A/N: Lots of you wrote me PMs after the last chapter asking me which songs/poems/nursery rhymes I'd referenced in the Master of Death ceremony featured in the last chapter. Some of you recognised many of them on your own. I have added a note to the end of last chapter with this information. Feel free to peruse it at your leisure if you're interested!
As ever, thank you for all the reviews. I read every one. M x
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Death to Life to Breakfast with Slytherins
Harry had never been a huge fan of mornings. There were ways he preferred being woken up if it had to happen; however, these generally didn't include Pansy Parkinson's pug-like face two inches from his own and the Daily Prophet being jammed in his left ear.
"Mwah?"
"Did you do this, Potter?"
"How d'you get in here?"
"I live here, remember? I'm one of your hostages."
Harry groaned and shoved her away so he could sit up blearily in bed. His head felt weird and echoey, and if it weren't for the fact that he did not have a headache for the first time in months, he would have missed the presence of the Marauders.
"You don't live in my bedroom. I spend enough of my time sharing a room with an irritating Slytherin at Hogwarts, I'm not going to start here at Grimmauld as well. And stop calling yourself my hostage."
Pansy crossed her arms and scowled from where she was kneeling on the edge of his bed. "You promised we could be your hostages. No take-backs."
"Oh my God, go away." He flumped back in bed and tried to tug the covers back over his head.
"I want to know if this was you." She yanked the covers back and wacked him over the head with the rolled up newspaper.
"If what was me?"
"This!" She unrolled the paper and held it up. Harry fumbled for his glasses and squinted at the headline.
MINISTER GOING DARKSIDE? SHACKLEBOLT IN TALKS TO RELEASE JAILED SLYTHERINS.
"Oh. That. Yes."
"Merlin, Potter. You really are the hero of the bloody underdog aren't you?"
There was an almighty crash from downstairs followed by lot of yelling and the distinctive bang of a Blasting Curse.
"I really hate mornings," Harry mumbled, as he rolled out of bed and staggered towards the door.
He entered the kitchen to find the huge oak table upended on its side while one of its antique wooden chairs was a smoking pile of wreckage a few feet away. Hermione, Ron and George were crouched behind one side of the table and Blaise, Goyle and Daphne were crouched behind the other. All six of them had their wands drawn. When Harry glanced around for Draco, he spotted him sitting in one of the un-blasted chairs in the corner calmly eating porridge as he watched the drama unfold.
With a sinking feeling, Harry realised that he may have forgotten to mention his Slytherin houseguests to his friends.
"Is it too much to ask that you explain to everyone what's going on here?"
"Not in my hostage contract," Draco said vaguely as he licked his spoon.
"You have a hostage contract?" Pansy asked. "We weren't offered a contract."
"No, of course he doesn't have a contract!" Harry flung his arms in the air. "No one has a hostage contract! You're all free to go anytime you like. I'll even show you to the door!"
"I don't want to go," Goyle said. "I like it here. I had treacle tart for breakfast."
"Harry?" Ron asked, slowly standing up from behind the table and pocketing his wand. "Care to explain why we Flooed in to find a bunch of Slytherins breakfasting at your table?"
"And why you look like you just exited your bedroom with Parkinson?" George added.
Sighing, Harry stepped around the overturned table to dish himself up some porridge from the pot on the stove. He found another chair that was still intact and sat down in it.
"They're just staying here until people stop victimising them and threatening to throw them in jail."
"They'll be here forever, then," Ron pointed out. "Have you met them?"
"Let's just…" Hermione gestured to the table, "clean everything up and sit down to talk things over like adults."
They all reluctantly worked together to clean up the disaster area that was Harry's kitchen. However, he couldn't really keep his mind on what they were doing, ears straining constantly for the sound of the doorbell. It couldn't be that long before officials at the Ministry came to inform him that his family had miraculously returned to life, could it? They'd had all night to question (and clothe) the newly resurrected Marauders. Wouldn't he be their first port of call?
"Alright, mate?" Ron asked, voice quiet over the clattering of the breakfast dishes as they were laid on the table. Harry looked up to see his friend hovering near him with a worried expression.
"Aren't you angry?" Harry asked, gesturing to the Slytherins.
Ron made a face. "I've come to terms with you Beating for team Slytherin. I'm not even that surprised anymore. I bet all Malfoy had to do was make pleading eyes at you and you just welcomed them all with open arms."
"Shut up," Harry said, because it was mostly true. "I was tricked into it."
"Well, they are Slytherins."
"True enough."
"No word from the Ministry?"
Harry shook his head. "What happens if they never come? What if they just lock them up or do experiments on them or re-kill them or something?"
"You said it yourself – Kingsley and the Aurors are desperate for someone to help them defeat Crouch and his minions. They now have a literally engraved note from the Powers That Be claiming to have bypassed death itself to provide them with the help. They're not going to turn it down. They'll be here any minute."
Any minute turned out to be about five hours later – a very long, strained five hours involving a breakfast of snide comments and veiled insults, followed by some very reluctant gardening. Narcissa Malfoy, on arriving in the kitchen to find an atmosphere of simmering warfare, put everyone to work in the Black garden, serenely deaf to all protests.
"What is this stuff?" Pansy wailed, as she was made to rake some appallingly fragrant crumbly brown mulch into one of the beds. "And why can't we use magic?"
"Because that, Miss Parkinson, is dragon dung," Narcissa told her primly. "It's highly volatile. You use magic on it, you lose your eyebrows and most of your hair. Forever."
"Poo? You're making me rake poo?"
"It's in the small print of your hostage contract," Harry told her with relish. "'Will be required to poo-rake on a regular basis'. No take-backs, remember."
"I don't have a hostage contract!"
Harry was actually glad of the work, as it took his mind off his family. The Malfoy house-elves had uncovered a nest of gnomes under the large oak tree at the bottom of the garden and he and Ron were having a great time reviving their gnome-tossing skills. He wasn't sure where they went when the disappeared over the back wall, but he hoped it wasn't into some poor Muggle's garden.
"It's strange that you have a garden," Hermione said as she wrestled another charmed binding rope onto a Venomous Tentacula. "It's nice – if a little homicidal."
"Fits in well with the house," muttered George, who had found himself swallowed up to the neck in an old armchair the last time he'd stayed over. He wouldn't believe it when Harry assured him he hadn't known about its people-swallowing properties when he stored it in that room.
"I like it." Harry watched another gnome soar majestically over the back wall. "It's completely different to Aunt Petunia's garden. She'd hate it." He lowered his voice. "And it's keeping Mrs Malfoy busy. Heaven knows what I would do with her if it wasn't here."
"Plus it's like a dream come true to see Pansy Parkinson shovelling –" Ron broke off at the distant sound of the doorbell ringing inside. He, Harry, Hermione and George exchanged looks.
"George, make sure this lot don't follow us," Harry said. "The Ministry can't know they're here."
They closed the back door behind them; it shimmered back into a blank-looking wall again, all evidence of the entrance hidden. As he hurried through the house, Harry frantically tried to bat the worst of the mud off his robes and flatten his hair. If the look on the face of the Auror on his doorstep was any indication, he wasn't that successful.
"Mr Potter, I presume?"
Harry stared at him. "You really need me to introduce myself? I know for a fact that my face was on the front page of yesterday's Daily Prophet. Right beneath the headline 'Potter: Insane or Dark?'"
"They're called manners, Harry," Hermione sighed beside him. "People use them on occasion. For example, people usually invite visitors inside and offer them a cup of tea."
"Oh, right. Tea. Er…tea?"
"I need you to accompany me to the Ministry."
Harry's heart leapt excitedly, but he'd been practicing his blank, confused face in front of the mirror and it was holding up well. "Why? Are you going to lock me up without a trial as well?"
The Auror flushed. "No. We have a matter that requires your urgent attention. You must come at once." He was quite young and had the air of someone who was used to getting his own way. His hair was artistically ruffled in a broom-swept style and his robes, while still technically in the correct shade of dark Auror blue, were cut in the latest fashion. Harry wondered if his superiors had sent him as a kind of punishment or lesson in humility. More experienced Aurors knew not to try and make him do anything.
"Does it involve Crouch, Dementors, obsessed fans or giant walking skeletons that eat people?"
"Mr Potter, when an Auror comes knocking at your door, you go with them. You don't stand there wasting valuable Ministry time asking questions we don't have to answer."
"How do I know you're really an Auror? You could be a fangirl in disguise waiting to pounce on me the minute I step outside this house."
"Do I look like a fangirl?" snapped the man. He was clearly losing his patience.
"I sense the truthful answer to that question is likely to get you even more riled up," Harry told him cheerfully.
"Mr Potter –!"
"Is there a problem here, McCabe?"
Harry looked over Auror-apparently-McCabe's shoulder to see another one had made an appearance behind him. She was stocky with a cheerful face and had the most amazing hair Harry had seen since the last time Teddy had a temper-tantrum. It was an ice white that contrasted brightly with her olive skin and it was shot through with electric blue highlights. It stood out over her head in spikes. He was sort of surprised the Auror dress code allowed it.
"Nice hair," Harry said. "Are you two planning on arresting me?"
"Why?" she countered. "Have you done something to warrant it?"
"No. But to be fair, nor have most of the prisoners in your Ministry cells."
"We're not going to arrest you, Mr Potter. We would just like to politely request your presence at the Ministry."
"Politely?" Ron asked, peering over Harry and Hermione's shoulders. "Really?"
She grimaced. "I'd also like to politely request you pretend your conversation with Auror McCabe was a figment of your imagination. Please also feel free to imagine him being severely reprimanded by his superiors once we return to the Ministry. My name is Auror Cooper."
Harry felt himself relaxing slightly. Had he put up enough of a resistance to be believable? He thought he had, even though every bone in his body was screaming for him to fall over himself to do whatever they wanted as long as they allowed him to see his family.
"Fine." He tried to look reluctant. "As long as my friends can come with me."
"No," McCabe said immediately, then huffed into silence as his partner glared at him.
Auror Cooper eyed Ron and Hermione, then nodded and gestured inside. "Floo is probably our quickest way, if you don't mind us using your fireplace."
Harry made sure to lead them to the fireplace in the parlour, as far from any windows overlooking the garden as possible.
"You want to go to Kingsley Shacklebolt's Office, The Ministry of Magic," instructed Cooper. "I'll go through first and lower the wards for you."
The trip was as nauseating as ever, but Harry hardly noticed as he tripped over the grate into Kingsley's office. It looked, if possible, even more stuffed full of parchment than it had before. The desk behind which Kingsley sat was practically groaning under the weight of piles and piles of paperwork. The man himself looked drawn and grey with exhaustion as he hunched over, quill in hand.
Harry braced himself for his best acting. Kingsley knew him and he couldn't afford to let slip that he knew why he was here.
"Is this about the Slytherins?" he asked, when Kingsley moved from behind his desk to shake his hand. "I saw the paper this morning. Glad to see you doing what you promised."
Kingsley looked a little alarmed at his words and his eyes shifted to where Cooper and McCabe were having a quiet argument beside the mantelpiece. They didn't appear to have heard Harry's words and he suddenly realised how weak it would have made Kingsley look if they had.
"Sorry," he said more quietly. "I am glad, though."
"It's not going well," Kingsley informed him just as quietly. "The Minister of Magic does not have nearly as much autonomous power as he used to – not since the whole debacle with Fudge. Everything has to go through Wizengamot and I can tell you now that they are extremely resistant to letting go any prisoners we do have – regardless of their possible innocence."
Take me to my family! Harry wanted to scream, but he forced himself to nod instead. "So that's not why I'm here?"
The fire flared behind him and Hermione stepped through, followed by Ron.
"No. You'd better take a seat. Trust me, you're going to want to be sitting down when I tell you this. All of you."
Ron and Hermione dug a couple of extra chairs out from under teetering piles of parchment and placed them next to the one already in front of Kingsley's desk. They sat down and braced themselves. Harry hoped he'd practised his shocked face enough. He thought it had looked quite convincing when he'd tried it out in front of the mirror that morning, but he wasn't sure how it would hold up under stress.
"So…?" Ron prompted, when it seemed like Kingsley might just stare at them for the next half hour.
"I'm not really sure how to start, to be honest. I have to be the only person in the world who has ever had to come up with a way to start this conversation." He cleared his throat and shuffled around some papers on his desk in an absent-minded way. "Well, I suppose I should start with finding out what you know about All Hallows Barking?"
Harry treated him to his best blank-eyed gaze. This was an expression he had practiced extensively in History of Magic lessons.
"It's a place of collective magical effervescence," Hermione piped up, "like Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor."
"You are correct, Miss Granger. Now last night, there was a great disturbance in the collective effervescence of All-Hallows Barking. The wardens of the church said they felt the magic literally draining away. It took a lot of quick spell-casting just to keep All-Hallows Barking from suddenly appearing in the middle of the road beside the Muggles' version of the church. I don't even need to tell you how much Obliviating that would have taken to sort out."
Harry winced. He hadn't thought of this as a possible consequence of the ceremony. "Was it Crouch?" he asked, as a cover for his horrified expression.
"Not Crouch, no." Kingsley sighed and leaned forward. "They went to investigate and when they saw what was there… well, they immediately called me and the heads of the Auror department and the Department of Mysteries."
"Well, what was it?" Harry asked, and he thought the impatience that coloured his voice was okay, because he would have been frustrated by now even if he hadn't known what Kingsley was trying to tell him.
"The church is devoted to death, remembrance and the afterlife," Kingsley said. "No one knows when it was first founded or why it was a place of collective effervescence. Now I suppose that we do. There were four people brought back to life in that churchyard. There was a message inscribed on the wall that they have been brought back to help us in this new battle against the Dark."
Harry's heart was hammering in his chest and he wasn't sure how to respond. Luckily, Hermione was there to rescue him. "How?" she asked. "I was always told that one thing magic is completely incapable of doing was bringing people back to life."
"It is. Or at least it always has been until now. The sheer amount of magic it took – well, I don't think it will be happening again any time soon. Even the Unspeakables are at a complete loss."
"Who was it?" Harry got out, and his voice was clearly breathless. "You brought me in so I have to be linked. Who came back from the dead?"
Kingsley pointed to a door in the wall to their left. "Go and see for yourself."
Harry stumbled to his feet and lurched blindly towards the door. He didn't have to fake his hitching breath or trembling hands. He fumbled for the doorknob and pushed it open. His eyes lit on four people seated around a wooden table in what was probably normally used as a little conference room. There was a meal set out on the table, but Harry couldn't have named a single item of food because his eyes were fixed on his family.
His gaze was drawn to his parents first. James and Lily Potter looked so young. They were his parents, so as he grew up they had grown older in his mind. All the parental figures in his life had either been in their thirties or heading into middle age, so his mental image of his parents had hovered around the same age even though he knew they had died young. These two were twenty-one. He was almost the same age as them and it was unspeakably bizarre.
His eyes stuttered to the side to flick over Sirius and Remus and he felt himself gaping even more because they weren't the Sirius and Remus he knew. The person looking at him fondly from the table was the best man who had waved at him from his parents' wedding picture, not the gaunt and broken wreck of a person who had spent twelve years in Azkaban. The young man who sat beside him still, admittedly, had silver streaks in his tawny hair, but his face was young and boyish.
It turned out that Harry really hadn't needed to practice his shocked face.
"I'll just, er, leave you to catch up," Kingsley said awkwardly from behind him.
Harry couldn't even react until he heard the door click shut behind him.
"Harry…" James started to his feet. It felt weirdly impossible to think of this young man as 'Dad' right now.
Harry motioned for him to be quiet, then tore his eyes away to gesture to Hermione who, along with Ron, was still staring wide-eyed at the Marauders. "Hermione?"
She jumped. "What?"
Harry touched his ears and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Is anyone listening?
She pulled out her wand and cast a quick spell. "No," she said after a few seconds, she waved her wand again. "I've also just cast an anti-eavesdropping charm on us."
"Good!" Harry burst out explosively. He pointed a rather shaky finger at Sirius and Remus. "What's this?" he demanded. "Did you two cast a de-aging spell on yourselves?"
"No!" they chorused, and it was so, so weird to be hearing those voices outside his head.
"This is entirely your fault," Remus added, looking agitated. "Do you think I want to look like this? No one's going to take me seriously! I took years for me to look old enough for people to stop asking me why I was skipping school whenever I went out during the day. Now I've got to go through it all again!"
"Nonsense, Moony," James said. "You look at least twenty. Okay, nineteen. Maybe eighteen in bad light when they can't see the grey in your hair."
"Personally, I'm quite glad I no longer look like the villain in a psychological horror movie," Sirius put in. "It'll be nice to walk down the street and not have people crossing the road to avoid me, while probably imagining how many corpses I have hanging up in my basement."
"But how did this happen?" Harry took a staggering step forward, then stopped like there was an invisible barrier keeping him from closing the distance between them.
"I've been thinking about it all night and I think I might have an explanation," Lily said. "I couldn't discuss it with the others because we weren't sure if we'd be overheard, but I'm sure it has to do with the wording of the spell in the Master of Death ceremony: 'I call upon you to give in exchange the lives owed to those whose were destroyed too young in sacrifice for the Greater Good.' 'Destroyed', you see? Not taken. Although Remus and Sirius lived, both their lives were pretty much destroyed the night that we died and Peter framed Sirius. I think…I think we were all just popped straight back into a replica of those bodies."
"I agree," Remus said quietly. He pulled up a sleeve to reveal a deep and painful-looking gouge in his right forearm. "This was a wound I inflicted on myself at the full moon three days before that Halloween night. It was extremely severe. No one had kept me company that full moon – I suspect that was the night the Secret Keeper switch was made. I nearly lost the arm, and even with healing potions it took a long time to heal. I always had the scar – right up to the day I died."
"I think, perhaps, that it was because it all happened at Halloween that the spell worked at all," Sirius put in, reaching out to brush his fingers over Remus's back in a gesture that might have been friendly absentmindedness if you didn't know to look for the hidden tenderness. His brow furrowed as he worked it out. "Halloween is a shortening of the phrase 'All Hallows Eve' – or to put it another way, Eve of the Deathly Hallows. It has always been known as the day when the veil between life and death is the thinnest.
"Maybe it really is the only day when Death himself – Death personified – has the power to reach into the living world and replicate a living body. These aren't our old bodies, just replicas. If you dug up James's, Remus's and Lily's graves, their skeletons would still be there. This was a ceremony created by Death himself: Death, who is outside time. He could have given us any bodies of any age he liked. Perhaps he chose to replicate bodies on this particular day in time because it was easiest.
"In fact, probably the only reason it worked was because our lives were destroyed on a day when his power was strongest – and also a day that life defeated Death. Harry did, after all, survive the Killing Curse that night. This was a night that life overcame Death, and perhaps, death could become life because of it."
A silence fell over them as they all contemplated the enormity of it. Harry was reeling, overwhelmed, his mind scrabbling to catch up.
"You know what?" Lily said suddenly, making them all jump. "Bugger this. I just want to hug my baby boy." She flung herself back from the table and stalked round to pull an unresisting Harry into an almost painfully tight hug. He felt something break inside him and he raised his arms and clung back. This was his mother. He was actually hugging his mum. It was almost too much to take.
There was the scraping of another chair being shoved back and suddenly both he and Lily were enveloped by another, longer set of arms. This was his dad. His actual flesh and blood dad and it was impossible and unfamiliar and familiar and wonderful, and now there were tears which he couldn't stop, but it was okay because they were being soaked up by his mother's shoulder, which he had dreamed of crying into on long nights when his cupboard had seemed too small and dark and lonely to bear any longer…
And then there were two more sets of arms and it was the most awkward, clumsy, amazing hug with way too many limbs being involved that had ever taken place. Ever. Harry was sure of it.
"We did it," he mumbled. "We did it. We actually bloody did it."
"Yes we did," James agreed, and they all drew back to look at one another with stupidly wide smiles. Harry was glad to see his eyes weren't the only ones that were wet.
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It was a very, very long time before they were allowed to leave the Ministry. Harry's family had already undergone vigorous testing to ensure they were who they claimed to be before he had been called, but apparently that was just the start of it.
There were no pre-made forms to fill out to register someone coming back to life, so they were being invented on the fly. James's and Lily's wands were fetched from the Auror archives where they had been packed away in a crime scene evidence box. Sirius's was apparently still somewhere in storage at Azkaban, along with the last set of clothes he wore on the night he was dragged off to the prison without trial. It was suspected that Remus's had been buried with him, and he decided he'd rather have a new one than work out how to scrub bits of his own rotting corpse off his old one in a way that wouldn't traumatise him for life.
Kingsley then insisted that they come up with a statement for the press, because there was no way that the miraculous return of a bunch of war heroes from the dead was going to pass unnoticed. Their insistence that it was Luna who would be first to publish the news in the Quibbler was met with stiff opposition, and only the Marauders' refusal to pose for a Daily Prophet photographer ensured they got their own way.
Luna herself was amazing. She trailed into the conference room after Auror Cooper and stopped in her tracks at the sight of James, Lily, Remus and Sirius sitting at the table.
"Oh. You're back," she said, as if they'd popped out to the shops for a box of teabags. "Hello, Professor Lupin. You're looking less deceased than the last time I saw you. I hope you've been well." Then she turned to Harry. "After this, can I have a word with you about an idea I've had for an article promoting Slytherin support? I thought we could link it to your bake sale."
"Uh…" Harry shared a wide-eyed look with Ron and Hermione. "Perhaps in a couple of days? I think there might be a bit of work ahead of me sorting out details to do with my family miraculously coming back to life." He emphasised the last few words in the way a person explores a tooth cavity with their tongue, trying to judge how long it takes for the pain to kick in.
"Yes, I suppose that would be a bit of a bother," she agreed. "It's all the forms they make you fill out and people refusing you at every turn. I had the same problem when I tried to get permission from the Peruvian Magical Ministry to explore a volcano for fire salamanders. They breed in the hot lava, you know."
"Really? Hot lava?" Ron said weakly. "I can see why you'd want to be there when that happens."
"I know, right?"
"Can we get on, Miss Lovegood?" Kingsley cut in. "We really do have a lot of work ahead of us."
"Of course," she said, pulling a notebook and quill out of her handbag. "What was it you wanted me to write about, Harry?"
"Really?" Ron said. "You can't think of anything newsworthy in here?"
"Well, I did notice Harry was less infested with nargles than the last time I saw him."
Harry sighed and wondered if they would be home in time for dinner.
Once their interview with Luna was over, there was the matter of reinstating things like Apparation licences, Sirius's official pardon and discussing whether resurrected people re-inherited their money and houses, or whether everything would still be in Harry's name.
"Frankly, I don't care," Harry said, when they were left alone by the Aurors and Kingsley again at teatime. "I'll pool everything together and divide it up between us."
"What about Teddy?" Remus asked, and that stumped them, because Andromeda and Harry were now legally his guardians in the eyes of the law. "We can't just take him from Andromeda," Remus continued. "Teddy won't even remember me and she has raised him for nearly three years. But I'm his father and I want him."
"You could go and live with her, at least for a while so he can get used to you again," Hermione suggested.
"I could, but.…" His eyes trailed to Sirius and he looked young and lost. It was terribly unnerving. Of all the Marauders, Harry had spent the most time with adult Remus. His mind was struggling to comprehend that Remus's adult mind with all his knowledge and life experience was now housed behind this boyish face.
"Yeah. That would be awkward," said Sirius with a wince.
"They can both come to Grimmauld Place," Harry said. "There should be room. We'll move Pansy and Daphne in together, and that bedroom on the second floor with those weird-looking gargoyles in it should be big enough for Goyle, Zabini and Draco to share. Sirius and Remus can go in Sirius's old room, Mum and Dad can take over the one Draco's been in and Andromeda and Teddy can have that big room on the first floor with the dressing room attached. We can turn the dressing room into a nursery."
"You think Andromeda would leave her home for that?" James asked doubtfully.
"I think Andromeda would do anything for Teddy, and this is really in his best interests."
The door to the conference room opened and Kingsley entered again, looking even more exhausted and droopy than he had before. "I think we're nearing the end of everything we can get done today," he told them, slumping down at the table and grabbing a Welsh cake to nibble one. "We should let you get on home."
"You should get on home as well, Shacklebolt," Sirius said, eyeing him with concern. "You look dead on your feet."
"You're joking, right? I haven't been home in three days and I'm still running behind." He slumped forward, rubbing his hands over his face. "I'm not cut out to be a Minister for Magic. I'm an Auror. Politics is not my thing."
"You're doing it amazingly well, then," said Harry, his heart going out to the man. "Way better than Fudge. And you've outlived Scrimgeour, as well."
"A flobberworm would have made a better Minister for Magic than Fudge," Ron pointed out.
"On a level with a flobberworm, then," Kingsley said wryly, moving to stand again. "Well, it's something."
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It was wonderful to stumble through the grate into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place that evening. Everything had been set to rights again after that morning's breakfast battle and there was a feast set out on the large oak table. Large copper pots of chicken soup and baskets of freshly baked bread rolls vied for room with sausages, mashed potatoes, onion gravy, sweetcorn and peas. Dishes of syrup pudding and custard were waiting under warming charms on the counter for the main course to be finished.
The Slytherins, Narcissa and George were already seated around the table, and Harry cheered up even more when both Pansy and Blaise actually choked on their food when they saw who followed Harry, Ron and Hermione through the Floo.
"Surprise!" he said, making jazz hands as Draco hammered Blaise on the back to dislodge the piece of sausage now trapped in his windpipe.
"Merlin, Potter, do the laws of the universe mean nothing to you?" Pansy spluttered, her eyes watering. "You can't just go around bringing people back form the dead willy-nilly."
"He doesn't listen when you tell him that," Draco informed her. "It just makes him more stubborn."
"I didn't do it," Harry said, because there was no way he was sharing his Master of Death secret with a bunch of Slytherins who'd wanted to hand him over to Voldemort a few short years ago.
"What, so they just popped out of the ground like daffodils, did they?"
"Who are you calling a daffodil?" James asked, insulted.
"Is that Professor Lupin?" Blaise's eyes were fixed on Remus. "Did you de-age him as well?"
"Of course I didn't," Harry said. "He came ready-de-aged."
"He also came ready-deceased. What, in the name of Merlin, have you done, Potter?"
"Can we just sit down and eat?" Sirius whined, eyeing the food as if he hadn't just been gorging on Welsh cakes and tea. "Being resurrected makes you hungry."
"Does the Ministry know about this?" Daphne asked, looking nervous as Lily sat down beside her. "I think this is the sort of thing they should be informed about."
"As opposed to the fact that I've got a houseful of illegal Slytherin hostages who I'm meant to keep quiet about, you mean?" Harry asked dryly.
"No, I just…" she trailed off as Sirius took a seat opposite her and make a grab for the rolls. She squinted at him, tilted her head, then let out a little shriek as she shoved her chair back from the table. "That's Sirius Black!" she yelled. "That's an actual de-aged, back-from-the-dead Sirius Black!"
"Are you sure?" Goyle asked. "He doesn't look like Sirius Black. Sirius Black had all hair and beard and scars and ribs and things. I saw the pictures."
"I still have ribs," said Sirius. "And hair."
"And fleas," James said.
"He's innocent," Hermione added loudly over Sirius's denial of parasite infestation "You know he is. It was in the papers for weeks."
Apparently the Slytherins didn't really know what to say to that, and the table lapsed into a slightly uncomfortable silence as they ate. The food Kreacher had cooked was as amazing as always and Harry was perfectly happy to ignore the weird dynamics of the eclectic group, as well as the wide-eyed stares, while he indulged in a huge plate of sausage and mash. He'd become pretty much immune to staring over the years.
He wasn't quite as capable of ignoring stray Malfoys in his bedroom, however, and this was what he was confronted with a couple of hours later after everyone, exhausted by the events of the last day, retired to bed.
"What are you doing in here?" Harry asked tiredly, throwing himself back on the bed.
Draco turned away from where he had been unashamedly snooping through Harry's dresser drawers.
"I shared a room with Goyle and Zabini for six years. I'm not doing it again."
"Six years, eh? And didn't move onto first-name terms in all that time."
"Not in public!" Draco looked scandalised.
Harry yawned and heeled off his shoes on the end of the bed so they clattered to the floor. He half-heartedly kicked at the blankets, trying to get under them without actually moving from a lying position. "Well, you're not sleeping in here."
"Yeah? Try and stop me."
Harry groaned and batted at Draco's hand as he reached into the pocket of the robes Harry was still wearing and dug out his wand. "Oh, come on!" he protested when Draco used it to transfigure the tatty wingback chair in the corner into a bed.
"Please," Draco said, clambering up onto the bed, which now sported silver-and-green fringed bedding. "You can't tell me you're not feeling lonely without your undead family knocking around up there."
He was right. Harry couldn't tell him that and it was sort of nice having a bit of company after the long day – even if it was irritating Malfoy-shaped company. He stared up at the ceiling while Draco shuffled around getting ready for bed. Eventually he settled back with a final flumph and put out the light with Harry's wand. They listened to one another breathing in the darkness for a few moments and Harry suddenly realised that this was the first time he'd been truly alone with Draco since the whole business started.
"Were they what you expected?" Harry asked.
"Hm?"
"My family. In the flesh."
"Worse. I've never met a more Gryffindorish bunch of Gryffindors in my life."
"Oh, please, we all know you have a soft spot for us."
"Lupin's all right," Draco allowed. "And your mother."
"You weren't surprised by – you know – Sirius and Remus? Looking younger?"
"No. Why? Were you?"
"Why weren't you surprised? Everyone else was!"
"Did none of you ever pay attention to the wording of the spell? Or the origins of the whole ceremony?"
"What do you mean?" Harry rolled over onto his side to study Draco's dark shape in the darkness. Even in the dim light his pale hair seemed to glow.
"The ceremony didn't start last night, Harry. The groundwork was laid when Death was cheated by the Peverells. They got the Hallows out of it. Nearly a thousand years later, two Peverell descendants meet with a clash, and Death is cheated again – by you this this time. That was the moment you became Master of Death, and that was the moment the Master of Death Ceremony was actually kick-started. That's why the bodies that were replicated were from that night. The thing with the fire and the potion and the three last descendants was just the last stage of the whole process."
Harry thought about that and there was really only one way to respond. "Oh, God, Voldemort is my cousin!"
"What?"
"We were both Peverell descendants. He was my cousin! I feel so contaminated right now."
"And people say I focus on the wrong part of any conversation. Besides, surely it must have occurred to you when you realised you were a Parselmouth?"
"I got that power from Voldemort when he cursed me. It's gone now."
"How do you know that's where it came from?"
"Well…" Harry fumbled in surprise. "Dumbledore told me."
"Dumbledore was just a man. He drew conclusions from presented evidence. He had no proof. You were too young for anyone to have figured out if you could talk to snakes before your parents died. I looked it up after that duel we had in second year. It can pop up three times in one generation, or skip three generations before resurfacing again. No one knows how it works. Besides, how do you know the power is gone? Have you tried it?"
"No," Harry admitted. "And I'm not going to." He paused, automatically waiting for a reaction to the declaration from the Marauders before remembering that they weren't cluttering up his mind anymore. "It's weird not to have them in my head," he said after a second.
"I'm just glad you've stopped spurting blood from your ears, to be honest."
"I'm glad to be rid of the wolf. Poor Remus. I don't know how he does that every month."
"Like he has a choice." Draco paused and Harry heard him shifting uncertainly in the darkness. "I could make the Wolfsbane potion for him. Next full moon, I mean."
"You'd do that?"
"Like I said. I don't mind Lupin."
That was practically a declaration of undying love from a Malfoy. They weren't great with emotions.
"Cheers, Draco."
"Well, you did take my friends hostage for me. I owe you."
There was the sound of ancient, groaning plumbing as the less exhausted inhabitants of Grimmauld Place began to troop upstairs and get ready for bed. A muffled shriek and a dull thud indicated that Pansy may have discovered the doxy Ron and George had hidden in her bedcurtains. Harry's eyelids began to droop.
"So. Lupin and Black."
Harry blinked away the edges of sleep. "What 'bout them?"
"I think they might be, you know…"
"Bedroom friends?"
"Salazar's sake, Potter, don't say it out loud!"
Harry sighed. "For the last time, there's nothing wrong with blokes, or girls of course, being bedroom friends."
"As long as you're happy to be lynched."
"If anyone tried to lynch Remus and Sirius, I'd remove their intestines through their nostrils. It's not like they rub it in people's faces." He paused. "I really, really did not intend that to sound as dirty as it just did."
"They couldn't do anything in front of people even if they wanted to," said Draco, apparently bypassing dirty innuendoes in favour of continuing the conversation. "If they did, they'd be responsible for a whole bunch of people with large nostrils and few intestines. I wasn't even sure myself. It was just little things. And a sort of feeling, you know?"
"Gaydar."
"You what?"
"You know? Like radar? But for gay people?"
"What's radar?"
"It's like a… you know what? Never mind."
Draco rolled over and Harry could just make out his pale face in the dim light. "How come you know so much about this, anyway?"
"I don't know. I don't know much at all, to be honest. It's just something you sort of absorb in the Muggle world. Maybe from telly or newspapers or books or something. We even had a lesson at primary school about it once – how it's okay to have two mummies or two daddies and whatnot."
"So it really doesn't bother you?"
There was a note in Draco's voice that made something squeeze in Harry's chest. "No, Draco."
"Okay."
"Draco?"
"Shut up, Potter, I'm trying to sleep."
"Okay." Harry closed his eyes. "Night, then."
"Good night, Harry."
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When Harry strolled, yawning, into the kitchen the next day, it was to the unexpected sight of his mother, father and Draco Malfoy sharing the breakfast table. It was clear from the dangerously teetering piles of dishes on the draining board that most of the household had already eaten and he could just make out the sound of Narcissa's imperious tones as she ordered the other hapless Slytherins around the garden again.
When Harry took a seat beside Draco it was to find the other young man flushed and glowering.
"Morning, everyone. What's wrong, Draco?"
"I just walked in on your parents doing unspeakable things against the kitchen wall," Draco told him with a shudder. "And when I asked them to desist, they told me it was their duty in the interests of the 'Greater Shagging'. What in Merlin's name is the 'Greater Shagging'? If I knew that's what we were working towards all this time I would have stayed locked in the Ministry cells."
"It's like the Greater Good, but more fun for all concerned," James said. "It's one of the main reasons Harry brought us back."
"No, it isn't!" Harry reached for some toast which Kreacher had kept warm in a charmed toast rack. "I distinctly remember saying that I didn't want any part in you lot embarking on the Greater Shagging."
"Honestly," said Draco, turning haunted eyes on Harry, "I may never recover. He had his hand in places one should never have one's hands in public."
"Oh, please," Harry said. "I got it much worse. I just walked in on Remus in the bathroom looking thoroughly mussed up and humming 'Back in Black'."
There was a short silence as the other three contemplated this.
"Interesting," James said eventually. "I was under the impression it was usually the other way around."
"Oh my God, don't say things like that," Harry begged. "You're my parental figures! And who ate all the strawberry jam?"
"It wasn't me," said Draco sulkily. "I haven't been able to stomach anything since I came in here. In fact, I think I'm going to go out for a breath of fresh air." He rose from the table with an air of wounded dignity and stalked out to the garden.
Harry turned to frown at his parents.
"We really didn't intend to have anyone walk in," Lily said. "We didn't intend to do it at all, but we have bodies now after so long and everything just feels so real and solid and enhanced."
"And he's so easy to wind up," James added.
Hand ran a hand tiredly over his face. "It might do to remember that without him you wouldn't be here."
"Sorry, Harry."
"Yeah, sorry."
They looked so much like the couple of contrite seventh years he'd scolded after coming across them making out under the Hufflepuff Quidditch stands after hours. They were so young. It had been easier to forget when they had just been voices, but now every time he looked at them it was like being slapped in the face by the realisation.
He adored his family. He could not imagine a better gift than to have his parents, Sirius and Remus back from the dead. But the love he felt for his mother and father did not really feel like the kind of love children usually had for their parents. He was almost positive, for instance, that the way he felt about them was very different to how Ron felt about Mr and Mrs Weasley.
"Are you okay, love?" Lily asked, and Harry realised he'd just been staring at them for what was probably a creepily long time.
"I just… I love having you here," he said, fumbling to put his feelings into words. "All of you. But it's weird as well. I… when I dreamed about this when I was little, I always imagined us being a proper family with a house and a garden and cat called Mistoffelees. Just a normal family, you know. But it's not like that. It's not bad, it's just not like that."
Lily pressed her lips together and for a moment her green eyes looked ancient and endless. "It's never going to be like that, Harry," she said eventually. "Voldemort took that from us. But what we can have together is just as special. We're equals, and James and I, in a very real sense, are only a year or so older than you. We can't remember very much about being dead. There is a sense of contentment and light, but not of time passing. I feel twenty-one."
She reached across the table and took Harry's hand. "I won't lie. I will always miss my little baby boy with his messy hair and chubby little hands. I'll always be sorry I missed his first full sentence, missed his toddling becoming walking, missed his first day at school, missed teaching him the wonder of the Muggle world as well as the Wizarding one."
"Missed teaching him to fly," James put in, covering Harry and Lily's hands with his own, "Missed taking him to buy his wand, missed helping him plan his first prank, missed watching him find out what he was good at and helping him reach for his dreams." He slanted a sideways look at Lily. "Missed dressing him up as the world's cutest pumpkin and getting us a bucketful of Muggle sweets at Halloween. That's what we'd planned for that night, you know. Before we had to go into hiding. A bit of light-heartedness in a world of darkness."
Harry nodded, unable to speak around the lump in his throat.
"Our baby boy grew up and we weren't there to see it," Lily continued quietly. "But look at him…" She squeezed Harry's hand. "What an extraordinary young man he's turned out to be. I am honoured to be part of your family, even if it is the craziest, most unconventional family of de-aged undead people, werewolves, portraits, Slytherins, snake-obsessed blue-haired toddlers, house-elves, hostages and numerous adopted outcasts who could never quite fit in anywhere else. And I'll always be proud to be your mum."
Harry smiled and was aware it probably looked wobbly and unconvincing. "I'm glad. I'm a Hogwarts professor now, though, so you're not allowed to ground me. Or dress me up as a pumpkin."
"Oh," James said, looking crestfallen.
"I suppose we could borrow Teddy if you were feeling an irresistible need to inflict toddler-pumpkins on an unsuspecting Muggle population."
"What's this about Teddy?" Remus asked as he and Sirius trailed into the room. "You're not getting him involved in any schemes, Prongs. You have your own offspring for that."
"My offspring is past his cute-by date," mourned James.
"Charmed." Harry drew back his hand from his parents' and took a bite of his toast.
"Sorry, offspring."
"So what are our plans for today?" Sirius asked, ladling up a bowlful of porridge and slopping a tooth-achingly large amount of honey into it.
"Don't know about you lot, but I'm going to pop back to Hogwarts and check on Alex and Daniel," said Harry. "They're probably dying for news and they did really well at the ceremony. Plus they both stayed at Hogwarts for the Easter holidays especially to do this. I owe them a chocolate egg."
Sirius nodded. "I feel our lives are worth at least a couple of chocolate eggs. Maybe even those ones with caramel in them."
"Not sure what we will do," Remus said. "I don't think it's wise for us to go out until things have settled a bit. Otherwise we're going to be mobbed."
"You could help Kreacher clear out the rooms on the third floor," Harry suggested. "We've only done a couple and the last time I tried to help, a chamber pot attacked me."
"A chamber pot?" James asked, amused.
"It had teeth. And it cackled. I don't want to talk about it."
"Third floor spring cleaning it is," Remus said, and James and Sirius groaned.
"Really?" Lily said, crossing her arms and frowning at them. "He let us live in his head. The least we can do it help de-chamber-pot his home."
"I'm allergic to cleaning." Sirius slumped forward on the table. "I come out in hives."
"If you help out without complaining, I'll let you do that thing," Remus promised him.
"Really?" Sirius brightened. "Okay, then."
"Oh, my God," Harry said. "I'm leaving. Please get the Greater Shagging out of your systems before I return."
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