AN: Thank you all so much for your comments! As a clarification, this is essentially a short story collection of the moments other characters realize the ruse - and their reactions. So unfortunately, no, this episode is not more Aldon (though I also love Aldon/Harry and I may very well write more of that sometime!), but here we go with... Leo!

XXX

He had promised Harry he wouldn't pry, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't take the opportunity, when it presented itself, to talk to her charming, self-professed best friend: Hermione Granger.

"Honestly," she chided him, almost like his mother would have, as if he hadn't specifically gone to the young intern rather than Eleni Hurst. "You should really be more careful."

It was a small cut, lengthwise against his palm, and not usually the kind of thing he would have gone to Maywell's for, but why not take the opportunity when he knew that Hermione was there?

"I know, but Harry's potions knives are surprisingly sharp," he replied easily. That was true – Harry's potion kit had many sharp knives. The fact that he had replied with a non-sequitur, well, Hermione didn't need to know that. It would be better for her to think he had been helping Harry with her potions, anyway. She didn't need to know that he had simply been cut in a practice bout that morning, or that Harry hadn't been there, having been caught up in some errand or another.

"Why didn't Harry heal it for you?" Hermione asked, a hint of confusion on her voice. "He is the best in our class at cosmetic healing…"

"Oh, he didn't want to put the cauldron on stasis," Leo lied breezily. Just because he preferred to reply with truthful non-sequiturs didn't mean he had a particular aversion to lying. He was the King of Thieves, after all. "Potions don't always take well to stasis charms, and anyway, it's not that bad."

"Hmm," Hermione replied suspiciously, but she poked her wand at his hand anyway. "That doesn't sound like him…"

"What do you mean?" Leo asked, nonchalant. This wasn't the first time she had mentioned something offhandedly like this, nor the first time they had discussed their odd friend – had it been, the kind of questions he asked would be a sure way to raise suspicion. Still, this was the reason he had been popping by the clinic a few more times than normal, with the kind of injuries he wouldn't normally bother with. Hermione was clearly good friends with Harry, based on the number of times she referenced him in casual conversation, but also the kind of good friend that, in his nearly three years of knowing her, Harry had never once mentioned. Overall, the whole thing was … odd.

She frowned at his cut, which was growing smaller by the second. "Hmm… well, it's nothing that unusual, I suppose," she demurred, nodding in satisfaction as his cut disappeared. "He did do that potions internship last year without telling me, and he has always been very good at potions at school, too. At school he's very focused on Healing, though. But it's not unusual for people to be different at school than they are at home."

"Really? What is Harry like at school?" He smiled disarmingly, flexing his hand, being sure to keep his tone light. "I only ever see him during the summers, so I can't imagine it."

"Hmm…" Hermione considered it, and he held his breath. Well, he didn't really hold his breath, but in his imagination he did. "He pays more attention to his clothes, and he's really into pranks. In our second week at school, he got his shoe stuck to the ceiling with gum, somehow. And he flirts outrageously, but I suppose he must be more relaxed at school than at home. Really, it's not that big of a difference, I suppose."

Leo laughed out loud and agreed with her, but his mind was whirring.

XXX

One of the oddest things about Harry, really, was the fact that she pretended to be a boy. And, even odder, whereas it was evident that she pretended to be a boy in Britain in a half-hearted manner at best, never becoming truly angry if anyone discovered she wasn't, it was clear that she was much more adamant about being a boy at school, if "flirting outrageously" was a qualifier. He had never gotten a reason for why Harry let people believe that she was a boy, only that, whatever it was, it was an important reason.

And there was that apartment. Harry acknowledged that the apartment was hers, and she paid rent on it, but she didn't use it for anything that he could imagine. She just rented it, and it was apparently fine if he knew that she rented it, but she had explicitly told him to remember nothing else about the place. It was at this apartment that he sat, now, brooding on the loveseat that he had procured for her. She didn't live here, but then – he was never to say that this was not lived in. He remembered the steely resolve in her eyes as she pressed those words into him.

And, based on what Hermione had said, apparently Harry was a completely different person in America. He couldn't imagine Harry, his Harry, flirting outrageously with anyone, playing pranks, or caring about her clothes. In fact, of those three things, the third was the most important. People didn't just change the way they dealt with their clothes. Clothing was something that someone dealt with every day – someone that did not care for fashion could not be trained to care for fashion every day. It just wasn't right. And that was on top of the fact, of course, that Hermione was apparently a very good friend, one close enough to know stories about Harry's escapades as early as her first year, that Harry had never mentioned before this summer. In fact, his Harry wasn't, as far as he knew, even remotely interested in pranks.

The only conclusion he could come up with was that Harry, the Harry that Hermione knew, was a very different person from his Harry. His Harry cared for virtually nothing except for potions, though she knew how to heal, and cared even less for her clothing. His Harry certainly let people believe that she was a boy, but she never enforced this belief by flirting, or by any other measure. His Harry was simply too different from Hermione's Harry – too different, indeed, to be the same literal person.

So say that was true – say that Hermione's Harry was literally a different person than his Harry. What options did that leave him?

Well, first, he knew that his Harry wasn't at home during the school year. She had as much told him so. However, neither was she using this apartment; despite the lived-in look it now had, he remembered that first autumn when he had first clambered through the windows, finding the place empty, soulless, dusty. Even now, when he looked around at the small apartment, it was full of the same furniture he had bought for her, left in the same bland, unoriginal style that he had set it up in. There were no crumbs on the countertops, no clothes overflowing from baskets on the floor in the bedrooms, no debris of life coating the tables or in the sinks. She wasn't living here.

So, she was elsewhere.

He groaned aloud, flopping sideways onto the loveseat and swinging his legs over the armrest. He tucked one of the handy, if dull, throw cushions under his head. Not being at school, at home, or in her apartment? That only left the rest of the world.

He skipped that problem, for the moment, and went back to Hermione's Harry. That Harry, between Hermione's words this morning, and her offhand comments when she didn't necessarily know he was listening, that Harry was impertinent and earnest to a fault. He was a flirt, but dedicated to his Healing studies, though equally excellent at potions. They were both top of the class, Hermione in most subjects but Harry second, and the order reversed, sometimes, in potions and in Healing. He cared about his clothing, and played pranks. That Harry, too, apparently looked and acted enoughlike his Harry that Hermione didn't, apparently, doubt they were the same person. Or, perhaps, it was the other way around – perhaps his Harry acted enough like her Harry that she didn't doubt they were the same person, small differences aside?

Who looked, and acted, enough like someone that even their self-professed best friend didn't doubt they were that person? They would have to know the person very well, well enough to act out the other person's traits. They would also have to look like that person, because Leo would give up his title if Hermione's Harry hadn't been in her sight for more than an hour at a time over the past three years. Someone who had known Harry her whole life, grown up with her, would be ideal.

Like a relative.

He sat up, bolt upright, swinging his legs back onto the floor. He knew someone like that – someone who fit both Hermione's description and who looked like Harry. Didn't they comment on it, the one time that Harry had brought him into the alleys? They weren't related, yet they looked uncommonly alike – a trait they had, at the time, simply attributed to good old noble inbreeding. But pureblood genetics, being what they were, meant that the families still largely remained distinct, even if they all developed very delicate looks. There was no rumour that he knew of placing the Potter and Black family trees close enough together that they would look alike. And they had grown up together – they were close enough that Harry, his secretive Harry, didn't bat an eye at bringing him down into the alleys.

Arcturus Rigel Black, also known as Archie, also fit Hermione's description. He was better dressed than Harry was – he actually looked, and dressed, like nobility. His clothing, even for a run into the alleys, was of a light, fine fabric, subtle to the eye but noticeable, and he carried himself like a noble. He was friendly, earnestly so, and adapted well to new situations. Though he was flustered by Rispah's usual antics, he recovered quickly. He could see Archie being a prankster, particularly given his background and connection to the Marauders – really, it was more surprising than otherwise that Harry wasn't into pranking, being a Potter.

And that background, too, fit wonderfully. Didn't his mother once mention that Lord Sirius Black, a regular volunteer at St. Mungo's, had lost his wife to illness? Something about how it was good for him to get back into the children's ward to volunteer, after being shut away for so long. That fit well – maybe too well.

And if Archie played at being Harry in America, then it would, of course, be logical for Harry to play Archie at Hogwarts, wouldn't it?

She had some explaining to do.

XXX

"I don't see what you could need to ask that you couldn't ask at the Phoenix," Harry said, exasperated, as Leo pulled her into her own apartment. She had been highly reluctant to follow him, though he noted that she didn't offer any particularly good reason for avoiding it. He pulled out his wand and flicked a rune for silence to each of the apartment's walls. It was a hasty, if effective, ward against eavesdroppers.

Glancing down at her, he could read the guarded uncertainty in her eyes, which had grown several degrees sharper on his casting of the ward.

"Simple question, Harry," he replied. "Are you attending Hogwarts during the year?"

Her green eyes sparked with panic, which was quickly smoothed over while she adopted a look of amusement. She was good, he had to admit – if he hadn't specifically been looking for clues, he might have missed it.

"What do you mean, Leo?" she laughed, the perfect picture of amused relief. "I'm a halfblood – I can't go to Hogwarts."

"You know what I mean, Harry," he said, dropping onto the loveseat and gesturing for her to take a seat. She didn't. "I saw the look of panic you had. Is your cousin attending AIM in your place, while you take his at Hogwarts?"

There was a pause – a very short pause. Harry's hand twitched towards her right, a sign that she was contemplating going for her wand. Before she could decide, he barrelled ahead.

"If you have, it would make a lot of sense. You look alike – I don't know why, I'm not sure I want to know why. You would have to pretend to be a boy, because your cousin is actually a boy, and it fits with you being a boy at AIM, too. And it would make sense with your personality, and his – if Hermione was your cousin's best friend, it would explain why you almost never mention her, but she often mentions you in casual conversation. And it would explain her description of you at school too, because the person she describes is not you."

She frowned at him, and he could tell by the positioning of her hand that she was still thinking about going for her wand.

"And there's no point obliviating me. Since I put the pieces together myself, I'll just do it again."

Harry's hand dropped to her side, and she stalked over to one of the armchairs in the slight apartment and sat down, crossing her arms tersely.

"What is the point of asking me this, Leo?" she demanded. "Either you're right, in which case there is no benefit to anyone and higher risk of discovery for us, or you're wrong, and you've just made a serious accusation against us, to no one's benefit."

"I want to know, Harry, because whatever it is, I want to help you," he replied seriously. "I can't help if I don't know all the details. Harry, I've said this before, but I'm on your side. Whatever it is, I'm on your side."

She let out a long breath, and he knew then that he had won. "It's dangerous," she said, feebly.

"That's fine," he grinned. "I live on danger."