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Chapter Thirty-Six—Welcome Home

"Mr. Evanson."

Harry turned around with a frown that he couldn't keep from his face. Headmistress Rowan was approaching, and from the look of concern she wore, she was probably going to talk to him again about how he belonged with the Potter family. He wouldn't put it past Fleamont and Euphemia to have owled Rowan about their last confrontation.

But the Headmistress simply fell into step beside him and asked, "Have you fully recovered from your ordeal?"

She met the one with Snape, Seneca, and Grindelwald, Harry determined after a moment. He nodded and smiled at her. "Thank you for asking."

He thought she would leave as they got closer to his quarters, but she kept walking with him, although she looked massively uncomfortable. Harry looked at her sideways, wondering what in the world she was waiting for, but she didn't say anything until he unlocked the door of his quarters.

Rowan drew a breath then, and looked at him with that direct gaze that had Harry averting his face. He knew she was capable of Legilimency, and he didn't feel much like having his mind read right now.

"I wanted you to know, Mr. Evanson," Rowan began, "that you are welcome at Hogwarts for as long as you choose to stay, whether or not you claim the name Potter, whether or not you do exactly as certain—people would like you to."

Harry blinked at her over his shoulder. Then he said, because he couldn't help himself, "I thought that you were a friend of the Potters."

"I am. But I think they have badly mishandled this situation. They certainly have worried more about what the papers say of how they are treating you than whether they were treating you correctly." Rowan shook her head. "Even if they were surprised by your existence, a family member is always worth more than the money that might be threatened by their appearance."

Harry nodded. He believed those words. He wondered, idly, for a moment about what would happen when James was old enough to attend Hogwarts.

If he would still be teaching here then. If the Potters would bother sending James.

"And please do come to me if you need something," Rowan finished. "While I understand the connection between you and the Princes, and you and the Blacks, I would be distressed if I thought one of my own professors could not consider reaching out to me."

Harry blinked, more taken aback than before. It hadn't even occurred to him to say anything to Headmistress Rowan about things like the situation with the Potters after Aethelred had come back to the school or the whole problem with the time travel ritual. He'd owled her to let her know he'd survived and would be back at Hogwarts on a certain date, but that was all.

Rowan looked at him narrowly, and Harry realized he'd been silent for too long. He nodded. "Of course, Headmistress. I'll keep that in mind for the future."

"And I'll keep working on Fleamont and Euphemia. I hope they'll see, eventually, that blaming you for your circumstances is ridiculous."

Harry smiled. "I appreciate it, Headmistress, but you really don't need to. I've accepted that they'll still see me as a threat, and made my peace with that—"

"Please call me Julia."

She was watching him with hopeful eyes, and something Hermione had said once returned to Harry then. You matter to all sorts of people, and you don't even know it.

Of course, Hermione had said that because she'd meant that Harry was a hero and a source of inspiration for many people who would never meet him. But maybe it could apply in other contexts, too. Harry had spent long enough denying that he fit into this timeline at all.

"All right," Harry said. "Then please call me Harry. My last name has made a mess out of the world anyway."

Julia laughed, and lingered for another ten minutes talking about students and the way that standards had changed since she'd been teaching at Hogwarts. Harry was smiling as he closed the door behind him.

Yes, he could have Severus, and Mariana, and Orion, and Sirius, and Regulus. And he could have friends who had nothing to do with any of them. At least, now that he had accepted his place in this timeline.

Well, I saw what non-acceptance gets people. And that helped. But I do feel—better now.

"Are you all right?"

Harry glanced up from his bowl of soup and blinked at Orion. Then his face softened. "Yes," he said. "It's not that I think it's the best thing that could have happened to him, but he got what he wanted."

Orion nodded slowly. They had heard from the Ministry today. Gellert Grindelwald had been imprisoned in Nurmengard, the prison he'd once built, while Seneca Prince was taken to Azkaban. It was decided that the Dementor's Kiss was too cruel for someone who only wanted death, and the Veil wasn't a guaranteed method, so Severus Snape had been struck with a Killing Curse by an Unspeakable in the employ of the Ministry.

"It must hurt nonetheless," Orion ventured. He was only guessing. He would have felt vengeful satisfaction that two enemies were dead, but it was abundantly clear by now that Harry wasn't him, which was one reason why Orion had fallen in love with him in the first place.

"It hurts," Harry answered quietly. "But I know that this was what Snape, in particular, wanted and asked for. And I didn't corrupt Seneca's mind or Gellert's. Frankly, I think Severus will be relieved to grow up without his grandfather."

"And our dear Minister?"

Harry had to shake his head. Orion could appreciate that. Dumbledore had been filled with sadness the last time Orion had seen him, and Orion wasn't sure what would change there, or if anything would. But he knew that Harry had worked hard to accept that he wasn't responsible for every nuance of this timeline. If he hadn't broken things, then, yes, Gellert wouldn't have betrayed Albus, but neither of them would have lived, either. Things had happened that weren't all Harry's fault, and weren't all Gellert's or anyone else's.

And Orion was more than happy about the way things had worked out.

"Ah, well." Orion shrugged aside the concerns of a man he cared little about, except as his happiness affected Harry's. "I am glad that you will continue to live in Grimmauld Place when you leave Hogwarts for the summer. Mariana has been speaking about moving somewhere else, but she's fussy, and hasn't found anything suitable."

Harry half-smiled. "I know that Severus wants to keep on living here. He'll probably want to as long as I'm here." He hesitated. "And you don't mind, do you?"

Orion reached across the kitchen table and caught Harry's hand, raising it to his lips. Harry flushed and averted his eyes. It was fascinating to Orion how Harry reacted that way, and constantly, to the simplest of gestures. Of course, from what Orion knew of Harry's original timeline, no one had treated him that way.

"No," Orion said. "I want what makes you happy. I know that Severus and my sons do not always get along, but I think it is good for all of them to have associations with other children. And Mariana is hardly competition."

Harry was sipping water when Orion said that, and he choked. It took what seemed like endless moments of mumbling and coughing for him to get past it. His face was red when he looked at Orion again, which Orion didn't think was all the water. "What?"

"Mariana isn't competing with me for you."

"I think it's kind of—weird to think that other people are eager to steal me from you. Or that I can be stolen," Harry added then, and his frown was fierce.

"You may think it's strange," Orion agreed. He didn't think it was. Harry's connection to the Potters or his looks might be the first things to attract someone's attention, but his power and his sweetness would continue to draw someone's eyes. "I do not. I love you, Harry. I do not intend to let you go unless you choose to be let go."

Harry paused a long moment as if uncertain what to say. Orion waited. The wait might have been tormenting if Harry had been the kind of pureblood he had grown up around. But Harry wasn't hesitating to increase his value in Orion's eyes. It was far more likely that he didn't want to mess this up.

That he thinks he could is charming.

"I—I don't know if I can say I love you, yet," Harry whispered back. "I don't know that I would recognize that emotion if it—if I had it."

"You did not date people in your original world?"

"In my fifth and sixth years at Hogwarts. And a little after the war. Not—not a lot. The way people thought of me as the Boy-Who-Lived meant it was hard to trust people."

Orion nodded. He could see that. And it explained a lot about the way that Harry had been so tender with Severus's feelings here. "All right. You're close to me, though. You trust me. You want to spend time with me?"

Harry was flushed, but he didn't look away from Orion's eyes, which Orion supposed he could attribute to Harry's courage. "Yes."

"Then that's all I think I can ask for right now." Orion claimed and kissed Harry's hand again, and went back to indifferent subjects for the rest of dinner.

It might take months or years—although Orion hoped it would not—but in the end, he thought Harry would come to return his love, his trust. Orion could wait.

"Mr. Harry! Mr. Harry!"

Harry began to run up the stairs. He'd felt restless all evening, and hadn't been able to sleep, even though he was comfortably full and his bed was as soft as always. So he'd gone to the kitchen for a glass of water, ignoring the offers of the Black house-elves to help him, and was halfway back to his room when he heard Severus calling him.

Mariana burst out of her room in nearly the same moment, clutching her robes with one hand and her wand with the other. Harry reached Severus's door just as she did, and they both knocked it open with the same motion.

Severus was sitting up in his bed, gasping. He held out one hand to Mariana and one to Harry, his eyes wide and haunted.

Harry might have thought it was a nightmare. Mariana had told him that Severus had those sometimes, mostly about his mother's death. It seemed that he remembered Eileen's final moments the same way Harry did Lily's.

Might have thought it was a nightmare. But Severus's scar was bleeding.

Harry sat down on the chair at the edge of the bed. Severus whimpered and leaned towards him. Mariana looked pained for a second, but she caught Harry's eyes over Severus's head and nodded.

Harry thought himself that this had less to do with what Severus thought of his grandmother, and more that he might feel the same strange connection between them at the moment that had probably made Harry restless and woke him up. He gathered Severus close and smoothed his hair down.

"Did you dream?" Harry whispered.

"Yes," Severus said, and wriggled closer. He had wide eyes, but all the liquid on his face seemed to be blood. Harry thought that would be easier to deal with than tears, but it made his heart hurt more. "I saw him killing Mummy. And then he turned around and looked at me, and laughed, and he said—"

"Yes, Severus?"

"He said he was coming back, and I can't stop him."

Severus started to cry this time. Mariana reached out and put her hand on his back. Severus wriggled around until he was hugging both of them, as far as that was possible. Harry met Mariana's grim eyes, and nodded a little.

Yes, he did know what this was about. It was discouraging that Voldemort might return so much earlier in this timeline than he had in Harry's, but then again, who knew how many Horcruxes he had made here, or whether as many Death Eaters had deserted him as they had in Harry's home timeline?

Harry stroked Severus's back and hair, and murmured soothing words that didn't feel like a lie, and thought to himself that he would do anything he could to keep the poor boy from suffering a fate like the one that had waited for Harry.

"Do you have to go back to Hogwarts?"

Harry stroked Severus's scar again. Severus had finally fallen asleep last night with his head wedged beneath Harry's chin, and Harry had fallen asleep at some point himself in the chair beside Severus's bed, waking up to find Mariana asleep in the bed itself and Orion watching them with a faintly amused expression from the door.

That expression had changed fast enough after Harry had told him what had happened because of Severus's nightmare, but he hadn't tried to say much yet. He had prodded Harry and Severus out of the chair and downstairs and ordered the house-elves to make them eggs and bacon, and Severus was crunching through a piece of the bacon now as he stared up at Harry.

"I have to finish out the term," Harry said quietly. "But then I'll be home for a while, and we can work together on making sure that you can block him out of your head." He thought Severus would probably take naturally to Occlumency; he might have a natural talent for it already.

"What kind of connection do you think he has to Severus?" Mariana asked from the other side of the table. She had a cup of tea in front of her and looked more haggard than she had at any time since Seneca's trial.

Harry hesitated. He had told both Mariana and Orion some details of his life as the Boy-Who-Lived, but not everything, and he didn't know if Severus was at the age when he should hear about potentially being a Horcrux.

"Is there any way to be certain?" Orion asked, apparently picking up on Harry's feelings.

Harry shook his head. "I know the kind of connection that I had to Voldemort in my original timeline." Orion flinched a little; Mariana seemed to be too involved in staring at Severus to notice. "But that doesn't mean it's the same here. And I don't want to decide that it is and we have to destroy—"

"Destroy what?" Mariana leaned forwards. "You know that I would do anything to save my grandson, Harry."

"And I will do anything to support you," Orion added, as if he thought Harry might not know that.

Harry half-smiled at him and turned to Mariana. "All right. I'll tell you what I know. But you have to bear in mind that I don't know if things are the same here, and even if they are, we might have to spend years finding and destroying these things."

Mariana nodded, her eyes flinty. "Please tell us."

"Voldemort made Horcruxes," Harry said, and Orion grunted as if punched. "I think one possibly is behind Severus's scar. One of the most important things you can do is teach Severus Occlumency," he went on hastily, because Mariana's face was rapidly paling. "That would have protected me if I could have learned it, but I was no good at it. Make sure you find a good teacher for Severus if you aren't."

"I was never more than passable." Mariana whispered. "Enough to recognize an intruder in my mind, no more than that. I had other magic that hid secrets in my mind." She glanced at Orion. "You're good."

"I am," Orion said quietly, glancing back and forth between her and Harry. Severus had hidden his face in Harry's robes, or Harry thought Orion might have looked at him as well. "But there must be trust between master and student for Occlumency to go well, and I don't think—"

"I trust you, Mr. Black."

Severus had lifted his head. His face was pale, but then, Harry thought, it always was. And his black eyes blazed with a fury that made Harry feel briefly sorry for Voldemort.

"I know that you want to help Mr. Harry," Severus said. "So you want to help me." He sat up. "Can we learn Occlumency today?"

"We can start," Orion said, his face and voice both gentle. "It'll take a long time to learn. Eat something first."

Severus nodded and twisted around to pick up his plate again, which was something Harry had thought would take longer. He smoothed back Severus's hair and smiled at Orion.

Orion's answering smile was bright. Harry settled back in the chair, reached for his own fork, and hoped that they would find a way to get through this, even if the Horcruxes were different or in different places, even if Voldemort had returned to his body earlier.

The timeline had changed. He would never see Ron or Hermione again, or at least not as someone who shared the same memories with them.

But he had friends and people he loved who wouldn't abandon him, or Severus. That was the best weapon against Voldemort.

What do you know? Harry thought with a small smile as he watched Severus talking to Orion about what their Occlumency lessons would entail. Love is the power that Voldemort knows not, after all.