Author's Note:
Round 7
School: Ilvermorny
Ilvermorny Theme: His failure to kill Harry is what led to his defeat. Write about the consequences of failure.
Year: Year 5
Word Count: 2,957
Mandatory Prompt: [Word] Dread
Extra Prompt: [Animal] A dog
Additional Notes: AU, Adult Hermione travels back in time and solves the First Wizarding War while Harry is a baby. While most pairings are canon, canon deaths of characters are prevented, jobs are a bit different and all characters are adults here. Also, please be advised that consequences are not always bad for everyone. Per the dictionary definition on the Merriam-Webster Dictionary site: Consequence is defined as a conclusion derived through logic or something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions. Please keep this in mind while reading! :)
Content Warning: James and Sirius are often jerks in this fic, but they can still be charming. I highly doubt that Lily would have married James otherwise.
TW: Big spider, spider bite, spider death, potentially fatal injury.
Beta Love: Thank you for taking time to read through and check my story, CoppersMama and Amelia Pilliams!
Consequences, Schmonsequences
"It just doesn't make sense, Sirius," James said, as he paced back and forth with Harry bouncing against his chest in the Muggle baby carrier that Lily had forced him to don that morning. "By all accounts, we should have lost the war, and then Snape brings that strange woman to Dumbledore and a month later, old Moldy Voldy is toast. Something is fishy, I tell you."
Sirius whined from the floor where he'd been rolling about in dog form trying to make Harry laugh. Just then, a foul odor began emanating from Harry's nappy and both James and Sirius gave each other a look of dread.
"I know, I know, Sirius. You've conveniently got no opposable thumbs so it's up to me."
The dog nodded in a very un-dog-like manner, covering his snout with his paws against the smell, and James groaned as he stomped off to the nursery to get Harry cleaned up.
Being a stay-at-home-dad was taking quite a lot to get used to with Lily teaching Charms at Hogwarts. She even worked with that professor-what's-her-name—Geigner? He couldn't recall, and that only made him more suspicious. James Potter was certain that something strange was going on, and he was going to get to the bottom of it if it killed him. And, the more that he thought about it, it seemed more urgent than ever, considering that this strange woman was the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
"For all we know, she's corrupting the youth into the next generation of Death Eaters! Come on, Sirius," James said, wand in hand, after the diaper mess was attended to, "we have a Dark Witch to catch!"
Sirius rose to all four paws and wagged his tail, barking excitedly. Harry took this moment to burst into tears, crying in the very tell-tale way that James had learnt meant he needed a bottle.
"Hold that thought, Sirius," James said, holding up a finger, and Sirius plopped his rump down on the carpet with a sullen thump. "Gotta get the boy fed and burped, and then we have a Dark Witch to catch!"
"See?" James hissed from their vantage point, putting the binoculars over Sirius' eyes so he could take a look. "I knew she was up to something!"
"Mate, she's sitting next to Snape. I know the Greasy Git is still, well, greasy, but that's not exactly a crime," Sirius replied. He had changed back to human form to hold a very wiggly Harry while James peered through a pair of binoculars he had nicked from Lily's closet.
"Don't you see, though?" James said, dread edging into his tone as he snatched the binoculars back. "She's got to know that Snape is into Dark magic, and she's trying to recruit him!"
Sirius was unimpressed. "It looked like she was just giving him half of her sandwich. I'm down for making sure that Snape gets a well-timed wedgie jinx cast on his trousers, but I'm not going to attack some witch I don't even know just because you're having sleep-deprived delusions. Isn't that right, Harry?"
Harry cooed loudly, as though agreeing with his godfather.
"I'm not delusional, she's just good at hiding it," James retorted, chewing on his lip. "Oh, and what's this? He's handed her a piece of rolled up parchment!"
Sirius stopped bouncing Harry, his interest piqued. "Well, then, I guess we'd better check it out. Here, let me fix you up."
James bounded through the forest on four fleet hooves, Harry giggling and clapping his chubby hands from where he bounced in the carrier. Sirius ran ahead in his animagus form, his bulky body cutting a path for James and Harry to slip through without incident. The Forbidden Forest was no place for a small child, but the two friends knew it well from their many years of midnight jaunts.
They slowed as they reached the edge of the forest and James dropped down to his knees, jumping back up on two legs and transforming back to his human form with Harry still strapped to his chest.
"Ta-dah!" he cried, grinning. "Well, what are you waiting for, mate?"
He threw a dirty look at Sirius, who sat there wagging his tail and whining.
"Remus is still mad at you, isn't he?" he asked.
Sirius nodded with cartoonish exaggeration.
"And if he sees you before he calms down about you forgetting your one-year wedding anniversary, he'll probably put you in a literal dog house?" James guessed.
Sirius let out a soft "arooo".
"You're a giant bloody dog, Sirius. I don't see why this is somehow going to be less inconspicuous," James scoffed, but he gave up and let Sirius trot along behind him as they came around the greenhouses to the little grassy courtyard where professors liked to take picnic lunches.
Harry began to fuss as they flattened themselves against the greenhouse to get a peek around the corner at where Snape and the strange professor sat together. James hastily grabbed a pacifier from his pocket and gave it to Harry with a whispered Muffliato spell for good measure.
"—must show it to you soon, Professor Granger," Snape was saying.
"Please, Severus, we've been through a war," she replied to him, patting his leg.
Snape went scarlet, stammering, "R—right. Hermione, then."
James turned to Sirius with an intense expression.
"See?" he whispered. "I've got the perfect idea to ruin their fun little date. I'll steal her keys and that paper so we can sneak into her quarters and find out what she's up to. What do you think about…good ol' Number Twelve?"
Sirius gave a soft woof in agreement.
James pulled out his wand with a wicked gleam in his eye and whispered a little spell that he and Sirius had cooked up in the second half of their fourth year at Hogwarts. It had been a bit of a pet project for them to create the "Sacred Twenty-Eight Pranks" by graduation, but they'd managed.
A strangely aggressive dust devil appeared out of nowhere, blowing a sheet of Snape's hair in his face and catching the bottom of his robes, lifting them skyward. Snape was so busy cursing and spitting the hair from his mouth that he only managed to grab one corner of his teaching robes before they flew nearly all the way over his head. Hermione sprung forward to help him and the cheeky spell plucked the rolled parchment and a set of keys from her pocket while she was distracted by trying to help Snape.
Sirius was rolling on the ground, his paws over his muzzle to prevent himself from howling with laughter. James, too, was so busy holding back laughter, that he only belatedly realized the absence of a familiar weight against his chest. James looked down to find an empty carrier and blanched, the incantation fizzling on his lips.
"Harry?" He whipped his head around frantically, only to catch a glimpse of Harry's red romper as the tot crawled towards something irresistible and shiny that had come to rest under one of the thick Forbidden Forest tree trunks.
"Gee! Gee!" Harry muttered to himself, grasping Hermione's filched keys in his chubby fist. The parchment lay crumpled and ignored nearby.
Sirius and James glanced back at Snape and Hermione only to see that they were somehow, inexplicitly kissing despite the fact that the spell was designed for maximum humiliation of its target. There wasn't enough time to fully process their failure, though, as Harry began shaking the keys loudly enough to draw unwanted attention, and from the looks of the juvenile acromantula that had begun climbing down from the tree above him, it was definitely the worst sort.
James knew he had to save his son. Not only did he love Harry beyond all reason, but he knew that if he failed, Lily would kill him—literally—and then probably bring him back to life just to kill him again.
'And she'd be right to do it,' James thought despairingly, as he tried to reach Harry before the giant spider turned his son into a snack.
Sirius bounded past James and leapt for the spider, but only got a leg in his jaws, spinning it off its collision course with Harry. With a horrible shriek, the spider dug its fangs into Sirius' flank. He yelped and went still as the paralyzing venom began to take effect.
"SIRIUS!" James screamed, all attempts at stealth thrown out the window, and in a panic, he shouted the first spell he could think of that could stop such a creature dead in its tracks as it skittered on seven legs towards Harry.
"Avada—" James started, his intent to kill the spider clear as he pointed his wand towards the spider, which was now only a foot away from his child.
Before he could finish the spell, someone slammed into him from behind, knocking him over and covering his mouth, just as a woman's voice shouted, "WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!"
With that, Harry floated into the sky, giggling with delight as he bobbed gently through the air, coming to rest where James lay with his face half-smushed into the dusty forest floor.
"Da-da-da," Harry babbled, bopping James on the cheek with the keys.
"I'll take those, little one," Hermione said. She tucked them into her pocket with the parchment with a small, wistful smile.
Harry fussed, but then she conjured up a ball that bounced on its own and rolled back to him every time he rolled it away, so he was soon back in high spirits.
"You're welcome," Snape said with a sneer, pulling James back to his feet and shaking him furiously. "What were you thinking, aiming an Unforgivable in the direction of your own child?"
"There was a spider!" James pointed, only to see that the acromantula had been cut neatly into small pieces, and was no longer a threat to anyone.
Snape arched an eyebrow at him, and James stewed between the shame of having done such a dangerous thing and his enduring dislike of his childhood nemesis.
"Severus, he's been bitten!" Hermione called out, and James grew woozy with dread.
Immediately, Snape released him and James numbly stumbled over to where the big, black dog lay on his side. Hermione gently examined the site around the bite and scratched Sirius behind the ears, smiling sadly when he could only wag the tip of his tail.
"The paralytic effect is strong," she said, drawing her hair back and pulling out her wand. "Do you keep acromantula antivenin on your person?"
"Yes," Snape said, "but I need a moment to prepare it for administration."
"We don't have a moment," Hermione replied, worry etched on her face. "I know you said we'd practice it together more, but I can't lose someone else…not after…everything I've been through…before."
They looked at each other meaningfully. Then, Snape began rummaging in his robes for the appropriate phial, and Hermione began to wave her wand and sang a strange spell that James had never heard before. Compared to his prank spell, though, this was a work of art. A glow began to build around the jagged edges of the bite mark, and Sirius began to whimper.
Making sure that Harry was within grabbing distance in case of further danger, James got down on his knees and held Sirius by the paw. "It's ok, mate, they're going to help you."
"Move it if you want him to live," Snape growled, motioning for James to scoot over.
Snape knelt down on the other side of Sirius across from where Hermione continued to sing the spell, driving back the venom from his heart. Then, with his own wand, Snape carefully funneled the antivenin into the bite and began singing the same spell along with Hermione. Their combined voices sounded ethereal under the whispering canopy of trees.
Though blood still matted the dog's fur, James was relieved to see that the wounds had closed, and Sirius appeared to be breathing normally. Harry was still blithely playing with his new toy, but he giggled when Sirius let out a small bark, got up on all four feet, and licked him on the face.
"Are you sure you want him to do that? You do know where that tongue has been, right?" Hermione was standing next to James, a smirk on her face.
"I…I'm sorry, Hermione," he started.
"That's Professor Granger to you, Mr. Potter," Hermione said, that smirk still playing on her lips.
"I—er, Professor Granger, then. I'm sorry. I failed to realize..."
"A lot of important things?" she supplied.
"Yeah," James said, hanging his head in defeat. "I really cocked things up."
"Well, look on the bright side," Hermione replied, "At least Harry's safe, and so is Sirius. By the way, Remus isn't mad. He's just sulking because the full moon is nearly here and you know how…out of sorts he can get. You should tell Sirius to stop by that schnitzel place by the tube station for a nice big peace offering."
James stared at her in shock. How she knew that the big black dog was Sirius was beyond belief. Not even Dumbledore knew the truth about their unregistered Animagus forms.
"But how—" he started.
"I know many things, and while I can't tell you how I know them, please believe me when I say that I learned them all the hard way. When I came here, I endeavored to make sure that nobody had to suffer if I could prevent it," Hermione said. "I want to make sure that the world is safe for children like Harry to grow up with his family and friends without fear of war."
James looked at her, then. He took in her confident body language, her brown teaching robes and messy ponytail. She looked like a librarian, not a budding Dark Witch. Her amber eyes had the sort of haunted look that spoke to the truth of her words.
"We failed in the end," she whispered, "and there were so many failures and consequences along the way, not to mention those that had happened long before I was born. That's why I'm here now."
"Well, hooray for us failures, I guess," James said at last. "I mean, if we keep failing, we're bound to succeed at some point, right?"
"I never thought I'd see the day I heard James Potter loudly declaring himself a failure, but here we are," drawled Snape from behind them. James bristled as Snape came around to Hermione's other side and she gently took his hand.
"Come now, Severus. You don't have to be an arse," Hermione chided.
"But what if I want to be an arse?" Severus quipped, earning him a pointed look from Hermione. "Fine. You may be a failure, Potter, but that's for the best. You won't be thrown in Azkaban for accidentally killing your son with an Unforgivable Curse."
"That wasn't my plan!" James, "If anything, it would have been an unintended consequence!"
"As would have been your murder at the hands of your wife," Snape said, deadpan.
"Speaking of less dire unintended consequences," Hermione said, the smirk returning to her lips as she turned to look at James and pointedly squeezed Snape's hand, "your little prank spell was the impetus we needed to finally be honest with each other about our relationship, so I guess I ought to thank you for that."
"Not sure that thanks are in order. You said it yourself, Professor," James said, "Snape's an arse."
"Yes, but he's my arse," Hermione replied, smiling even more at Snape's scowl.
James felt a tug on his sleeve and saw that Sirius was motioning with his nose to look to his right. There, coming over the hill, was Lily Potter, looking all for the world as though she'd read his mind and knew exactly what sort of shenanigans he'd been getting up to.
"I think we ought to get going, actually," James said hurriedly, and scooped up Harry, placing him back in his carrier with a worried glance at Lily's advancing form.
"Oh? I thought you might want to tour my quarters and make sure I'm not some sort of budding Dark Witch," Hermione replied, twirling her key ring on her finger.
Lily was getting closer, and James was pretty sure that he could see a vein bulging on her forehead.
"That won't be necessary, really. Gotta go see a man about a schnitzel, if you know what I mean. Thanks again! Ta!" James said, and beat a hasty retreat with Harry bouncing in his carrier and Sirius hot on his heels.
"That was James, wasn't it?" Lily said, her breathing labored from running up the hill.
"Yep," Hermione replied.
"He and Sirius jumped to conclusions and got up to something, didn't they?"
"Indeed," Snape said smugly.
"Must I remind you who jumped to conclusions and got up to something with Voldemort?" Lily glared daggers at Snape, who smartly coughed and looked a bit repentant.
"Harry's doing fine," Hermione said, placing a hand on Lily's shoulder. "I wouldn't ever let anything happen to him. You know that."
Lily's eyes softened and she nodded. "I know, but that man is going to be the death of me."
"Maybe you should put him in some sort of daycare," Hermione suggested. "I hear the Wizengamot is looking to fill positions."
Lily snorted. "Merlin forbid!"
The three professors had a hearty laugh at the thought of James wearing Wizengamot robes and trying to keep Harry from teething on the gavel, then turned to head back to the castle.
Meanwhile, James did indeed help Sirius get an epic schnitzel to mend his strained relationship. But that is a tale for another time.