Always Second Best
Summary: On Halloween ten years ago, Lily and James Potter were away at an Order of the Phoenix meeting, and Voldemort entered their little house in Godric's Hollow with one intention: to kill the Chosen one. But when he fired the killing curse at Harry Potter, he shot back the spell. Dumbledore got to the house before anyone else, and thinking that Charlus, Harry's twin, is the BWL, gives Death payment for letting him live so long in the form of Harry, thinking he is giving her the unimportant twin, when he is giving her the more important one. Ten years later, what will happen when both twins go to Hogwarts?
Disclaimer: I can swear to you on my life that my name is not JK Rowling, and I do not own Harry Potter.
I will try and do as little bashing as possible but there WILL be Dumbledore and Ron and Charlus bashing. That's all. Honest *crosses fingers behind back*. Have you noticed I've taken James off? Course you haven't. Nobody reads these things anyway (myself included). Neglect but NO abuse.
AN: PLEASE STOP TELLING ME I MADE A MISTAKE WITH WHEN FLORA DIED. I KNOW. YOU CAN ALL REST EASY.
And if I get ONE MORE REVIEW/PM about it now that I've said it in TWO ANs, I will be starting a nationwide manhunt. I am not joking.
GOOD NEWS GUYS, BY THE WAY. MY MUSE HAS RETURNED. HOPEFULLY I'LL BE WRITING MORE AGAIN.
ALSO: I DO NOT KNOW WHEN LiDL WAS ESTABLISHED. TAKING A SHOT IN THE DARK HERE.
Anyway, I know you've all been looking forward to this chapter - I've been told that people are desperate for this one.
Also, since I last updated, I became a year older. So I feel I should really update more regularly. Probably won't happen, but...
...
Confrontations
Round One: Harry Potter vs. His Parents
...
James had begun to try and knock the door down.
(BUT BEFORE YOU READ THE REST, HAVE YOU READ THE AN? YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. DO IT. NOW.)
It was a mainly fruitless effort, but it helped him get some of his frustration out. He ignored the knocker. Luckily, his wife didn't.
"James..." It was a whisper from red lips, and it was unsurprising that James didn't hear his wife first time - it was like a storm against a violin. The storm won, tearing the instrument to pieces, until the pieces were being blown about in the air.
But ignore the author's rather brilliant simile, if she does say so herself. Back to the story.
"James? Honey? James!" Lily's voice rose until James detected somebody trying to speak to him. He spun around, half of him hoping to see his son, even though the voice was clearly a woman's, and he felt his heart drop a little when he saw his wife.
"What?" it came out sharper than James intended, and he saw Lily flinch, but he couldn't apologise now. He would apologise later. Now was not the time. There was no time. No time to waste. He needed to see Harry. Talk to Harry. Hold Harry. Say 'God Harry, I'm so sorry."
Lily pointed a shaking finger towards the door of Ravenclaw tower. James spun, hoping to see Harry again (you're just going to be disappointed, the evil little voice cackled in James' head) to be met with the still unopened door. About to lash out at his wife, James almost missed the knocker's mouth opening.
Almost.
"The beginning of eternity,
The end of time and space,
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place."
James had to admit it. He was stuck. He was a very clever man, but more with plans, actions, numbers. Riddles, on the other hand... he wasn't so good with. Lily had always liked them.
He spun round, and looked at Lily, waiting for her to give the perfect answer. She began to pace. She ran her fingers though her hair. She bit her lip. She was muttering, strange words and places under her breath. It looked like it would take a while.
Not content to just sit around, James took out of a hidden pocket in his robes a quill and a notebook that he had deemed for 'emergencies' such as getting Char out of trouble, getting him out of trouble, and taking down marks and seating plans and study sessions and whatnot. Apparently he would have to cover some of the more academic lessons, so he had to be prepared.
He wrote down the riddle, and stared hard at it.
"The beginning of eternity," Could it be the big bang? The creation of magic? For some reason, the word eternity stood out, and James mentally took it apart. Maybe there were other meanings? Who knows what it could mean in another language? It would be something really simple, James betted. Something really simple separating him and Harry. So simple it was staring him in the face.
The beginning of eternity.
It couldn't be that simple, could it? The beginning of the word 'eternity' was an 'e'.
The end of time and space.
It still fit. At the end of 'time' and 'space' was the letter 'e' again. It seemed to be adding up, but James was still very sceptical. How could he get it when his genius of a wife couldn't?
The beginning of every end,
The end of every place.
It fit. It made perfect sense. James sprung up from his haunches, and practically ran to the door that was separating him and his son and his child and his second miraculous survivor.
"The letter e." James couldn't be sure, but the corners of the beak of the eagle twitched. Was that even possible? But James couldn't be sure. Lily had spun around in shock, looking in a right state, before shaking her head and running into the common room behind him.
As they burst in, it seemed like a thousand eyes had turned on them. The room itself was airy and large, the walls lined with books and blue and bronze curtains covering presumably large windows. The carpet was soft underfoot, and a stunning midnight blue to match with the star covered ceiling. A huge marble statue of Rowena Ravenclaw was in the middle of the room. People were lounging on beanbags, armchairs, or just on the floor with books, playing cards and other devices in their hands.
Shame James wasn't really bothered with the interior.
Mutely, as if they were expecting them (which admittedly, they probably were), all the Ravenclaws pointed to the staircase as one. James let out a breathy 'cheers' and took off for the staircase at a run, Lily hot on his heels.
...
Harry released Hedwig into the nights, her bleach white wings a contrast to the ebony night. The snowflake rose, and rose, higher and higher until you could see the sky rip, the tiniest tear, into the Other World flew Hedwig, and then she was gone.
The tear closed.
Harry rested his head against the wall, and opened his mouth slightly; sucking in all the air he could in one great whoosh. There was nobody in his room, as his dorm mates had become uncomfortable earlier, and gone down to the common room. So it was just him. Alone. In a room. In a strange place. Where he was dead.
Harry let all the air out.
He lay down on his bed, and pulled the curtains closed around him, as he heard heavy footsteps running up the stairs. Let them gawk at somebody else, minding their own business.
"Harry?!" James Potter's voice carried through the room, and Harry felt his eyes widen. They couldn't find him, he couldn't see them. Not now, not ever. Never. He fought valiantly to calm his breathing but it came out in little gasps that turned to steam in front of him. When had it gotten so cold?
"Harry, please sweetheart, come out!" Lily sounded like a blind woman, and distantly, Harry heard crashing. It was like he was staring down on his own body, curled up in a ball in the centre of his bed, hyperventilating and shaking like a leaf, the whole small section inside his bed shrouded in water vapour, none escaping the thick velvet curtain surrounding him.
What was wrong with him? Distantly, he remembered his lessons in the Other World; if blah and blah and blah happens: you're having a panic attack.
How did you cure panic?
Harry wasn't sure.
He had no time to think on it further, as the curtains round his bed were pulled back, and James Potter was there. He smelled of pinewood, Harry decided, like brooms and custard. Hands wrapped round him, squeezing the air out of him, and excited shout "Harry! Harry I'm so mumblewumblemumbletumblesumb lebumble" The words were fading, and Harry felt himself fading with them.
Hands holding him, now realising something was wrong, shaking Harry. "LilyehfbdsIthinkhe'skjifbhuakiwefillmdfn." With one final burst of energy, Harry lurched backwards out of James' arms. As the man went to approach him, Harry forced out a garbled mess of words before the rush surrounded him completely, and the words and the world with them faded.
"Don't touch me."
...
Round Two: The Hogwarts Professors vs. Death
...
The woman that came out of the fireplace was not what they were expecting.
They were expecting a half mad woman, with an evil grin and child stealing tendencies, but the woman coming out of the fireplace, while brushing soot off her coat, looked decidedly normal.
She had brown hair with some natural blonde streaks running through it, which looked like it had never been cut; it was so long, surpassing the woman's knees. There was a slight curl to it which somehow made her look rather exotic with half her face covered.
Nicole, if that was her name, was an pretty woman, with freckles that ran rampant over her nose, or what they could see of it, and exceptionally long eyelashes framing black eyes that didn't fit in with the rest of her face.
As she was looking down and dusting her black muggle coat, Dumbledore knew that it was all an act. She was here merely as a front, to scope out the castle, the Potters, the souls she would soon be collecting with her scythe that she wielded with ease. Assessing him.
The other Professors looked accommodating enough, although in the split second before the meeting officially began, Dumbledore knew that if her identity, she would not be bothered by the revelation. She was the all-powerful deity Death, he was a headmaster who had gotten in way too deep.
Nicole looked up, and smiled at the staff who were watching her with thinly veiled curiosity and wonder. She thrust out a hand, and grabbed the nearest person's she could find. It was an small, older man, with traces of Goblin Blood in him, she could tell.
"Hi, I'm Nicole Morteaus. Harry's guardian? I've been summoned, haven't I?" Death made sure to play up her naivety and innocence in the ways of the wizarding world. She could already see some of the auras in the room calm, from a turbulent indigo of suspicion to a slightly calmer navy blue of curious.
"Yes, you have." Albus' tone was clipped, precise. He was a coward, and sometimes Nicole couldn't help but think he was more of a monster than Tom Riddle, but he was not stupid. That Grandfather facade would not work with her. If he had even tried it, or any form of 'I've never seen you before in my life, I'll be nice to you' Death would've been forced to curse the man.
She had been looking forward to that, as well. He just loved to spoil her fun.
"What's the issue?" she grinned, revealing some pearly white teeth that made her look like the cat with the mouse, all bundled up in a mousetrap.
"Do you know... who your ward is?" The little old man asked, noticing Dumbledore's reluctance to talk. Clever, Death was sure of it. Exceptionally so. He had noticed that she was not all she seemed at first glance.
"I have many wards, Professor...?" Death looked to him, and noticed his aura becoming very restless.
"Flitwick. Head of Ravenclaw, Professor of Charms." the small man replied, his eyes going up and down her body, looking for weapons no doubt.
"Harry Potter. Surely you do not have two Harry Potters in your residence?" The stern animagus (Cat; Death could see her form flickering deep inside her when nobody else could) woman let out in a clipped tone.
Death took an instant dislike to the woman.
She was sure she was a good teacher, and a good woman, but she was too blinded by ideals that had been beaten into her by the dear Headmaster many years before, pushing students towards the old coot, unknowingly ruining lives.
The woman reminded her of Health. Health was a deity with whom Death had an extreme problem, with the most perfect, healthy children. Everybody loved Health, simply because of the position the old bat had been given when the world had been divided. Death had always loved Life, and Life had always loved Death, so Life had given Death everything that he made - everything went to her in the end. But she was disliked, unloved. Health had always hated her, because she was able to rob people of their Health, reminding Health that she was no more than an underling.
Her and her companion, Age. She could see everything reflected here, in the stuffy little staffroom at Hogwarts, and it made her weary of the world that would in the end, never change.
And personally, Death thought that Power and Corruption had favoured Dumbledore far too much. They were a lethal team, just as lethal as Death herself. Look at Voldemort, Hitler, Idi Amin, Osama Bin Laden...
But that was just her opinion.
Instead of answering the cat-woman, Death sauntered over to the table in the middle of the room, and sat upon it, and crossed her legs while lacing her hands together in her lap.
"Ah, yes. Harry Potter."
...
Professor Charity Burbage had seen many things in her thirty six years of life.
She had seen her father beating her mother, and then always apologising, and her mother always forgiving him.
She had seen the rise and fall of Lord Voldemort, one of the darkest - if not the darkest - wizards ever to live.
She had seen suffering, of little children begging for food, and she had seen ignorance, where people walked right on past, assuming someone else would come along and feed them.
She had seen cruelty, where sons and daughters were abused for simply not thinking the same as the family, and hated and killed for using their minds.
She had seen wordless, boneless, hopeless terror. There were too many stories behind that one.
She had never seen a woman like this.
In fact, Charity wasn't completely certain it was a woman.
After the maybe-not-a-woman left, with a sweep of her Rapunzel like hair and a wiggle of fingers, and Charity didn't even have the strength to wonder where she was going, as she hadn't exited through the fire like she had come in, but into the corridor.
Charity pulled out a chair for Flitwick, her mentor, who had done most of the questioning and in return had been played with like he was an interesting toy, and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
She didn't know what she was reassuring him about.
Or even if she was reassuring him.
The hand could have very well been steadying herself, as she felt her legs wobble and threaten to give up on her.
...
Round Three: Alec Potter vs. the Three Headed Dog
...
Alec didn't exactly know how he had gotten himself into this situation.
He'd seen Harry (Harry! He really was having a good day! Harry was back, Harry was home, and it wasn't even his birthday! Maybe for his birthday he'd get to fly on a broom and be better than Char, but that would never happen, so he was happy with Harry).
Then his Mum and Dad had run away somewhere (they ran away from a lot, his parents. They ran away from problems and Rose and they always seemed to run to Char. Char couldn't protect them; he wasn't big yet; but neither was Alec so that's probably why they never ran to him. Char was bigger than Rose too, but at times it didn't feel like that).
Then Rose had started playing Sleeping Lions. No warning at all. She usually warned him. Yes, it was one of his favourite games ever, but NOW WAS NOT THE TIME. He had told her as much, but she stubbornly kept on playing, perfectly still on the heap of soft toys.
She was getting better, Alec had to admit, but she'd never be as good as him.
Alec had very quietly crept out of the room (because Rose might decide to stop playing if she heard him leaving and drag him back and he didn't want that), and gone looking for Harry. Rose would stop playing for him surely.
Hogwarts was a bit... funny.
It kept on moving, and the paintings weren't like the ones at home (here they seemed very boring, telling him to go back to bed, when Mick would've asked to be pelted with raisins - he was Mad Mick for a reason) and it kept on making him trip (it wasn't very nice, was Hogwarts, at least not to him).
Eventually, he found a long room that had no paintings in to tell him to go to bed, and no screaming men dressed in tights that pelted him with water balloons (he was beginning to shiver - the cold was setting in).
And there was a big, closed door.
Now, my dear readers, I'm not entirely sure if you remember being six years old. If you do, good on you, your memory is excellent and most likely superior to mine. Because, when six year olds are confronted with a big, closed door they feel the urge - no, the need - to open it and see what's on the other side.
Nobody knows WHY.
They just DO.
So Alec, being six years old, gave the door a push.
It didn't move.
Alec pushed harder.
The door didn't budge.
This vicious cycle had been going on for about ten minutes before Alec remembered something that Rose had taught him, in the hope that he'd actually have a bit of life experience, or at the very least manners, when he grew up.
"Don't just barge in - it's rude! You have to knock!"
Alec stood on his tiptoes and knocked.
The door growled.
Alec frowned. His door didn't do that - but this was Hogwarts, after all, and the doors were bound to be a bit different to the ones back home.
"I'm very sorry Mr Door. Could you please let me in? I need to find Harry, you see."
Alec knocked again, but this time, no sooner had his knuckles made contact with the door did they begin to bleed, and scarlet blood ran down the rough wood.
Alec's bottom lip trembled.
He wasn't a crier. But... this was special circumstances.
The door was being mean.
Rose was playing Sleeping Lions.
Harry was... somewhere.
Mum and Dad were running away.
Charlus had disappeared in a crowd of red and gold.
... Charlus.
Charlus.
CHARLUS.
If memory served (though Alec didn't think that exact phrase) then Charlus always got everything and all he wanted, simply by doing something...
How?
What was it?
He cried.
Now, seeing no good reason to keep the hot, salty tears from rolling down his face any longer, Alec let out a sob.
And another.
Fluffy was feeling hostile, but when she heard the distressed cries of the cub, she couldn't resist mentally removing the curses on the door. A few seconds later, a small face and a crack of light appeared.
The door opened fully, and Alec found himself wondering how had he gotten in this situation? As the door closed behind him and the world became dark, a wet thing licked his cheek, lapping up his tears.
...
Round Four: Madame Pomfrey vs. The House of Potter
...
Poppy Pomfrey prided herself on being the voice of reason in a hysterical atmosphere, or more commonly, the woman with the bandages when you were bleeding so that the young and the older came hobbling to her with various cuts and bruises.
She had stayed calm through the wars of Grindelwald when she had been studying as a nurse, and she had stayed calm after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's attack on Hogsmeade, when nearly every student third year and up had been injured in some way.
She had been calm when the Weasley Twins had sent a good percentage of the school to her, suffering from various magically induced diseases all at once, after a prank gone wrong.
Her secret?
Her very strong herbal tea, 50% off at LiDL, the muggle branch of worldwide stores that originated in Germany, she thought, which she had happened upon back in the 70's, after a dark night and the yellow sign had glowed at her through the darkness.
How people went through their every day, stress filled lives without it was astonishing.
Sadly, she had temporarily ran out of her supply, so the cup she was nursing at the moment was her last for about 24 hours, as she usually had her monthly delivery sent to Hogwarts, but after getting back from the holidays, had to have it delivered the next day from her house where it was sent in the holidays. Her husband was forwarding it after her tomorrow.
Anyway, nobody got ill on the first night back.
Not with anything serious, anyway (later, she knew it was this thought that jinxed it).
James Potter, also known as Prongs and one of the infamous Marauders who had given her no end of grief when he had been at school, pushed the hospital door open with his back, cradling Harry to his front.
For the second time in this story, James Potter accomplished three things in one moment. And again, these were not all good things. In fact, none of them were.
He slipped on the newly cleaned floor ('BANG! And the Dirt is Gone' being another of Poppy's very worthwhile muggle purchases that she had goaded the house elves into using)
His glasses fell off as he impacted on the ground, making his sight about as good as that of a blind man.
And he dropped the hyper-ventilating, panicking child in his arms onto the newly cleaned floor, whose body was shaking uncontrollably.
With a muffled, distant cry that could have in no way been him, Harry collided with a cold, wet, hard surface that didn't have a heartbeat like James, and wasn't whispering rubbish in his ear. He could hardly clock it though - he could hardly breathe.
In.
Out.
That was how he usually breathed - he had never known any other way, but maybe he should've been breathing differently, like he was now, but he hadn't seen anybody else breathing like he was now, but before today and the trip to Diagon, he had never seen anybody breathing before in his memory. Nobody had breathed in the Other World except for him, so he didn't have to copy everyone else's breathing.
Inoutinoutininoutininoutouti nout-
That wasn't normal.
He didn't think so, at least.
James was stunned, disorientated, out of it. On instinct, he thrust his hand out for his glasses which were usually on his bedside table, but didn't appear to be there today. He must've knocked them off in the night. Long fingers ghosted over shaking flesh. Shaking flesh that was not his glasses.
Harry.
Everything came back in a rush, seconds after he had fallen, everything that had happened in the past three/four hours jamming itself into his head.
Harry.
Jerking upward, James' ears were bombarded by the sound of shattering China (he had lived with his mother for eighteen years - it had happened so many times that he could probably have told you if it was a plate or a teacup if he had concentrated harder on the sound of impact) and the smell of strong, sickly, herbal tea.
"James Potter, what are you doin-" a flash of fiery red blurred itself across James' still not decent vision, and James knew Lily had arrived. "Professors Potter, what is the meaning-" and her sentence stopped, meaning that she had seen Harry and knew exactly what the meaning of their visit was and what they were doing.
A single hand swept across Harry's sweat covered brow, and Poppy's loud gasp alerted anyone on their side of the castle that something was wrong.
Harry James Potter was burning up.
Delirious.
Shaking.
Quaking.
Hyperventilating (Hey! That rhymed! I'm a poet and I didn't even know it!)
In one swoop, with her metaphorical talons out, Poppy scooped up her charge and was soon fussing over him gently, placing him in a nondescript hospital bed, and quickly seeing she could not help him deal with a panic attack considering the circumstances, gave James his glasses, batted Lily's hovering form away from the bed and told them that he'd be in lessons tomorrow, and they could see him then.
When the panic attack had subsided, Harry half heartedly fought Poppy as she dosed him with something foul tasting that made him feel much better, and sent him off to bed.
After that, she made sure she had a secret stash of herbal tea for the first day, hidden in one of the panels in her office.
A better choice she could not have made.
...
Round Five: Rose Potter vs. Slytherins vs. The Three Headed Dog
...
When Rose came around, she wasn't expecting Alec to be missing.
She was expecting to see him collapsed next to her, like a limpet, truth be told, curled around he body like he often was, and impossible to struggle out from under from until he was good and ready to move.
Instead, she was groggy, had a pounding head, and the bedroom door was wide open.
It took her less than ten seconds to realise Alec had gone.
It took her less that then minutes to be searching the hallways, candle in hand and dressing gown on.
"Hey look, it's an ickle Potter!" Rose span round, her candle flickering threateningly as the air rushed past it quickly.
They was a girl and a boy, and they both looked about fifteen, with the right amount of acne, greasy skin and height. On their Hogwarts robes, they both had a green snake emblazoned, signifying they were Slytherins.
"Aww, is baby Potty lost?" the girl snickered, looking out the corner of her eye at the boy for approval.
It seemed that they were definitely teenage adolescents, because the hormones had definitely kicked in there, and he wasn't even handsome, he had squinty eyes and sweaty armpits.
"All alone..." the boy sneered, and began to advance.
Rose turned and ran, footsteps following her seconds later. Her bare feet hit the stone floor, making her shiver even as she fled, black hair whipping round her young face as she searched for an escape route.
What did she do?
She ran through the mazelike corridors of Hogwarts as fast as she could, and yet she knew the Slytherins were only playing with her, letting her get away because they were bigger and stronger and trained and they weren't useless like her.
"Come out come out, ickle Potter!" one laughed in an almost unhinged voice as Rose ducked inside an open door, breathing shallowly.
"It isn't safe!" the other Slytherin sounded oddly panicked "this is the third floor! I don't want to die here Beauregard".
"You won't," the boy dismissed, tone lofty "and if you're too much of an idiot to believe anything that old coot says, then you're the idiot here. Go on, go back to patrolling."
"Oh..." the girl made a disgruntled sound in her throat but stayed put, her footsteps not going away or voice not fading "fine. But you're going first."
Rose then became aware of hot breath on the back of her neck.
Her hands shook.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
Her heart pounded loud in her ears.
(And, if she'd had anything in her bowels, she probably would've lost it at that second. It was called the 'Fight or Flight' reaction, she remembered, but Rose felt more like fainting, because people did that when they were scared as well, right?)
(She couldn't remember when she was last this scared, because she'd put fear on hold, or so she'd thought - but she was learning a lot about herself tonight)
Rose whimpered.
"Rose?" a small voice asked from behind her, and she turned as slowly as she could, seeing Alec, head resting on the monster's midsection, brown eyes large and blinking.
She squatted slowly, painfully aware of the Slytherins outside jeering and laughing and hissing threats and horrible things about her family (some of which she agreed with, internally, immediately scorning herself) trying to be as quiet as she could so the older Hogwarts students weren't alerted of where they were.
"Alec." she hissed, eyes wide as she took in the three headed dog (Cerberus) her brother was drowsily resting on.
"Hmm?" her younger brother groaned, nestling his head further into the monster's fur.
"Get off the dog." she all but snarled, panic overwhelming her pain as one of the heads yawned, revealing two rows of sharp, yellow teeth.
"I don't wanna..." Alec moaned before Rose decided to risk it before reaching one small hand out and attaching it round Alec's twig-like wrist, tugging as hard as she could as successfully bringing Alec to his feet and away from the Cerberus.
"ROSE!" Alec shouted in annoyance, and Rose's frantic shh motions hadn't paid off as the door opened, and two faces appeared in the crack of light like ghostly silhouettes, grinning sinisterly.
"Look, Erin! Two ickle Potters all alone- Merlin's baggy underpants what is that?" the boy broke off, face white and pale as there was a small farting noise (Fight or Flight).
The second face disappeared, and footsteps ran away and faded as a voice shouted back at the three people and huge mythical dog "I told you that you were going first! I'm not going to die!"
The boy deliberated, before he too ran, not bothering to close the door behind him, so Rose sprinted out of the open door, tugging Alec along with her as Fluffy shifted in her sleep, hoping that the pup made it back to his pack safely.
...
And so, the first night passed.
James and Lily Potter spent it worrying about a son they had not spared a thought about for eleven years, Alec and Rose Potter spent it whispering in the dark about adventures, Harry Potter spent it being cared for in the hospital wing, Charlus Potter spent it stewing about the fact that his brother had stolen his glory, and Death spent the night comforting Flora, who was finally asleep in the rectangle room, whimpering in her sleep.
And then, the first day began.
