Of Dinner and Detention

Outside the classroom, Harry stomped his way down the corridor, the note to McGonagall clutched tight in his hand. When he turned a corner he walked slap into Peeves the poltergeist, a wide-mouthed little man floating on his back in midair, juggling several inkwells.

"Why, it's Potty Wee Potter!" Peeves cackled, allowing two of the inkwells to fall to the ground where they smashed and spattered the walls with ink; Harry jumped backwards out of the way with a snarl.

"Get out of it, Peeves."

"Ooh, Crackpot's feeling cranky," said Peeves, pursuing Harry along the corridor, leering as he zoomed along above him. 'What is it this time, my fine Potty friend? Heaving voices? Seeing visions? Speaking in -" Peeves blew a gigantic raspberry "- tongues?"

Harry stopped and forced himself to take a deep breath, knowing that reacting would only give Peeves exactly what he wanted. He intentionally kept his breaths measured and even as he walked down the nearest flight of stairs. Predictably, however, Peeves merely slid down the banister on his back beside him.

"Oh, most think he's barking, the potty wee lad,
But some are more kindly and think he's just sad,
But Peevesy knows better and says that he's mad -"

Unfortunately for Harry, that as the rhyme that sent him over the edge. "SHUT UP!"

A door to his left flew open and Professor McGonagall emerged from her office looking grim and slightly harassed.

"What on earth are you shouting about, Potter?" she snapped, as Peeves cackled gleefully and zoomed out of sight. "Why aren't you in class?"

"I've been sent to see you," Harry said stiffly.

"Sent? What do you mean, sent?"

He held out the note from Professor Umbridge. Professor McGonagall took it from him, frowning, slit it open with a tap of her wand, stretched it out and began to read. Her eyes zoomed from side to side behind their square spectacles as she read what Umbridge had written, and with each line they became narrower.

"Come in here, Potter."

He followed her inside her study. The door closed automatically behind him.

"Well?" said Professor McGonagall, rounding on him. "Is this true?"

"Is what true?" Harry asked, rather more aggressively than he had intended. "Professor?" he added, in an attempt to sound more polite.

"Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?"

"Uh, yes," said Harry.

"You called her a liar?"

"Uh, yes."

"You told her He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I did do that."

Professor McGonagall sat down behind her desk, frowning at Harry. Then said said, "Have a biscuit, Potter."

"Have - what?"

"Have a biscuit," she repeated impatiently, indicating a tartan tin lying on top of one of the piles of papers on her desk. "And sit down."

There had been a previous occasion when Harry, expecting to be caned by Professor McGonagall, had instead been appointed by her to the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He sank into a chair opposite her and helped himself to a Ginger Newt, feeling just as confused and wrong-footed as he had done on that occasion. Professor McGonagall set down Professor Umbridge's note and looked very seriously at Harry.

"Potter, you need to be careful," she said. "You of all people should know that better than anyone. And your boys are more like you than even they would like to admit. It's up to you to set a good example."

Harry swallowed his mouthful of Ginger Newt and stared at her. her tone of voice was not at all what it should have been - it was not brisk, crisp and stern; it was low and anxious and somehow much more human than usual. It almost sounded like she was treating him like an equal.

"You can not afford to get on her bad side, Potter."

"I'm sorry, Minerva," he said honestly. "I just - I lost it."

"Believe me, Harry, I understand," she told him. "But you need to be more careful. You just can't afford to get on the wrong side of the woman, and you've got the added pressure of showing your children how to behave. And you and I both know those three specialise in getting themselves into the kind of trouble you could only dream about. We don't need a repeat of the courtyard incident, Potter."

In the distance, they heard the bell ring for the end of the lesson. Overhead and all around came the elephantine sounds of hundreds of students on the move. Harry, however, was staring openly at Professor McGonagall.

"What? How - how could you possibly -?"

Across the desk, Professor McGonagall stopped dead in her tracks. Frowning, she said very slowly, "Lily had been at school for all of three days the first time she duelled her brother."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, interrupting her train of thought. "The first time?"

McGonagall shrugged. "It really isn't worth calling you up to the school every time your kids are called into my office. As much as I enjoy your company, it would be a waste of all of our time to be meeting with you every day of the school year."

Harry slowly lowered his biscuit onto the table as he gaped at Professor McGonagall.

"Minerva... How much do you remember?"

Across the desk, she looked at him with eyes glistening. He'd never seen her get emotional like this before. Quietly, she said, "Everything."

It was as though that one word hit him like a truck. He sat back in his seat involuntarily, almost like he'd been pushed backwards.

Still blinking back tears, Professor McGonagall cleated her throat. Her voice shook slightly as she said, "Misbehaviour in Dolores Umbridge's class could cost you more than house points and a detention."

It took Harry a second. "What do you -?"

"Potter, use your common sense," she snapped, abruptly returning to her usual manner. "You know where she comes from and who she's reporting to."

"Yeah, but -"

"- You've done this before, Harry," she said. "You and I both know what's coming."

"Exactly," he said, leaning forward as though that would exaggerate his point. "And that's why I have to -"

"- If you so much as finish that sentence, I swear on Merlin's beard I will hit you," she told him seriously.

"What?"

She stood up now, and made her way slowly around the desk. "You are not going to let yourself be hurt. Not again."

He frowned. "But, the timeline."

"What about it?"

He stood now, his own temper rising. "I've seen what happens when you mess with time, Minerva. Al and Scorp almost erased themselves out of existence!"

"They didn't know what they were doing."

"And neither do we!" he all-but roared. "We don't even know how this whole mess happened, Minerva. And now it's spreading! First Ginny, then Hermione, and now you. Oh - and the best part? I'm not the only adult suddenly reliving his worst nightmares!"

"What does that mean?"

"You didn't hear?" he said sarcastically. "Draco Malfoy woke up as a teenager this morning."

He watched as she froze, then reached around behind herself until she found the edge of her desk. Very gingerly, she leaned herself against it.

"How?"

"What do you mean 'how'?" he demanded, again a little too forcefully.

"No, Harry - how do we protect him?"

He leant forward again, both hands grasping the back of the chair he had been sitting in, and let out a long, deep breath.

"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know, Minerva."

Harry was entirely unsurprised to find a slightly nervous-looking James and thoroughly confused-looking Al waiting for him in the corridor when he emerged from Professor McGonagall's office.

"James said you were sent out of class?" Al asked his father.

Harry shrugged. "It's not like we're learning anything there, anyway."

Beside him, James said timidly, "So? What's the damage?"

"A week's worth of detention," Harry said matter-of-factory, leading them through the hallways and back toward the Great Hall for dinner.

"But you're telling the truth," Al insisted.

"Yeah!" James added.

Harry stopped head in his tracks and pulled the boys into a secret passage. When they were securely hidden behind a particularly obnoxiously-coloured tapestry, he said, "Do you really think this is about truth or lies?"

He looked from one to the other, only to find them staring at each other with the same unreadable expression.

"We've done everything in our power to protect you kids from this," Harry found himself saying. "Back home, this is history. It happened a million years ago. We've moved on with our lives, and most days it's almost like it never happened. But then you catch an snippet of someone else's conversation, or you see an old photo, or you pass someone randomly in the street and it all comes flooding back."

"This was, hands down, one of the worst years of my life, and that includes my crappy childhood with the Dursleys. This is the year I realised I had a target painted on my back. This is the year the Ministry started a smear campaign against me and against Dumbledore. This is the year a teacher abused her power and hurt her students. This is the year I learnt to stand on my own two feet and protect myself, because no one else was going to do it for me."

He reached out a hand to each of their shoulders and looked each of them square in the eye. "This is about so much more than truth and lies, okay? And - guys, I really need you to hear me."

"We're listening, dad," Al whispered.

Beside him, James added, "I don't think I've ever heard anything more clearly in my life."

"Good," Harry said. "Because this is important: I need you to keep your heads down and your tempers under control. Lily, too."

James took a step back. "I'm sorry - which of us just got kicked out of class?"

"Do as I say, not as I do."

"That wasn't an answer."

"Knock it off, James," Al said tiredly. "He's got to protect the timeline."

"Yeah, because I'm sure not yelling at a teacher in the middle of class would have really made a huge difference to the sequence of events in 1995!"

"Actually," Harry said tiredly, scrunching his hand into a fist and staring at the still-blank back of his hand absentmindedly, "you'd be surprised."

As they emerged out of the secret passageway and continued their descent through the Castle toward dinner, Al asked, "So what's the deal with this new professor, anyway? James says she's not letting us use magic in class. Like, at all."

Harry laughed, though there was not a trace of humour in it.

"But it's Defence," James said. "As in Defence Against the Dark Arts. You know, the one where we literally learn how to, you know, defend ourselves?"

"Yeah," Al echoed. "How are we supposed to do that by reading the most boring textbook I have ever opened in my life?"

"You know it's really bad when that's coming from you," James said insightfully.

Harry glanced around them quickly, then said in a very low voice, "Didn't you listen to her speech at the start-of-term feast?"

"Of course we did," James said. "But it didn't make any sense."

"Sure it did," Al told him.

James scoffed. "Oh, really? So something about progress being prohibited makes sense to you?"

Al sighed. "Didn't you take any of it in?"

"'Course I did!" James said indignantly. "It means the Ministry's interfering at Hogwarts, right?"

As they arrived in the Entrance Hall, Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, at least you still listen to Aunt Hermione."

Ginny approached them then, with Lily in tow. It was an odd sight, seeing the two together; He'd never really stopped to think how alike mother and daughter really were.

"Everything okay?" Ginny asked them. When he shot her a look, she added, "You're stressed."

"How could you possibly know that?"

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'm doing the thing with my hair again, aren't I?"

"Little bit, yeah," she confirmed, falling into step beside him. "But we also may have heard you got kicked out of class for yelling at a teacher?"

He reached over and slapped James gently on the back of his head again, having seen him irritating his sister out of the corner of his eye. To Ginny, he said, "That got out fast, even by Hogwarts standards. Hey - knock it off, you two. Honestly, sometimes I swear you're still five years old."

The last part had clearly not been meant for Ginny. She threw the kids one of her own famous looks.

"You know, mum," James said conversationally, "that look loses a little of its power when you consider you're literally younger than me right now."

"Better be careful, Jamie," Lily told him. "Her bat-bogey hex is already legendary."

"I may or may not have demonstrated it on the twins this morning," Ginny said. With a smile, she added, "But if Professor Flitwick asks, we were together all morning."

"Noted," Harry smiled. "You joining us for dinner then, Gin?"

She shrugged. "Why not?"

The moment they crossed the threshold into the Great Hall, the whispering started. Harry couldn't help but roll his eyes, though he made a point of not showing any other outward reaction. At as normal a pace as they could manage, Harry and Ginny led the kids across to the Gryffindor table, where Ron and Hermione had saved them seats.

Has he saw them approaching, Ron's spoon fell out of his hand and hit the table with a loud clang. Beside him, Hermione frowned.

"What's wrong?"

Mutely, he gestured to the Potters, who frowned at him. "Look at them, 'Mione. They even look like a family!"

Hermione dropped her voice and whispered "That's because they are a family, Ronald."

"Yeah, but - but they look it!"

As she climbed into a seat at the table opposite him, Ginny reminded him, "This shouldn't be news to you, Ron. And if it is - well, dad's got some serious explaining to do."

"See, Uncle Ron," James said, settling himself comfortably into a seat beside his uncle, "the birds and the bees are -"

"Urgh!" Ron exclaimed loudly, waving a hand at him as though that would make him stop talking, and clapping his other hand over one of his ears. "No! I do not need my nephew lecturing me on -"

Too later, Ron realised he'd said too much, too loudly. On the other side of Hermione, Neville Longbottom leaned forward, a confused expression adorning his face. "Nephew?"

"Oh, uh," Ron said, fumbling for words. "He, uh ..."

Rolling her eyes, Ginny stepped in to save her brother. "Technically, we're distant cousins. Bu their mum insists they call my brothers Uncle."

Neville's frown deepened. "But I thought they were Harry's cousins?"

"Technically, they are," Ginny said, her hand finding Harry's knee under the table and squeezing it tightly, as though she were silently warning him not to give anything away while she smoothly covered over the lie. "You know what the old families are like, Neville. We're all distantly related at some point down the line."

"It's really better if you don't think about it," Harry offered.

"Besides, the Prewetts are closer to the Weasleys than the Potters."

"How, exactly?" Hermione asked.

Ginny shrugged. "Mum was one."

"One what?" Ron chimed in.

Ginny rolled her eyes again and deftly threw a bread roll square into his nose without so much as looking at him. Smiling at Neville, who was struggling to keep a straight face after Ron let you an indignant yell, she said, "A Prewett."

While Neville went back to his dinner, Ron glared daggers at his sister. "What was that for?"

As she served herself and Harry each a solid helping of mashed potatoes, she said, "Not knowing when to keep your mouth shut."

Ron opened his mouth to retort, but her single raised eyebrow saw him quickly shut it again.

Beside him, James leant over and whispered, "She was a pro chaser back in the day. I do not recommend pushing her. Learnt the hard way as a kid - she doesn't miss."

Ron's mouth dropped open.

"Oh, come on, Ronald," Hermione said irritatedly. "Some of us are trying to eat here."

Across the table, Al and Lily did a terrible job at attempting to stifle their giggles. While Ron quickly shut his mouth - which currently contained a half-chewed mouthful of his food - they couldn't help it. Ron ad Hermione as teenagers were exactly like the Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione they had grown up with.

Beside Ginny, Harry shook his head, Placing a pork chop on each of their plates, he said, "Some things really do never change."

Their conversation quieted slightly as they tucked into their respective plates of dinner. Unfortunately for all of them, that also meant they could hear snippets of the conversations happening around them.

"He says he saw Cedric Diggory murdered ..."

Al's face paled noticeably at hearing that. Beside him, Ginny momentarily put her fork down and rubbed a comforting couple of circles on his back, exactly the same way she used to when he was little. He. Glanced over and threw her a tight smile, but it looked more like a grimace. Harry gave his son a small nod, but didn't say anything. Now was not the time.

"He reckons he duelled with You-Know-Who ..."

James glanced up at his father, but Harry just shook his head. They would have plenty of time for this conversation later.

"Come off it ..."

"Who does he think he's kidding?"

"Pur-lease ..."

It didn't take long for Harry to get to the point where he'd had enough. All too calmly, he very gently placed his knife and fork onto his plate, then wiped his mouth with a serviette.

"You okay?" Ginny asked him quietly. He nodded curtly, but she wasn't buying it. "We can go, if you want. Grab a plate from the kitchens, and -"

"- I'm fine, Gin," he told her, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

"What I don't get," Ron said, completely oblivious to the moment Harry and Ginny were sharing directly opposite him, "is why they all believed you two months ago when Dumbledore told them."

"To be honest, Ron," Harry said, tearing his eyes away from his wife's to look at her brother, "I don't know that they did."

Before anyone had a chance to continue to conversation, Hermione slammed her own knife and fork down on the table. "Let's just get out of here."

Ron looked longingly at his half-finished apple pie, but he followed Hermione in rising from the table. The Potters did, too, and together they headed out of the Great Hall, all very keenly aware people were staring at them the whole way.

As they hit the Entrance Hall, Ron said, "What d'you mean, you're not sure they believed it?"

"You remember what it was like when it happened, Ron," Hermione said gently, careful not to be overheard. "He appeared in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric's dead body."

"Whoa," James muttered, utterly horrified.

"None of us saw what happened inside the maze," Ginny said, explaining it specifically to the kids. "All we had was Dumbledore's word that You-Know-Who was back, that he killed Cedric and fought dad."

Lily frowned. "I've never heard you call him that before."

Ginny threw her a look. "What? He's your dad."

"No, not dad," Lily said. "Voldemort. You always call him Voldemort."

Ron shuddered violently, almost as though he were recoiling in horror. The twelve-year-old had said it so nonchalantly, it took him a moment to remember he wasn't the big, bad evil anymore in the time that she came from.

"Fear of a name only increases fear of a thing itself," Al said in the quiet that followed. "You taught us that, Aunt Hermione."

"You say we always call it what it is. Even if it scares us," Lily added.

James shrugged. "Yeah. Aunt Hermione's a badass. This isn't news."

Hermione, however, looked a little uncomfortable. Sure, she'd been complimented on things like her intelligence before, but this - to see three kids who admired who she was as a person - this was new.

"Anyway," James said, not noticing his aunt's discomfort, "Dumbledore was telling everyone the truth. And they still didn't believe him?"

Harry sighed. "You have no idea how much fear is associated with Voldemort - seriously, Ron, you need to get over this irrational fear of a name."

Ron, who had shuddered again, threw his best friend a look.

"Sorry," Harry said quickly, already knowing Hermione was about to call him out on biting his best friend's head off, "I know, that was entirely uncalled for. It's just - this is -"

"- We know, Harry," Hermione said kindly. "But you need to remember this is hard for us, too."

"I know -"

"- No, I really don't think you do," Hermione said. "I remember this whole other life, Harry. I didn't wake up back in time like you did, but I keep getting flashes of things that haven't happened. Like they're memories, but they're not."

"Things like what?" Ron asked her uncharacteristically sensitively.

"Like our daughter. She's called Rose. She's brilliant - smart and kind. And she loves quidditch, just like her dad," Hermione told him. "And our son, Hugo. He's got freckles just like yours."

Ron's face was unreadable.

Blinking back tears, Hermione turned back to the kids and said, "No matter how true it all was, everyone went home for the summer before it could really sink in. Then they spent two months reading about how Harry's a nutcase and Dumbledore's going senile."

"That's ridiculous!" James exclaimed. "Dumbledore's only, what, a hundred, maybe a hundred-and-fifty years old?"

"That's nothing on Great-Aunt Muriel," Lily shrugged.

"She's not exactly the best defence of senility," Harry said quietly, just loud enough for Al to hear. Seeing the unimpressed look Ginny had thrown him, he added, "What? Tell me I'm wrong."

"And you wonder where this lot picked up their bad habits," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I'm not the one who insisted on calling that one James Sirius," Harry said, pointing at their eldest. "And don't even get me started on the twins."

"For the last time, I have no control over when my brothers have children."

"So you're saying you didn't start calling them the 'new Marauders' before they were born?"

"How was I supposed to know they were going to live up to the stupid joke?!"

When they next looked up, they realised they'd been bickering all the way to the portrait of the Fat Lady.

Without so much as blinking, Hermione said, "Mimbulus Mimbletonia," and the portrait swung open.

"This is still weird," Al said, stepping through the hidden circular doorway after his brother.

"What do you mean it's weird?" James said. "You're in here all the time!"

"Not willingly," Lily pointed out. "He only comes in here when you make him."

"Are you saying we're not close?"

"Well, you didn't notice when he went time travelling last year and almost got us all written out of existence, James. I think that qualifies."

Mercifully, the common room was virtually empty; nearly everyone was still down at dinner. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny took seats in their favourite armchairs by the fire. Lily sat with her back leaning against the arm of her father's chair. As soon as she was on the floor Crookshanks made a beeline for her, knowing she would spend all evening absentmindedly scratching his ears. James lazily curled up in what was arguably the oldest and least comfortable chair in all of Gryffindor Tower - which, even back in his father's day - meant it was almost always available. Al, however, loitered awkwardly behind them.

"Come grab a seat, bud," Harry said, resting an arm on the back of the chair above Ginny out of reflex alone.

"Are you sure?"

Ron frowned. "Of course we're sure. Why wouldn't we be sure?"

Al looked to Harry, who gave him a nod. Quietly, Al said, "Because I'm not a Gryffindor, Uncle Ron. This tower isn't my home. It's, uh, actually a little uncomfortable being in here."

"'Course it's uncomfortable," James said. "Up here you actually get daylight."

Ron frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

James shrugged. "He's a dungeon dweller, isn't he?"

Beside Harry, Ginny picked up a square cushion and lobbed it at James' head. The kid didn't even flinch - he caught the pillow mere centimetres from his face and popped it behind his head.

Ginny sounded every bit a tired mother as she said, "How many times have you got to be told not to call him that?"

"Apparently at least once more," Lily piped up cheekily.

"Stay out of it, Lily," Harry said tiredly, knowing as well as his kids did that this was, at minimum, a weekly conversation in the Potter household.

"Yeah, shut up, Lily!"

"I-don't-care-if-we're-at-Hogwarts-I-will-still-send-you-to-your-room!" Ginny said, in a perfect imitation of her own mother.

Mother and son stared each other down.

"Come on, Al," Harry said, scooching over slightly on the couch. "There's always room for more in here. You know that."

"Do I?"

All attention was on Al now.

"It's just - well, is there? Really, I mean?"

Ginny spoke first, pointing at Ron and offering, "If my brother can make nice with Draco Malfoy -"

"- Wait, I do what now -?"

"- then that alone is proof that we can evolve," she finished pointedly, glaring at Ron. "Now get over here before you miss out on hexing your brother."

"Doing What now?"

Ignoring James, Ginny smiled at Al. "There's a reason I taught you that bat bogey hex, you know. I'm surprised you haven't used it yet."

"I've been saving it for a special occasion," Al said, looking more and more comfortable as he took a seat on the couch beside his father. "I'm thinking maybe the next time he asks out Olivia Pendleton."

Lily actually laughed. "Oh my God, James. You haven't got a hope in hell with Ollie Pendleton!"

James shrugged. "I'm playing the long game."

"Okay," Lily retorted with a snort. "But you'll be older than Nicholas Flamel before she agrees to go out with you."

"Then I'll just need to make myself a philosopher's stone."

"You're a spellcaster, not an alchemist," Ron said.

If the situation weren't quite so serious, it would have been comical. James and Lily both had their mouths half open to retort back at each other. Harry's arm had fallen off the back of the couch and landed on Ginny's shoulder; they were grinning at each other like idiots, as Al and Hermione watched on. In perfect unison, however, they all froze. Slowly, they all turned to look at Ron, who frowned back at their astonished looks.

"What? What did I - oh."

He looked to Hermione, fear in his eyes.

"'Mione?"