Disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING.
If I, hypothetically, already had a sequel to this story vaguely planned and outlined, would people be at all interested? Also, I want to do a bit of research for my new WIP (Harry Potter, Transdimensional Guidance Counselor), which means I basically would love it if people could tell me their favorite Harry Potter crossovers. Yes, I said crossovers. I'm so going there. Uh, a couple of people have already suggested Artemis Fowl, but I've never actually read the books, so...that's a no-go.
This chapter is dedicated to Jimaine, who giggled a lot and put up with me asking 'WHICH BIT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT TELL ME NOW' every five seconds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: In Which James' Sordid Past Is Revealed
Harry winced when Draco Malfoy sauntered into their cell a few hours after they'd all regained some semblance of lucidity. Harry had been hoping with all his might that their interrogator would be anyone but someone the children knew in their world, so it only made sense that Scorpius' freaking father—not to mention Teddy's cousin, and a man Harry's kids were all inexplicably extremely fond of—would come sashaying in through the door, all puffed up with pride and ignorance and idiocy and other annoying inbred Malfoyish traits.
He was more than willing to take partial credit for Scorpius' relatively enlightened attitude. Merlin knew Astoria and Draco hadn't exactly fostered a sense of modesty or thoughtfulness in their son. All right, so Scorpius wasn't modest, exactly, but at least sometimes he pretended to be a little humble if he thought it would get him his way.
But then again—well, Harry couldn't help noticing that this Draco looked…considerably younger than the Draco back in his universe, somehow. Less mature, and wasn't that a frightening thought?
Maybe here, his family hadn't fallen from favor with Voldemort; maybe he'd never been forced to prove himself by murdering others; maybe he hadn't had to live through a couple of years of terror at Hogwarts, trapped between family loyalty and fear. A pity, Harry thought. A little existential dread and a year or two of constant panicking had done his universe's Draco a world of good.
Harry found it rather interesting that this world's Malfoy had a receding hairline, just like his counterpart—definitive proof that even if he hadn't hexed Malfoy during a rough interdepartmental poker tournament a few years ago, a certain amount of baldness would've happened anyway. He was so definitely rubbing that in Malfoy's face, once they got home.
"Well, well, well," Draco murmured smugly, sounding like every bad henchman cliché come to life. "What have we got here?"
"Inbreeding?" James offered ingenuously.
"Hey," Scorpius protested, but it sounded suspiciously half-hearted.
"James, Scorpius. Is this really the time?" Al asked, his Stern Disapproval face firmly in place. Scorpius rolled his eyes.
Harry bit his lip rather savagely to stop himself from laughing—nothing made Malfoy lose his composure like being ignored, and his darlings were doing an excellent job of pretending the Death Eater didn't even exist. Hell, they were self-absorbed enough that it probably wasn't even intentional.
Draco cleared his throat loudly, and no one paid him the slightest bit of attention. So, of course, he cleared his throat again, this time sounding rather like a kneazle trying to hack up a hairball, only somehow sophisticated at the same time.
The children eyed him balefully. "It's not polite to interrupt," Al said severely, as if he weren't stuck in a tiny, grimy little cell in the middle of an alternate dimension—as if Draco weren't their enemy right now. "We'll get to you in a minute."
"Ooh," James said, eyes going round, "are you here to ask questions? You can interrogate me!" He bounced in place a little, excited beyond reason by this second chance at a properly aggressive questioning.
"You're unbelievable," Scorpius said, staring. Harry privately agreed, a little worried about his eldest son's mental health.
James, to Harry's utter horror, winked at Scorpius saucily. "Thanks, babe," he said throatily. "M'glad you think so. I've always thought so, too."
Harry shuddered. Scorpius scrambled backwards, his face a rictus of terrified confusion. Al went more than a little green, and Teddy snickered, burying his face in his girlfriend's plentiful pink hair.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Victoire sighed. "Boys… I believe you were about to gloat?" she asked Draco, getting everyone back on track quite handily.
Draco had gone rather red-cheeked and scowly, looking like nothing so much as a toddler about to throw a tantrum. Not exactly seemly for a man nearing forty, Harry thought with a comforting feeling of superiority. Good to know some things really didn't change from world to world.
Harry made a mental note to never, ever stop taunting his Malfoy about this entire incident. Gold, the whole thing.
"I was not about to gloat, thank you--" he began, and Harry smiled to himself, satisfied, because the moment an unwary bystander—or, he supposed, wary villain—succumbed to an argument with one of his kids, they'd already lost.
"Please," Scorpius scoffed, and Harry was a little bemused at the scorn in the younger Malfoy's eyes. Scorpius worshiped his father, nearly as much as Draco had once worshiped Lucius. "Everyone knows that when you come swanning into a prisoner's cell like that, there's only one course of action left to you. Gloating, maybe a bit of light dominance-affirming torture, a couple vaguely threatening smiles, and a parting one-liner. This is common knowledge."
"It's true," Al agreed, supportive as ever of his best friend.
"Maybe," Draco said coldly, "I'm here to kill you all. Did you consider that?"
Teddy emitted a loud and bizarre croaking noise. Everyone turned to stare, and he went a dull red, ducking his head and running a hand through his bright hair. "That was supposed to be ominous thunder crashing in the distance," he explained, rightfully embarrassed. Harry winced, wondering what Lupin would thing of how he, Ginny, and Andromeda had raised his beloved son.
He already knew what Tonks would say. Something along the lines of 'He's perfect in every way, and hysterical to boot'. But Harry had known Tonks fairly well, so he didn't exactly find her imaginary approval very comforting. She was Tonks. She thought pig-noses were first-rate humor.
"Thunder? Sounded more like a frog giving birth to a pterodactyl," James replied, brow furrowed.
"Oh, shut it, squirt."
"An angry pterodactyl."
"Next time, stick to a dun dun DUN," Victoire advised her boyfriend sagely. "Traditional, and pretty hard to get wrong."
"Your confidence in my abilities overwhelms me, sweetheart," Teddy pouted.
"I really am going to kill you all," Draco muttered, pained. "I'd say painfully and slowly, but it will be quick, if only so you stop talking."
"You aren't here to kill us," Al scoffed, rather more on the ball than any of Harry's other bratlings. Harry was going to have to sit them all down for a nice long talk about not being utter idiots one of these days. He was all for foolish and suicidal bravado, of course, but he was beginning to think the children didn't even register that they were in danger.
"You aren't gonna kill us," Al repeated, "'cause you're a minion." He glanced nervously at Harry, obviously seeking reassurance, or maybe approval. Harry grimaced back, torn between relief that at least one of his children could reason their way out of a wet paper bag and despair that even said young navigator on the choppy seas of logic did not see the dangers inherent in taunting Dark Wizards.
"I am not a minion!" Draco cried, aghast.
"He is not a minion," Scorpius agreed loyally (though Harry suspected the show of fidelity was more towards his last name and bloodline and less out of any sense of filial duty). But even Malfoy's Not-Son didn't sound altogether confident.
"Oh, he is too," Al said stubbornly, setting his jaw.
"I am not!"
Somehow, Harry was utterly unsurprised to see Draco Malfoy sinking to a teenager's level.
"Of course you're a minion," Victoire said with the sort of ruthless, inexorable reason that made men three times her age tremble with fear. In the Wizarding World, nothing was quite so rare, and thus quite so feared, as common sense. "You are a Death Eater, are you not? A servant of Lord Voldemort? Then you are a minion. And when a minion visits a group of mysterious prisoners, it can only be for gloating purposes."
For gloating purposes, Harry repeated to himself silently. When he got back to his own universe, he was never, ever going to stop laughing. Assuming Malfoy didn't just whip out a wand and Crucio the hell out of them all for being impossibly irritating. But then again, if he did, Harry would get to arrest him, which was always good for a cackle or two.
Plus, last time he'd arrested Draco, Neville had bought pretty much the entire extended Weasley clan a round of drinks—and Harry hadn't had to pay for a drop of alcohol for weeks.
"You can't kill us before you know exactly who we are," Al added, taking up the slack, "Or why we're here, and what kind of threat we might be to your, uh—"
"Lord and master's regime of doom," Teddy suggested brightly.
"Right," Al said, nodding sharply. "I mean, haven't you ever read…well, anything?"
"Now," Harry took over quickly, before Draco burst into frustrated tears or attacked the children in a preemptive defense of his sanity, "Kids, I've told you about the differences between fiction and reality. Several times."
"Well, yes," Scorpius said slowly. "But we're not really going by fiction, here."
"We're going by Uncle Ron's stories," James agreed, signing his uncle's death sentence right then and there.
"And your unofficial biography," Teddy added maliciously. Harry groaned, because all of his friends had a part in that piece of trash, and he couldn't exactly massacre his entire family. Not if he wanted to arrest Draco at some point in the near future. It was hard to arrest someone when you were stuck in Azkaban for life.
He decided that selective hearing was the better part of valor, and turned back to the person he was rapidly starting to think of as 'AlternaDraco Font-of-Blackmail-Material Malfoy'. A long but fitting name, and he thought it had a nice ring to it, really. "I'm assuming you've got questions, right?"
One day, Harry was confident, Malfoy would actually figure out that the pout and the red face did not, in fact, make him look threatening, except in a 'if you keep this up I'm going to go cry in a bathroom with an angsty ghost and then you'll feel sorry' sort of way.
"Yes. Like 'who are you' and 'why shouldn't I rip your tongues out and feed them to the house elves right now'?" Draco ground out.
"Um, well, because that would be gross," James said in a slow I'm-reasoning-with-a-madman tone, which he usually whipped out whenever Percy was around.
Malfoy's hand tightened around his wand until his knuckles went white from the pressure. Harry tensed, resigning himself to getting in the way of whatever spell the Death Eater might fling James' way.
Except James then added, "Also, it would be really messy. Not to mention, Kreacher and Winky told me they aren't actually all that keen on devouring human flesh. Apparently it's a little too gamey."
Even Draco's murderous rage fizzled in the face of the befuddled horror this inspired in James' audience. Harry tried to find the right words, but his mind had gone blank in self-defense. All he could think was that Ginny was so never, ever hearing about this. She'd get really sarcastic and start saying things about Harry's name-mongering ways coming back to haunt him, which was rich, considering she'd wanted to name all the kids after her favorite Martin the Muggle characters.
Fortunately, his godson was there to ask the awkward questions for him. "Oh my god, what have you done and who did you do it to?" Teddy demanded, aghast.
James flushed. "I was just a kid, all right, and Lily wouldn't stop crying and I thought--"
"You tried to feed your sister to a house elf?" Harry cried, shocked right out of his daze.
"Well, yeah," James said, apparently confused by their astonishment, "Of course. I wouldn't now, obviously, but this was years ago and she was just this slobbery red-faced fiend-thing from hell that spewed and shat everywhere all the time and peed on me when I helped Mum change her diapers once--"
"Lily never peed on me," Al interjected proudly, casting an obnoxiously superior look at his older brother. Harry, who was fairly certain that he'd been peed on by half of Hogwarts' current population, glared enviously at his middle child.
"Yeah, well, that's more proof that she's a vicious monster who enjoys causing me pain," James said sulkily, coming uncomfortably close to echoing Harry's thoughts about most of the younger generation, particularly those bits of it with freckles or red hair.
"James," Harry said wearily, "I understand where you're coming from, but no feeding people to the house elves, all right?"
"It's not like I've made a habit of it!" James said, aggrieved. "B'sides, like I told you, they didn't even want to eat her. Even Kreacher said humans taste gross. Not good eating on us, y'know. He said he'd eat kneazle first. Preferably Crookshanks."
Harry stared wordlessly at his son for a while, but that was okay, because everyone else was staring at James, too.
"That's fascinating, James," Victoire said hollowly, a trapped look in her eyes. "Eurgh."
"Please get back to interrogating us," Scorpius begged his Fake-Father. "Please. James even volunteered! Take him away and ask him questions! Far, far away. For a very long time."
Draco, strangely, did not look thrilled by this suggestion.
"Just…tell me who you are," he said, darting nervous glances James' way. For a moment, Harry actually regretted Lily's absence; if she'd been with them, they'd have already irrevocably shattered Draco's mind, soul, and will to live, and long since been on their merry way. Where to, he wasn't sure, but still. There would be way-going.
"If we told you about us, we'd have to kill you," Scorpius said promptly, because he had a truly disturbing obsession with Muggle spy movies that Harry and his friends had foolishly indulged. Draco always got the funniest look on his face whenever Scorpius started talking about how ingenious Muggles were and how they made the neatest things.
"Kill me," Draco repeated blankly.
"Um. We're the ones unarmed in a prison cell," Al reminded his best friend patiently.
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Ignore them," Harry sighed, because watching Draco's sanity slowly fray before his eyes was oddly not as enjoyable in this world as it was at home. Possibly because this Draco Malfoy was still a Death Eater, not Al's self-proclaimed mentor and Teddy's cousin and Scorpius' adoring and criminally indulgent father. "The truth is, we're nothing particularly special or interesting. Just annoying."
"Speak for yourself," James said with a haughty sniff.
"Nothing special? The veritable explosion of power from the shop we found you in says something different," Draco said waspishly.
"Right, well, we're nothing particularly special—as long as you forget about the transdimensional travellers thing," Harry amended. He ignored the children's shocked stares—they must have thought he'd try to cover the whole 'not our dimension, folks' thing up, maybe strike a pose and lie bald-faced yet heroically to their captors. A reasonable enough assumption, really, except that he had no idea how long they'd be prisoner, and if the shopkeeper got himself captured and questioned, well.
Bilge'd witnessed everything, including Harry's epiphany of deductive genius, which made lying a little too dangerous. So Harry figured he might as well take the opportunity to build a little trust with the AlternaMalfoy. Voldemort wasn't exactly known for letting his prisoners out on good behavior, but hey, it was worth a try.
"Transdimensional travellers," Draco repeated blankly, obviously unimpressed by Harry's openness and honesty.
"Yeah. Go figure, right?" Teddy said, apparently trusting Harry to steer them right. Despite having read Harry's unofficial biography. Now that was real faith, right there.
"It's not as fun as I thought it'd be," James added sadly. "I mean, aren't alternate realities supposed to have, like, dinosaurs and aliens and things? Couldn't we have gone to a dimension where all the girls are Veela nudists?"
"One day, I will hurt you," Victoire said.
"You aren't joking," Draco said, staring at Harry. "About being interdimensional…"
"Tourists," Al supplied helpfully. "Okay, unintentional tourists, but still."
Scorpius shuddered. "Tourists?" he repeated, the word dripping disdain. "Malfoys are not tourists, Al. Malfoys own the very ground they tread upon, regardless of where that ground might be or who has the actual deed to it."
Harry braced himself, but AlternaDraco's shrill screech still made him flinch. "Did you say 'Malfoys'?"
"What, are you blind or something?" demanded James "Tact Is Gross, Like Your Face" Potter. "He looks just like you, only not balding. Yet."
Harry felt his heart hit plummet. No, no—not even James would be so dim, so foolish…
Teddy let out a low, despairing groan. Al gaped at James, terror in his eyes. Harry didn't dare even look at Malfoy.
"You do not say the b-word!" Scorpius hissed, panic in his gaze...but it was too late, too late.