Chapter 1
"We're all stories, in the end."
2014
The first picture that caught Jake's attention was a family portrait. But what stood out the most was that it wasn't moving; it was a Muggle picture of two adults and a small boy who was grinning gleefully between them.
"Burt, Elizabeth, and Kurt Hummel on Kurt's 7th birthday, 1987"
"Hummel," Ryder mused. "That name sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?"
"I dunno. Why is there even a Muggle picture in here, anyway?" Kitty asked. "How could a Muggle get it here?"
"I'm pretty sure it just means he's Muggle-Born," Marley pointed out. "And if he was a student here, there must be some record of him. Maybe we could try looking in the records in the Library or the Trophy Room or something?"
"Really? Are you actually trying to turn this into more work for us to do now?" Jake asked exasperated. "Don't we have enough to do with the Charms essay that's due tomorrow?"
"I thought you were the one who wanted to go searching through all this stuff!" Marley pointed out. "Now it's getting interesting and you're giving up?"
"I'm not giving up, it's just - why do we even care about Kurt Hummel? He's like twenty years older than us. Who cares?"
"Jake, he was here when everything happened! If he was 7 in 1987, that means he was probably in Harry Potter's year at Hogwarts. What if he was there? This is so much more than one of Binns' lessons - this is the real story!"
The passion in Marley's voice gave everyone pause.
"I just - I feel like this is something important. I want to hear Kurt Hummel's story."
They found his name in a record of old school prefects and head boys and girls in the library. Kurt was a Slytherin, which surprised all four students when they remembered the Muggle photograph in the box that Jake was now dragging around the castle.
The only person any of them could think of that might have answers was Professor McGonagall, as she would have trained the prefects while still acting as Deputy Headmistress. The only obstacle was how they were going to get a meeting with the stern witch.
She was close to retirement, or at least it was rumored that she was. It was no secret that McGonagall was getting up there in years and wasn't as active in the school as she once was. Although many students knew the location of her office, none had been able to guess the password and few were ever invited to meetings with her - that duty belonged to the deputy headmaster.
So it was pure luck that the foursome was walking into the Great Hall for breakfast the next day right behind the school's headmistress.
"Professor McGonagall!" Marley called out before anyone could stop her.
The older witch turned around and had a small smile on her lips as she surveyed the students. "Yes?"
"We were just wondering - I mean, Jake and Kitty found some old pictures from before -" McGonagall looked sad, like all the adults did when anyone mentioned the time immediately before the Battle - "and we were wondering if you could tell us about the student in them?"
"And who was that Miss Rose? I've seen a lot of students go through these halls." Her voice was stern, but not unkind.
"Kurt Hummel."
McGonagall's eyes softened immediately upon hearing the name and she adopted a deeply saddened expression. "I haven't thought about Mr. Hummel in years. Why don't you kids get your breakfast and come see me during your free period today. I believe none of you have classes in the fourth hour?"
McGonagall's office looked like nothing that the woman would have designed. There were tabled with spindly artifacts all over the place in a most haphazard fashion - much too disorganized for such a straight-laced woman.
The four students sat in a row of chairs before her desk and sipped the tea she had offered them when they first arrived. Marley's attention was drawn away from a portrait of a sleeping Albus Dumbledore when Professor McGonagall began speaking.
"Kurt Hummel was a most unique student. He reminded me of myself in so many ways. Both our fathers were Muggles, you see. He was always so bright but never quite fit in until he found a place in his fifth year...
1986
Kurt's favorite story was always the one about how his mom and dad met. They always told it the same way, too, but it wasn't over-rehearsed. It was just how they were.
Dad, laughing, would turn to Kurt and say, "Did I ever tell you how your mom and I met?"
Kurt would roll his eyes, but secretly get excited. "Yes, dad, you've told me."
From the kitchen, Mom would excitedly yell, "Oh, are you telling the story again? Make sure you get it right!"
"Of course I'll get it right, I was there!"
Kurt would jump up on to the couch next to his dad and try his hardest to look like he was there against his will.
"Well, it all happened about a month after I moved to London. I was still getting used to the city and the cars driving on the wrong side and everything, and I was lost."
"Hopelessly lost!" Mom would call from the kitchen as she finished up dinner.
"Yeah, well, anyway, I was wandering up and down every street, trying to find something that looked familiar when all of a sudden I ran into someone. Now, I might not have been paying the best attention, but I knew enough to know that there hadn't been anyone there a moment before. Nor was there even a doorway that someone might have appeared from. But there she was, and I ran right into her and knocked all her packages over."
Mom would come into the living room by this point and would stand behind Dad's chair and wrap her arms around his torso lovingly.
"Naturally, I bent over to help her pick her things up – at the same moment she did, too. We knocked heads and I looked at her for the first time. And there she was. Your mother." At this, Dad would turn around and gaze lovingly at Mom. "She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. And so, being the suave gentleman that I am, I said, 'We gotta stop meeting like this!'"
"No you didn't!" Kurt would finally squeal at the same time that Mom laughed lovingly.
"You're right, he didn't. He said something more along the lines of, 'Wow. Sorry, pretty. You're, I mean. Can I try again?' It was so cute, but I finally decided to stop his bumbling and I cut in and told him my name."
"And then I handed her her books and packages, which I hadn't even noticed at the time were exceptionally weird, and then I asked her out."
"If I recall correctly, you actually asked me how to get to the nearest underground station and then said, 'Wanna eat?'"
"Well, I got you to go out with me eventually."
"And the rest is history."
Kurt would look away so his parents could kiss for a moment and then he would turn back. "But how did you tell him?" he would then ask Mom.
Mom and Dad would exchange another deep look, one which Kurt never fully understood. "It took me a long time, because I was scared that your dad wouldn't like me still if he knew and I was worried about the Statute of Secrecy. I managed to avoid introducing him to my friends and taking him to my place, but finally he outright asked me if I wasn't as committed as he was. And of course, that wasn't the case. I was – I am very much in love. So I sat him down and said I had something very serious to tell him."
"And here I was, thinking she was going to break up with me or tell me she was dying."
"So I just said it."
"And?" Kurt would gasp, the tension still present in the story that he knew by heart.
"I said okay and I kissed her," Dad would say.
"...About ten minutes later. He processed what I said, and still looked hopelessly confused and scared that it was all a joke that I was playing instead of breaking up with him. So I pulled out my wand and I transfigured his baseball cap into a watch and I think that was the moment when everything changed for him. And then he said okay and kissed me."
"After that, she started introducing me to her friends and everyone, and even brought me to the Leaky Cauldron – where we first met – and Diagon Alley. Her parents weren't totally thrilled at first that I was a Muggle, but they got over that pretty quickly when they saw us together."
"And then he proposed and we had you, and everything was perfect."
Perfect. Kurt always loved that his parents were basically a real-life fairy tale.
Of course, a fairy tale can't be complete if both the parents are alive. When Kurt was seven, the family moved and his parents took him out of his Muggle elementary school and Dad stopped working at his auto shop. Mom and Dad started having long conversations every night, and they didn't seem as happy any more. They thought that Kurt didn't know what was going on, but they were wrong.
Kurt heard the fear in all the adults' voices when Mom's friends would come over. He heard them talking about Death Eaters who were still out there and the danger to Muggles. He cried himself to sleep every night that she left Kurt and Dad alone at the house while she went out with her friends.
Every morning she came back, she told him that she had to do it because she wanted him to be safe and happy. It was a small comfort. Until the morning when she didn't return.
She was hours late already and Kurt and Dad were terrified, Mom was never late, not like this. Dad had even turned on the Wireless to see if there was any news, something which he never did when Kurt was around unless they were listening to a music program.
Then there was a knock at the door.
Standing at the door was some unnamed Ministry witch. She looked mean and her voice was hard. Kurt would never remember her name or even what she said, he only remembered that she was the one that made the fairy-tale end forever. She made Kurt go to his room while she spoke with Dad, and even as stubborn and willful as he'd been at that age, Kurt had done what she'd said because she was just that scary.
When Kurt finally snuck out of his room, after the silence had lasted too long, he found Dad alone and curled up on the couch. That was the first time Kurt ever saw Dad cry. Kurt had crawled up onto the couch, settled on his knees next to his Dad shaking his shoulder a little, like he did when Dad fell asleep before dinner.
"Daddy, what's wrong?"
"Did I ever tell you how your mom and I met?" Dad said, trying to clear up his tears.
But the story was all wrong with only one storyteller. And that was the last time it was ever told.
1990
Kurt and Dad lived a normal Muggle life after that. They forgot all about the rogue Death Eaters who were still active despite the downfall of their leader. They still kept in contact with friends and family from the other world, but it hurt too much. They moved across the country and Dad opened up a new auto shop and everything was fine.
Kurt went back to Muggle school and learned math, writing, and history. He played with his classmates and listened to them tell made up stories about wizards and he never told them that magic was real. He almost forgot it was real, or at least he could pretend to forget. It was easier that way in the end.
Kurt was in the fifth grade and was nervous that all his classmates were starting to like each other. They were split up to watch those videos in class one day, and Kurt was terrified. Because he was starting to realize that he was even more different from his classmates.
When they found that out, boys started bullying Kurt. There were awful taunts and threats of violence, he was isolated and lost in a sea of kids that would never understand him- his magic, his past, or the things that made him so different from them all. He cried himself to sleep every night, but never told Dad, because this was yet another thing that Dad couldn't help him understand. Kurt's Dad loved him, did everything he could to give him a good life and as normal a childhood as you could have when you were so different from the entire world, but this was one area his Dad just wouldn't understand, one area he couldn't understand. More than ever he mourned for the loss of his Mom, and wished harder than anything that she was still there, holding his hand or playing with his hair, laughing and telling stories, telling him everything would be okay.
Then at lunch one day, a boy from his class approached him.
"Hey Hummel, did your mommy leave you 'cause you're gay?" he taunted.
Kurt froze in his seat, but said nothing to the larger bully, he'd learned too often that responding only made things a million times worse.
"Don't ignore me when I talk to you!"
But Kurt only folded in on himself more.
"Fine! I guess I'll just hafta teach you what happens when you act like that!"
Kurt looked up just in time to see the bully lifting his cup, which had been holding a slushie, and beginning to toss the contents toward him. Kurt screwed up his eyes and wished harder than anything that the slushie would miss him. And then he waited for the impact. But it never came.
When Kurt opened his eyes, he saw his bully spluttering and confused, covered in his own slushie. Laughter began to rise from the surrounding children as they teased the boy for his poor aim and clumsiness.
And then Kurt remembered words his mother had spoken to him long ago: "If you're ever in trouble, I'll save you."
His mother's magic, which flowed in his veins, had saved him from humiliation. She'd kept her promise.
1991
Not too long after his eleventh birthday, Kurt got his Hogwarts letter. Though both he and Dad knew it was coming eventually, they were both a little shaken as it seemed their past was finally catching up to them, and no amount of pretending could change the course of their lives now.
"Well, I guess we've got to head to London," Dad finally said. "Maybe we can call up your grandparents and they can take you to Diagon Alley. Lord knows I won't be any help finding your supplies there."
It had been years since Kurt had spent any significant amount of time with his maternal grandparents. They visited every birthday and Christmas and got along just fine with Burt's family, but it was too hard on all of them. Kurt was the spitting image of his mother as a young girl.
When Grandma and Grandpa Schmidt come to pick Kurt up, they've already got a trunk with them.
"It was your mother's trunk. We thought you might want to bring it to school with you."
Kurt nodded eagerly and dragged it inside with help from Dad. Then Dad drove them all over to the nearest wizarding village so they could use the pub's floo network to get to the Leaky Cauldron.
Kurt waved goodbye to Dad through the dancing green flames and thought about everything that was pulling them apart. His own feelings. His own abilities. His own self.
How long would it be before he and Dad weren't anything more than two people living in the same house over summer holidays?
That was the moment when Kurt decided to do everything to keep Dad in his life.
On September 1, 1991, Kurt stood on Platform 9 ¾ with Dad and his new owl and wished that he didn't feel so guilty about leaving Dad alone.
"Have fun at school and write to me every week," Dad whispered as he hugged Kurt goodbye. "I'll see you at Christmas!"
Kurt ended up in a train compartment with several other first-years, two girls and a boy. The girls introduced themselves as Rachel and Mercedes, and the boy was Mike. All of them had come from wizarding families, too, but they knew so much more about Hogwarts and the wizarding world.
"I heard that Harry Potter is on the train!" Rachel squealed after getting something from the candy trolley. "A girl in the next compartment just said that a boy told her that he saw him at the end of the train!"
"Wow," The other three chimed in at once, shock evident in their voices as they looked from one another in wide eyed awe. Even Kurt, who had been cut off from his wizarding roots for several years, still knew who Harry Potter was. Everyone knew the famous Harry Potter, but Kurt had never considered the fact he'd be the same age as the infamous Boy Who Lived, and from the reactions of the others- neither had they.
"Is he a first year, too?" Kurt asked.
Mike nodded. "He must be, otherwise the older kids would already know about him. My brother is a third year and he never mentioned anything."
The conversation moved on to school as time wore on and more and more students began changing into their robes. Kurt pulled on his plain black robes when he heard Mercedes call his name.
"What about you, Kurt? Where do you think you'll be sorted?"
Kurt knew enough about Hogwarts to name the four houses, but he didn't know much beyond that. "I don't know. I think all of the houses are pretty good."
"Well, where were your parents?"
"I – I don't know," Kurt said, realizing that it was true. He had never thought to ask Mom when he was younger.
"What do you mean?" Rachel asked. "How can you not know?"
"Mom died when I was seven. I never thought to ask her before."
"Well, what about your dad?"
"He's a Muggle."
There was a bit of a shocked silence in the compartment, a silence that confused and terrified Kurt a little. He'd barely made it out of Muggle schools with their judgement and hatred of him- had he inadvertently already stepped into the same situation here?
"Wait, a Muggle? You're sure he's not a Squib or something?" Rachel pushed.
"No, I'm sure."
"Hm. Well, both my dads were in Hufflepuff, but I don't know if that's the right house for me," Rachel said. "I think I'd be better suited for one of the more prestigious houses."
"There's nothing wrong with Hufflepuff," Mike said quietly if not a little defensively.
Kurt was glad that the conversation had moved on from him. He absently listened to his friends debating the merits of the various houses as he stared out the window. Not for the first time did Kurt wish he knew more about Mom, and Dad too, before they became Mom and Dad. What was Dad's life like before he knew that magic was real? What did Mom do before she married a Muggle and decided to fight for her husband and son's rights?
When they finally arrived at Hogwarts and were guided across the lake, Kurt's nerves returned in full force. He overheard plenty of conversations about what they would have to do to get sorted and which house was the best. It wasn't until the ghosts entered the room that they'd been ushered into that the first years stopped talking, the silence was so quick and deafening that Kurt wasn't so sure that it was a good thing. It felt suffocating, at least with the talking he could blend in and pretend to be part of the crowd, at least that way he'd been able to listen and learn about what was going to happen and what might be expected of him.
Moments later, Professor McGonagall brought them into the Great Hall for the sorting ceremony and every thought was chased out of Kurt's head. He watched as his classmates were sorted. Rachel was placed in Slytherin, then Mike in Ravenclaw. A boy only eleven and already towering over all his classmates was sorted into Gryffindor and then Kurt's name was called.
As the sorting hat was placed over his head, Kurt heard a small voice in speaking in his mind.
"Hmm. Very ambitious, I see. Fearless, too. But a hard outer shell. Where to put you? Better be SLYTHERIN!"
A table on the far end of the hall decked in green and silver erupted in cheers. Kurt went to join Rachel and the other first years that had been sorted there thus far and watched the rest of the ceremony. To his dismay, Mercedes was sorted into Gryffindor and took her seat at the opposite end of the hall. She sent a sad smile in Kurt's direction at their separation, but shrugged it off quickly; they'd only known each other for a few hours after all. A girl named Santana was also sorted into Slytherin, as was a boy named Draco – the hat hadn't even needed a minute to think before sending Draco their way. Everyone's attention was caught as Harry Potter was sorted into Gryffindor and he took a seat near the tall boy from earlier. After watching another boy get sorted into Gryffindor, this one with an odd mohawked hairstyle, Kurt's attention waned and he began to examine the hall.
At the front was a long table filled with all the professors. Kurt recognized a few immediately, like Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster, who had his own chocolate frog card, and Hagrid, who had taken them across the lake. The rest, however, were a mystery.
There were a couple hundred students gathered in the Great Hall, and all appeared almost identical in their black robes and hats. The only things that differentiated them were the colors on their ties and patches. As Kurt examined the other students' faces, he thought he might have recognized a cousin or two from Mom's side, a concept that hadn't even occurred to him until that very moment. Would they remember him or even want to associate with him?
As the last students were sorted and a boy named Blaise and a girl named Lauren both joined the Slytherin table, Professor Dumbledore stood up and announced the beginning of the meal.
As the evening wore on, Kurt talked with his new classmates and learned more about his house – most notably, its reputation. Draco seemed to fit that stereotype perfectly, and Kurt reminded himself that he should be wary around him. It became all the more apparent when Draco mentioned something about how they shouldn't allow Muggle-borns to attend Hogwarts. Kurt immediately thought of his dad back home.
"I don't see why that's a problem," he said boldly.
Draco turned a sneering face on Kurt. "And why is that?"
"Well, magic would die out without us marrying Muggles."
"Don't tell me you're a mudblood? I didn't think they let those in Slytherin."
"No, my mom was a witch. But my dad's a Muggle."
"Yeah, well, you're just a little freak anyway. In a few days time, I'm sure you'll be crying to go home."
It stung, knowing that the bullies here were just as bad as the bullies at Kurt's Muggle school had been, but he decided to just ignore the blonde boy. Instead, he spoke with Rachel and Santana, the two sitting closest to him.
As Kurt's first year wore on, he found himself a niche within Slytherin. Unfortunately, it left him isolated from the rest of the school. As a Slytherin, many students (most notably the Gryffindors) automatically disliked him. But he didn't agree with the more radical Slytherins like Draco, and so he wasn't well liked within his house, either. Santana had a friend that she knew from her neighborhood who was in Hufflepuff, and Kurt continued to talk with Mike in Ravenclaw and Mercedes in Gryffindor, so he wasn't ever totally alone.
Kurt had learned long ago to ignore the looks of disdain (this time due to his blood purity and not his sexuality, of course), so he merely puffed out his chest and continued to build his thick skin. That was why he was a Slytherin, after all. He was strong and ambitious and didn't care about what anyone else thought.
