didn’t know, but he knew what they would want him to do if they were here.  They’d want him to get out of danger.  And since this Voldemort wanna be seemed to have targeted him specifically…

He waited until the man’s back was completely to him - he was engaging Neville in some screaming match and holy shit Gryffindors are brave -  before opening his eyes entirely and locking them on Draco.  

Now, Drake!

Draco’s eyes widened in shock at hearing Haz’s voice in his head but he didn’t make any move.  They’d been using legilimency for years - he must really be out of it to not be responding.  Maybe he really had thought Haz was dead.  Is that why he left him there in the forest?

Come on, Draco. Still nothing. For as close as they’d been for years, Draco hadn’t been fully inducted as a Marauder until recently.  His father’s apology for how things went down last summer.  Trying to will his best friend into action, Haz cursed himself for not having pushed harder for them to do it sooner.

This was newer to Draco, not an instinct yet.  They couldn’t fuck this up though, which meant Haz would have to go with Plan B. Thirty feet there, change, then one quick command.

He could make it. They could make it.

Haz inhaled, and then transformed.

Hagrid stumbled back in shock as the teenager he’d been carrying morphed into a bird of prey in his arms.  Harry wanted to apologize but there was no time, the people around them were already exclaiming in alarm.  With two powerful beats of his wings he was across the courtyard, regaining his human form as soon as he got to Draco.  

“Kreacher!”  He screamed, hoping that the house elf would know from his desperation that he needed him now. 

There was a crack almost instantaneously - he must’ve been close, Gods, did that mean dad was nearby? - and the ancient elf was there, standing in front of him.  But it was still too slow.

The Wizard-Pretending-To-Be-Voldemort shot a spell at him. He saw the green light and heard a whooshing sound coming his way and it was all Haz could do to yank Draco down to the pavement with him in time before the spell hit the wall directly behind where they’d been standing.

Merlin Fucking a Pendragon this guy was serious.

Knowing that he’d probably never hear the end of it when he found his dad, but also knowing that now was not the time to hesitate, Haz pointed his wand at the Dark Wizard and cast the worst thing he could think of.

“Sectumsempra!”

The spell seemed to erupt out of his wand.  Holy shit it must be strong.  If his fathers didn’t murder him, he’d have to tell Uncle Sev that the curse he’d created was ace.  It hit the man’s shield, slicing right through it and then…

Oh Godric…

There was a horrific wet tearing sound and…

…gods was that his arm falling to the ground?

Yeah, they needed to go now.

“Kreacher!” Haz cried out, still holding Draco’s wrist in a vice-like grip.  “Take us home! Now!”

The elf’s eyes were wide as saucers, but he didn’t hesitate, reaching out a gnarled hand to grasp Harry’s wrist just above where his hand held Draco’s before disappearing with a crack.

The familiar squeeze of apparition was worse than Harry had ever experienced.  Was Kreacher panicking?  Why was it going on for so long?  It shouldn’t be taking that long for them to reach Aberdeen….

Then they landed with a thud on a soft, carpeted floor, and the crushing weight that had been squeezing him was gone.  

Merlin Kreacher, not your best wo–” Haz began, but the words died in his throat as he looked around. 

Instead of the inviting, warm foyer of their Aberdeen Lodge, he was in a dimly lit, dusty hall.  The black and white marble floor beneath them was cold enough that it almost burned where his bare skin touched the ground.  Instead of the warm creams and soft sage greens of their foyer, the walls here were black with wall frame molding panels giving it an antique, almost gothic look.  To their right, thick black curtains had been pulled tight over… something.  Instinctively Haz knew that something was not a window. 

“Potter, what the actual fuck was that?”

Draco was looking up at him with a mix of bewilderment, anger, and… was that fear?

“That was me rescuing you, you bloody arsehole, even though you clearly don’t deserve it, leaving me for dead in the forest for your mum to find.  You’re welcome, by the way, for the rescue and for me telling her you were alive.” 

“Potter what are you talk–” But whatever else Draco was about to say was drowned out as the curtains flew open revealing a life-sized portrait of…

“Filth! Vermin! Besmirching the House of my Forefathers!” 

“Grandmere!  Arrêtez! C’est seulement moi et Draco - il est le fils de Narcissa et Lucius. Vous le reconnaissez?”

That silenced the portrait momentarily but there was no recognition in her wide grey eyes.  He’d grown a lot since she passed but still she should know him.  In frustration he rounded on Kreacher.

“Kreacher, just where the bloody hell did you bring us? Does father know you’ve been keeping a batty portrait of grandmere stashed away?”

The elf was staring at him, eyes still as wide as they had been when he’d taken them away from Hogwarts.  Draco, annoyingly, was staring too.

Finally the house elf began to speak, his voice coming out as a croak.

“You is not supposed to be beings here, Master Haz.”

Chapter Text

Draco was quite sure this was the most confused he’d ever been in his life.  

Two hours ago he’d lost one of his lifelong friends to Fiendfyre of his own casting.  Two hours ago there had been a moment - several moments actually - where he thought Harry Potter would leave him to die in the flames.

He still smelled like ash.

One hour ago he’d watched their oaf of a Care of Magical Creatures Professor carry Potter’s broken corpse up to the castle while the Dark Lord gloated over his triumph.  Just to be interrupted by Potter transforming into some intimidating bird of prey and kidnapping him using a deranged house elf he could’ve sworn he’d seen serving his Auntie Bella…

And now…

Now he was listening to Potter argue with a portrait of his Great Aunt Walburga.  

In rapid French.  

If you’d asked him this morning he would’ve guessed Potter couldn’t even spell français let alone speak it…

“So what the hell was that, huh?”  Potter was speaking to Draco again.  But he was… smiling?  Like they were best mates?  Madness…

“Who the fuck is that guy?  Parading around like some wanna be Vol–”

Draco just managed to smack a hand over Potter’s mouth before he triggered the taboo which would’ve had every Death Eater in the country converging on them.  He glared at the Gryffindor, trying to convey with his face all the ways in which he was not here for whatever fresh bout of insanity Potter had in store.

Breath Play.  Kinky, but probably not the time, Dray.

And… what the fuck was that about???

He slammed up his mental walls, shoving Potter out at the same time that he pushed him away with his hands.

“I’ll thank you to stay the fuck out of my mind Potter.  You’ve already done enough with this ridiculous kidnapping!”

“Kidnapping?  I rescued you, you twat!”

“And what makes you think I need rescuing?!”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe the fact that you looked about ready to piss yourself at the sight of the Lord–”

“DON’T SAY HIS NAME!”

“...Circe fine, at the sight of Snakeface McGee back there.”

“Sn–snakeface.”

“McGee, yes if you’re gonna piss yourself about the name of someone who died fifteen years ago.”

Draco had admittedly not had any sense of how the day was going to evolve after news broke that the LeStrange Vault had been robbed and the Dark Lord had begun indiscriminately casting unforgiveables at everyone around him.  But not in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that it would end with listening to Harry Potter deny the return of the Dark Lord after having just severed his arm in a duel.

And oh gods.  

He was going to be so angry.

“We need to get a hold of our parents,”  Potter said earnestly, the bravado of a minute ago slipping from his face.  Draco spluttered at the utter absurdity of it.

“ Our parents?”

“Well, maybe not your mom – she was fully in the thick of it when I saw her.  She’s fine though, nothing shakes Cissy.”

Draco would’ve been offended at the familiarity if he wasn’t pretty sure Potter had lost his mind entirely.

“And Merlin knows Lucy’s not my biggest fan…”

LUCY?

“But, if any of them have stayed out of whatever that mess is its him.  I didn’t see either of my dads, and I don’t… I can’t understand why they wouldn’t–”

Potter’s voice cut off in a gasping sob, and Draco could do nothing but stare as the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, his biggest rival and his current captor broke down in tears over not seeing his parents on the battlefield.  

“Master Haz…”  The house elf interrupted, a distressed look on his face.

“Oh yes!  Kreacher, go to father.  Tell him to meet us… where are we exactly?”

“Master Haz, you is needing to sits down.”

“Is he hurt?  Is that where Pops is, is he with him?”

“Master Haz…”

“Kreacher, I order you to tell me where my fathers are!”

Potter was yelling now, his eyes wide with panic and despite the absurdity of what he was saying, Draco found his heart aching slightly for the worry on the Gryffindor’s face.  

This was insane, Potter had one father, one father who’d been dead since he was fifteen months old… 

The house elf was trembling with the effort it took to defy the order from Potter, and Draco found himself wondering when Potter had had the time to bond not only one but two elves so deeply.  He’d seen the way Dobby had come for Potter at the Manor - seen the way he’d been able to manipulate the Malfoy’s millennia-old wards to follow his commands as if they were nothing.  Now here Potter was again, this time with another ancient house’s elf, literally shaking with the effort of delaying his demands.  As if he could sense his thoughts, the house elf’s watery cataracted eyes landed on Draco.

“All- Alright Master Haz…”

And what the fuck was with the nickname.

“...but I can only be talkings with you.”

And then before he could think about what that meant, the elf snapped its arthritic fingers, and Draco’s world went dark.

When he woke he was laid out on a garish settee and the light streaming through the windows told him it was well into the evening.  The sun had just been coming up when they’d left Hogwarts which meant he’d been out for what… ten hours at least? 

“Potter! Potter you twat what the fu–”

A warm hand covered his mouth and Draco swung his eyes up to see that Harry had been sitting in an armchair right beside him.  His green eyes were red-rimmed, somehow making them even more vibrant than Draco was used to.  

“Shh… Gran– Walburga just stopped yelling.  Let’s not wake her back up, yeah?”

Draco wanted to retort that he didn’t give a damn about waking up a bloody portrait, because now in addition to being kidnapped he’d been knocked bloody unconscious for hours by Potter and his absolutely insane house elf, except he’d never seen Potter look so…

…well so heartbroken.

“What… Potter, what are you going to do with me?”

It hadn’t really occurred to him until he asked but as the question came out it occurred to Draco that he really should’ve asked it the moment they left Hogwarts.  Was he being held for ransom?  By the fucking Chosen One?  It didn’t seem like it but what other reason could Harry Potter possibly have for taking him and then keeping him unconscious.

“Do with you?  Nothing I just… fuck Dray I just need someone on my side, ok?”

“Potter I have quite literally never been on your side.”

“Never?”

“Truly not once.”

“I mean surely in Quidditch at least…”

The House Elf, who Draco had somehow not noticed on waking up, cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Wait Kreach, does that mean I’m not…”

The ancient elf shook its head vigorously, giant ears flapping back and forth emphatically.

“Circe’s tit. Tell me I’m not a fucking Hufflepuff.” Draco, who was beginning to suspect Potter had lost his entire mind, decided it was best not to speak.  

“The Potter Boy is being in Gryffindor Master Haz.”

“Ugh, no wonder you think I’m such a twat,” Harry said, looking at Draco as if they were commiserating about a common foe.  “Look, I’m sorry Kreacher knocked you out.  He needed to tell me some… family matters.  But then I realized that there’s literally no one to bloody help us except, well you’ll see… not that he’s in any state to help anyone right now. Then when Kreacher went to get him I got caught up in trying to make sure he didn’t fucking die on me too.  So yeah.  Sorry?”

He shrugged helplessly, as if he truly cared to avoid Draco’s ire, but Draco was too focused on trying to make sense to what Potter had just said to pay his apology any mind.  Only one person left to help?  Did that mean after they left that the Dark Lord had killed everyone fighting alongside Potter but one person?  Despite having found himself lined up against them less than twenty-four hours ago, Draco felt the bottom of his stomach fall out at the thought.  

All their teachers, all their classmates, just gone…

“Only one… only one of them survived after we left?”

“What? You mean the people at Hogwarts? No, no I… I’m not actually sure what happened after we left.  I mean he’s the only one in our corner that I can get to right now.  Kreacher says your parents are alive but apparently they took Snakeface to the Manor to try to put his arm back on so…”

“Potter! Who?”

“Oh. Right, sorry,” Harry said shifting and looking over his shoulder where Draco realized, a tall figure was laid out on a couch along the far wall, with a line of potions arrayed on the coffee table in front of him.  He was deathly pale - barely a shade darker than the bandages that had been painstakingly wrapped around him.  He seemed still as the grave, looking more like a corpse at a wake than the answer to their problems, until Draco saw just the smallest rise in his chest as he took a slow, shallow breath.

“Severus.”

Chapter Text

“Haz! Wake up!”

“Wha- Jesus Malfoy, warn a bloke before you go prodding him with those icicles you call fingers!”

Harry blinked awake to see the sight of a sleep rumpled Draco Malfoy looming over him, peering down at him curiously.  It took him a moment to realize where he was - in the Slytherin dorms in some alternate universe where he and Draco Malfoy were mates who beat each other off.  As if he too had just remembered that fact Draco slid a knee up onto the bed so he was half straddling Harry, the warmth of his body already causing Harry’s cock to plump in interest.

“Have you recovered your senses?” the blonde boy asked, his eyes trailing down Harry’s body in clear interest.

“Huh?”

“Do you still want to kiss me?”

“...yes?”

Draco threw himself backwards with a sigh of exasperation.

“Merlin and Morgana, what did you take?”  

Harry sat up, annoyed. 

“Why is that the test for whether or not I’ve lost my mind! Merlin, what is wrong with you?”

Draco just arched an unimpressed brow.  “Fine.  If you want to be all boring about it.  Who’s the Minister of Magic?”

Well shit.  He definitely didn’t know that answer.

“Cornelius Fudge?”

“What?”

“Rufus Scrimgor?”

“Haz - no.”

Draco heaved himself out of bed, shaking his head in incredulity.

“Pius Thicknesse?”

“Ugh you’re making it worse.  Come on. Throw some trousers on - lets go find your dads.”

His fathers were just as unimpressed with his lack of recovery.  They’d gathered in Regulus’ private rooms, and Harry had to suppress a blush at the sight of James coming out of the bedroom in flannel pants and a vest.  It wasn’t that he was homophobic, obviously, its just well… 

He’d never really given James Potter much thought as a man.  In his mind he’d always been James the Marauder, a mischievous teen laughing with his friends, or James the father - sacrificing himself so his wife and child could get away.

For as large as he’d loomed in Harry’s psyche he’d always been… well pretty two dimensional.

But not this James.  This James who’d clearly grabbed his glasses too fast when they knocked and hadn’t yet bothered to wipe the fingerprint smudge off that was partially obscuring his left lens.  This James who’s morning stubble was starting to go silver like the hair near his temple.  This James who moved in such easy synchronization with the man he loved that they’d somehow known exactly who would clear the ungraded papers off the coffee table and who would fetch the tea without saying a word.

Everything about this James felt intimate in a way that made Harry feel compelled to come clean immediately and beg everyone’s forgiveness for invading on such private family time.  

“Get your godfather will you Haz?  He should be here for this conversation,” James said, his voice still scratchy from sleep.

Harry looked at Draco for some kind of clue, but Draco just gestured at him in a get on with it sort of way.  

Where was Sirius? Was he supposed to know this?  Was it another test?

Regulus was watching him now, eyes sharp, and Harry figured if he was going to fail at this he might as well do it in style.  

Plus he was needing the reassurance that he did actually belong with these people.  

“Expecto Patronum!”

Prongs erupted out of his wand, clearly shocking everyone in the room, but Harry had committed and he was going to see this through.  

“Go wake up Padfoot, and tell him to come to Regulus’ sitting room.  

The silvery stag, turned and…

…went through the door five feet from where they were sitting that Harry had assumed was a coat closet.  A barely muffled scream of alarm came from the room two seconds later followed by a truly impressive string of expletives that had Draco doubled over in laughter on the couch next to him.

“Oh Morgana, I don’t know what is wrong with you, but at least you’re going insane in a fun way.”

James looked thoroughly bewildered, if a little pleased but Regulus…

Harry had seen Sirius’ feelings hurt enough to recognize that look on those patrician Black features.  He opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by Sirius bursting out of what he now knew was the guest bedroom.

“What the bloody fuck was that Reg?”  He growled at his brother.

“Don’t look at me, that was all your godson.”

Sirius’ neck swiveled in his direction, the anger replaced in the space of a second with a look of confusion.

“You finally figured out how to cast a patronus?”

Was Fortunate Harry some kind of idiot?

“Uh. Yeah, I suppose.”

“And it’s Prongs?”  Sirius sounded almost skeptical at that, shooting a quick glance at Regulus before his eyes returned to Harry.

“Should… should it not be Prongs?”

Sirius almost looked like he was going to say more but Regulus cleared his throat and Sirius’ mouth snapped shut.

“Just take a seat, Siri, we have to figure out what we’re going to do,” the younger Black looked like he’d hardly slept at all.  Harry was once again overcome with the feeling that he should apologize.

“Draco seems to think that Haz’s memories did not return to him overnight.”

“That true Haz?”

“Umm yeah, I think so.”

James, who’d been watching him quietly since the Patronus furrowed his brow and leaned forward looking at him.  Sirius’ eyes though, were fixed on Regulus.

“Reg, I know after last summer it’s a delicate subject for you but, I really think if Haz is ok with it we should at least try…”

“Absolutely not.  No Legilimency.”

“If Haz consents…”

“He’s in no fit state to consent.”

Sirius let out an exasperated huff.  “He’s lost his memories not his mind - you know what Legilimency is, right Haz?  You know what it is we’re discussing?”

“Yeah I–”

“I said no, Sirius.”  

“Reg I can’t help him remember without–”

“And once he remembers?  How do you think he’ll react then?”

Sirius sighed and sat back, looking at James for backup that was clearly not forthcoming.  “If you won’t let me, then I think maybe it’s time we take him to Mungo’s…”

At this, Harry sat up straighter.

“No! No please I– I don’t want to go there.”

Sirius, harrumphed in clear frustration at the whole family.  “Look Haz, I know it’ll be uncomfortable explaining to them how this happened but it’s not like they’ll call the Ministry over something as minor as recreational potions use.  That’s reserved for way bigger–”

“I’m not going, Sirius.  I’d have you read my mind way before then.” Harry could imagine the kinds of things St. Mungo’s would call the Ministry over.  Big things.  Things like seventeen year old boys being transported in from other dimensions after a bad trip gone wrong.  If they got the Ministry involved… there’s no guarantee he’d be let out when Mungo’s was done with him.

James leaned forward in his seat, looking past Harry at Draco.  

“Can you show me where the pensieve is that you got the potion from?”

Draco looked at Harry before answering, but seeing as how he had no memory whatsoever of getting said potion, he just shrugged.

“Ugh, Haz. You’re ruining literally everything.  Yes, I can show you.”

James nodded.  “Alright. Reg - I’ll go get this Pensieve - see if taking a look at the potion that’s still in it helps clue you in about what’s going on with Haz.  You’ve a free period this afternoon, yeah?”

Regulus nodded.  

“We told Rem we’d lend a hand with Capture the Stag this afternoon.  Should take a couple of hours tops.  Would that be enough time to see what’s in the potion?”

“Of course, Jamie, what do you take me for a third year?”

His father smiled at that, and Harry felt his gut twist.  Jamie.  His dad went by Jamie.

“Then we’ll pop back down after that.  If we’re no closer to an answer then, then its Legilimency or Mungo’s or both–”  James raised his voice as Harry and Regulus both tried to object, “--I’m not comfortable leaving things as they are any longer than that.  Something’s off, Reg, and we need to figure out what it is.”

Harry let out a breath.  So by this evening they’d know.  Who knew how they’d feel about him then.  Still, it was more time than he’d ever thought he’d have with his Dad and Sirius, so he might as well make the best of it.

“Sounds like a plan. Only… what’s Capture the Stag?”

Capture the Stag, as it turned out, was an absurd combination of Marauders Chaos and combat training.  Apparently, when he’d come in after the War to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts Remus Lupin had flat out refused to teach formal dueling.

“It encourages terrible habits. Instills all the wrong instincts,” he explained to Harry on the walk down the grounds to where the course had been set up.  He still seemed bewildered that Harry was willing to talk to him at all, but he was happy to talk to him like a real person and stared at him less than Sirius did which was a relief.

The students - all the NEWT-level defense students, Harry learned - were split into two teams, and charged with either capturing or defending the Stag (James, obviously) who in turn ran around causing havoc and generally having a great time.

“Why a Stag?”

“It’s in the name,” Sirius said, as if it was obvious. “It’s a muggle game originally.”

“You mean capture the flag…”

“Why would you want a flag?”

“Why would you want a stag? And besides, aren't there supposed to be two of them?”

“We’ve only got one Stag, Prongslet,” Sirius said gravely.  “You sure you’re up to this?”

Remus, though, was looking at Harry curiously. “He’s right, actually.  That is how it’s played with muggles.  Prongs heard wrong the first time I explained it to him and I didn’t have the heart to correct him.”

Sirius, seemingly annoyed and embarrassed to have been corrected, shot Remus a mutinous look.  “Always letting people believe what’s easiest, eh Moons?”

He didn’t wait for a response, just stomped off to walk with James and Draco, as Remus’ eyes flashed with anger and something that looked an awful lot like hurt.

“Sorry–” Harry began, but the werewolf cut him off.  “Not your fault.  Come on, let's go join the rest of them, I’ll be giving the rules again in case there’s anything I missed.”  

Harry nodded, and then gasped as he rounded a corner to see the course that had been set up in the field surrounding and encompassing the quidditch pitch.  There were trees, boulders, and other assorted obstacles scattered around the lawn, and a particularly strong atmospheric charm had been cast so that the entire area was encased in thick, low lying fog.  A crowd of students was standing in a cluster by the side, gathered around a sandy-haired man who was talking enthusiastically to scattered chuckles.  As they approached, they caught up with Sirius, James and Draco and Harry felt himself naturally gravitate towards the blonde boy.  

He’d been able to keep his head down for the most part in class so far - he’d only had arithmancy (which had been absolutely unintelligible) with Hermione (wearing a blue tie, somewhat depressingly), and a handful of Ravenclaws and Slytherins where were all where he’d expected them to be. But now he was anxious and curious in equal measure about the prospect of being around more of his classmates.  Other than Hermione he’d spotted an absolutely stacked looking Neville wearing a yellow tie in the halls, and he couldn’t help wondering who else was different.  

As they approached, the sandy haired man turned, flashing them a smile and Harry stopped dead in his tracks.

Wormtail.

It was Wormtail.  Here.  Without thinking about it he flung an arm out to halt Draco in his tracks, sweeping the taller boy behind him.

“Haz what–”

“What is he doing here?”

“Pettigrew?  He always comes out for Capture the Stag. Someone needs to captain the other team besides Rem.”

“Why can’t Sirius, or my dad–”

Draco dropped his voice, eyes scanning over Harry again, as if surprised despite everything he didn’t know that he would be ignorant of this too.

“You know Sirius hasn’t dueled since the end of the last war, Haz.  Well except for– but that doesn’t bear discussing now. No, Sirius is here as medic.” 

Harry nodded, making a mental note to ask Draco for the full history later.  Shoving down his panic he took a moment to look at the gathered students.  His eyes landed instantly on Ginny and Dean.  Apart from the green tie on the youngest Weasley - which, yeah, he kind of understood - what drew his attention and held it were the massive scars cutting across Dean’s face, cut all the way to where a black eye patch was covering his left eye.

“Holy shit, what happened to Thomas?” he whispered.

“Who?”

“Dean.”

“Dean Rosier?”

Harry knew that name, vaguely as having belonged to a Death Eater Mad Eye Moody killed during the first war.  Why would Dean have his last name?

“Maybe?  The Gryffindor bloke with the eye patch Draco, why’s he got an eye patch?”

He apparently hadn’t been whispering quietly enough because Ginny shot him a venomous look, holding Dean’s hand tighter in her own.  Dean, for his part, looked vaguely hurt, while Remus sent Harry a look that could actually kill.

“Sorry…” he muttered, falling silent.

“Right - Potter-Black has had a bit of an incident that’s impacted him memory,” Remus began, which - rude, “so if he says anything odd to you today pay it no mind.”

There were quiet giggles from the assembled students and Neville - Neville! - sneered at him, but Dean’s face softened so Harry supposed that was alright. 

“Malfoy will be minding him during the exercise, and he’ll be defending with me, so we should still have even numbers to proceed. And I’m sure you all remember Auror Potter-Black and Healer Black as well as Mr. Pettigrew from the Department of Magical Games and Sports, who’ll be captaining the offense once again.  Peter, why don’t you pick two students and we’ll get the rest sorted. Prongs, you’re good to take off now.”

James gave them all a jaunty salute before transforming (to appreciative gasps from the students) and taking off into the mist. Ten minutes later, they were sorted into two teams of fifteen students a piece, and Sirius had taken off on his broom to fly above the fray.   

“Alright, on my single defense you’re free to go.  Remember what I said, nothing stronger than Class III curses - I don’t want to see any injuries worse than something from a stunner or a diffindo. Is that clear?  Nott, I’m talking directly to you.”

Theo grinned, but there was humor in it.  

“As always there’s a couple of nasty blighters in there courtesy of Professor Diggory - nothing worse than a boggart or redcap I should think, but keep a keen eye out, you know how things like to wander in from the Forest when its misty like this.”

A couple of the students shivered but Harry felt nothing but exhilaration as he took out his wand and prepared to run into the fray.  

“Alright - On your mark, get set, go!”

Harry and Draco raced into the mist, wands out, a dozen or so students on their heels.  Remus was just to his left, looking younger and more playful than Harry had ever seen him.  In the dim light of the fog, his eyes were positively glowing.

Draco was right, Lupin really was hot when he was feral like this.

“You two - take the area by the Ravenclaw stands - you know Prongs will want to tempt some nasties out of the forest if he can and that’s where it cuts closest to the field.”

“We doing zone then, Professor?”

“I think that’s best, yes, Miss Weasley, unless you’ve a different idea.”

“Nah, zone’s cleanest, keeps us from jinxing each other on accident.”

“An excellent point.  Five points to Slytherin. Now, why don’t you and Mr. Rosier take the far set of goal posts, and make sure nothing sneaks in from the back.”

Dean Thomas Rosier smirked at the werewolf as if they were in on some sort of inside joke.  Harry thought it was rather rude and not very professorial to make the kid with one eye act as look out but no one else seemed bothered by the conversation.

“Nothing’ll get by me ewythr, don’t worry,” Dean responded with a warm smile at Remus and since when did he speak Welsh? What the fuck?

“Come on,” Draco said, pulling Harry over to their assignments and he added that conversation to his ever growing list of things to ask Draco about.  

Green sparks erupted in the distance, announcing the start of the offense and Harry felt his magic thrum through him with anticipation.

The first people to come their way were Theo Nott and Pansy Parkinson.  Without any pretense, Theo hurled a silent stunner at Harry’s head which he just avoided by falling to the ground, dragging Draco down with him.  Draco had a spell off at Pansy in a split second, a tripping jinx which sent her careening into the side of one of the Ravenclaw bleachers.  

“Aerial attack? I’ll cover you,” Draco said, his eyes alight with the thrill of the game.

“What?  Like fly?”

Harry threw up a shield and then a stunner of his own at Theo as Draco gaped at him, momentarily distracted.  

“Oh Haz… who are you. Fine, I'll go.  Too big of an opportunity to pass up, Pansy hates birds. Cover me, keep the spells low.”  And then, without any further discussion Draco transformed into the most beautiful kestrel Harry had ever seen.  

Holy Shit.

Draco Malfoy was an animagus.

Did that mean he was an animagus?

A purple spell whizzed by his head, reminding him that now was not the time to be wondering about how fucking cool other Harry’s life was.  He sent six spells in rapid succession at Theo and Pansy as Draco disappeared into the mist. Then just as Theo almost clipped him with a bat bogey hex, a streak of grey and white shot out of the sky as Draco dive bombed Pansy from above.

She screeched - wow she really was afraid of birds - and threw up her hands to protect her face, leaving her body exposed for the stunner Harry sent her way two seconds later.

“Oh you dicks!” Theo said, but he was laughing as he levitated Pansy out and retreated. Draco, still in Kestrel form, flew a loop through the air in victory, startling a laugh out of Harry. 

Draco was just about to start a second circuit when a green spell flew at him out of nowhere, missing him by inches.  Harry’s eyes flew up - panic pumping through his veins and his eyes caught on Peter fucking Pettigrew standing in a copse of trees wand still aimed at Draco.  Another green spell left his wand, headed straight for the animagus.  It was a darker green than Harry had ever seen, and he couldn't hear the rushing sound, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe…

With nothing but a soul crushing urge to stop the spell on his mind, Harry cut his wand through the air, realizing as he did that he’d screamed “No!” loud enough that it echoed through the pitch and surrounding forest.  

His intention had apparently been clear enough for the magic to work because the Ravenclaw stand they’d been positioned next to crashed violently to the ground, intercepting the spell and burying Pettigrew beneath a pile of timber.

Draco changed back in a blink, eyes wide, but not with panic at having almost been Avada’ed (twice).  No, he was staring at Harry like he’d gone insane.  Harry was just about to open his mouth to say something, when his Father came charging out of the mist, transforming mid leap back into his Auror form, just as Sirius landed next to his right.

“Haz, what the fuck!”

Chapter Text

“He tried to kill Draco!”  Harry knew he was yelling. but fuck this.  “I saw it with my own eyes! Shot an Avada at him while he was a bloody bird and couldn’t defend himself.”

“Haz…” James said in a placating tone, but Harry was having none of it. “I saw the spell, dad!”

“Harry. I know what you thought you saw,” James said, pulling out his own wand. “Draco may I?”

“Sure, Ja-Auror Potter-Black.”

“Look– Animagus Umwandeln! ”

A forest green jet of light left James' wand and hit Draco right in the chest, drawing a strangled cry from Harry before it morphed Draco into his kestrel form. He flapped his wings a few times, flying around to Harry’s other side, before transforming back.

“See Haz?  A little disorienting if you’re not expecting it, but nothing worse than that.”

Harry couldn’t help but reach for the other boy, grabbing him by his shoulders and looking him over for any sign of damage before looking back up at his father.

“I– I just saw the green and–”

James’ brow was furrowed in confusion but Remus, who’d come over as soon as they extracted Peter and had caught the conversation, was looking pensive. He looked around at the gathered students though, and jumped back into professor mode.

“Alright everyone, that’s it for today, I’m afraid.  We’ll leave it at that for today. We’ll leave the course up though, and continue the game during Thursday’s lesson. Nothing to be concerned about, just an accident, but if I could have two volunteers– perfect, thank you Mr. Rosier, Miss Weasley - the rest of you can go on up to the castle.”

They all waited, in awkward intermission as the rest of the students filed past as Ginny and Dean went down to where Sirius was tending to Peter.  Draco, bless him, stayed at Harry’s side without being asked, and the Marauders seemed to think this was such a foregone conclusion that no one even commented.  When finally Blaise Zabini rounded the bend and was out of earshot, Remus turned to James, an earnest look in his eyes.

“I used to have that reaction,” he said quietly.

James scoffed. “Don’t be daft Moony, we used to throw it around the dorm all the time.”

“Not then,” Remus said, still staring at Harry, “After the war. It changed for me after the War.  Then any green spell had me jumping no matter the context.”

“But Haz hasn’t–”

“Goddamnit Prongslet, what the hell was that!” Sirius said, wiping his hands off, having just finished tending to Peter, “Compound fucking fracture, concussion, three bruised ribs and he’s lucky it wasn’t worse.  I can’t tell what spell you used but I’m pretty sure when Rem said nothing about a Class III he also meant ‘don’t drop a bloody stadium on one of your uncles.’”

“He is not my uncle.”

Harry didn’t care if it was a different universe - he’d never feel sorry for any amount of pain he inflicted on Wormtail.

“Jamie, mate, I know Reg wants to wait but–”

Whatever Sirius was going to say was interrupted by Peter, supported by Dean and Ginny, storming up to them as fast as his good leg would carry it.

“I know he’s your kid but I’ve had it up to here with his shit.  What is it this time Haz, too high to know when a prank goes too far?”

It took all the self control Harry had not to draw his wand and curse the bloody traitor right then and there.  His father was alive, and still friends with the pathetic excuse for a man, so things couldn’t have gone down exactly the same as they had in his world.  But some part of Harry just knew…

“Where’s my mother?”

The question took everyone standing there by surprise, like Harry thought it would.  James paled and gaped at him, Sirius’ eyebrows shot into his hair, and Draco actually reached out and grabbed for his wrist - whether to support him or restrain him Harry wasn’t certain.  But he wasn’t concerned with that at the moment.  He was watching Wormtail for any tell…

And yes. There it was.  The way his eyes widened in fear and guilt before he fixed a perplexed look on his face told Harry all he needed to know.  

“That’s what I thought.”

“Ja-James you ne-need to get that boy in line!” Peter blustered, but he had gone completely pale, and not just from the pain.  “Dunno what he’s go-going on about but it's bang out of order.”

Remus (who Harry was starting to think might suspect that what was going on with him that ran deeper than just memory loss) scrunched his nose as if smelling something on the air, before his eyes sharpened on Peter.  Dean, almost on instinct, mirrored Remus - turning to the man he was supporting with an assessing glance.

“Why… why are you afraid, Peter?” Remus’ voice was so low - so low and so controlled - but the tone told Harry that if Wormtail hadn’t been afraid before he absolutely should be now.  

“Because talking about the War is bloody upsetting alright! Merlin, Remus I volunteer to help you and then Prongs’ Brat–”

“Watch it, Pete.”

“Prongs’ son, drops a fucking tower on me, doesn’t apologize, and starts ra-rambling on about the war dead as if Lily would be anything but disappointed–”

“I said watch how to speak about my son, Peter.” James’ response came out as a growl.

“I don’t bloody need this! I don’t bloody need any of this!” Peter’s voice was rising in indignation.  “Next time you decide to run this stupid exercise, Remus, you can leave me out.  Padfoot I’d like to go up to the Hospital Wing now.”

Sirius had been staring at Remus since he scented Peter’s fear, and for a moment their eyes locked.  For the first time since Harry arrived in this universe, he saw them look at eachother in a way that didn’t seem hostile. They almost seemed to be having an entirely separate conversation, one that no one else had any hope of following.

“Sirius!” 

Remus looked away and the moment was broken.

“Yeah. Sorry Pete, I’ll uh— I’ll take you up now.”

“Hurt him and I will find you, Wormtail.”  Harry called out to their retreating backs.  He probably sounded unhinged, but the look of absolute horror Wormtail gave him was worth whatever shit storm would come.  Maybe they’d think he was just messing around.  

The looks Remus and James were giving him kinda made him doubt it.  

“Right,” James said, cradling his head in his hands.  “Pads is right.  I don’t think this can wait until tonight. Come on.”

They began their trek back up to the castle, Harry dragging his feet - unsure if Sirius tending to Peter would mean that Regulus, rather than his godfather, would be probing into his mind and realizing that he really really wasn’t ready for all that.  He was brainstorming ways to stall, wondering whether or not he could coax Draco into helping him with some kind of a distraction, when he caught sight of a dark-haired person rushing down the steps.  He met Sirius, Pete, Ginny and Dean, and said something to Sirius that had him looking back at them.

And then Sirius was handing Peter over to Ginny and Dean completely and the pair of them - it was clear it was Regulus now - were running , running towards them.  

“What on Earth…” Draco murmured and Harry quite agreed.  Fit as he was, something about Regulus Black running felt wrong wrong wrong.

They met them in the middle of the Great Lawn, and Regulus flew at Harry, his eyes wide with concern as he put one hand on Harry’s forehead as if to check for fever, the other one flying to his pulse point.

“Haz, mon loulou , gods are you alright?”

“What - yeah I’m fine, its Peter who got hurt.”

“Your heart, your head - have you had any trouble breathing? Oh gods - Sirius do you think it’s too late for a Bezour?”

“We can try Reg, but any reaction he would’ve had by now–”

“HEY!” James cried out, coming around to stand right by Reg and Harry, one hand on Harry’s shoulder all signs of his earlier anger gone. “What’s going on?”

“The– Pensieve they were using– so old, a bloody antique– different, different solution than we use now,” Regulus’ breathing was coming in heavy, but whether it was from the exertion of the run or panic Harry couldn’t tell.  

“How was it different?” Draco was pale, as he asked, even for him, and had gone back to clutching Harry’s wrist.  Harry decided he rather liked it when he did that, and would have to think about that later if whatever this revelation was didn’t land him in the Department of Mysteries.

“Modern Pensieve Potion uses purified Appalachian Micah–”

“--right–”

“But during the Eighteen Sixties–”

“--the embargo?”

“Yes!”

Merlin, Draco really was so smart.  He might be proper fucked with this crush.  Thank Gods his Ron wasn’t here to see it.

“So then, as a binding agent they must have needed, to get that sheen–” Draco’s eyes widened and he too pressed into Harry’s pulse point, “Oh Gods.”

“Mother of Pearl.”

James let out a sound of alarm, and Remus’ eyes widened in horror.

Harry didn’t get it.

“What’s… what’s wrong with mother of pearl?”

Sirius threw up his arms in exasperation, as James, using his slow ‘you’re very insane’ voice again spoke.

“Haz - you’re deathly allergic to mollusks.”

“Am I?  I’ve had prawns before.”

Draco let out a groan of frustration. “First those are crustaceans you absolute loon - and second you’ve had oysters before, and yes you are, seeing as how you almost died on our bloody veranda and mother still hasn’t forgiven herself.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed.”

“So… maybe I got over my allergy?”

“Harry,” Regulus said, very seriously, enough to make him look back at the man and take in the palpable concern in his eyes.  “That much shellfish, unattended. It should’ve killed you.”

An accidental overdose then.  He felt a little bad for Fortunate Harry.

But also for himself, since this probably meant that the ruse was well and truly up.

“That explains it, then.”

Chapter Text

Uncle Sev was being kind of a dick, given how he’d saved his life and all.  

“You left?”

“Umm yes?  Fucked up nose guy was trying to kill me!”

“Potter!”

“Weird, you only call Pops that–”

“Pay attention - you’re telling me you gravely injured the Dark Lord–”

“--I mean I assume, his arm hit the ground but I didn’t really see what else–”

“--And then you JUST LEFT?!”

“Well… I took Drake with me, wasn’t going to leave him behind even if Aunt Cissy was there.”

Snape turned to Draco with a completely bewildered look on his face. “Aunt Cissy?”

“No clue, Professor. He’s been like this since he came back to life.”

Snape gaped at them both for a moment, before closing his eyes as if he had to physically drag the patience up from the depths of his soul to put up with their bullshit.

“Since he– How. How did both of you neglect to tell me that Potter died ?”

“--well. He got better…”

“Did it not occur to you, Draco, that perhaps the reason why RESURRECTED Potter is not acting like Potter might be because Potter is not the one who came back?”

The blond boy’s eyes flew to him in alarm.  He took a step back.

“Nooo… it did not.”

“Right. Legilimens .”

He hadn’t faced an outright assault as brutal as Uncle Sev’s in years - possibly ever.  Snape made it through half of the evening - him and Draco in the Room of Hidden things filling two vials of the Pensieve Potion… them making their way down to the Forbidden Forest… the quick frot behind the Greenhouses… and then setting up in the clearing–

Fucking Rude!

He flew back into his Sev’s mind angrily and then he was watching Sev – in the headmaster’s office? Why was it all green? Then down by the boathouse with Snakeface himself… getting attacked by the snake… passing Harry memories as he bled out…

“I just left you there like that?”

No wonder Uncle Sev was so pissed at this Harry.

“Well?” Draco asked nervously - and when had he moved all the way over there? Merlin he really was afraid of him.  “Is it Potter?”

Snape was gaping at him, but he glared back.  He really wasn’t fond of having his mind messed with. 

“I– It appears that we are joined by a version of Mr. Potter from a different universe… a very different universe from the looks of it.”

Draco looked at Snape like he was insane. 

“What?!”

“Unless I’m very much mistaken about the nature of your relationship–”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It seems that where this Potter is from you two… make love not war.” 

“Ugh, we’re friends with benefits, why are you old heads always trying to read more into it?” Haz said, momentarily forgetting that this Sev was not his Sev.

“We’re what ?! That’s preposterous.  I don’t even like boys.”

Harry and Severus both turned to look at Draco incredulously at that, and he had the decency to flush at the lie.

“Well even if I did, I’d never take up with him.”

“Ouch Dray–”

“Would you stop calling me that!” 

“FILTH! BLOOD TRAITORS! HALF-BLOODS DISHONORING THE HALLS OF MY FOREFATHERS!”

“Pas maintenant, grand-mère!”

It took some cajoling for Harry to get the curtains closed again.  When he’d finished he turned around to see Snape staring at him as if all his worst fears had come to pass. 

“Potter… in your universe… did your father and the mutt …”

“Ewww Pops and Sirius, no fucking way!”

Snape visibly exhaled in relief.

“Thank Merlin for small mercies.”

“Regulus would’ve castrated him for ever making a move on his man, are you kidding?  My dad’s the most possessive insane person you’ve ever–”

“ Regulus Black is your father?”

“...yeah?”

“But… Regulus was… Regulus had taste .”

“Ha! There’s the Uncle Sev I know - you hate it in my world too.  I think you get over it though, just to make Pops life hell.  I’m half convinced Regulus had me start calling you ‘uncle’ just to drive James spare.”

This was apparently too much for Snape’s mind to take.  He stared at Harry for a long moment before starting again.

“So Potter and Lily… they never…”

“What? No they did.  Can two blokes make a baby here?  Nevermind - pin in that for later - Regulus is my step -father.  But like, since I was two?  So yes, Regulus Black is my father.”

He felt the tears threatening again and tried to will them away.  He’d spent the last few years trying to deny Regulus and now… all he wanted was to have him here.

“He’s… he’s my dad.” It came out quiet and choked.  He missed his fucking dads.  

Snape’s eyes however had widened in hope.  “Does that mean–in your world, Lily is she…”

Harry looked away.  He knew how hard this was on his Severus.  The thought of breaking the news to this other version of his uncle hurt his heart.

“She was killed in the first war.  When her and my dad were splitting up she—she went over to the Longbottoms to talk to Alice about it.  They were down in the living room and Frank was giving Neville a bath when Vol–when he came.  They held him off long enough for Frank and Neville to escape but-mum was killed. Alice too.”

It was an old wound, and one he’d worked over in the grief counseling Regulus had insisted they all attend years ago.  He was proud of his mother, and he’d forgiven Severus for the part he played in her death years ago, even if her and Alice’s deaths had shattered James and Frank’s friendship and had turned Neville into a virulent anti-reconciliation fanatic. 

“Oh so in your universe too, I–” The devastation on Severus’ face was heartbreaking.

“I’ve forgiven you,” Harry said quietly.  “Pops, well you were never going to get along with Pops, but with how you helped in killing that evil mother fucker, I think… I think he must’ve forgiven you too, or else I don’t reckon he would’ve let me around you no matter how close you and Reg are.”

Severus stared at him for a moment and then shook himself.  “Right. Ok… ok, Potter.”

And then, completely unexpectedly, he rounded on Draco and drew his wand.

“Oi!”

“Not now, Potter. Intra-universe business.”

Draco backed up, clearly alarmed, looking for a way out.  

“Draco I have known you since you were born. You are not now, nor have you ever been, cut out for life as a Death Eater.  Albus gave you a choice on the Astronomy Tower, a choice which circumstance prevented you from taking.  It is for the sake of his memory that I am giving you that choice once again. Are you with us, or are you with the Dark Lord?”

Draco looked almost taken aback by the question. He looked at Harry, almost as if he was looking for support, and, well this was Drake. So he tried to smile encouragingly but that only seemed to alarm the Malfoy heir further.

“Who’s us, just you and Daft Potter?”

“For the moment… it would appear so, yes.”

Draco gave them another dubious look, before his eyes fell to the floor.

“My parents…”

“Failed you by getting you into this mess in the first place.  And trust me when I say, your mother wants you free of the Dark Lord more than anything.  I, of all people, should know.”

Harry didn’t know what that was about, precisely, but it seemed to mean something to Draco, who let out a shaky breath. 

“Alright.  Yes, Merlin help me.  I’m with you.”

“Good.  Now you’re not going to like this–”

Haz did not like the sound of that…

“But we have two… unsavory options as I see it in trying to reach this Potter’s universe.”

“Ohmigod, you’re gonna get me home!”

“Why would we waste time on that?”

Haz glared at Draco, who just gave him an unapologetic shrug.

“We’ve got a lot to deal with already, Potter.”

“It is not a waste–”Snape cut in, “because unless I am very much mistaken, this Potter’s universe is full of something we are sorely lacking at present.”

“What’s that?” Haz interrupted, earning himself a glare from Snape. Whatever - he was excited.

“Someone other than gods damned teenagers to lend a fucking hand.” And really, that made him want to giggle.  Uncle Sev was hilarious, in every universe.  

Draco though, seemed to be considering.  

“That… that’s actually a good idea.”

“So glad I have your approval,” Snape said flatly.  “Which brings us back to our two, somewhat odious options.  We can either seek entry into the Department of Mysteries–”

“Don’t be absurd–”

“Wicked! Always wanted to go there, is it true they have brains in a tank?”

“OR–” Severus said, raising his voice over both boys’ commentary, “we could… attempt to get Sybil Trelawney to grant us access to her grandmother’s scrying glass.  Both options, obviously, have their drawbacks.”

“Wait–” Haz said, more than a little confused, “Sybil Trelawney… the advice columnist?”

Chapter Text

“Explains what?  How does your seafood allergy explain anything?”

Don’t be mad.”

That was apparently not the right way to start a conversation with Regulus Black.  Immediately, his eyes sharpened and he cast a look at James, who responded with a glance of his own that seemed to beg the younger man to calm down.

He did not.

“Listen… Sirius, do you still want to read my mind?”  Harry said, casting around for a solution that wouldn’t force him to look into Regulus Black’s eyes and tell him that he’d switched places with his son when they (presumably) both died.

“You know what’s happening.”  Regulus said, his voice curt and accusing.  It wasn’t a question. Evidently, he didn’t need Legilimency to read Harry’s mind. 

“Haz–whatever it is, you need to come clean now.  Your father and I have been worried sick and I’m not going to let you hide behind Sirius just because he’s soft with you.”

“Oi!”

“You know you are.” The younger Black Brother said dismissively, and Sirius’ eyes narrowed at that.

“Yeah well, maybe he could use gentler handling every once and a while, Reg.”

Regulus’ face turned ice cold and James’ eyes widened in alarm.

“Pads–”

“Oh, come off it Jamie, we all know that him going all ‘Ancient and Most Noble’ brand of psycho with Haz’s ex is how we got into this mess in the first place–”

“His ex ?”  Regulus’ voice was a his of rage at that and wow, Harry kind of wanted to know this tea, but he’d just started psyching himself up to say something.  “That’s how you’re going to describe that fucking salopard ?”

Nope. He had to say it now, or he was going to lose his nerve.

“I–I am Harry James Potter,” he said, interrupting the escalating argument.  Everyone looked at him like he was a bit insane but they still fell quiet, waiting for him to continue.  He swallowed.  That was the easy part - it was this next bit they were not going to like.  Draco was still holding his hand - his panic over the lethal dose of mother of pearl Haz had consumed making him hover closer than normal.  He was probably going to hate Harry after this.  

Already feeling a little heartbroken over that fact, he very selfishly squeezed Draco’s hand - who instantly returned the gesture, pulling Harry’s whole arm into his body.

Fuck.

“I am Harry Potter, but I’m not Haz Potter-Black.”

The response wasn’t instantaneous from everyone. James squinted at him, as if trying to decide if he was just insulting Regulus or telling them something important.  Remus tilted his head, peering at Harry as if he was a fascinating puzzle to be figured out. And Draco… well, Draco’s hand seemed to spasm in his, although he didn’t release his grip. 

Regulus and Sirius though…

Their argument from a moment before seemed all but forgotten as they fixed him with near identical looks of deep suspicion.

“What do you mean, you’re not Haz Potter Black?” James said, his voice low and foreboding.  Regulus though, wasn’t waiting.  He drew his wand, sparks shooting out the end in his haste and Harry instinctively threw up a shield, pushing everyone but Draco back a few feet.

“The fuck was that?!”  Sirius exclaimed - but Regulus’ wand was now trained on him.

“Where is my son?”

“I don’t know!”

That was, evidently, the wrong answer.  This time, the reactions were much more immediate.  James and Draco instantly seemed to jump to the heightened level of alarm that the Black Brothers had adopted moments earlier. Draco dropped his hand, staring at Harry with a mixed look of betrayal and confusion on his face. James’ wand came out then, and he looked poised to attack when Remus stepped in front of him placatingly.

“Calm down, Jamie, just hear what he has to say–”

But Regulus, who'd already seemed as if he was teetering on the edge before Harry confirmed that Haz was probably somewhere and it wasn't here, broke. With a flourish, he struck. A stunner or something darker - Harry couldn’t be sure, he’d cast it wordlessly - came hurtling his way.

“Stop! Oh my God, stop. It’s not what you think!” He said, throwing up a shield and pushing Draco and James away with a forceful but not overly intense silent bombarda .  Regulus cast a diffindo which Harry didn’t have time to block.  He twisted, and it grazed him in the ribs, ripping through his robes and slicing into his side with sharp, intense pain that felt almost like being burned by fire.

Regulus Black was not fucking around.  Harry was just about to cast again when he felt the press of a wand at his throat. While he’d been distracted with Regulus, Sirius had snuck up on him from behind.

“Where’s my godson? What the fuck have you done to him?”  The older Black’s voice was low and deadly.  Even though Harry knew this Sirius wasn’t his Sirius, part of his heart broke at the tone of absolute hatred in his godfather’s voice.  

“Sirius I… I am Harry, I’m just not… I’m just not your Harry,” he choked out, realizing as he spoke that tears had begun to run down his cheeks as he spoke.  He’d fucked this up.  Fucked it all up.  He should’ve come clean earlier.  He should’ve never come clean at all.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Regulus hissed and Harry’s eyes flew to him.  Regulus, who’d never stopped suspecting him - who’d only warmed to him when he thought he was in the process of dying of anaphylactic shock.  Regulus who seemed to think he was in charge even though he didn’t even seem to be on speaking terms with Haz.  Regulus who everyone - seemed to defer to now.

“Well?” he said, arching that perfect Black family eyebrow at Harry, and he snapped.

Guess he was about to have his first row with a parent.

“Listen asshole, you may be this Harry’s step-dad, but to me you’re just a decomposing Death Eater at the bottom of a lake full of Inferi so hear me when I say in my mind you’re the last person here I owe answers to.”

Sirius and Regulus’ eyes went wide at that. From his place next to James, Harry noticed that Remus had gone preternaturally still. James and Draco, though, just looked alarmed.

“A lake full of what?” Draco exclaimed.

“Reggie did you–” Sirius began, but before he even got the question out the younger Black brother cut him off.

“Never.”

Sirius’ eyes flew to Remus’ and the werewolf scoffed in affronted disbelief.

“Christ, I know how little you think of me Sirius, but honestly I haven’t even talked about it with James–”

“Reg,” James began, his voice oddly calm “what are they talking about?”

Silence.

“Pads?”

Both Black brothers were looking wary now, and Harry knew an opening when he saw one.

“You asked days ago for permission to use Legilimency on me,” Harry said, his eyes locking on Sirius.  “I consent.  I don’t know how I got here either, but I am Harry Potter, and I am your Godson, just maybe from somewhere… different.”

Sirius’ eyes were fixed on his.

“Siri–”

“I didn’t mean to, Padfoot,” Harry said softly, eyes still locked on his godfather.  “I think me and Haz must’ve switched places.  I don’t know them–” 

He waved vaguely in the direction of James and Regulus, who both seemed hurt.

“–but I know you.  So, you can see for yourself.”

“Sirius, don’t–”

“Legilimens.”

Where Snape had felt like a cold steel blade, Sirius felt like fire as he tore through Harry’s mind, pulling his consciousness back and forth in a dizzying swirling inferno.

He jumped first to Haz - to that moment when Harry saw himself on the platform, standing on the other side of the train in King’s Cross.   Harry could feel Sirius’ confusion through their link, but he didn’t have time to make out more than that before the memory flitted away.  Behind his eyes colors swirled until things seemed to take shape once more.  This time they were back in the Forbidden Forest, and Harry felt his heart speed up as he took in the unnatural form of Voldemort, wand held aloft, lips peeled back in a snarl as he attacked.  The last thing he had time to notice was the ghostly figures of his parents, Sirius and Remus standing with him before Voldemort struck him down.  

Sirius jerked out of his mind in shock when the green jet of life hit him in the chest.  It took Harry a second to right himself - to make sense of this healthier, saner version of his Godfather who was staring at him in confusion, chest heaving as if he’d just run several miles.  

“You are my Godfather,” Harry said, surprised by the force in his voice, by the tears now streaming down his face for an entirely different reason.

“I am.”  Sirius agreed. 

“Pads I really think you should–”

The look in Sirius' eyes told Harry that the elder Black Brother had, if possible, more questions than he had originally.  

“You can go again if you want,” Harry said, cutting off his father, and Sirius didn’t hesitate.

“Legilimens!”

The flames were back, but this time they burned towards Harry’s memories of Sirius.  Flashes of Sirius as a wraith in the forest, then Sirius in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place singing David Bowie; Sirius speaking in whispers to Harry through the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room; Sirius teasing Moony when they cleaned out the drawing room - their eyes lingering in a way Harry hadn’t understood at the time.

And then…

The Department of Mysteries… Lucius Malfoy’s furious face, Bellatrix’s manic cackle, Sirius next to the Veil, Sirius falling… Sirius…

The presence in his mind was ripped away abruptly and Harry staggered backwards, blinking in the sudden brightness of the day.  It took him even longer to right himself this time, to make sense of what he was seeing, to remember that he was out on the great lawn with people besides Sirius Black, including Sirius’ now furious younger brother who, apparently, was his more protective parent.

Because only that could explain how Sirius was now sprawled out on the grass, rubbing his reddening jaw with Regulus standing over him, sporting split knuckles and a look of absolute fury.

“He gave me fucking permission!” Sirius shouted up, indignantly.

“You went too far! You always go to Gods-damned far, Sirius! His fucking nose is bleeding!”

Harry reached up to touch his nose to discover, yes, there was a trickle of blood that had run down from his left nostril, filling the bow of his lips with blood that stuck to his finger as he pressed against the wetness.

"His side is still bleeding from where you bloody cut him open you twat!" Sirius replied, and oh yeah... he'd forgotten about that.  Harry pressed a finger to his side, sucking in a pained breath when his hand met with the split skin.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Remus’ voice was kind as he first vanished the blood on Harry's face and then lifted his shirt and began to stitch the flesh together. 

As the werewolf bent to inspect his work Harry's eyes landed on James, who was looking between his husband, his best friend and his son with a lost look on his face. He felt a rush of anger and hurt at how... passive his father seemed in all of this.  He'd always heard that James Potter was cocksure, almost to the point of arrogance, that he was a natural-born leader, the kind of person who people ran to follow. So why did this James always seem like the last to act, the least sure? 

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” he said bitterly, and James seemed to redden at his words.  

“Sorry Haz–Harry…” It had been a stupid comment on his part.  Baiting James into a response had only served to remind him that he was still suspicious of Harry.  

“Pads was he–”

“He’s your son, Jamie.”

James’ shoulders visibly sagged.  

“But he’s not our Haz.  They switched places it seemed when they…”  Sirius looked down at this, the gravity of the situation seeming to hit him mid-sentence. "Muggle Christ, what a mess."

“When they what, Sirius?”  Regulus asked before craning his head around to look at Harry accusingly.  “What did you do to take my son’s place?”

Oh… fuck you, Regulus Black.

“I died.”

Chapter Text

“You let her fucking teach?”

“Dumbledore let her teach.”

Haz scoffed.  “You kept her on, though. Even though she’s a proper fraud.”

“I spent the last year trying to keep the Carrows from killing or permanently maiming any of the students, Potter.  My apologies for not putting replacing the Divination Professor higher on my to do list.”

“Mmm. Still funny. My Uncle Sev hates her column more than anyone .”

“Sybil Trelawney the journalist,” Snape said, his lip curling in disgust, “at least here the only people exposed to her lunacy are the students intellectually stunted enough to take divination.”

Snape and Draco shared a smirk.  Wait did that mean that he…

“Wait… you’re not saying I…”

“You were far from a scholastic genius Potter. Divination was far more your speed than arithmancy.”

Was rubbish world Harry a simpleton? How embarrassing.  

“What did Trelawney write, in your world?”

Haz glanced at Draco, who seemed a little embarrassed for having asked the question - as if he didn’t know full well that Draco was one of the most curious people in the Wizarding World.  Of course he had questions - Haz had come from a parallel bloody universe after all - but so far he’d restricted himself to only the occasional query rather than grilling Haz like he was undoubtedly dying to.  Haz tried to smile encouragingly as he answered.

“She wrote one of the most popular columns in the Daily Prophet - the Unsolicited Advice Column.  Never tell him I said so, but Remus was obsessed with it - and dad always looked at it before he threw the paper away even if he’d never admit it.”

Snape scoffed. 

“Typical James Potter, always needs to check to see what the fans are saying.”

Haz furrowed his brow at Severus.  He knew that Pops and Uncle Sev didn’t like each other - but it had never been like this.  Weird that it was so much more intense in a world where James was dead.

“No… its Regulus who checks it every time.  He’s the one who won’t let information pass him by no matter how much it hurts.  James, Pops, he’s…”

In recovery?  Never been the same since his wife left their safehouse after an argument and then was murdered?  The kind of person who always carries the shadow of having hit rock bottom on him if you know where to look?  Haz didn’t feel like this Sev was really deserving of those answers.  

“He’s…different. Because of the war.  At least according to Reg and Sirius.”

Snape had the decency to look away at that, apparently sensing the sensitivity around the topic.  

“What kind of things did she write?” Draco asked, pulling them back on task and Haz grabbed onto it like a life raft.

“All sorts of things - the whole idea was that people’s problems would ‘come to her’ from the beyond and then she would write proposed solutions.  Publicly.  Usually it was just embarrassing - she dedicated one whole column to your dad’s receding hairline once, Draco - but other times it’d be pretty serious.  The one she wrote about Frank and Neville needing to let their anger go to move on seemed like it was going to get the whole thing shut down.”

Both Draco and Sev made faces of confusion at that, but neither commented, seeming to chalk it up as an interdimensional oddity.  

“Would she get the word out, if we communicated with her directly?  To your fathers?”

Haz nodded enthusiastically.  

“Definitely.  They’re–my dads are war heroes.  They don’t talk about it much but it’s always kind of there - for them and Pads and Remus - it’s why they’re so bloody popular with everything they do.  It’s definitely the only reason Pops is still an Auror, for the gravitas he brings to the DMLE more than anything, you know?”

Severus looked like he was trying very hard not to roll his eyes, and fair - even in their world Haz couldn’t have talked about James Potter’s gravitas without Severus lodging an objection.  Orders of Merlin could only go so far.  Somehow, this Severus powered through and nodded, as if making a decision.

“Alright.  It’ll be worth the risk then.  Potter, I suggest you get that House Elf of yours to take you up to the Divination Tower and try to convince Sybil that her scrying glass is needed for urgent Order of the Phoenix business.  She’s never been a member but she worshiped Dumbledore, I doubt she’ll give you a hard time about it.”

Sure.  That made sense, kind of.  There was only one problem.

“I ummm… I don’t actually know what she looks like.”

Severus blinked at him, as if this hadn’t occurred to him, while Draco scrunched up his face as if trying to conjure a description.

“A bit like a dragonfly… but with frizzy hair–”  

Snape gave Draco a withering look and he fell silent blushing slightly.  Haz gave Draco a conspiratorial wink which earned him a look of alarm followed by a deep scowl that did nothing to discourage his budding affection for this darker, pricklier Draco.  

If he wasn’t still in love with Etienne he might think the old heads were right, and that all their fucking about had caused him to actually develop a crush on his blonde best friend.

Except, as he was constantly having to remind himself, this wasn’t his best friend.  This was someone else - someone who met his eyes with hostility rather than warm affection, and something about that made Haz’s heart race with the thrill of the challenge.

James.  I’m so James it’s disgusting. 

He wondered if it had been the same with the Harry Potter that he’d switched places with.  Based on the genuine bewilderment in Draco’s eyes, he kind of doubted it.  

“If this… iteration… of Potter is unaware of what Sybil Trelawney looks like, then you will have to accompany him back, Draco.”

“What?!”

“I will transfigure you, if need be–”

“--why can’t he just go to the Divination Tower?”

“We… uh… we don’t have a Divination Tower, actually.”

Severus nodded as if this made complete sense.  “Hogwarts adjusts to fit the needs of its student body.  The castle is not the same as it was when I attended as a student, I imagine the layout could be quite different from how it is in an alternate universe, particularly if the student body is different than ours.  Potter, how many students are there in your year in Gryffindor?”   

“Uhhh hold on one sec, lemme think…”

“...you don’t know how many students are in your year in your house?”

“‘S not my house.  I’m in Slytherin.  I think it’s what - seven? Granger, Brown, Patil, Patil, Weasley, Finnegan, Rosier?”  

He looked at Draco for confirmation, but he was just looking at him in shock, his eyes wide.  Snape, too, had gone pale. 

“What?”

“We… we don’t have a Rosier in our year.  In any house.”

Haz felt the pit fall out of his stomach.  He, Draco, and Dean had been near inseparable growing up.  If Draco had been his best friend then Dean had been the closest thing he had to a brother growing up - with how often Sirius and Remus brought him over and with how much Regulus doted on him.  They’d only grown apart after fourth year, after Remus had caught him with Etienne and had told Regulus about it.  Dean had taken Remus’ side, offended on behalf of the man who’d acted almost as a father to him at Haz’s prolonged cold shoulder.  It had driven a wedge between them, a wedge that became a chasm after Dean was attacked and Sirius and Remus split, throwing their whole dysfunctional family into disarray.

Haz had been a shit - too caught up in his own discomfort as Dean’s disfigurement to really be there for him - all too glad to seem as if he was keeping a distance out of allegiance to Sirius even though his godfather had spent the last two years doing everything he could to win back the boy he’d raised from infancy.  

Except, apparently in this world he didn’t.  Maybe in this world, Evan Rosier never checked on Dorcas Meadowes’ sister after she was killed.  Maybe they never came together in a drunken whirl of grief to conceive Dean.  

Or maybe… in this world his dad and Sirius didn’t get there soon enough. Maybe in this world, the Dark Lord’s plan went through, and Bellatrix and Barty killed him and his mother not knowing who he was.  Regulus had explained it to Haz once, the sick pleasure the Dark Lord would have gotten sending an uninformed Bella to eliminate her own maternal line, an unknowing Barty to kill the only child of his dead best friend…

Perhaps in this universe, he’d succeeded.  Just like he’d succeeded in killing James.

And all of a sudden it was all too much.

“S’cuse me…”

He barely made it to the hall bathroom in time before he fell to his knees, heaving into the toilet.  Once the panic started it couldn’t stop.  

Dean.

His Fathers.

Sirius.

Remus.

He’d never realized how surrounded he was with family until now. Even if he was mad at them, even if he’d pushed them away, they were always there .

Haz wretched again.  

Soft footsteps padded towards him.  He rose out a second wave of retching before looking back to see who  it was, wiping the tears from his eyes as he did so, and willing himself not to lay his cheek on the cool porcelain of the toilet in front of what was effectively a total stranger.  

Pricklier Draco was standing there, looking down at him.  Haz glanced up at him, their eyes connecting for a moment before Draco’s eyes skidded away, seeming embarrassed even though it was Haz who was indisposed.

“You alright Potter?”

“Grand. Just here in this crap world where everyone I love is dead.  Except for you and Uncle Sev, and apparently we’re not even on a first name basis.”  

Draco’s eyes widened at the word ‘love’ but he didn’t comment further, just lapsing into silence as he stood over Haz.  It was weirdly comforting, just having him here, and Haz could feel him heartbeat slowing back to normal in the loaded quiet of the bathroom.  He didn’t know this Draco per se, but he knew his Draco well enough to know that there was something the blonde boy wanted to say, so he waited, almost able to feel the pressure of whatever it was building on Draco’s tongue.

“What was he like? Rosier I mean.”

There it was.

“Brilliant.  Great athlete, better friend.  Loyal and steady, much less of a cunt than either of us. Never let the heir thing get to his head the way we sometimes did. The three of us were close as children - cousins, though you and I always acted more like friends.”

Made the sex less weird , Haz almost added, but it didn’t seem to be the time.

Draco nodded, not looking at him.

“I didn’t–I don’t have any cousins. It’s just me - I’m heir to Malfoy, Black and Rosier.”

He must be so lonely, this Draco.  No wonder he was so prickly.  

“I’ll help you spend down your vaults, ‘f you need,” Haz said, giving Draco what he hoped came off as a playful side smile.  True to his prickly nature, Draco seemed affronted at first, but then seeming to realize it was a joke, he gave Haz a small private smile.  The way it quirked his lips, bringing out the dimple in his left cheek reminded Haz violently of Regulus - of how when he’d been younger he’d always been secretly envious of the way Draco looked more like his father than he did, and he felt the need to be sick all over again.  

Sensing the change in him, Draco took a step farther into the bathroom, so that this time when Haz was done retching up the nothing that was left in his stomach the Malfoy heir was standing just a hair's breadth from where he was sprawled on the floor.  This time when he looked up, Draco held out a damp flannel that Haz accepted gratefully, wiping his mouth before banishing the cloth to the laundry. 

He glanced back at Draco to see the taller boy had extended his hand in offering.  Haz took it, noticing as he did the way Draco’s eyes widened as if in surprise.  They stood there, chest to chest, while Haz fought the urge to wrap his arms around the taller boy.  

Too much.  Too prickly, he’ll balk.  

Instead, they just stared at each other for a moment before Draco spoke again.

“Come on.  Let’s go get this scrying glass.  Maybe then I can meet this Rosier in person.”

Chapter Text

Draco didn’t want to be here.  

He didn’t want to see what had become of his lovely school - the castle that had been his home for the last seven years. He didn’t want to see how the lawn - usually a long unbroken plane of lush green grass now had whole chunks of earth torn out of it, craters of red clay carved out like pock marks as far as the eye could see. The bodies - the human bodies at least - were gone, but the debris remained.  Draco didn’t want to see them - the shoes and the tattered remains of students’ robes strewn about.  He didn’t want to wonder just how many of the prior owners of the flotsam littering the grounds had survived this makeshift killing field.

Potter, this queer, interdimensional Potter who seemed to like him despite having met him at his absolute worst, took him by his wrist, running a comforting thumb over his pulse point. It was something his mother did - an old Black family trick to keeping calm in stressful situations - one she’d deployed countless times over the past two years.  Had it been some alternative version of her who’d taught the trick to Potter?  Or was it Regulus?  Or had it been Draco - the unfathomable alternative version of himself who shared Potter’s confidences and his bed?

The thought made his head spin, but the familiar touch was enough to keep him grounded through the walk up the lawn, shuffling along as best they could beneath the invisibility cloak. As they got closer to the castle, they saw Order members patrolling around the perimeter with some of the older students.  

All from other Houses.   Not for the first time he burned with the shame of it - especially when they shuffled past a particularly battle-hardened looking Neville Longbottom, blood only partially scrubbed off his face and neck, a gigantic sword slung over his back.

“Gods, does he always look like that?”  Potter murmured once Longbottom had moved off far enough.  Draco, not sure exactly how to respond without damning himself (because yes, he had noticed the Longbottom glow up, despite the horrors of the past year) made a non-committal sound.  

“Ah, is he a cunt here as well?”

Draco spluttered at that.  He really could not imagine a world where Neville Longbottom could be described as a ‘cunt’ least of all by Harry Potter.  He was opening his mouth to say so, when they rounded a corner and Potter stopped dead in his tracks. Not expecting it, Draco walked into his back, stumbling back so he was too busy trying to find his balance to stop Harry as he threw off the invisibility cloak and launched himself at a very confused Dean Thomas.

“Jesus–Harry–What?” Thomas said, wrapping his arms around the shorter boy in confusion as actual tears began streaming down his face.

“Drake said he never met you, and, I thought… I thought…” Potter was almost hiccuping with emotion.  “But he must just know you by Meadowes or something.  Merlin and Morgana, I’m so glad to see you.”

“Meadowes?  Malfoy told you my mum’s maiden name?” Thomas’ eyes were widened in alarm, and Draco could’ve kicked Potter for his idiotic blundering.  

“No, I mean–he didn’t… are you not Meadowes then? I was just guessing.”

Harry… mate… you’re really worrying me. Let’s go find Ron and Hermione, yeah?”

“What?  No. No, I’m… I just need to get to the Divination Tower.”

Thomas nodded slowly, but Draco noticed from the subtle way he adjusted his wrist that he was sliding his wand out of his wrist holster.  Sure enough a second later the Gryffindor had his wand gripped tightly in his hand.

“Everyone’s really worried about you Harry,” Thomas tried again, in a too calm voice that set alarm bells ringing in Draco’s mind.  “We just want to understand what they did to you in the Forest. Hagrid told us it was Narcissa Malfoy who checked on you - was she the one who made you take Malfoy and run?”

“What? No–”

“ Stupefy! ”

The jinx hit Dean Thomas squarely in the chest and he slumped down to the side as Harry whirled about in alarm.

“What the bloody hell was that for?”  he shouted glaring daggers at a spot about two feet from Draco’s left shoulder.  

“That was to cover up your bloody idiocy! Making him think we’re doing research into his bloody muggle family!”

“I don’t know his last name! You told me he didn’t exist!”

“If Thomas is a secret Rosier, that’s news to me! And now he thinks my mother, who’s practically his Aunt, has Imperiused the Chosen One. So thanks for that.”

“The Chosen One?”

“You, you half-wit!”

“Chosen for what?”

“Getting on my last bloody nerve apparently!  Now get back under this stupid cloak before you cause another ridiculous scene!”

“My Draco likes the cloak just fine,” Potter said poutily as he stomped back to Draco. 

Annoying. Annoying that this Potter was bumbling about as if this wasn’t a dangerous mission; and annoying that Draco was somehow finding time to be jealous of an alternative version of himself.

My Draco.  Bet he’s a wanker.

“My apologies.  The cloak is brilliant, the stupidity is all yours. Happy?”

“Thrilled.  We can’t leave him here stunned.”

“Fine. Under the cloak, when we get to the end of the hall I’ll revive him.”

Potter ducked under the cloak, pressing himself against Draco’s back as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Draco did his best to ignore the shiver that went his spine at the contact, but his efforts were evidently insufficient judging by the pleased noise that came from his universe hopping companion.

"Mmm, saw that,” Potter said in a low, pleased voice.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Course you don’t.  Let’s go find that tower.”

Fifteen minutes later they were plodding up one of the shifting staircases, the last before they got to the ninth floor corridor and the spiral staircase that would lead to the Divination Tower, and Potter was panting with exertion.  They’d taken off the cloak a few floors earlier, once it became clear that Potter was struggling to keep up with Draco’s pace and that the upper floors were practically abandoned.  Potter’s cheeks were a little flushed, but it was the slight tremor in his legs and hands that had Draco’s brow furrowing in concern.

“Merlin fucking a Pendragon, I’m so weak!  Does he have some aversion to eating or something? I’m dizzy just from climbing the stairs.”

Draco eyes widened at hearing Harry Potter uttering such a pureblood curse (that particular phrase was one of Blaise Zabini’s personal favorites) before skimming over him again. The tremows had relaxed a bit since they’d paused, but his eyes couldn’t help but linger on Potter’s thin limbs and sunken cheeks.  

Sure, maybe he was slimmer than usual, but he’d always been slight, right? That was just his body type. 

“You’ve been on the run.  Probably not eating like you’re used to.  You’ve always stuffed your face when I see you.”

“Have I been on the run since I was in diapers then?  Because I can’t think of any other reason I’d be bloody shorter than I’m meant to be.”

As they reached the top of the staircase Draco turned around facing the shorter boy as he finished climbing his way up the stairs.  

“You’re short, Potter,” he said, a smirk on his lips.  “No need to make excuses.  We can’t all be wizards of impressive stature.”

Far from huffing indignantly like Draco had expected him to, Potter returned his smirk and then stepped up onto the landing, so close to Draco that they were practically chest to chest.  

“Trust me, Draco, I’m very familiar with your stature.” 

He looked up at Draco through soot dark eyelashes before lifting up on his toes to whisper in his ear.

“Mmm no. This is definitely more of a stretch than usual.”

What the bloody fuck was he supposed to do with that?

“I’m not convinced you know Sad Boy Harry well at all,” Potter said lightly, flitting past Draco and continuing down the corridor as if murmuring sweet nothings to each other was entirely normal behavior for them.  Maybe to him it was?

“Sad boy Harry?”

“That’s what I’m calling him for now.”

“Dramatic.”

“Accurate.”

As they were part way up the spiral staircase Potter paused again and looked back at Draco, his eyes flashing with uncertainty again.

“How do we get on?”

“You and Trelawney? Ok I expect.  I’ve never been in her classes, so I’m not sure.  She might not even be there.”

“What do we do if she’s not?”

“Take every reflective surface in her tower and let Severus sort it out,” Draco said, shrugging.  This woman held the key to a possibly inexhaustible reserve of rested wizards willing to put the Dark Lord down for good.  They weren’t going to stand on ceremony.  Potter, weirdly, seemed reassured by his words and nodded in agreement.

“Alright.  Cloak back on, just in case she’s not pleased to see you.”

Potter waited until the cloak was obscuring him again, and then turned and knocked on the trap door leading to Trelawney’s tower. There was a thudding noise, as if someone had stumbled into a piece of furniture right above them, and then the trap door was thrown open.  Trelawney looked down at Potter - eyes as round and bug-like as Draco had ever seen them, her wispy hair and half a dozen gauzy scarves hanging down towards them like spanish moss.  

“Mr. Potter, I have, of course, been expecting you,”  she said in the most mysterious voice she could manage, sweeping one scarved and bangled hand back in a welcoming gesture.

Fraud. Draco thought to himself.

“Er, great.”

“Please… do come in.”

“Right, I’ll just come up then.”

Draco did his best to scramble up right behind Potter without making it obvious or having a leg kick out beyond the bounds of the cloak.  It wasn’t graceful, and he was pretty sure he made more sound than he should, but he managed to get himself into the tower room before she shut the door behind him which he considered a victory.  He stood right behind Haz as he looked around the room, taking in his surroundings before looking back at the Professor in front of him.

“Now what can I do for you, Mr. Potter?  Or should I say, Mr. Potter-Black?”

Chapter Text

Harry still didn’t like Regulus Black.

But he had to admit, the man was a force to be reckoned with.  

The younger Black brother had gone weak in the knees when Harry had bluntly spat out that he died.  He’d been intentionally a dick about it, and as much as he hated it Harry knew why. 

A part of him had really wanted to put Regulus Black in his place.  Wanted to take the younger Black brother down a peg.  To remind him just who the fuck he was talking to.

But as soon as “I died” left Harry’s lips he realized that he had been the one who’d forgotten who he was talking to.  He’d forgotten that he was talking to a parent, and that he’d just used Regulus’ child’s death as a stick to hit him with to sate his aggravation.

For the first time since he arrived in this strange universe, Harry entertained the idea that he might be a bigger wanker than Haz.

Everyone there had panicked, half at Regulus sliding to his knees right there in the middle of the Great Lawn, and half as they realized the implications of Harry’s words.

If he had died, then Haz… 

But Regulus wasn’t down for long.

“I’m fine, Jamie! I can walk on my own.  Put that calming draught away, Sirius, before I blast the vial out of your hand.”

He’d pushed himself up, only the tremor in his aristocratic hands giving away the terrible shock he’d just suffered.  

“Reggie, maybe it’s best if we take a moment to just go back to your chambers and–”

“Did you move the Pensieve down to my chambers?”

“What?  No, it’s still in the Room of Hidden Things.”

“Then we’re going there.”  Regulus said it as if it was the obvious next step. James fixed him with a gentle look of concern.

“Reg, love… you already tested the Pensieve Potion earlier today, remember?” The Potter patriarch said, in a light soothing voice. “That’s why you came running out here?”

“James Potter if you do not stop speaking to me like I’m some weak-minded invalid I will hex you mute.  I am fully aware of why I’m here and how I got here.  I don’t need the Pensieve to test the potion, I need it so we call all see what bloody happened to our son and figure out what in Circe’s name to do about it .”

Then he turned his gaze on Harry and Harry almost felt the need to shrink away from the intensity of it.  

“I apologize.”

“What?”

Whatever he had been expecting Regulus to say, it hadn’t been that.

“I have attacked you. Twice.  I can be… hasty … when I am worried about my son.  You said in your world I am just a dead Death Eater at the bottom of a lake.  I am sorry for that. For myself and for you.  Because in this universe, Harry Potter, you are the most important person in my world.  And I would fight death himself to keep you safe.”

Harry shivered, and felt himself looking down so the older man wouldn’t see the way his words made his eyes sting.

What would it feel like to be loved like that, he wondered.

“Harry?”

He looked up, his eyes catching on Regulus’ intense silver irises again.

“Will you please let me see what happened?  Let us all look together so we can figure out how to get Haz back and how to get you home?”

Dread exploded in Harry’s gut at the last bit.

Don’t make me go back.

He almost said it.

Almost.

But he couldn’t keep Regulus from his son. Even if that spoiled, loved, version of him didn’t appreciate what he had.

So instead, he cleared his throat, trying to make his voice sound stronger than it felt.

“Y-yeah.  I can show you.”

Fifteen minutes later they were standing by a truly ancient looking Pensieve in the Room of Requirement, and Harry was trying to work out how much of his life to put on display.

“Have you used one of these before?”

James’ question was soft, and valid, but for some reason it annoyed Harry.  

He shouldn’t have used one before.  It wasn’t the kind of thing a normal student would just stumble upon, let alone know how to use if they did.

But Harry had been plunging into people’s memories since he was fourteen.  

It was how he saw the man in front of him, for the first time outside a small handful of pictures.

The thought made him angrier as he realized that, despite all the time they’d had, Dumbledore had never bothered to throw in a memory of his parents to let Harry see them. The thought left him feeling bitter, and more than a little hurt, so he did his best to shake it off.

“Yeah. I’ve used one before.”

Regulus, who had watched the exchange, seemed to sense that there was more there, but said nothing.  Despite the fact that he’d gotten along with the younger Black Brother far less than anyone else there, Harry found his focus grounding.  There was something about Regulus Black that made him feel as if it was ok to cede control - as if for once, it didn’t all have to fall to him.

It made him feel relieved and terrified in equal measure - the idea of letting go.

But Harry had never been a coward.  

“What do you want to see?”

“What do you want to see?”

Regulus almost trembled as Harry said it.

How could he have mistaken this boy for his son?  Even for a moment?

Haz had spent the last three years pushing him away - ever since that Nimue-damned predator had come with the Beauxbatons delegation to the Triwizard Tournament.

Regulus didn’t care if most of the continent had adopted an eight-year standard program of study, and Etienne Gallieux was technically a student - he was nineteen when Remus caught him pinning Haz up against a wall in an abandoned corridor, sucking love bites into Haz’s unblemished skin, the two of them stinking to high heaven of Gillyweed.

“He begged me not to tell you.  Just… handle it gently, please Reg.”

He didn’t. He got the canard sent back to Provence in disgrace but blew up Haz’s relationship with Remus and himself in the process.  He thought that would be the end of it - that Haz would go back to the happy child he’d been before Gallieux had introduced drugs and sex into his world.

But he couldn’t unring that bell.  The Frenchman left, but the habits stayed.

What’s worse, Haz started dragging Draco into it as well. 

Then last summer, during a bout of frustration when he knew - just knew - that Haz was keeping something from him, Regulus pushed.

Just a little bit. 

Haz had never had an issue keeping his Occlemency walls up before.  

But Haz was high, his mind a sluggish shadow of what it normally was, so Regulus slipped into the cracks and caught a glimpse of Etienne.  He was older - out of robes, but still just as covetous in the way he was touching Regulus’ son.  What’s more - Regulus recognized the square where they were sitting. It was in Rouen.  

Some part of him had worried about this exact thing, every time they’d come to France since the incident with Gallieux began.  But James had said he was being paranoid, and Cissy had wanted them there, and Sirius missed Remus less when he was out of London, and…

…but they shouldn’t have come.  It didn't matter if he couldn't protect his son from everything, forever.  He could have protected him from this, if he'd been just a little less willing to let it go.

As he slipped back out of Haz's mind, Regulus had forced his face to remain neutral.  He'd gone through the painful motions of preparing himself a cup of tea like he'd intended, going the extra mile not to arouse Haz's suspicions before heading to a different part of the house.  

Then as soon as he was out of earshot, he apparated away.

Regulus hadn’t had a plan. Thinking back, he supposed he probably would have just eviscerated the predator with his words, before hexing him in some embarassing but not illegal way.  Just to try to scare him off.  Protective though he was, Regulus knew this wasn’t the same as when Haz had been a fourth year.  His son was almost of age - and while Regulus personally thought no wizard worthy of anyone’s time would be messing about with a child on the edge of seventeen when they were almost in their mid-twenties - he understood that the law was not going to be overly fussed.

But then, Gallieux started making threats of his own.

“You should leave, Professor, unless you want me selling memories of your son on his knees to the highest bidder.”

It was a mistake on the Frenchman’s part - remembering Regulus’ profession but forgetting his last name.  

Blacks did not tolerate threats to their family.

By the time Regulus was done with him - Etienne Gallieux had forgotten a lot more than that.

After it was done, Regulus waited for the ax to fall.  It took month's - the better part of a year - and still he was surprised when it did.  He thought they’d have more time - at least through Haz's graduation.  He’d somehow forgotten Easter.

Haz stopped talking to him altogether.  James was as angry at him as he’d ever been.  Their son was spiraling, and Regulus couldn’t even get him to meet his eyes.

And now this stranger stood there, wearing his son’s face, looking at him through his son’s eyes, willingly offering what he would have carved his heart out to have from his son.

A glimpse inside.

A chance to understand.

A chance to maybe be understood in return.

“Regulus? What do you want to see?”

 He looked up, meeting those green eyes he knew better than his own.

“Everything.”

Chapter Text

Regulus was doing it again. Pushing for too much, this time with a stranger wearing their son’s face. 

Not a stranger. Pads says he’s Harry. 

And he did have echoes of Haz - James could see that clear as day.  The stubbornness. The loyalty. The disappointment in him. 

Apparently he was destined to be found wanting by his son from every universe. 

Prongs is his Patronus though…

His James Potter must’ve figured something out that he didn’t then. This Harry was clearly more comfortable with Sirius (no surprise there) and Remus (which clearly meant he was a better judge of character than James’ Haz), but if he’d earned Patronus status other James can’t have mucked up that badly.

“I don’t know them, but I know you.”

James knew could be fairly closed off. That when things became too much he had a tendency to space out.  ‘Dissociate’ the muggle mind-healer had called it, right about the time she’d tried to get him to agree to monthly sessions where he’d shred the Statute of Secrecy in the vague hope that saying the quiet parts out loud would make his catastrophic failures hurt less.  If in Harry’s universe Regulus hadn’t survived… 

Well, James couldn’t imagine there was much of himself left for Harry to know.

“Dad?”

He looked up at the sound of Harry’s voice. It was uncanny, now that he knew, how much he sounded like Haz but without any of the inflection he’d come to expect from his son.  Harry sounded guileless compared to his son.   It left him feeling confused and guilty for how good it made him feel to hear affection in his son’s voice again. 

“Are you… are you going to come with us?”

He was doing it again.

“Of course.” James tried his best to smile reassuringly, but even though Harry gave him a small smile in return, the tension around his eyes stayed in place.  

“I umm… I think it makes the most sense if I try to start at the beginning.  I don’t… I don’t know that it’ll make sense if I try to go in reverse.”

Regulus nodded.

“Very sensible.”

Harry exhaled as if he was preparing himself for something very unpleasant.  Then he closed his eyes and raised his wand to his temple, pulling it away with a white swirling string of memory a second later.  He pulled the memory away from his face, getting about a foot from his temple before the string detached and floated down, moving with an uncanny slowness through the air until he deposited it into the swirling Pensieve potion.  Regulus had insisted on replacing the solution, even though Harry had no intention of drinking it, and so the liquid was clear and unused until the memory touched its surface.  It swirled black and green for a moment before returning to its nondescript cloudy color.  

Harry repeated the process ten times or so, each time with longer pauses between. Around the seventh memory, a silent tear escaped from his closed eyelids, sliding down his face and catching on his jaw.  James found himself itching to wipe it away, to pull this boy - his son - into his arms and tell him he didn’t have to go on, that whatever memory was painful enough to make him cry in a room full of strangers wasn’t something James wanted to force him to relive for his own benefit.  But, as always, he waited too long.  Draco’s pale fingers were already cupping his Harry’s jaw, swiping away the tear and then resting there, rubbing that enchanting black family pattern into Harry’s skin.  There was something almost uncomfortably intimate about it, but Harry’s shoulders seemed to relax at the contact, and he finished extracting the rest of the memories with a few more shudders but no more tears.

When he opened his eyes again, they were brighter for the unshed tears crowding out his irises, but Harry’s voice was steady as he spoke.

“Right.  Who all is coming?”

They all looked around at each other, clearly all having hoped to go, before Remus quietly murmured, “if you’d prefer for me not to come I–”

“Nonsense.  Whatever fight you’re in with Haz, we’re good.  We’ll all squeeze in I guess.  I would let you go without me, only… I’m not sure they’ll make much sense without an explainer.  Especially–” here Harry paused and shot a nervous look in James’ direction that he couldn’t make heads or tails of– “especially the first one.  I’m not sure, really, how that one will turn out at all, actually.”

“Whatever it shows, however difficult to understand, we’re exceedingly grateful,” Regulus responded.  

Harry nodded.  “Right.  No sense in drawing it out then.”

He bent his head to the memories swirling around in the stone basin, and then with a twist of magic he was sucked into the pool below.  Draco followed suit immediately after, followed a split second later by Regulus (who, if James knew him at all, was annoyed that his precocious nephew had beat him to the punch).  

“Go ‘head, Jamie,” Sirius murmured from his left.  “We’ll be right behind you.”

He must be doing it again.

“Right.”

Not giving himself time to think, James strode forward and dipped his head to the memories.  He felt a lurch in his stomach and then he was falling forward into…

…darkness?  It wasn’t quite black, not really, more like a dark grey that seemed to almost shift around them.  There was just enough light around him that he could make out Regulus and the two boys and instinctively he reached out a hand to Regulus, who it without looking, as if after all these years he could anticipate James’ needs no matter the circumstances.

There was movement behind him, Sirius and Remus, he assessed quickly, though he could only see their outlines.

“Are we supposed to see–” Pads began but he fell silent as a familiar, frantic voice broke the silence.

“ Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off ——”

Regulus’ grip on James’ hand tightened into a vice-like grip as his own voice echoed around them.  There was a crash that seemed to come from below them, and a pounding that sounded like feet running up a staircase coming from their left.

He could hear the turn of a doorknob - closer now - and heavy, panicked breathing as a door creaked open.  But still, he could see nothing.

“Why are there no visuals?” Sirius’ voice was high with distress. James knew he must be barely holding the panic at bay.  War memories were hard on Sirius, and fuck if this didn’t feel like a war memory…

“I don’t remember what it looked like," Harry murmured, his voice tight, "I’m only one and a bit here.”

A high-pitched mirthless laugh from below cut off the inquiry.  From the direction of the door, came a pained, barely suppressed sound of distress.  Soft footsteps seemed to walk straight through the crowd of them, making the hair on the back of James’ neck stand on end.  From just behind his elbow, an achingly familiar sound of a toddler woken too soon from sleep broke the silence.

“Shh… shh… Harry love, quiet now.” 

Remus inhaled sharply, as Lily’s voice, panicked and shaking, came from the darkness right in front of his face.

“Accio, Cloak! God where could it be?” 

James’ heart rate was rising with each tortured second as he listened to his dead wife’s panicked breathing in the darkness while some alternative version of himself fought for his life below them.

Then there was a rushing sound.

For the first time since they’d arrived in the memory, the visuals shifted, as a line of green light broke through the darkness, lighting up the gap beneath the door they could only guess was there. 

The shock of light was followed by a heavy thud.

Dead.  This James Potter was dead.  

“Prongs–”

“I’m here Siri,” James' voice sounded wrong in the heavy silence that followed his death, but he felt a hand reach for him in the dark. He pulled it into his chest, expecting Sirius.

“Is–is it ok if I ummm… if I stay with you for this part?”

Harry’s voice was barely audible from where James had pulled him into his chest, but he hugged the boy closer at his question.  he was shaking like a leaf, reliving his father's death for their fucking edification, this boy who James had yelled at not three hours ago for reacting badly to a flash of green light...

“You can always stay with me. You don’t have to ask.”

It was the least he could do.  If he were the one dead downstairs, it’s what he’d want for Haz.

From the direction of the door came the sounds of creaking stairs again.  The gate was slower this time. Unhurried.

In his arms, Harry shuddered.

“I’ve got you.” 

As the tense silence was broken by the crash of the nursery door bursting in James felt the familiar pull of oblivion as his mind desperately tried to take him elsewhere.

“Stand aside you silly girl!”

“I’ve got you.”

He couldn’t go, though. Not this time.  He told Harry he’d stay.

“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead —– ”

“I have you, Harry.”

Another flash of green. The sound of Lily’s body hitting the floor.

“I’m here. You’re safe.”

A third flash, and then screaming… the most horrible screaming… 

“I’ve got you.”

And then, as the screaming faded away, the cry of a distraught, but living, baby.

Harry had made it.  He'd made it through that night and had made it back to James. Somehow, that made all the horrible things they'd just witnessed were worth it. 

James was still holding the boy tight as the darkness around them began to warp, twisting around them as the second memory began to materialize.  

The brightness was almost blinding after so long in darkness, but as James’ eyes adjusted, he realized they were standing in a muggle parlor decorated in the most garish shade of peach.

Something about it looked strangely familiar.

“Is—is this the Dursley’s?”

Chapter Text

Regulus stared around the horrid, salmon pink, painfully muggle home and tried to will his heart rate to return to normal.  

James had died.  The sight of him hugging Harry tight against his chest only a few feet away was not enough to calm the panic clawing at Regulus’ chest as he realized how close he must have come to losing him all those years ago.  Is that what would have happened if the Dark Lord came for Haz instead of Neville Longbottom first?  It was unthinkable.

“Is—is this the Dursley’s?”

Just the sound of James’ voice made his eyes sting. One glance at Sirius’ face told Regulus he wasn’t the only one feeling that way.  

From where he was still wrapped in James’ arms, Harry seemed to stiffen.  

“Uh… yeah.  You know them then?”

James tried to keep his voice neutral as he replied, clearly not wanting to insult Lily’s relatives in case they were important to Harry.

“Erm… not–not well.  They, uh… didn’t exactly approve of your father and me.  Umm… Regulus that is–I think Vernon…”

“Is a raging homophobe?”  Harry supplied, his lips quirking at James’ botched attempt at diplomacy.

They hadn’t seen Lily’s sister and her husband since Haz was a toddler.  Even his overwhelming sense of guilt about Lily’s death hadn’t been enough for James to willingly bring Haz back in the vicinity of Petunia’s sharp-tongued rebukes or Vernon’s purple-faced bigotry.  From the knowing smirk on Harry’s face, the visits must have gone on a good deal longer.  Perhaps Sirius and Remus hadn’t felt it was their place to cut off Lily’s relatives?

“Did you visit them often, then?” Regulus asked, noting how sharp the details of the memory were, down to the horrendous floral pattern in the wallpaper.  The smirk slid off Harry’s face at once.

“Uh.. not exactly.”

Regulus opened his mouth to ask a follow up when a heavy-set boy who looked to be about twelve came thundering down the stairs. He stopped half-way down and began to jump on the steps with enough force to rattle the artwork hung on the walls.

“WAKE UP POTTER!”   The boy - Dudley? - bellowed, his face red with exertion.  It didn’t make sense though, why would Harry be sleeping over?  Surely a day-trip was enough to assuage even Remus’ guilty conscience. And if he did stay the night, why wouldn’t the horrid boy be pounding his fat little fists against Harry’s bedroom door?

Remus gasped, and Regulus’ eyes swung to his. He must have figured it out first.  

Wouldn’t be the first time. 

Remus wasn’t looking at him though.  Instead he was staring at the cupboard underneath the stairs.

“What–”

The words died on Regulus’ tongue as the cupboard door pushed open from within.

If Dudley looked twelve, the small, slim boy that emerged from under the stairs seemed a full three years younger.  He had a thin face - thinner than Regulus had ever seen on his own son - but the wide green eyes framed by soot dark lashes were unmistakable. 

“Are you–is this hide and seek?” 

The pallet bed Regulus could see in the cupboard behind Harry seemed to answer his question before the last word left his lips, but still he stared down the older boy in James’ arms, begging him to contradict what was right before his eyes.

“MUM SAID! MUM SAID YOU’RE TO MAKE A FRY UP POTTER!”

“I don’t understand,” Sirius said, his voice hard, his eyes flashing with anger.  He did, though.  

“You wouldn’t have left me here if you had a choice,” Harry murmured, apparently knowing Sirius well enough to understand what he was actually asking. “But you’re… well you’re locked up right now.”

“Locked up?”  Regulus couldn’t keep the affront out of his voice.  Blacks did not get locked up.

“They thought Sirius was Secret Keeper.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No. You switched–”

Regulus couldn’t help but swivel around to look at Remus in accusatory surprise.

“--with Peter.”

“GET A MOVE ON POTTER!”

The weight of Harry’s words hung over them all as they watched this diminutive version of Harry, dust himself off and silently make his way over to the kitchen, flicking on the hob and pulling ingredients out of the muggle ice box with a familiarity that made Regulus’ insides twist with fury.  

This was his normal.

This bullying pig of a child was treating him like a house elf, and this was his normal.

He could see from James’ face that he was working up to ask a thousand questions about Peter, could see as loyalty to his friend and disbelief warred with his implicit trust of Harry. But their son was no idiot.  Regulus cold tell from the steel that entered his son’s eyes at the mention of Pettigrew’s name that if there was one thing he was absolutely certain to show them on this hellish trip down memory lane it was going to be clear proof of the rat’s betrayal.  

So when James opened his mouth Regulus reached out a hand, effectively ending his questioning with the brush of his finger’s across  his husband’s arm, and posed a question of his own in a voice he hoped was soothing enough to disguise the unquenchable rage pulsing through his veins right now.

“What’s that mark, love?  The one across your forehead?”

Harry’s lips quirked. His answer, when it came, was far from funny.

“It’s from the killing curse.  From the last memory.  Makes it bloody hard to blend into a crowd, let me tell you.”

The rage, if possible, seemed to double. Regulus must have been losing his touch, because Harry seemed to read it in his expression.

“It–it’s fine. Really.”

It was not fine.

Nothing was fine.  

As they went from memory to memory Regulus was pretty sure not a single thing had been “fine” for more than a few days in Harry’s entire life.

The way Dumbledore treated his son like some foot soldier from before he even hit puberty was far from fine.  The way Harry leaned into it, grateful for even that, for any scrap of affection even as he was being manipulated so openly, just made it worse.

Seeing his brother, his boisterous, warm, capable brother reduced to an emaciated madman, threatening school children to try to exact deserved vengeance against Pettigrew was as far from fine as anything he’d ever witnessed, even if watching Remus wrap his strong arms around Sirius and whisper soothing words of support into his ear gave him hope for a reconciliation between the two Marauders that he’d given up on long ago.

There was nothing ‘fine’ about watching the Dark Lord destroy Draco, seeing his life mirror Regulus’ own.  Although watching his nephew and Harry turn their wands on each other, seeing the terror in his son’s eyes as Draco bled out on the bathroom floor, was somehow so much worse.

By the time they made it to the end, none of them were fine.  Sirius had collapsed at the sight of Remus’ corpse laid out in the Great Hall and hadn’t gotten up again.  He’d just sat there, quietly pleading with the Harry in the memory not to go as he trudged across the lawn on his way to meet his doom.  James’ arms had stayed wrapped around their son the entire time, clinging to Harry like a lifeline. Harry didn’t seem to mind.

Of course he doesn’t.  Poor thing has been touch starved for a lifetime. 

While Remus had moved with Sirius, his long fingers constantly running calming circles over the older Black Brother’s neck and shoulders as if to remind him that he was still there, Draco had slowly moved farther and farther from them, his arms wrapped tightly around himself in a failed attempt to self-soothe.  Regulus could see the guilt pouring off of his cousin in waves, could practically feel him shiver in disgust as his alternate self tried in vain to stop Crabbe’s idiot of a son from setting the Room of Hidden things aflame.  Regulus felt nothing but pity for this foreign version of his nephew although even he could not help the curl of fury in his stomach at the sight of Lucius and Narcissa flanking the Dark Lord in the Forbidden Forest. 

And then there was Bella.  Maybe after seeing all this, Sirius would finally let go of the guilt he’d carried over killing her all those years ago.

Knowing that it was coming didn’t make it any easier when after what felt like hours, the Dark Lord, more grotesque in his alien body than Regulus had ever seen him but just as cruel, raised his wand and cast the killing curse at their son.  The memory around them went dark, and then so slowly that he could barely tell it was happening at first, the dark began to fade to white.

Around them a ghostly mirage of a train station materialized.

The fucking headmaster was back again, spinning his web of manipulation even in death but for once, Harry wasn’t watching him.  His eyes were fixed ahead - unseeing until–

“Haz!”

He couldn’t help  the cry that left his lips as he saw his son - looking pale and shaken on the other side of the station.  Before he could think better of it Regulus was running, the magic of the Pensieve pulling at him as he tried in vain to make it to his son.  Haz’s eyes flicked up, and for a moment - one glorious beautiful moment - Regulus thought that somehow he must have heard him.

But his son was looking through him.  His eyes locked on Harry’s and then the world around them was spinning, spinning, spinning until–

Regulus landed back on the floor of the Room of Hidden Things in a heap, his eyes burning with tears of loss and frustration.  He blinked at the glare of the late afternoon sun streaming in through the windows. When he opened his eyes again, his son was standing above him, a hand reached down to help him up.

“Haz.”

It came out as a sob.  Harry’s lips turned down in an apologetic grimace.  

“No. It’s still me. I’m– I’m sorry.”

“It–it’s fine.”

Harry gave him a wry smile.  Apparently, Harry wasn’t the only one who lacked the words to express how deeply wrong everything was.  Regulus let himself get pulled to his feet, but kept hold of Harry’s hand once he was upright again.  His son’s eyebrows went up in surprise as Regulus tugged him in for a hug, enveloping him in his arms.

He didn’t have the words, but he’d do everything in his power to protect his son - both his sons - from ever having to live through horrors like that again.

Regulus held on to him for longer than was strictly necessary, before releasing Harry and looking around at the rest of their group.  James had apparently seen the same despondency in Draco that Regulus had, but was absolutely not going to let him suffer in stoic isolation.  Regulus felt a surge of fondness for his husband at the sight of his strong capable hand clapped on Draco's shoulder, pulling the slim boy into a side hug that Draco seemed aggrieved and comforted by in equal measure.  Behind them, Sirius and Remus were murmuring quietly to each other, no longer clinging to each other but standing with a closeness that would've been unthinkable a week earlier.  

"Tea, I think," James said, and with a few silent nods they all agreed, winding their way back to the door that would take them back to the castle.  The silence was a welcome reprieve after the chaos they'd just witnessed, and the normally rowdy group moved wordlessly through the towers of debris.

Tea. They would have tea, or maybe something stronger, and then they'd sort out what to do.  Everything would be more manageable then.  They just needed to take a beat, clear their heads and--

All thoughts of a needed hour of respite flew from Regulus' mind as James pushed open the door to the Room of Requirement to reveal the sight of Minerva McGonagall looking more harried and annoyed than Regulus had seen her in years.

"Thank Merlin.  I was ready to claim Headmistress' Prerogative to break down that infernal door if you didn't come out soon."

"I'm sorry Minerva, I didn't realize we had an engagement--"

"Well, we didn't.  Not until Severus Snape arrived in my floo half an hour ago, dragging his infernal spouse along with him, demanding to see you and Haz and Draco and going on about snake bites and Dark Lords and Sybil Trelawney of all people!"

"He really brought--"

"--what's this about snakes?"

"Sybil Trelawney, the advice columnist?"

Minerva gave them all a quelling look.

"I gave up trying to decode the nonsense you gentlemen get up to decades ago, and I'm certainly not attempting it again now. Just. Come."

Chapter Text

“You… you know me?” Haz didn’t know how to feel about the fact that the only person other than Kreacher who knew who he was in this Merlin-cursed universe looked very much like a preying mantis come to life, but he couldn’t deny the surge of relief he felt at hearing someone call him ‘Potter-Black.’

It meant it was real.

He wasn’t crazy.

“But of course, your aura is quite a bit greener than Mr. Potter’s… anyone with a true gift for the sight could hardly mistake you,” the woman - Sybil Trelawny - said, waving a bony wrist clad in no less than ten bangles in front of them, before throwing one of the many gauzy scarves she had strewn around her neck over her shoulder with an exaggerated flourish.

Not exactly the anchor of sanity he would’ve picked, but beggars can’t be choosers.  

“...Right. So you know why we’ve come then?”  Haz said hopefully.

“Oh my dear, I would never presume, in this universe so full of infinite forces manipulated by the fates, to know why any action might take place.  What with Mars in its ninth house, and Mercury in retrograde, and the solstice fast approaching, how I could I, a humble diviner, ever truly grasp the reasons behind how the stars move us–”

“Right… of course not… but erm, you do know that me and Sad Harry, have er–switched, yeah?”

She nodded, enthusiastically. “How astute you must be to have sensed his despair as well, merely from walking a day in his shoes–”

“--and you know that we need to speak to my, dads, yeah? Through that mirror of yours? So they can help us fix it?”

Trelawny gave him a stern look that was somewhat ruined by the fact that her over-large spectacles magnified her eyes to near double their size.

“Oh my dear, I’m sorry but that’s quite impossible.”

Haz’s heart plummeted in his chest at her words.  

He was stuck here.

He’d never get home again.

He’d never–

“And why is that?”  Draco’s harsh, biting words cut through his panic attack, bringing him back to the conversation at hand.  The blond boy was glaring at the witch in front of them with all the condescension he could muster. The hesitation Haz had sensed in him as they walked up to the castle earlier was gone, leaving only entitled exasperation.  

It was weirdly comforting. To see how even in this world, he was so reflexively like Regulus.

“The idea, that we, as mere mortals could ‘fix’ what the stars have set in motion–”

“Can we reach their world or not?”  Draco spoke over her, clearly done with her.

“Well, yes of course–”

“Well, then. Fetch your grandmother’s bloody scrying glass! Harry Potter just died for us - we’re not abandoning him to some Nimue-damned wormhole because you’re worried it’ll mess with your chakras. And this Potter–”

Draco looked at him, silver eyes flashing with righteous indignation.

“--is missing his fathers.  And he would like to speak with them.”  He finished primly, as if Haz’s needs were somehow on par with his Sad-boy counterparts.

He thought he might love this Draco just a little bit.

“It’s not possible to speak through the glass to persons other than yourself,” Trelawney sniffed, although she didn’t renew her arguments about the futility of attempting to contact his world, which was already an improvement.

He could talk to sad Harry… and then sad Harry could get his dads, and Pads, and Remus because he’d probably know what to do, and–

“We’ll speak with ourselves then,” Draco said, already pushing past the woman to make his way into the tower room.  “Lead the way.”

There was quite a bit of sighing, and going on about the universe and disturbing the path the stars had laid out for them as they picked their way through the nauseatingly perfumed class room. They wove around the odd assortment of poofed ottomans and wingback chairs Trelawney had arranged around spindley tables in groups of three. She made a great show of rummaging through the half dozen pockets she must have sewn into her robes, pulling out crystals and dream catchers and charmed talismans before finally locating the keys to her private chambers and letting them inside.  The space in her personal sitting room was, if possible, more ludicrously decorated than the classroom, with mobiles hanging from the ceiling in odd places, depicting the signs of the zodiac in the Greek, Chinese, and Mayan traditions.  

Finally, with another ridiculous flourish she pulled one of slightly moth-eaten curtains lining the walls aside to reveal a mirror.  

The ‘glass’ actually wasn’t glass at all, but rather a hammered bronze sphere.  It was so old that the rim had thinned to an edge sharp enough to cut flesh.  It was unmarred, save for a shallow etching of a hammer and anvil at the top, carved above a stylized H.  Although Haz was standing a good ten feet from the mirror, from the second it was uncovered he could feel the hum of power emanating from the strange object.

“I’m going to kill him,” Draco ground out. “Grandmother’s bloody scrying glass he said. This is Vulcan’s Mirror!”

From the tone of Draco’s voice, Haz knew that was something he should have heard about before…

“He was Hephaestus, first.” Trelawney chided.

…oh, right. Regulus had always favored Greek to Roman mythology when he was growing up.  Wait… but that meant…

“Merlin used this!”

“Only after he stole it from Morgan Le Fey!” She retorted, sounding well and truly affronted - but it wasn’t a ‘no.’  Haz’s History of Magic recall was atrocious compared to Draco’s but even he’d heard of Merlin’s Mirror…

“Can it really show the past, present and future?” Driaco asked, his voice low with awe.

Trelawney seemed loath to answer, letting the question hang between them as Draco waited impatiently on her reply. She seemed to think he’d move on eventually, but the blond boy merely raised an expectant eyebrow at her until with a huff she relented.

“At present it is exclusively showing scenes of Mr. Potter-Black’s world–”

“--why?”

“The planets show us what they need us to see.”

“You don’t know do you?”

She gave an affronted huff, but Haz wasn’t listening, instead he moved to stand in front of the mirror.  The bronze surface seemed to ripple as he stepped fully in front of it, a flash of light arcing across its surface before it moved, transforming into an all too familiar swirl of translucent white mist.

The fucking pensieve.  

Was it possible that Sad Harry had been stuck there all this time?  Reliving his memories of Etienne on loop while Haz was here?  

Merlin, what a mortifying thought.

“What do you see?” Draco asked, coming to stand behind Haz’s shoulder.  

“Nothing,” Haz said, the bitterness clear in his voice. “You try.”

Draco’s gaze locked on his, before sliding over to the mirror, apprehension warring with curiosity in his gaze.

“In your world… is he… am I…”

“You’re brilliant, Dray. Go on, have a look.” Haz stepped out of the way, taking the choice out of his hands, and the mirror rippled again, before settling back into those infernal wisps of memory.

Fucking founders, was Draco trapped in the pensieve too?  How had this gone so terribly wrong?

“It’s not working,” Draco complained, eyes whipping to Trelawney, where she stood slightly off to the side.  “Show us how it works.”

“Young man, the Fates are not to be commanded, and nor am I–”

“Can you just! Please.” Haz’s voice cracked as he heard himself beg the Divination Professor, but he didn’t care.  He needed to know if they were using it wrong or if he’d really cursed Harry and Draco to a life stuck in a pensieve through his irresponsible actions.  

Trelawney, apparently able to sense his desperation, dropped the act for the time being, and stepped in front of the scrying glass without another word.  Even from where he was standing, Haz could see when the mirror worked for her, revealing the scene of a different but no less eccentric office.  A slightly better dressed version of Trelawney was dictating to a quick quotes quill as she laid out tarot cards on an oversized mahogany desk, a different pair of over-sized spectacles slipping down her narrow nose.  

“Would you like me to make contact?” The professor asked softly. “We’ll have to wait until she looks at something reflective - anything will do, another mirror, a window pane.  We connected over a puddle in the middle of Trafalgar Square once, although a muggle police man interrupted our conversation after only fifteen minutes if you’d believe it. Once she knows I’m making contact though, she can use her mirror to show us more. Her mirror allows her to see the present in her world. If we angle them just so we should get a view of your fathers at least.  I’m sure with a little prodding she’ll agree to write a column… maybe even send an owl if she’s in a good mood–”

“No.” Haz couldn’t bear the idea of his dads learning that he’d somehow banished himself to another world by reading it a fucking advise column in the Evening Prophet.  Even if she would send an owl, he had no idea how long it would take to reach Scotland.  And if he and Draco were missing, or laying in St. Mungo’s in some kind of coma… there’s no way Regulus would be taking post from reporters.

And honestly, if he had to explain what had happened, if he had to lay all his shame out in the open, he didn’t want to do it to some stranger.  Even one as mad as Sybil Trelawney.

He couldn’t talk to his dads - he knew that.

But he had an uncle waiting on his back at Grimmauld.  

“Can I borrow this Professor?” Haz said, taking a step towards the mirror before he could change his mind.

“What?  Mr. Potter-Black that mirror has been in my family’s possession for the better part of a millennium, I simply cannot–”

“We’ll have it back to you quick as we can! Kreacher!”

The house elf appeared in the tower room with a crack, and before Trelawney could sputter out further protest, Haz had yanked the mirror down off the wall and grabbed Draco by the wrist.

“Grimmauld Place! Now!”

Before the Professor could process what was happening, they disappeared with a crack.

Severus hadn’t ever imagined he’d find himself convalescing at Twelve Grimmauld Place.  He’d been twice in his youth. Once, as Regulus’ guest, accompanying him back over Easter so they could attend a meeting Lucius had promised would change ‘everything.’

For once, the blond hadn’t exaggerated.  Severus could still remember it - being presented to Walburga Black, standing there stiff as a board, fists clenched so tight that his fingernails were cutting crescent moons into his palm as she told him that his father’s dirty genes had done nothing to dilute his mother’s harsh features.

“You’d have thought that she’d at least have bred with an animal who could get rid of that horrible Prince nose. I guess they truly are useless.”

He’d taken the mark the next day.

His second trip to Grimmauld, she’d been far less smug.  The second time, as he and Regulus dragged the corpse of Evan Rosier into their foyer, his pure, anointed blood leaking out onto the cold marble floor, her face hadn’t been sneering at all.

She’d been horrified.

She wasn’t the only one.  They’d all fallen to pieces after that. So when Regulus disappeared a few months later, Severus had assumed he’d never be back, not even to see the only proof of his friend’s death, etched out in golden thread on that accursed Black Family Tapestry - the only closure they were likely to come by in their cruel world.

From his makeshift sick-bed on the Black’s ancient Chesterfield, he stared at that inscription now.

Regulus Black, 1960-1979.

He had seen it - albeit fifteen years later, after the Mutt had escaped, and Dumbledore had forgiven him again , and Severus had been forced to drag himself to this Gods-Damned mausoleum for bi-monthly meetings of the Order of the Phoenix.  

It had felt like ripping open an old wound, every time he crossed that threshold, every time he stared down at the foyer floor, dusty but somehow insultingly clear of any sign that it had once been stained with Evan’s life blood.  He’d had to cross that foyer, his pace slowed to accommodate the halting gate of Alistar Moody - trudging unknowing and uncaring over the scene of his crime.  He couldn’t pretend to mourn the man, right side of the war or not, just like he hadn’t been able to feign appropriate sympathy after Barty had–

No. He wouldn’t go there.  Grimmauld, and the appearance of a Regulus-raised Potter was pushing on enough bruises as it was. A Potter who spoke rapid French in the same clipped manor the younger Black brother had, who had called him Uncle Sev, and who reflexively wielded the kind of fierce occlumency that Severus hadn’t seen employed by anyone but Narcissa Malfoy.

Aunt Cissy.

Merlin, spare them all.

His spiraling was interrupted by a loud crack as Potter, Draco, the Black’s ancient house elf, and a round mirror that looked like an antique stolen straight from the British Museum landed in a heap on the carpet in front of him.

Good Lord.

He needed a drink.

“We got it!” Potter announced, quite unnecessarily.

“Funnily enough, I’d deduced that on my own.” Severus sneered out, replying automatically.  He couldn’t help it, not when it came to Potter.

Far from getting angry like his counterpart would have, this Potter laughed.

“Founders, you’re so prickly.  Is this what you’re like when you’re single?  I can’t imagine what a nightmare you must be with students.  Do they have to contract with someone else to teach the Hufflepuffs?”

Draco snorted, and then quickly covered his face, out of mortification at the undignified sound or laughing at a joke from Potter, Severus wasn’t sure.  He’d seen the two of them in Potter’s mind, just a few quick flashes but more than enough to get the idea.  The thought of such an unholy union forming here was enough to make him wish the snake had bit just a little deeper.

He decided the comment was not worth dignifying with a response so instead he fixed them with a glare.

“Well?  Does it work?”

“Yes…” Potter said, his voice wavering in a way that told Severus there was a ‘but’ coming. He arched an eyebrow, waiting.

“Draco and I can’t reach ourselves, though.”

“And why is that?”

“We… well we took pensieve potion–”

“We WHAT?”

“--Which is how I ended up here in the first place, I think, only now when we try to contact ourselves it looks like we’re still in the pensieve? For some reason? So… um… we need to call you instead!”

Potter ended with a feigned jauntiness that did absolutely nothing to wipe the horrified looks off Severus and Draco’s faces.

“You drank pensieve potion?”

“Am I a drug addict? ”

“Do you have any idea the number of ways in which your nervous system alone–”

“Does Mother know I’m a drug addict?”

Severus gave Draco a quelling look and the blonde boy subsided, grudgingly.  Potter was blushing something fierce, but Severus had no interest in sparing his feelings.  Mind altering potions were dangerous, and for some spoiled son of James Potter to be leading his fellow Slytherins down a path of recreational potion abuse was just so bloody typical…

“It was our first time trying it!” Potter protested, earning him twin glares, before he sagged, defeated.

“It was stupid.  I was being stupid.  I know it sounds dumb because you’re all in the middle of a war and all, but my dad just broke me up with my boyfriend, and–”

“My dad ‘broke me up with my boyfriend?’ You’d rather turn to dangerous potions use than tell James Potter that you’ll date who you want to date?”

Potter’s eyes flashed at him, his face mirroring the Harry Severus knew for the first time since they’d returned with the mirror.  

“You really do hate him, don’t you?  Even though he’s dead? Seems pretty crap given how its your fault he was killed in the first place.”

Draco sucked in a shocked breath, but Potter wasn’t done.

“My dad, not Pops.  Regulus broke us up, and not by saying ‘pick a different bloke’ but by wiping Etienne’s memories of me entirely, so sorry if I was a bit fucked in the head about it.”

Draco’s eyes were as wide as saucers - he loved gossip almost as much as his mother - but Severus’ blood had run cold at the mention of the name.

“Etienne Gallieux?”

He remembered the Bauxbatons student.  He’d had no business accompanying their delegation to Hogwarts for that accursed tournament–and even less business getting off in the bushes during the Yule Ball with Blaise Zabini when the boy was just barely fifteen.

“You know him?”

“I did not appreciate the attention he was paying to my younger Slytherins.”

Harry’s eyes widened.

“I thought I was in Gryffindor here?”

It was Severus’ turn to look shocked.  He’d assumed they had met later… Potter was a good nine months younger than Zabini…

He was no longer surprised Regulus had wiped the man’s memories - he was rather surprised he hadn’t killed him.

He realized he hadn’t responded to Potter’s question, but the boy had clearly taken his silence as answer enough, and he averted his gaze, glaring at the floor as if it was truly the first time he’d considered that that predatory arsehole would’ve gone for a different underage wizard.

It wasn’t a revelation Severus was comfortable watching.  He cleared his throat.  

“So you need me to connect with the version of myself that exists in your world?”

Potter looked up at him, seeming relieved to have moved on from the painful subject.  Draco looked between them, but for once, fell back and let Potter take the lead.  Instead he silently levitated the mirror onto the far wall, at the perfect height for Severus to look directly into it without having to move from his sick bed.

“Yes - he’ll help us, I know he will.”

Such faith in this Uncle Sev. Enough faith that Potter had sought him out in this universe.  Such faith that Potter had saved his life.

Sighing, suddenly nervous about being face to face with a different version of himself, Severus turned towards the mirror. Ever the nosy git, Draco perched himself precariously on on the arm of the Chesterfield.

“Right, anything I should know?”

“You’ll see him at first, but he won’t see you until he looks into something reflective.  Once he does though, you’ll be able to talk to him.” Harry said, moving surreptitiously to the left so he was angled just out of view of the mirror.

Severus glanced at the mirror, and the surface began to ripple.

“Potter–Potter why did you move?”

“Just to give you some, you know, privacy.”

“Privacy? Why on Earth would I need privacy?  Potter what the hell is wrong with your Uncle Severus that you presume I need privacy when looking in on him at 9:00 in the evening?”

“With him? Nothing.”  The Potter boy was smirking at him now, and Severus was positive he never needed to see this Slytherin iteration of James Potter’s progeny.  His life had been hard enough.  In front of him, the rippling surface of the mirror began to form into shapes.

“It’s his husband I’m worried about.”

The shapes in the mirror solidified in shocking, graphic clarity.

“Everyone knows Uncle Barty’s more than a little insane.”

Draco, mind finally catching up with his eyes, let out a squeak of horror and promptly fell over the back of the sofa.