DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
A note on pairings: Eventual het and/or slash, of both main and side characters. I don't know who Harry (or anyone else) will end up with, but I think it's fair to put the warning up now so you don't go screaming when it does turn up. Romance won't ever be the main focus and is likely to be fairly minimal when it does occur, although of course it's an important motivator for lots of things.
Warnings: Het, slash, blood, gore, swearing, disturbing themes, violence and torture, references to physical and emotional abuse, angst, character death, references to sex, references to drugs and drug use, lots of crime and terrorism and other immorality, murder. These are for the whole fic, I'm only going to put it up once unless I think there's something particularly disturbing happening in a chapter.
East of the Sun: Prologue
"Fabian, Fabian, let me in." Sirius Black pounded on his friend's door with his fist. "It's important!"
The door opened suddenly and Sirius stumbled forward, righting himself with a gasp only to find himself at wandpoint.
"What's my favourite drink and how do I like it?" Fabian demanded.
"Butterbeer-tini, you girl, shaken not stirred. Now let me in, this is serious."
"I know who you are, you don't have to-"
"Damnit Fabian I don't have time for this!"
Fabian grinned and stepped aside, opened the door just wide enough for Sirius to get inside, then shoved the door closed again and skillfully set about reapplying the locking and warding charms. Sirius leaned against the wall, panting, cradling the bundle in his arms to his chest.
When Fabian finished with the charms and turned around, all traces of good humour had fled. "What brings you here tonight, Sirius? Come on through, we can sit in the lounge."
Sirius waited until they had settled onto Fabian's threadbare sofas before he began to explain. "This is Harry Potter, James' son," he said. "I need you to take care of him for a while."
"Is this some kind of joke?" Fabian asked flatly. "You must be out of your bloody mind. You can't leave a child with me, the Death Eaters have had my name for weeks now-"
"He knows where James and Lily are. There's going to be an attack. Tonight."
Sirius watched the blood drain out of Fabian's cheeks, leaving the red-haired man looking pale and ill. "You're going to try to ambush them?"
Sirius nodded.
"But why leave the kid with me? I don't know the first thing about children – I should be there fighting with you."
"Because, if anything happens to us tonight, you had a torrid love affair with Eudora Muldoon, a beautiful black-haired, green-eyed American witch of Irish descent you met while swanning about the continent a few years ago."
"I wasn't swanning anywhere, it was a mission-"
"Doesn't matter. This lovely pureblood wench was so passionately attracted to you – or drunk, whatever - that she forgot her contraception hex and little Hadrian Prewett here appeared nine months later, to her great and unforgettable displeasure. She put up with him for a while but now it's getting in the way of her singing career, so here he is and here you are, one great big happy family. Congrats."
At any other time, Sirius might have broken down laughing at Fabian's expression of sheer helplessness.
Sirius gently lay Harry down on the sofa and started rummaging in his bag. Once he found what he was looking for he began to throw sheets of parchment onto the coffee table in front of them. "Birth certificate – Petra General Hospital, in Jordan. That Eudora was a stubborn one, wouldn't give up on having her Grand Tour for anything, not even a bump. Healers notes from the birth, vaccination records, pictures of you two together – glamours, of course - love letters that get progressively nastier, a letter with traces of a castration curse that's been disabled, and finally a letter saying that she's coming to town, dated three days ago. You'd stopped reading the letters once the one with the curse arrived, so you had no idea she was pregnant until she appeared at the door last night, dumped him in your arms and disappeared again."
"The birth certificate is genuine?" Sirius glanced up from rifling in his bag to see Fabian peering at the certificate. Typical cursebreaker, Sirius thought. Couldn't look at anything without wanting to deconstruct it.
"I know a guy who works in Petra and I have lots of money."
"And let me guess, he would swear up and down that … Eudora was the worst patient he'd ever had and that he was run off his feet bringing her all sorts of odd things that she just needed to get through the birth, right?"
"This is why I chose you, Fabian old chap. Got it in one."
Fabian sighed and rubbed tiredly at his eyes. "Merlin and Morgana, Sirius, why all the subterfuge?"
"It's Harry they want – I can't tell you why, I don't even know myself. But if this ambush goes wrong and we get ourselves killed, it's safer for Harry to not be Harry any more," Sirius said.
"How long did all this take you? You must have been planning it for weeks-"
"Nine hours."
"Blimey." Fabian laughed. It sounded hollow. "You work fast."
"Lily overheard that miserable, traitorous rat talking to his Death Eater buddies. It's too good an opportunity to take some of them down to let it slip through our fingers, but we don't want Harry in the thick of it. So here he is. And I'm hoping that I can come back tomorrow morning to fetch him and he'll just have spent a pleasant night in your flat and nothing else will come of it. But if the worst comes, he's safer here. And if not, we still have those documents if he ever needs to go into hiding."
"You're assuming that I'll say yes to all of this nonsense," Fabian pointed out.
"Mate, if you were going to say no, you'd have stopped me long before now."
A few hours later, oaths sworn, having been left with a crib in his bedroom, a pile of toddler paraphernalia, what seemed like an army of animated toys and strict instructions on how to deal with what seemed like every possible situation that could ever come up while Harry was in his care, Fabian slumped onto his sofa and sighed deeply, absent-mindedly stirring his mug of coffee (Irish, what else on a night like this?). His twin Gideon lay stretched out on the other sofa, and while Fabian couldn't see his face, he expected he probably looked like Fabian felt – a little gobsmacked at having a kid suddenly dumped on them, however suddenly, and tense with the knowledge that it was now well after midnight, and no-one had contacted them yet. It was possible that they were still fighting, or that the Death Eaters had figured out it was a trap and called the attack off, or that everyone was holed up at St Mungos or Headquarters and had just forgotten to update them – a thousand possible scenarios, and it felt like Fabian had run through them all by now.
"You didn't have to stay here with me," Fabian said, just to break out of his head for a while. They'd already had this argument, after all. "You could have gone with them."
"They can handle themselves." Gideon waved a hand dismissively. "Gotta believe that, anyway, or I'll go mad. Can't be there all the time, and it's a small house. Too many people and we'd just trip over each other."
They had both gotten good at sounding unconcerned over the years. "At least they'll have Alice and Marlene with them."
"Wish they'd had Frank instead though." Gideon sighed. "Poor bastard. I know the folks at St Mungos say he's going to pull through okay, but that blasting curse was nasty."
"Marlene's gotten a lot faster with that slicing thing she does. It'll be okay."
Fabian must have dozed off, because the next time he looked at the clock it was after four. "Gideon," he hissed, rolling onto his feet and accidentally knocking over the empty mug of coffee he'd set on the floor earlier in the night. The wards buzzed angrily in his ears. "Gid, do you hear-"
His brother had heard, he realised, because he too was on his feet, wand in hand. They locked eyes briefly, and an understanding passed through them, born of long years of doing everything together. Gideon crept towards the front door and Fabian was moving towards Harry's crib when the front door exploded inwards with a crash and suddenly everything was chaos as wizards with dark robes and masks swept in.
"Expulso!" Gideon shouted, and two of the attackers who had stepped through the doorway slammed backwards into the hall, landing with sickening thuds against the wall which cracked under the pressure of the curse.
More Death Eaters swarmed in and Fabian joined his brother in engaging them as he found the way to his bedroom and Harry cut off. Icy fear pooled in his stomach and began to flood his veins. With a sweep of his wand the furniture leapt to their defence, barrelling into the Death Eaters. At least two were knocked off their feet, but another slipped past, laughing softly.
"Fabian, Fabian, you're hopelessly outnumbered," the Death Eater purred. The voice sounded familiar, but distorted by the mask Fabian couldn't make it out. "Just give in and we can do this the easy way, you don't have to di-"
With a vicious swipe of his wand Fabian flung a Bone-Breaking curse at his head. It missed, and Fabian only barely managed to bring up a shield in time before an Entrail-Expelling curse splashed against it. Where was Gideon? He could still hear shouting from the hall, he must still be alive, but there were so many Death Eaters-
"Last chance, you miserable little blood traitor," the Death Eater said. "Tell us where the Dark Lord is and we might kill you quickly."
"Go to hell!" This guy talked way too much. Fabian took advantage of his chattiness to throw another Bonebreaker and this one hit, smashing directly into the Death Eater's rib cage. The force of the curse threw him against the sofa where he slumped over the back of it, blood oozing out of his shattered chest.
"Amycus! NO!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Fabian saw that one of the Death Eaters Gideon had caught with the blasting curse had struggled onto her feet and into the lounge doorway, clutching at her side with one hand and her wand in the other. She was drenched in blood.
He whirled around, wand raised to bring up a shield, but he was too late. The overwhelming pain of the Cruciatus curse brought him to his knees, blind with agony as he screamed and writhed on the floor. He could only make out choking, gurgling laughter as everything went white.