Chapter 13: The Other Side

Hermione Granger was, according to her teachers, intelligent and driven. Of course such statements could not stand on their own, leaving them to add words such as 'unhealthy' and 'insufferable' to clarify just how intelligent and driven they considered her. Truly, such admiration from her professors was benefiting someone of her status as the top student in all of Hogwarts.

Or at least among the third years. The proof of her awe-inspiring drive was the small hourglass that hung around her neck.

McGonagall had given it to her with clear instructions, making it clear that it was to be used only for its intended purpose of visiting every possible class.

However.

There was no way Harry was dead. No, things didn't add up. And the final piece of the puzzle was Sirius Black's acquittal. Though the death of Harry Potter was now hanging over the shoulders of one Peter Pettigrew, who had been revealed as alive and stripped of his Order of Merlin commendation, she didn't believe that he was responsible either.

Unfortunately she was stuck in the school at the moment, incapable of chasing down Black to interrogate him. This left her with the next best option. Someone who knew the man. Despite pleading with her, McGonagall was unwilling, and Dumbledore was too busy to bother.

This left her only true friend besides Ron, who was going through the motions of the school year with as much wit as he could muster. As much as she liked him, there was the simple truth that the only reason they were friends over the past two years was because of Harry's influence on them.

In the library, she sat down with a book nearly as large as Hogwarts, A History.

Graduating Classes of Hogwarts

The first classes were simply lists of names, but that was fine. She was looking at a more modern class, after all. The Hogwarts Class of Seventy-Eight, in which Sirius Black had graduated after seven years in Gryffindor.

And next to him, the faces she was hoping to find. James Potter, Peter Pettigrew… and Remus Lupin.

She had been keeping the man, who was probably the best DADA teacher that they've had so far, not that this was a massive achievement by itself, under scrutiny. She remembered his son had joined the second year this year and more than that, he apparently had not known about said son for the longest time!

How… reprobate. Then the strangeness kept piling up. His son was apparently the nephew of the Greengrass family, whose daughter had died as well. Hermione remembered Daphne Greengrass, who had been less of a pest than Pansy Parkinson, but still a Slytherin, which made classes with her generally insufferable.

So in that sleep-deprived haze it started to click. Sirius Black breaks out. Harry Potter, allegedly, dies. Daphne Greengrass, allegedly, dies, close enough for the funerals to be held on the same day. Remus Lupin's son appears, a Metamorphmagus, and Remus used to be friends with both Sirius and James?

Of course she used the time turner to attend all her classes, but every other free time she had? She spent here, working on her theories, and while none of them made sense, a few hypotheses could be drawn, certainly not because she needed to be right, but of course she would be.

She was Hermione Granger, after all, almost fourteen, that's practically almost an adult!

Hypothesis number one: Edward Lupin, or Teddy as he insisted everyone call him, was Harry in disguise.

Hypothesis number two: To make the disguise believable, Harry's death was faked, without leaving a body behind.

Hypothesis number three: The responsible parties are Remus Lupin and the Greengrass family, possibly to hide Harry from Sirius Black! To prevent him from talking to her they must be doing something to him! The Imperius curse?! Loyalty potions?! Love potions?

That would explain why Daphne was gone as well!

That's when she hit a wall. Sirius was acquitted and Teddy vanished from Hogwarts. It took a bit of digging to find out that Astoria Greengrass, Daphne's younger sister, had also disappeared. The teachers assured them they were with their family due to an emergency and would join them as soon as everything has been resolved.

So what had changed? Why would Harry not reveal himself?

She put a bookmark onto the page and slapped the book shut, rushing out of the library with billowing robes. She had a man to confront, and a friend to rescue!

There was a hole in the Gryffindor common room. Not in the physical sense, as there were plenty of those in the walls, but in the sense that something, or someone, who should be there was not.

Harry Potter's death had left the Wizarding World shook, the British Ministry in shambles, and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry hollow.

And none felt this more than the teachers. McGonagall was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the Weasley twins to do something so outragelously stupid that they would cheer the rest of their house, or perhaps even the school, up.

But they did not. Against all odds, two weeks into the school year, they sat silently with their younger siblings, eating dinner. She had heard whispers of them planning something, but whatever it was must have fallen through, or their ability to act had seen considerable improvement over the past few months.

If they were the only ones acting strange, she could have left it be, but Dumbledore, too, seemed to have a new vigour in his step the last time she saw him, and though young Mr. Lupin had left for the weekend, his father, Remus, seemed content.

Pomona had told her the gist of it. The allegation of abuse after the rather… concerning display of a Boggart in a second year classroom. The young man's outburst. His guardian eventually came to pick him up, leaving enough of an impression for Dumbledore to give Remus a stern warning about age-appropriate classwork. In a way, she understood. The Greengrass family was, while not as rich as the Malfoy family, quite well connected. Unlike the blatant pureblood supremacist, they also had a seat on the Wizengamot, though they had used it for a long while.

She remembered Lucinda Greengrass. A Ravenclaw with so much heart, it was almost a shame she wasn't in another house. She remembered when the news broke that her sister, Adria, had died, though it was years after the sisters had graduated. She had wondered if the woman had the same expression on her face as she did at the funeral of her daughter.

She did not know much about Leonidas Greengrass, who had married into the family, from an illustrious Greek pureblood family. Before said funeral, she would have considered him the typical man of such a stature, but his words were laced with painful truth, and though she could still not claim to know much about him, she could say that he loved his daughter.

And to her, as a teacher, that counted more than anything.

She had seen so many people walk through these halls. She had accompanied many children over the years, seeing them graduate. She had seen their heartaches and their joys. She had seen the signs of loving homes, and the signs of those that were close to abusive, or outright malicious towards their children.

She had seen the likes of Lucius Malfoy spawn from homes that expected too much from them, and she had seen the likes of Harry Potter come and go from homes that expected nothing.

The fact that he died in that loveless home would haunt her until the end of her days, she was sure.

A knock on the door caused her to look up. Shoulder long red hair peeked through the door to her office, revealing one-half of the Weasley twins.

"Come in, Mr. Weasley," she said, giving him a nod. "It'd be more polite to wait for me to call first and then open the door."

"Yes," he said, stepping in. He looked… shaken? Perhaps that wasn't the right word. Something was making him nervous, and he took a seat in front of her with no small amounts of looking over his shoulder.

She didn't feel very comfortable either. Seeing one of the twins without the other was like that hole in the common room. It felt unnatural.

"Is something the matter, Fred," she asked. They thought she couldn't keep them apart, but they were quite wrong about that. Though they both were identical down to their mannerisms, some things were and would always be unique to them.

"I've had a fight with George," he said, not even trying to deny who he was. She raised an eyebrow. That was unusual, they haven't had a real fight since their first year, after which the boys were joined at the hip. Fred rubbed the back of his neck. "He didn't want me to talk to you. I'm still not sure, he might be right."

She frowned. "I assure you, anything you say here will be kept between us, unless it concerns something highly illegal."

The stressed word made him cower. She didn't think he would do something that broke any actual laws. Even when it came to school rules, the Weasleys prided themselves on skirting the line to a point where they could never be punished more significantly than a few detentions here and there.

Magic knows she's had to deal with a few requests from Professor Sprout to throw them out. They were still banned from the greenhouses.

"It's not me I'm worried about," Fred said, fumbling around in his pocket and pulling out a piece of parchment. "I saw something recently, and I don't know who to talk to. George said we shouldn't talk to anyone, but it doesn't sit right by me."

She furrowed her brow at the parchment. She had seen it before… many years ago.

"And what, pray tell, did you see?" she asked, her voice soft. Of course, it had been so long, but she would always remember that strange map that the self-proclaimed Marauders were carrying around whenever they were sent to detention. The map which would insult her quite crudely whenever she moved to decipher it.

He held his wand up to the map and tapped it once. "I solemnly swear I'm up to no good."

And just like that, magic unfolded. Invisible ink made itself known as it slithered over the parchment of the map, not stopping as Fred unfolded it, revealing an incredibly detailed depiction of Hogwarts from the broom's eye view.

And near his wand, she saw his name, and hers, standing across each other.

"Magnificent," she said, finding herself in awe at the spellwork. Her students had created this? Something like this was… she wouldn't say unprecedented, but considering their unwillingness to sit still and learn, it was a surprise. A welcome one, but a surprise nonetheless. "Is this how you kept avoiding Filch's patrols?"

"He was using it before we… found it," Fred said diplomatically. He shook his head. "But no, yesterday I saw something on the map. George saw it, too, so it wasn't just a trick of light. A name that shouldn't be on the map."

"Shouldn't?"

"Harry Potter," Fred said, his voice barely above a whisper. McGonagall's blood froze in her veins. "Not randomly in some room, but with the headmaster in his office."

"Impossible," she whispered back. Louder, she spoke again. "No, Mr. Weasley, that isn't possible. Perhaps he has become a ghost, if he was alive-"

If he was alive, Dumbledore would no longer look like a mess. He would walk with his head held high.

He would walk with a spring in his step.

Her eyes widened, her hand moving to her chest as she stood up. When she moved towards her door, it was Fred's hand on her arm that stopped her.

"Professor," he said, his voice still quiet and hoarse. "If he is alive, and Headmaster Dumbledore knows… why didn't he tell us?"

She thought. And thought and thought and thought.

Because Harry would not want them to? Why would Dumbledore, who had always acted in Harry's best interest, accept such a reason? Unless.

Unless it was in Harry's best interest to hide away. But of course that didn't add up.

"Say, Mr. Weasley." She turned to him, and he let her arm go when he saw her lips drawn into a thin line. "Around which time did you see Mr. Potter on the map?"

"During the afternoon classes."

The boy's guardian was not Leonidas Greengrass, then. It was, against all common sense and logic, Harry Potter.

"You wonder whether it would be prudent to accept Dumbledore's decision to keep this hidden from everyone without question," she summarized. Fred nodded. She looked back towards her door. "I suppose we will have to ask him ourselves if his excuses are reasonable."

"We?" Fred asked, blinking. "I was kind of hoping we could keep my name out of this, wipe my memory maybe or-"

"We're not going to obliviate a student in our care, Mr. Weasley," McGonagall said, patting the young man on his cheek. "We keep our spells for the adults."

Fred swallowed. So much for getting advice on how to proceed. The professor had hijacked his finds, and George was probably not going to be happy. At least she hadn't taken the map from him.

Sirius woke up and smelled freedom. When Dumbledore came to him after the trial, Sirius felt miserable to shake him off. Someone so powerful and connected had never seen to making this happen before that day.

So he asked for a month. A month to sort his feelings, a month to sort what remained of his belongings, a month to find himself some semblance of peace.

A month before he would visit Hogwarts so pay respects to Harry.

Which is how he found himself rising, for the third morning in a row, in a large room in a rather dusty hotel that had been recommended to him by Amelia when he was looking for a place to stay. Though he had Grimmauld Place, he had seen the inside of a prison for long enough to move from one to another.

In some ways, Grimmauld Place caused miserable memories to resurface, not unlike the Dementors themselves.

And so he went through the motions. He woke in cold sweat, and before he did anything, he had to take his first potion of the day. The diluted calming draught would help him make that first step. The step that would always be the hardest.

After the vial went down like a firewhiskey in a dry throat, he stood, noting with a slight feeling of satisfaction that he did not trip today. He took off his shirt, his fingers only slipping a few times as they failed the hold onto the fabric before he managed to lift it over his head and threw it onto the pile in the corner of the room.

A quick trip into the bathroom saw him face to face with what he had become. Emasculated, thin and bony. But every day, he improved slightly. Today, he was seven stone, which was a massive improvement to the four-and-a-half he had on when the regimen started. Sirius lifted the flappy skin on his stomach in disgust before moving on to take his second potion. Nutrition in a bottle. Tasted as awful as it sounded. A quick shower later, he was dressed and ready to take the rest.

He walked out of the room, through a hallway with a red carpet and flattering wallpapers that displayed the imagery of various cities in the world, starting in London, going through Paris, Coppenhagen, Moscow, Warsaw and ending up in an image of Berlin as the wall fell, only three years ago.

It was an image he had stopped in front of a few times during his stay.

"Mr. Black, early as always, I see," a concierge greeted him with a smile. Sirius nodded at him, the initial awkwardness of his new 'home', for the lack of a better word, had passed by now. It was not easy jumping into the Muggle world at the drop of a hat, but if there was one place where the illustrious press would not look for the last Black heir that wasn't a mass murderer (despite a few papers running theories about his bribery of officials, or some bogus excuse about old Black family magic that made the use of truth serum impossible). "The breakfast will be served as usual, I'm afraid."

"It's alright, Mr. Pearson," Sirius said, smiling at the man. Nobody asked questions if you had enough money to throw around. He felt fortunate that he had spent so much time with James and Lily after school, allowing him to blend in at least somewhat reasonably. "I'll be at the pool."

He had an hour until breakfast was served, and in a way, he prefered the crowd of a busy restaurant to the sheer weight of sitting alone while eating. Though he was left well alone, and his appearance was without a doubt not making it easy for other people to approach him, the presence of others made him feel normal.

After all, those who are normal do not fear the crowds. They do not cover their ears when they hear a crying child, or squeeze their eyes shut tight to hide from the piercing green eyes of the godson he had failed, or cower when a plate shattered after being dropped.

Sirius took a deep breath.

He wasn't going to swim, of course, but the indoor pool was one of the few places where the background noise allowed him to keep his thoughts straight without straying off too far.

Mr. Pearson gave him a smile as they passed each other, and Sirius made his way down the stairs, past the first floor and towards the pool. Holding his breath as he passed through the narrow hallway that led into the changing room. He changed into a bathrobe, enjoying the freedom it gave him and found himself at his good place.

The weird smell of chlorine, the rushing of the water through the pipes, the artificial lights on the ceiling to spite the dreary English weather.

Sirius found an empty beach chair and laid down on it, closing his eyes, enjoying the slight twinge of pain in his eyes as the fluorescent lights burned through his eyelids. Alas, it was not meant to be. When he had found a comfortable position to take his time, the light was cut off by something moving above him. He slowly opened his eyes, blinded by the bright lights and squinted at whoever was blocking his sight.

In the creases of their shadowed appearance, Sirius found himself staring at green eyes. He rubbed his eyes, blinking through the tiredness, and found himself once more seeing the face of a ghost.

"James," he said, his voice small and hoarse. "Have… have you come to take me?"

James blinked, his eyebrows rising. "Well, yes, but I'm afraid you have the wrong Potter, Sirius Black."

Sirius had the displeasure of finding out that nightmares and hallucinations cared a bit too much about gravity and fell over his own legs when he tried to stand up too fast. Before he could hit the floor in a painful thud, the ghost of James had grabbed his arm. He felt warm.

"I've gone mad," Sirius said, looking at where the warmth was coming from. The man's hand on his wrist. "I've gone mad, more mad than I've been. You can't be real."

"I can explain everything," James said. No, not James. Those eyes. That haircut. That beard, James could never grow a beard like that. "But I need you to come with me, Sirius."

"Will I see Harry?" Sirius asked, shaking his wrist free from the man's grip. "Will it hurt?"

"Blimey, Sirius," Harry said, slapping the man's face a few times with soft pats. "I'm not here to kill you, I'm here to bring you to my family. I'm alive."

Sirius rubbed his eyes. He grabbed his cheek between two fingers, pinching and pulling. He lifted a fist, but before he could punch himself awake, the man grabbed his wrist again, and Sirius had to live with the shame of being too weak to really fight the man off.

"I'll come," Sirius said, resigning himself to the madness. "But I don't even know who you are."

"I'm a time traveler," James said, smiling widely. "Who do you think told Amelia Bones about Peter Pettigrew?"

Sirius blinked. His eyes cleared. The features became more obvious. The smile sealed it. "Harry."

He wrapped the boy, the man, in a hug. With a tug, they were gone.

Remus was not someone afraid of other people. His furry little problem left him with little to fear from others, as most regular spells were not quite as effective against him anymore. He was much more afraid of himself, as someone who was, once every month, capable of becoming a monster beyond the pale.

Of course, nowadays there was the Wolfsbane potion, which let him keep his mind. And though the fear of losing himself and hurting someone else was not there anymore, his reflection in the mirror when he was fully conscious to see just what had become of him disgusted him.

But when he found himself under the scrutiny of a fourteen year old witch, who had, in no small amount of words, accused him of kidnapping Harry Potter with the help of the Greengrass family, he did feel quite concerned. She looked haggard and erratic. He could see she had barely slept in the past week, and were she any older he would not be surprised if he had found a gray strand of hair or two in that bushy head.

"When is the last time you've slept, Ms. Granger?" Remus asked. She frowned, her face scrunched up, whether it was in annoyance or in thought as she tried to recall, he could not tell. Her left eyelid twitched a few times.

She clearly hadn't taken the death of her friend well. He could understand. Sirius' acquittal filled him with shame, and even now he had not dared to seek the man out to talk to him. He was a coward and a hypocrite.

But Hermione was young. She didn't know her limits, and from what he had heard the other teachers said, she was not one to let something such as limits stop her.

"Harry isn't dead," Hermione insisted, deciding to ignore his question. "He can't be dead. There's no way he'd have just disappeared without a trace."

"It's not 'no trace', Ms. Granger, certain kinds of magic leave a rather visible mark upon the world, especially those released when one dies." Remus tried to sound diplomatic, but he failed, that pang of pain entering his voice. "It's why, despite the rather… industrious possibilities that wizards have, Aurors for example are trained to find such traces. From what the headmaster has told me, the signs were clear."

"No," Hermione said, shaking her head. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Whatever she wanted to say fell apart as tiredness crawled up her back. "No."

"It's never easy losing a friend, and there is nothing worse than waking up in the morning forgetting they're gone. Holding onto the belief they must still be around isn't wrong, but you mustn't let that control you.

Hermione raised a finger, her mouth opening and closing a few times. Her shoulders slumped, her body sagging. For a moment, Remus thought she might fall over. Instead, she used the motion to mask her pulling out her wand. Were he any less skilled in duelling, a move like that would have gotten him. His shield was up before she managed to finish pronouncing her spell, deflecting the soft red light of a stunner that probably wouldn't have managed to make a cat unconscious into the wall.

She followed up by tackling him, which he was ashamed to admit he wasn't expecting. Though larger and stronger than her by a fair margin, she had managed to knock him over as he tripped over a chair in his cramped office.

He resisted the urge to smile. Harry had some good friends. Settling on wincing in pain instead, he found himself not-quite-pinned to the ground and his shirt in the shaking hands of a crying child that tried her best to look threatening.

"Why are you hiding him from me?" she asked, pulling on his shirt. She looked more and more upset by the second, her face flushing red in frustration and exhaustion, a cold sweat gathering in the back of her neck, no doubt from the miserable circulation of many sleepless nights. "I want my friend back. Give me Harry back you reprobate bastard!"

For someone so small and tired, she certainly had quite a lot of strength in her arms. That constant lifting of books must be doing something for her. Ever patient, for he did not like himself when he was angry, Remus stood up and grabbed the girl's arms, putting her down standing. She didn't let go of the shirt, ripping it slightly.

"I'm sorry," Remus said. His words caused her to let go, stumbling backwards and landing on her arse. She didn't accept his offered hand to help her up. "If he were alive, and I knew where he was, I'd take you to him."

"He's pretending to be your son," Hermione insisted. Remus frowned. "A metamorphmagus who appears at the same time when two of my classmates die in the same summer? He's even taller than the other second years!"

"I've always been taller than most people around that age," Remus said, shaking his head. "It's a family thing. And I assure you, I've checked thoroughly, he's my son."

"So where is he? You can't tell me you're so unconcerned he just got taken home for the weekend after, after that!"

She pointed at nothing, but Remus knew she meant the Boggart. The rumour mill of Hogwarts was fast and cruel, as always.

"I'm sorry," Remus repeated. A quick disarm gave him her wand. A Levicorpus held her in place as he walked out of the office, towards McGonagall. Better to have her head of house take care of this.