Albus Severus Potter

Note: contains some lines from the original epilogue from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Chapter 1

-Flashbacks-

Albus was so excited about his first year at Hogwarts that he could hardly stop moving, not that he physically could, with the abundant amount of people clambering and shuffling within the tight hallways that ran alongside the train's compartments. He'd once overheard his dad telling his older brother, James, about some absurdly far-fetched story that had supposedly happened in grounds of Hogwarts, some time ago, when James was going to start his first year at Hogwarts. Though it had been over 3 years since that first mention of Hogwarts, at the time it had seemed such an amazing experience which Albus himself had been wanting and waiting for since he'd heard of all the crazy and cool things he could do.

'Magic is cool', he thought to himself, 'how do muggles live without it?!'.

Maybe they didn't know, admittedly he himself had thought it was some made-up fantasy at first, as a school fully dedicated to the studies of magic seemed impossible even in Albus' 8-year old imaginative mind.

But that wasn't what was filling his thoughts at this current moment.

He was thinking vaguely about his dad, and he thought of the expectations from his dad. His father never mentioned anything of the sort, though Albus felt the unspoken judgment and expectations his father seemed to tell Albus with his eyes alone.

His father had always been the most famous, most popular, most powerful wizard who defeated some long forgotten dark lord called Voldemort. Albus had heard about his father's extravagant adventures in school so abundantly that he could practically repeat the many tattles and tales off by heart.

'Why was Harry Potter so popular in school, always an important part of the gossip, and it was he, his son, who had to deal with it?'

He doubted that he would live up to any of these expectations.

Then, another thought. One which he'd had a thousand times before; the choosing ceremony, which would take place in the great hall of Hogwarts. He was still very nervous about being chosen by the magical choosing hat, in front of the entire school. He trusted his dad's last words to him before he got on the train;

"then Slytherin House will have gained an excellent student, won't it? It doesn't matter to us, Al. But if it matters to you, you'll be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin. The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account."

Albus sincerely hoped he could be, like all his family before him, in Gryffindor.

Albus had never genuinely thought why he desperately wanted to be in Gryffindor. Maybe it was to please his family, he thought to himself, though he knew truly inside of him that the real reason he wanted it was to just fit in, to be equal to his parents, his brother...

Rose beckoning him over broke him out of his deep thoughts. He went to join them, but she waved him on, "Sorry Al, but there's really no space in here. You're gonna have to sit somewhere else."

Albus peered inside the cheery compartment, and, true to her word, Rose was right about the amount of space that was left after she squeezed back in. There was barely enough space to shake a wand at, let alone for Albus to sit down. Albus begrudgingly waddled back down the corridor looking for a spare seat, possibly with a person in the same year as him. He was most definitely not going into a compartment with three brutish, hairy fifth-years, all of whom seemed to have little to no hygienic conscience, or personal space, on that matter.

He gazed out the window as he moved, looking at the bland British countryside wooshing by. The train ride now seemed to take forever as Albus eagerly anticipated the arrival to the school, at the carriages, which he knew would take them to the magical castle of Hogwarts.

But right now, there was a bigger problem. The train was teeming with luggage and other clusterings of random magical equipment, and there was absolutely nowhere to sit.

Harry snapped awake with a cold sweat on his back. Yet another fearful night of dreams, the ones where his mind would go back to his troubled past. Back to a time when Voldemort was at large, and wanted him dead. Rapid and frighting dreams were commonly a mixture of flashbacks of all that happened, over nineteen years ago now.

Cedric dying within the graveyard of little Hangleton...

the Order of the Phoenix and Grimuald place...

Dumbledore's death on the top of the Astronomy tower...

... and Sirius.

He still clearly remembered how Sirius had been killed, murdered, in the Ministry of Magic, all that time ago, fading away into the next life.

How could he forget?

And how he, Sirius' closest friend, practically his son, his closeset friend's son, had done nothing to stop him from dying. How he could've helped him, deflected the spell,
attacked Bellatrix, done anything to stop his godfather from dying...

He scolded himself mentally, of course he still missed Sirius, but it had been near to 22 years since it had happened. There was nothing he could have done.

But was there?

Harry still thought about what he could've done to save Sirius, save Dumbledore, save everyone who died, no murdered, or losing somebody close to them, just like Ron had. He felt responsible for each and every single person, or creature, that died at the hands of Voldemort or his followers.

More recently horrifying thoughts about what could've, what would've happened if he, Ron, Hermione and everyone else hadn't stood up to Voldemort and stopped him rattled his brain. It was strange, to him at least, how he was thinking more about what happened when he was 17 years-old, rather then when he was actually there, doing it.

Maybe it was the worry of his children going off to Hogwarts, a place where both good and bad things had happened for him. He was especially worried for Albus, who had seemed quite anxious about getting into Gryffindor, amongst other fears which James had implemented into his young mind, when Harry had seen him off at the platform 9¾.

A stir to his left alleviated some of the fear from him. Harry vaguely wondered how Albus was feeling. Was he feeling like Harry himself when he'd first arrived at Hogwarts, just completely overwhelmed? Or was he more excited, ambitious?

He also wondered how long it will take for him to cause mischief, as Harry had in his first year, stumbling upon the mystery of the mirror of Erised, not to mention Voldemort and the evil teacher Quirell. Ginny had adamantly warned Albus to be good, telling him that she would have his head if she got any owls from the school telling her of anything bad he'd done. Ginny had looked to Harry to scold Albus as well, but he just kept silent, pretending not to notice her piercing gaze.

When she wasn't looking, though, he slipped Albus a quick wink and also, the marauder's map, something that had kept him both in and out of trouble during his time at school.

'He needed to stop thinking too much', he thought, rubbing his aching temples.

Suddenly, a crash from below and a loud meowing sound brought him somewhat out of his sleepy, thoughtful state.

Harry's heart hammered against his chest. Even now, Harry still had a slight paranoid state around him, and was constantly on edge, especially when something odd happened like that. He wasn't as bad as he was before, almost any noise had caused him to immediately turn and hex it. Now, it only caused him a minor heart attack and a wary sense.

'Probably not. Hopefully not. Probably just Crookshanks making a racket downstairs', thought Harry, dragging himself out of bed to investigate.

He debated bringing his wand, not wanting to alarm Ginny or Lily, their 9 year-old daughter, who was in the room adjacent to theirs. Against his better judgement, he grudgingly picked up his beloved wand, an 11-inch wand of Holly with a phoenix feather core, opened the door, and went into to the dark corridor. He'd most likely need to clean up Crookshanks' mess anyway.

Albus walked the heavily carpeted corridor of the Hogwarts express, looking at the compartments lining the right-hand side of the train as he went. He was hoping James would bring him all sorts of exciting things from Hogsmeade, as it was his third year, where he could now go to the small village, which was little distance from the school.

All the separate compartments will mostly filled, a lot of them with kids older than him, some even older then James, so he struck it lucky when he found a compartment near the end of the train, with only one kid, a blond haired, thin boy, who looked to be a first-year like Albus, though it was hard to tell with the kid's boisterous hair covering his face. Albus hovered around the sliding door entrance, debating whether or not to go in, then eventually, after standing there for a couple of minutes, he crept in, pulled his catastrophe of luggage with him, and slid the door shut, feeling terribly awkward.

"Hi, is it OK if I sit here?" Albus enquired.

"Sure...go for it", the boy replied.

Albus dumped his trunk and other things on the seat beside him, before collapsing in the seat opposite the kid.

"I'm Albus"

"Hi, my name's Scorpius"

Scorpius spoke with a soft voice, barely creeping on the edge of a whisper, though it had a slightly sneering, posh accent, which Scorpius seemed to be trying to hide by talking quietly. He looked like a bookworm, with study books scattered all around him, his trunk an unorganized rabble of clothes, books, his cage and ingredients, the mess almost as bad as Albus'.

"So what house do you want to be in? I'm hoping Gryffindor."

It seemed that Scorpius wasn't good at conversation, though he seemed to be actually noticing Albus, at least he was facing him now.

"Nah, I'd prefer Slytherin, all my family have been in it before."

Before Albus could help it, he shuddered at what Scorpius had said. He had always feared going to Slytherin, and here was a person willing to go to that house. Albus had heard all the stories about people in Slytherin becoming evil, all the worst wizards and witches who had been father too had held some prejudice towards Slytherin, though he had said it didn't matter if Albus was to be put into Slytherin.

Still, this was one of the things he worried about regarding the sorting ceremony, well that, and wetting himself infront of the entire school. He was even having nightmares of himself being put into Slytherin, his brother's disgusted look and his dad's disappointed face.

'But how would they really react? Would they be as disspointed, or worse?'

Albus tried to not show dislike of the house, not wanting to offend his newfound, albeit temporary, friend.

As he walked towards the end of the upstairs corridor, Harry got a nagging feeling of something, something was not quite right.

He hoped he was just having after-effects of his nightmare, or that it might just be his oversensitive wizarding sense, though it was a little frightening to have a random noise after such a dream as Harry had had.

'Surely, there was nothing wrong?'

He really hoped he was just paranoid.

Either way, as he descended the hallway leading to the staircase, he kept on getting that same feeling off-putting him from this meaningless night.

Gliding down the stairs two at a time, Harry was getting annoyed at the consistent irritating presence of Crookshanks, whom Harry had promised to take care of for Ron and Hermione as they had went on holiday to Lichtenstein to visit 'some of the oldest and most prestigious wizarding communities and monuments', which Harry remembered from Hermione's long rambling rant about it at work. This news had been much to Ron's dismay and disbelief.

The other thing was the continuous stream of nightmares.

He was having one every other night and after every one he had convinced himself that Voldemort is back, the realistic events of his darkest memories coming back to haunt him.

Afterwards he would keep telling himself that it's nothing.

'Surely a person, even as strong as Voldemort, couldn't be alive again? Not after he, Ron and Hermione had thoroughly destroyed each and every Horcrux?'

But before, when he had had dreams, it had meant Voldemort was doing something, alive and real. But still after nineteen years?

The only reassuring thing was that his scar hadn't hurt in so long, the last time being when Ginny had "accidentally" hit Harry in the forehead with a flying pan when they had argued.

Harry wondered why his brain couldn't move past these events, when for the past nineteen years he and everyone had been trying to. Maybe this was a sign of something?

Great, back to that paranoia.

"Now where's this bloody cat", Harry muttered to himself in an whispered undertone, he didn't want to face Ginny's wrath for waking her up, like when he had her up at 2 AM to do a mission for the ministry of Magic. He had somehow unfathomably ended up being 30 minutes late, despite only having to be there for 3 AM.

Harry started to creep around in a hunched position, squinting into the darkness to look for a ruffled ginger tail of a pampered ginger cat, listening for the scampering of claws on wooden planks, or the snorkel like breathing Crookshanks did, which would drive Harry nuts. Though he could barely see a thing, Harry didn't want to attract any attention to himself, as he still felt that something was wrong. He then bumped into something on the floor, something furry, and big.

He bent down to pick it up and when he touched it, he immediately pulled away and found his left hand covered in a thick, honey-like liquid.

Lumos' he whispered.

As tiny rays of light gathered at the tip of his wand, Harry dared to look down, feeling the substance seeping around his slippered feet, soaking them in whatever it was.

At that exact moment, he knew everything was not alright, and then the sweat and fear came again, along with some nice waking nightmares. There was definitely something irregular about this night, as there, on the floor, was a dead body.

Crookshank's dead body.