Title: Could-Have Beans
Rating: T
Authoress: T-R-Us
Set During Half-Blood Prince

Disclaimer: I think we all know that I don't own Harry Potter. Epic life fail. (I do think I own the idea of Could-Have Beans. At least, I haven't heard of them anywhere before, so I'm just going to lay claim to them right here. Claimed.)

'George pushed back a curtain beside the Muggle tricks and Harry saw a darker, less crowded room. The packaging on the products lining these shelves was more subdued.'
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"What are these?" Harry asked, peering at one of the boxes.

"Ah," George smiled, albeit somewhat ruefully, "All of this is still in development, you see. Not ready for the shelves yet."

"Right, but it's coming along." The second twin reached up to slide out a circular tin and carefully peeled back the lid. Dipping his fingers into the contents, he produced a handful of – Harry leaned in closer to get a better look – beans?

Noting his confusion, Fred grinned and held out his hand. In the center of his palm were five brightly colored kidney beans. "We were looking to find a way to beat out Bertie Bott, but I think that what we've come up with is a bit better."

"Could-Have Beans," George stated as his twin tipped the beans into Harry's hand. "One mouthful and they'll let you live a life that could have been. But only temporarily, of course."

Harry could only stare down at the small objects, considering the possibilities. A life that could have been?

"Like we said, though, very experimental," Fred leaned forward to take the beans back, but paused when Harry's fingers, as if of their own accord, curled tightly into a fist around them.

"I'll take them. Any price you want."

The twins exchanged a glance before George began hesitantly, "We already told you your money's no good here, Harry, but really..." He fell off as his friend stuffed the beans into his pocket, moving quickly as though he thought one of the Weasley's would demand he hand them over. "Just – ah – you should at the very least know that there's no predicting what the beans will make you see."

"It could be anything," Fred cut in, eyes unusually solemn. "The world if Dumbledore had never been born or if one of Ron's Christmas jumpers suddenly developed sentient thought and took over the continent. Anything at all."

"And there's no telling when the hallucination will end. It just does. But usually the amount of time you spend in the vision is much longer than in real life. Rather like a dream or a fogey muggle time travel story."

Harry nodded, but it was clear to both Fred and George that he was scarcely listening. Already he had begun to consider what it would be like to try the beans and the thought was intoxicating.

The twins were spared from further explanation, however, when the young shop-witch George introduced as Verity Hembree poked her head around the corner to direct her employers' attention to a customer.

Harry watched as the twins went back to their business, keeping the beans in the back of his mind even as he rejoined Ron and Hermione and the trio began to follow Draco Malfoy to Knockturn Alley.

It wasn't until later that evening when the group was safely back at the Burrow that Harry had the opportunity to try out the beans. The time after their excursion had been spent unloading the various things purchased for school, followed by dinner. While Harry had considered feigning illness in order to sneak upstairs, he knew that Mrs. Weasley wouldn't give him a moment's peace. When the time finally came to try out the beans it was when Harry had been safely tucked into bed in Ron's bedroom, his best friend already asleep and snoring softly on the opposite side of the room.

With a furtive glance to ensure Ron truly was asleep, Harry rose and crept quietly across the room to where he had tossed his jeans earlier and fished the handful of beans out of his pocket. Keeping one, he placed the four others on the bedside table next to his wand and glasses. Sliding backwards across the bed so that his back was flush against the headboard, he palmed the fifth bean, closed his eyes and swallowed.

For one long, disappointing moment, nothing happened, when a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over him, forcing him to slump farther down onto the bed, asleep.

When Harry finally reopened his eyes, it was to a blurry reality. Instinct and years of reflex told him to reach out to the right and grab his glasses, but his wrist overshot the edge of the bedside table, connecting painfully with the hard wood. The table was closer to the bed than he remembered. Biting back a cry, he continued to flounder about until his questing fingers closed upon his glasses. Now, with his vision corrected, he looked up.

This, he knew immediately, was not his room at the Dursley's – nor anywhere else he could imagine.

For one thing, the quidditch posters taped to the walls supported the Holyhead Harpies, not the Chudley Cannons as they did in Ron's room at the Burrow.

Gryffindor pennants depicting its mascot lion rearing up on its hind legs, head thrown up in an endless roar, covered the walls wherever the quidditch posters did not. A slightly battered dresser stood on the opposite side of the room, shuddering under the weight of a hundred books, which had apparently been removed from their shelves to make way for an empty cage. Professor Lupin's grindylow tank, Harry realized. Did this mean he was in Lupin's house?

A shelf above the dresser held several dust-covered items, things that must have been placed there years before. A pair of stuffed dogs, one gray, one black, sat forlornly next to what looked like an autographed quaffle and a tin marked "Chocolate Frog Cards". In another part of the room, a Nimbus Two-Thousand and One broom was leaned up against the closed bedroom door, next to a trunk that looked all too familiar.

There was no mistaking the name emblazoned on the side, though the gilt letters spelling out 'Harry James Potter' only added to the confusion. If his trunk was here, then where was here?

A sharp rapping on the bedroom door drew Harry's attention towards it. Although he knew it was impossible, a part of him was still expecting to hear the shrill voice of his Aunt Petunia directing him downstairs to start making breakfast.

He was proven wrong, however, cut short as a soft, almost familiar voice announced, "Harry, breakfast is ready if you'd kindly join us in the kitchen." It was the same voice he had heard once before in Dumbledore's pensieve and far too many times in his nightmares. "Harry, I'm not going to say it again," and then more insistently, "Breakfast is ready."

Harry practically leapt out of bed at this, calling out a shaky, "Coming!" and scrambled to find something to wear. Seeing a pair of jeans hanging halfway out of the dresser, he hastily pulled them on and then a t-shirt with the title of some wizarding musical group he was certain he'd never even heard of before written across it.

At a speed with which he surprised himself, Harry threw open the bedroom door to reveal an upstairs landing. Across the narrow hallway he could see in to the opposite room, a tidy master bedroom in which Lily Potter was currently folding laundry. Lily Potter. His mother.

"Mum..."

She looked up, turning her head to peer at him curiously. Just as pretty as he remembered, her dark, red hair was pulled up into a loose bun from which several wispy tendrils were escaping. Bright, green eyes – identical to Harry's own, as had been pointed out to him all too frequently – were riveted on him. She set down the sweater which she had been folding and pressed her hands against her hips, quirking a delicate eyebrow. "Well, then?"

Harry froze for a moment, startled, then managed to regain enough presence of mind to stutter out, "You're alive!"

An irritated look quickly formed on her face and she took two steps towards him, hand outstretched. "Let me see your head. Merlin, if I find another lump, I'm taking away that quaffle your father keeps lobbing at you."

"I'm – I'm fine, mum," he added the last of this ecstatically. Though he did not know the how of it or the why, other than that this was the work of the beans, his parents were alive and he was at their – his! – home in Godric's Hollow.

"Your breakfast," his mother stated as she continued to eye him warily, "Is getting cold."

"Yeah..."

"Harry!" He jumped and hurried for the nearby staircase, his flight followed shortly by his mother's echoing bellow of "Don't run in the house!"

Halfway down the stairs, he encountered an ancient-looking tabby which fled the moment he got within two feet of it, hissing balefully. Some family pet no doubt and from the looks of it, the poor cat had been with the Potter's for at least the better part of a decade.

When he reached the bottom, Harry was met with a short hallway and straight ahead, past a few doors leading into other rooms, he could see the kitchen and from this distance hear the voices of those within.

"Have some more bacon, Reems, it's good. And from the looks of it you could use some."

"I don't want any more bacon,, Sirius. I've enough on my plate already. Now please stop changing the subject."

These two voices were wonderfully familiar, adding to Harry's elation.

Professor Lupin sounded as quietly haggard as ever and Sirius – Harry could just throw himself at his godfather. As he readied himself to enter, Harry stopped and hung back when a third person's voice drifted down the hall.

"Moony's right this time, Sirius. You're going to have to start staying – "

"Dad!" Harry rushed into the kitchen, stopping just short of his father's lanky presence.
With a breakfast plate balanced precariously in one hand, James blinked at his son, hoping he hadn't heard too much of the conversation. When the sixteen year-old boy did nothing but stare at him, however, his minor concern was forgotten. "Merlin's beard, Harry, I'm sorry if I threw that quaffle too hard. You're not hurt again are you?"

"He's a junior Marauder, isn't he?" Sirius rose from where he'd been eating his own breakfast and snagged his godson in one arm, all too eagerly rubbing his fisted free hand through the boy's unruly hair.

"Hey, Sirius! Gerroffme!" Harry scowled and started to fight his godfather off, batting his hands away. To his father he threw in an "I'm fine, dad, fine," before manoeuvring himself into one of the empty seats at the table.

His father slid the plate he'd been holding over to him and Harry focused on the food in front of him, offering Remus, who sat to his left, a quick "Morning, professor!" before digging in.

This quiet, offhand comment drew a roaring howl of laughter from both James and Sirius, and after a moment's confusion, Harry sheepishly realized his mistake. "Sorry, Remus, I don't know where – what – er..."

Remus smiled, unoffended and Sirius took this as an opportunity to resume forcing another piece of bacon on his friend.

Turning to his own breakfast, Harry never noticed that the werewolf's steady gaze remained on him throughout the meal.

"Sirius Black!" James had just begun to clean up the dishes when Lily entered the kitchen, her arms filled with laundry. "I am not your personal laundry service." Eyeing him angrily, she dumped the pile unceremoniously onto the kitchen floor.

With a scowl, Sirius examined the pile of his – still dirty – clothing, but made no move to actually pick any of it up. "But you did Remus' laundry!" He griped instead, shooting his friend an annoyed look as though it was Lupin's fault that the werewolf's clothes were neatly folded upstairs and Sirius' were strewn across the floor.

Lupin opened his mouth to retort, but seemed to think better of it.

Instead it was James who punched Sirius good-naturedly in the shoulder. "Remus lives here. And he pulls his own weight. You're just some free-loading mongrel we picked up somewhere in first year."

The group laughed at this and startled, Harry looked over at his former professor, unable to prevent himself from asking, "He lives here?"

This earned him bemused looks from everyone present and Harry couldn't possibly miss the annoyed glance that his mother shot in his father's direction.

"Is this supposed to be some sort of joke?" She asked, and Harry had a sneaking suspicion that given the opportunity she wouldn't hesitate to examine his head for bumps. He was grateful that Sirius, sitting between him and the doorway where his mother was standing, provided something of a human shield.

"Er – yeah," he laughed in response, though it wasn't very convincing. "I was just joking. About – er – that. Of course Profess – Remus lives here. He always has, right?" When the concerned looks he was receiving from his parents did not change, Harry looked around for an escape. "Ah, I'm just going to go to the bathroom for a second." Rising, he moved out of the kitchen and down the hall in the direction he had come.

The bathroom, once he found it, was small but neatly done up with wizarding photographs of the beach, waves visibly crashing against a sandy shore. Harry didn't take much notice of this, however, as he leaned over the sink, splashing water in his face.

It was funny that no matter how different the beans had made his life out to be, physically he still looked the same as ever. Same green eyes, same messy hair and same --

Harry hesitated. With his still-wet hand, he reached dup to brush his unruly bangs aside and stared. The reflection staring back at him confirmed his suspicions. No, not the same lightning bolt scar.

Dropping his hand, he let his hair fall back against his unmarred forehead. He should have expected this. His parents were alive, weren't they? Which meant that Voldemort hadn't attacked them. Was that the could-have been, then? The instigator to all of this?

Harry shrugged. The how and why of it all didn't really matter, so long as --

"Harry?"

Startled, he whipped around, realizing belatedly that he hadn't shut the bathroom door behind him. "Profess – Remus."

Lupin's eyes studied him sharply as the werewolf leaned casually against the door frame. "That's the third time you've said that this morning, Harry, are you all right?"

"Er, yeah," Harry turned back to the mirror, giving himself one last look before he joined Remus in the doorway. "I'm fine. Just – just not having the best of days, you know?"

Remus nodded and placed a hand on Harry's shoulder, gently steering him towards the nearby front door. "Sirius is leaving, he wanted to say goodbye before he went."

Harry followed his former professor down the hall to where his parents were already standing with his godfather – who, Harry noted, was holding a bag of the clothes his mother had strewn across the floor.

"There you are!" Sirius was grinning, but Harry recognized the flicker of doubt in the wizard's eyes, something that he knew from the Sirius who had spent thirteen years in Azkaban. "I'm off then. Hopefully I'll see you before you leave for Hogwarts, eh?" He leaned forward to hug his godson tightly, then pulled away to acknowledge Remus and James. "I'll be in touch."

James clapped his friend on the back as Remus squeezed his elbow. If Harry didn't know better, he would have thought that this parting would be for longer than expected. Or... was it? The expression on the three Marauders' faces was almost sorrowful.

With a last, bittersweet grin, Sirius stepped out of the front door and disapparated.

"All right, then," Lily was the first to move away from the door and immediately turned to her son. "Your laundry's on the bed. It's not going to put itself away."

Accepting this as a dismissal, Harry bounded up the stairs, trying to puzzle out just why Sirius' departure was such a sad one. In his room he found the laundry piled neatly on his bed and after a few moments of searching for the appropriate place to stash the clothing away, settled on jamming most of it into his already half-packed school trunk.

"Harry?" Having just crammed the last of his robes in, Harry looked up to see his father standing in the doorway. "Did you want to go out back and toss the quaffle around for a bit" He hesitated and grinned sheepishly, "I'll try not to catch you in the head with it today. But really, Harry, even seekers should learn how to catch things."

Harry's heart lifted and he nodded eagerly, following his father through house to the kitchen where James slid open the back door to a rather spacious backyard. Although he couldn't quite make out the words, Harry didn't miss the fact that his father had to mutter a charm of some sort to open the door.

"Grab the good one, would you?"

Putting the suspicious bit of magic out of his head, Harry nodded and peered around the yard, noting the small shed in the far corner, similar to the equipment shed at Hogwarts. This one, he assumed, shared the same purpose. Pulling open the door, he poked his head in to see gardening tools and quidditch supplies in general disarray. Unlike the inside of the house, which was well-ordered and neat, the shed showed obvious signs of his mother's absence. Clearly she left the small space to the care of Harry and James.

Gingerly stepping over a fallen broomstick – an old Cleansweep by the looks of it – Harry reached for one of the quaffles which littered the floor of the shed.

"You find it yet?" James appeared in the doorway, but before Harry could answer he turned to look at something in the distance, not visible from the inside of the shed. Face paling, he stepped out of Harry's line of sight, voice calling back at him to "Stay here!"

"What? I – " Confused, Harry stepped forward, nearly tripping over the Cleansweep he had avoided so carefully earlier. James didn't let him finish, slamming the door shut and throwing his son into darkness as the click of the lock echoed around the inside of the shed.

Collecting himself, Harry lurched towards the door and pounded on it with his fists.

A scream from the direction of the house rent the air and Harry tripled his efforts to escape. Cursing his own stupidity, he felt around his pockets for his wand, wondering briefly why he hadn't even bothered to think about it all this time. But there it was, jammed into his back pocket as though it belonged there and pulling it out, Harry shot the alohomora charm at the door.

When the lock failed to give, he used something more powerful, blasting his way through the wood.
Harsh sunlight assaulted his eyes as though he had been in the dark for much longer than he actually had and squinting at the brightness, he raced towards the back of the house. He was halted momentarily by the sliding door to the kitchen which was also locked. It gave way to the same spell that the shed had, the glass shattering into a million shards as Harry hurried into the kitchen.

"James!" He could hear someone – his mother, he realized – screaming by the front door. "James, don't!"

More horrifying than the terror in his mother's voice was the shout that followed.

"Avada kedavra!"

Racing forward, harry arrived in the entranceway just in time to see his father's prone body fall to the ground with a sickening thud, the sound almost completely drowned out by his mother's scream.

Hurling himself towards his fallen father, Harry was held still in his mother's arms, wrapping around him as he moved past, holding him tightly to her despite his struggles.

"No!" He screamed, fighting to pull away from her, "NO!"

"Stop," Lily shouted at him, "Run away, Harry! Get out of here! Remember what I told you!"

She pushed him back towards the way he had come, but Harry didn't move – couldn't move. Even if the beans had brought him back in time to hear what his mother so desperately wanted him to remember, the moment itself effectively cleared every coherent thought from his head aside from the burning need to stop whoever it was that stood just outside the front door.
Though he already knew exactly who it was before they even stepped into the house.

Voldemort looked the same as he always did in Harry's memories – but whole. This was a man who hadn't yet met his downfall. Gone were the slit nostrils, the bald head and the snake-like features. This was the Tom Riddle who had never attempted to kill Harry Potter, who had never been backfired upon by the love Lily Evans felt for her son.

Harry's eyes widened as the dark lord stepped further over the threshold, followed closely by two masked death eaters. Turning to one of them, he grinned sickeningly and nodded at Harry's mother, who still stood in front of her son protectively.

"Well? Shall I let her live?"

The masked death eater said nothing and Voldemort rounded on the pair, before him.

"What do you say, Evans? Give me the boy and I'll let you live. Either way," he smiled menacingly, "The boy is going to die. It's up to you whether or not you will as well."

Meeting the dark lord's gaze, Lily pushed Harry further behind her. "I will never give you my son," she hissed, then twisted to look at him. "Run, Harry!"

Still his feet refused to move. Powerlessly, he could only watch as the bright flash of green light that had always haunted his memories engulfed the room. Suddenly there was nothing – no one – standing between him and the dark lord.

"Well, young Potter," Voldemort rasped, moving ever closer. He kicked at Lily's corpse, laughing at the horrified expression on Harry's face as his mother's body limply gave way under his foot. "Such valiant parents you had. And their last words, how memorable. Do you have any of your own you wished to add?"

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but the expression on the Voldemort's face didn't so much as flicker as he uttered the same curse which had proven so fatal to both Lily and James.

Once more the horrifying flash of green engulfed the room and a choked cry forced its way between Harry's lips. The green faded to black as though a darkness had settled over the entranceway and gradually Harry became aware of the fact that he was no longer standing in Godric's Hollow, but lying in bed in Ron's room at the Burrow.

Taking a few deep breaths, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and lay back. It wasn't real.

The following morning, Harry woke to the sounds of movement downstairs. It wasn't unusual for Mr. and Mrs. Weasley to be up and about while Ron and Harry took advantage of the last few weeks of their vacation.

In the bed next to his, Harry could see that his friend was predictably still asleep, mouth hanging slightly open as he snored softly. Harry wished his own sleep had been as peaceful. After the beans had relinquished their hold on him, he had slipped into normal dreams, fragmented ones which always seemed to start out pleasantly, but end with that same terrifying flash of green light.

Downstairs, someone was knocking on the door and Harry listened as Molly answered it. Her voice was muffled by the many floors between them, but Harry could hear his own name spoken in a man's voice.

"I think he's still asleep," he could just barely make out, "Let me check for you."

By the time Molly had climbed her way up all of the stairs to Ron's bedroom, Harry was dressed and ready to greet her.

"Oh, Harry, you're awake. I was just coming up to see you," she wheezed, panting slightly from her climb. "Tonks and Remus have dropped in for breakfast and Professor Lupin would like to speak to you." She smiled fondly at him before turning her attention to her own son.

"Get up!" She barked and Ron woke with a start. "It's time for breakfast."

Harry smiled sympathetically at his groggy-eyed friend before following Mrs. Weasley down the stairs and back to the kitchen. Both Hermione and Ginny were already awake, chatting animatedly with Tonks between bitefuls of toast.

In the doorway stood Remus and it came as something of a shock to Harry to see him looking so old. In the beans' vision, Remus had seemed much younger, the years of grief over the deaths of his closest friends not weighing down on his shoulders.

"Good morning, Harry," he nodded, smiling thinly. "I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment?"
Harry repeated the greeting to his former professor, and followed him into the nearby living room where both took a seat on one of the couches.

Remus didn't waffle around, instead leaping straight into the point as he shot Harry a grave look. "How many of those beans did you buy from the Weasley's?"

Startled, Harry's eyes widened. "What?"

"The could-have beans," Remus persisted, and suddenly everything seemed to make sense.

"You were there!" Harry cried, eyeing Lupin, "You – how – "

"Yes! When you came downstairs that morning, I had expected to find Lily and James' son as another projection of the beans. Drawn from my memories of you and warped slightly by the change in history." He smiled ruefully, "But when you didn't know what was going on..." The werewolf fell off, looking away. "When I saw you in the bathroom – you were looking for your scar, weren't you?"

Harry nodded and suddenly something that had been bothering him in the back of his mind came charging to the surface. "Professor – sir – when – er – he came, why didn't you stop him? Why weren't you there?"

There was a pause where Remus stared off in the distance for so long that Harry considered repeating his question. "I had already woken up by that point, Harry." Lupin answered finally, but there was no masking the regret in his voice. "I was spared seeing that particular... misfortune." He turned to focus his sober gaze on Harry again. "You were not."

Harry hesitated before phrasing the second question that had been troubling him. "What was the could have been, sir? At first I thought it was simply that Voldemort never attacked, but – "

"These things are always more complicated than we are initially led to believe. In this particular reality, I am forced to assume that the inciting incident was because of Sirius." If Harry noticed the way Remus barely avoided choking on the name, he said nothing. "As you know, he had been the original secret keeper for your parents, but was changed to Peter shortly after your parents went into hiding. In the universe that the beans showed, he was still the secret keeper and in hiding, himself. Unlike what we feared would happen, he was not attacked and your parents, yourself – and I – were kept safely concealed."

"Until he found out. Do you think they did something to Sirius – "

Remus cut him off before he could finish. "Harry, how many beans did you get from the Weasley's?"

"Just one," he answered, voice soft.

Remus looked relieved. "I don't think you should buy any more. These visions, they can show you things better left unseen. I wish you had been able to know your parents, Harry, I really do, but this is not the way to go about it."

Harry nodded and Remus clapped a hand down on his shoulder. "Shall we have breakfast?"

"Sure." He followed his former professor back into the kitchen, watching as Remus joined Tonks' side and Mrs. Weasley began to ferry plates over to the kitchen table, admonishing the bleary-looking Ron who had just stumbled in.

This was his reality, Harry reminded himself, a faint smile on his face. It might not be the one he would have chosen for himself, but all things considered, it wasn't bad.

And, after all – he still had four beans left.