A/N: Happy sixth birthday to this fic! I first posted it July 23rd, 2016, shortly after writing the first chapter or so. Crazy to think of what all changed since then, especially BECAUSE of this fic, of all things.

Shout out to my old friend who made me watch Supernatural and who casually, probably not listening to me, told me, "Eh, post it. Why not."

Shout out to ShamiksXa who I haven't spoken to in years, but was the one to find this fic and share it with Rosycat.

Shout out to Rosycat for making me join your group chat and becoming my best friend (we'll play Genshin as soon as I get this posted, I swear).

Shout out to Karen Hikari, MyaZab, geminalupus, and FrostedDragonHeart for being in Rosycat's chat, and becoming my absolute closest friends. Not that y'all are reading this fic what with all the adulting we do now and the superiority of Ao3, but it's for the sake of the sentiment.

Crazy to think of how much you mean to me, and the fact I met you at all because one friend convinced me to post a silly crossover fanfic I still can't take seriously.

Anyway, enjoy the chapter, everyone. I know you've been waiting for it for a while.

Chapter 36

The next few days were tense. No one could quite believe that Umbridge was gone, despite the new decree announcing the change. They were all aware that it was meant to be temporary, and no one seemed quite willing to believe it would be a release that lasted any significant amount of time. Throughout the day, it relaxed by mere increments, assisted by some light-hearted practical jokes from the Weasley twins and Jack. And it finally seemed possible to believe it when the elemental magic professor was asked to take on Defense until the headmaster or the new, significantly more distant Inquisitor could find a permanent replacement.

Speaking of the nonhuman professor, the Trio was back at their search with as much effort as they could muster with their OWLs fast approaching. It had taken Hermione ages to track down the book they had been looking through all those months ago, as it had been checked out for a significant period of time. As is, research was rather difficult with only one book and three heads eager to search. Most of the time, Hermione took the lead, but once the words began swimming before her eyes, she would reluctantly pass it on to one of the other two.

It was another late night when their search yielded any true results. The Trio had snuck into the Restricted Section of the library late into the night beneath the Invisibility Cloak. Hermione's eyes had started drooping nearly an hour ago, and Harry had tugged the book from her grasp. The lack of protest was more evidence than any that he needed to take a turn. Hermione was likely asleep now, and Ron was somewhere between a doze and asleep.

Harry sighed and glanced at the title. Part of him regretted revitalizing the search. They had all seemed to let it go by silent agreement; Jack simply meant too much to them, had wormed his way into their trust too thoroughly. And that was still true.

But that night in Dumbledore's office, Harry had realized something else; they didn't actually know Jack's motives. They were familiar with his odd circumstance, but Harry couldn't piece together his why. He seemed to care deeply about his students but… there was something else to it. Something that endlessly nagged at him that he couldn't put aside anymore. It was too easy to take a motive like protection too far, and unless Harry understood where the nonhuman's line was drawn, he couldn't risk leaving that missing piece of motivation up to chance. Not with that memory of his triumphant smile after driving someone — even if it was Umbridge — mad.

The Undead: Myths, Legends, and Fact, the title read. Harry vaguely recalled Hermione picking it up in the first place due to a footnote in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them discussing the particular usage of Homenum Revelio and the circumstances where it would be effective. Of course she had attacked the research from the angle of why her spell hadn't worked.

Eyes blinking slowly, Harry let out a large yawn and turned the page.

Spirits, the chapter heading read.

He blinked again in confusion. He was firmly entrenched in the "Legends" section of the needlessly massive book, and he knew for a fact spirits were floating around Hogwarts.

Commonly used synonymously (and erroneously) with 'ghosts' (see chap. 472), spirits are controversial creatures of legend. There has been little to confirm or deny their existence, and some fringe magizoologists swear by their existence. However, there has yet to be any true substantive evidence of these claims. The reader may be familiar with spirits through various childhood stories, of both No-Maj and wizard origin.

His eyes began to slide through the words without truly noticing them when something caught his eye.

Spirits are tied to an emotion, element, or both. These elements fall under the expanded classification, utilizing niche elements that fall under broader categories when used by wixen (e.g. Snow or frost instead of water as a whole).

Harry sat up straighter. Ron stirred and mumbled something, but did not truly wake. Harry ignored him, flipping through the pages of the chapter, searching desperately for the repeated "Traits" section.

Traits.

Harry took a deep breath, and began to read.

Spirits have a brand of immortality. Upon becoming one through a mortal death, they are said to remain the age they were at their death for eternity while gaining an ageless quality. However, they are trapped between life and death, lacking the traits that would classify them as fully alive or fully dead. Thus, they are classified as undead. For example, a "second death" is possible for them, whereas proper ghosts can simply move on, and true mortals die more easily and without any external intervention.

Harry blinked, suddenly remembering a comment Luna had made months ago: "Spirits are people who die but aren't dead," she had said as the rest of the DA talked about Jack.

He looked to the next point.

Due to their deep connection to emotions, their tie to the mortal world is entirely dependent upon their existence in the minds of the living. Should that tie, whatever it may be, be lost, the spirit will experience a second death and pass on to the other side permanently.

Luna had said something else too, about spirits being fuelled by belief.

Remembering the moment that had gotten them on this search in the first place, Harry looked for anything about spells, particularly Homenum Revelio.

Like most undead, a spirit's reaction to standard spells are theorized to be inconsistent. For example, though a stunning spell may work on them, a spell meant for humans would not have effect any longer, presuming their mortal form was human.

Unlike werewolves, a spirit would no longer be human at all by virtue of composition, due to their existence being tied not to a life force, but to external forces like emotions. Werewolves, despite intense debate regarding their classification, remain mortal and retain most if not all characteristics of human life an overwhelming majority of the time, whereas spirits are always removed from these same compositional qualities.

Despite the author's pathological love of big words paired with Harry's tired state, he got the main picture. A spirit was a sort of magical cryptid that came about from a mortal dying and somehow being turned into a spirit, trapped between life and death to an extent that meant they did not die easily, but could still face this supposed second death. They were tied to nature and to emotion in place of a true life force.

But there were two points in particular that made it click. The small mention of elemental magic and how it varied from human magic was… exactly like Jack's. He himself had mentioned that he had an affinity for the element of "snow" rather than the wizard classification that would place him as a water elementalist. And the second point was its description of how spirits reacted to spells meant for humans like Homenum Revelio.

It was frustratingly vague, given the cryptid sort of qualification that spirits faced. Absolute fact for some, but with no solid evidence proving they existed. As such, there was nothing solid Harry could truly go off of.

But something about the chapter's descriptions of spirits just felt right. Like an itch that was just beginning to be scratched.

Harry flipped through a few more pages, trying to find something else that struck a chord. Thankfully, his search was not in vain.

As spirits are inherently tied to mortals, they are said to gravitate towards them, often viewing their second life as some sort of duty to a group of mortals, particularly children. This is where crypto-magizoologists claim their commonplace nature in children's stories comes from.

That parental quality, that inexplicable need to make sure Harry was taken care of. That immense anger when he found out about the black quills, his need to make sure Snape's behavior towards Harry and other students improved, the odd decrease of bullying and abuse over the last year… Jack was many things, but at his core, he seemed to be driven to protect people. Notably, children.

Harry thought through the other qualities of spirits and compared them to Jack. He certainly seemed to have that ageless quality to him. People would often go from seeing him as if he were hardly older than Harry to treating him like he was as old as Lupin or older. What's more, he was clearly familiar with people like Harry's parents and their classmates, but they had found no record of him attending Hogwarts, at least at the time he claimed. But it was possible that he fudged the numbers to make his perceived age seem more realistic… If he was a spirit, that meant he had died at some point. And Harry's life had begun in the midst of a war. It was possible Jack was in truth older than his parents, died in the war, then went to America as a new spirit. And he returned now due to a newfound threat to them, the very same one that had killed him and many kids he had gone to school with. And he felt a duty to prevent the same fate that had befallen them from falling upon the new generation.

It made sense for the parts of Jack he was most familiar with. But he had a feeling he wouldn't find any more clues about his apparent dark side in a book compiling word-of-mouth witnesses to a cryptid's existence. He had one budding theory, though he didn't know how much water it would hold. If Jack was a spirit, and spirits were tied to emotions… Maybe that relationship went deeper than just a life force or an abstract duty. What if they could manipulate emotions by some intangible means?

Enough to make someone go mad?

Harry looked up from the book. All this gave him was an idea. And that was all they would ever find in textbooks. He needed to go to Jack's office, find whatever he could about who — what — he was. And more importantly, why he did what he did.

He rose with a purpose, leaving the book for the sleeping Ron and Hermione and taking his cloak with him. He'd return for them — once he got his answers.

Predictably, Jack's office was empty. Harry neared the desk, whispering a light spell beneath his cloak.

Not much was on or in his desk, reasonably, as he never gave paper assignments. A few scraps of paper covered in doodles, a thank you letter or two. A list of prank ideas from someone named Jamie. He glanced over that one, but most were innocuous enough that he didn't believe this person's pranks were what ultimately pushed Umbridge over the edge.

Harry's eyes caught on a thicker envelope beneath everything else. It was labeled in Sirius' handwriting, merely reading "Pictures". Recognizing it as the parcel Jack had held to his chest, teary-eyed, on Christmas, Harry opened it, and found that, alongside a letter, they were filled with pictures of someone Harry recognized. Red hair and oh-so-painfully familiar green eyes looked at him fondly through every picture.

His mother.

Any time he saw her, Harry was struck with the painful awareness that something essential was taken from him, leaving a hole that could never truly be filled. He swallowed thickly and was about to ignore it, but a smaller clip fell out, this one similarly labeled — oddly — in Aunt Petunia's handwriting.

It was a family photo with five figures. A curly script Harry didn't recognize, in ink faded enough to be as old as the picture, labeled it "The Evans family, 1969." His eyes first went to a familiar little girl with bright red hair and green eyes, undoubtedly Lily. Behind her was an older man and woman, the latter with Lily's coloration and the first with brown hair and eyes. To their left, a slightly stiff older girl with the same-hued hair and eyes half-smiled for the camera.

And on their right stood a lanky sixteen-year-old boy with brown hair and eyes like Petunia and the father. He grinned a familiar, crooked smile while a glint of mischief danced in his eye. A boy who, despite his coloration, was otherwise utterly identical to Harry's elemental professor.

Your dear Uncle Evans.

Harry dropped the photos.

Every thought he'd ever had raced through his head in that one moment, each demanding to be heard loudly and all at once. A mysterious uncle who had disappeared for years and suddenly returned? One who was oddly similar to Jack?

He braced himself with shaky hands against the cold wood of the desk. Honestly, he felt stupid for not putting it together sooner. Jack Evans and Uncle Evans, the latter of which never gave his first name. Admittedly, Evans wasn't exactly an uncommon surname, but nonetheless, he should have figured it out. But he had been thrown by the awareness that Uncle Evans was older than Aunt Petunia, even if only by a few years. Meanwhile, Jack had seemed to be even younger than Harry's mother.

As his thoughts calmed slightly, hurt sprang through Harry's heart. Why hadn't Jack told him? He went to his class all the time, he saw him every day, he'd helped him with the DA. He'd told him everything he'd done in school, however edited it had been for the sake of the evidently unnecessary Statute and Umbridge's presence, even though he'd watched and knew what had happened already.

And yet, Uncle Evans had always been so excited to hear Harry's thoughts on everything. He'd wanted Harry to talk, and write, as much as he wanted, praising him for doing so.

Jack had, too. Even if Harry was inadvertently repeating himself. Jack encouraged him to share it all again.

He remembered the fond looks Jack had sent his way, the worried protectiveness in Dumbledore's office. The steadfast presence.

It made perfect, absolutely ridiculous, sense.

Harry calmed his breathing and looked back down at the envelope. Thankfully, he had dropped it and the secondary group of photos back into the drawer. However, it was evidently thick enough to dislodge a piece of wood that Harry hadn't noticed wedged into the bottom, creating the illusion of the bottom of the drawer.

Harry swallowed, feeling even more guilty than he had before. But he had come here on the suspicion that Jack was a spirit, and though he had gained further evidence, he had not gained total proof, however incredible the knowledge was. The book had said that spirits had an ageless quality and were trapped at the apparent age of their death. Uncle Evans was far too old to look the age Jack appeared to be. And though the Dursleys had always been cagey about giving Harry more information about his family, he'd at least known of their existence. His uncle was never mentioned, never a factor, until Petunia's letter just this year. As if he had been dead and then came back.

Harry pried open the false bottom of the drawer. It was empty except for an oddly decorative, golden tube.

He picked it up, ignoring the tingle that shot through him at its touch. He might have once called it magic, but he knew what that felt like by now. This was something else. Something not meant for mortals, and he knew it.

But he saw the face of Jack's mortal form upon it, and he brushed the pads of his fingers against its jeweled surface.

"Jack, I'm scared!"

Harry whirled around at the sudden sound of a child's voice, but instead of the office, he found it replaced with a frozen lake. Before him, a little girl with red hair and green eyes had gone still in the middle of the ice, cracks spider-webbing around her feet.

"I know, I know," came another voice, and Harry turned to see the familiar form of Jack before him. He no longer had an accent, giving his voice an oddly familiar, soothing cadence. The dark hair and eyes continued to unnerve him, but it made him seem more… grounded. Less like he was a part of some other world.

Harry could now see that he and Lily had the same eye shape. The same as Harry's.

"But you're gonna be alright," Jack continued. "You're not gonna fall in. W-we're gonna have a little fun instead!"

"No, we're not!" Lily's childlike voice cried.

"Would I trick you?" Jack tried to console her.

"Yes! You always play tricks!"

"Alright, well not… not this time. I promise, I promise, you're gonna be… you're gonna be fine. You have to believe in me, Lily."

Belief, Luna had said, gave spirits their power, Harry reflected as he watched Jack guide the childhood form of his mother to safety with a game of hopscotch. It was so painfully familiar. He felt certain Jack had done something much the same with him on multiple occasions, but aged up for a fifteen-year old.

At his mother's final step, Jack grasped his crooked staff and pulled Lily to safety.

They smiled at each other in relief, and Harry found his lips pulling into a matching expression.

A sickening crack echoed through the memory, and Jack cried out as he fell through the ice.

Lily and Harry both ran towards the hole but, tied as he was to Jack's memory, not his mother's, his own vision filled with water as he looked up to the hole.

Jack fought to find his way up, but he was blocked by ice everywhere he tried. The shocking cold of the water had triggered a breath right as he fell, and his lungs were already filled with water. Before long, his punches at the ice grew weak, and his brown eyes closed for the last time.

As Harry watched the teen's — for he was a teen, barely older than Harry himself — body grow still, Harry shivered, watching the thing he had learned to be death pass over, taking something beautiful and lively from this world.

He had seen the same thing happen to Cedric.

Then, after some unknown amount of time, but long enough for the water to have turned black in the night, moonlight broke through the ice. It fell upon the child's body. His skin lost its warm underglow, and his brown hair was leached of its color until it became that of snow.

Ice blue eyes shot open, meeting his own.

Harry gasped for air as he came back to the present. Hands he had only just stilled after the previous earth-shattering revelation were shaking again, and Harry gripped them tightly. He put the tube back in the drawer and replaced the false bottom quickly. Whatever it was, it contained memories, and he didn't know what else he would see.

This was confirmation, he knew. Luna had spoken of spirits and guardians, of traits he found in that book of the undead. And Jack himself… he was Harry's uncle, older brother to both his mother and his aunt, but forever frozen at the age of sixteen. Frozen at the moment he died. Died before Harry's mother's eyes, concealed by ice or not.

Harry remembered Jack's rueful smile as he spoke of never truly getting close to anyone, the dark look that passed over his eyes whenever Harry spoke of his parents. His inexplicable knowledge of the goings-on of Hogwarts throughout the years, despite having no true record of ever attending.

Harry felt as if his emotions had been thrown into an icy lake and tossed around, only to emerge soaked, exhausted, and freezing. He wanted to go back up to his bed and collapse for weeks on end.

But he still didn't know if Jack's motivations were truly altruistic. All he had learned would be for nothing unless he could prove to himself that his professor — his uncle — wouldn't take his protection too far.

With a shaky hand, he picked up Sirius' letter.

Jack,

You always seem to rush away right when you get near whatever's really going on with you. I thought I'd give you something tangible as a reminder.

Though I'm not called to protect in quite so literal a fashion as you, I do understand the role you have to fill and, what's more, the line you must walk in order to do so. It's easy to get lost in feelings of anger and hate for the sake of the ones we want to protect. I spent years feeling that way.

But when it comes down to it, anyone with any amount of humanity in them can attest to the fact that love and loyalty cannot exist without their opposites. Even within ourselves. For the sake of those we love, we will feel even the darkest of things towards those who harm them.

But you, more than anyone else I know, have sought to help all those you can. Even when they have harmed Harry, like Snivellus or the Malfoy boy. So you, more than anyone, can see that feeling the shadows cast by such fierce love is only that. A feeling.

I am well acquainted with the fear and darkness that arises in the mind, preying upon loneliness. If I could keep it from you, I would. Perhaps it's just the burden that we must bear. So here are some photos I managed to find of those we both love, who valued that fierce protectiveness, and would mourn our loneliness.

(I'm sure you're in some, even if only in spirit.)

I see you, Jack, no matter what your fears tell you. If you need anything, all you have to do is ask.

Padfoot

Though the letter was written to Jack, it struck a chord with Harry too. He certainly had his own dark side, didn't he? To have a piece of his parents' murderer's soul inside him, influencing his anger to rise faster, easier, was a hard thing to bear. It was easy to fear anger as a whole, but all it was was a feeling. A dark side of something fierce and bright and beautiful.

One could not exist without the other.

He caught a glimpse of the first picture in the parcel. His mother was clothed in white, head leaned against his father's shoulder, and both had wild grins on their faces. Beside them were Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew, and on the other side, by his mother, were three women labeled as Marlene, Dorcas, and Alice, the latter of which Harry recognized as Neville's mother.

A tiny spread of frost crept along the grass between Lily and Marlene despite the late summer weather. But no matter what angle Harry appraised the photo from, no familiar, ghostly form could be revealed.

Harry touched his cheeks, mutedly surprised to find them wet with tears. He scrubbed his sleeve across them before carefully replacing the letter and the photos in the drawer, closing it with a gentle thud.

Harry didn't think he had all the pieces, not by a long shot. He would have to speak with Jack to figure out the rest of the story. But he had enough for now.

Love that fierce and bright cast dark shadows upon its other face. And those shadows were only ever seen when the spirit, his family, saw Harry threatened.

He had his answers. The only question now was what to do with them.

His throat closed at the thought. How the hell was he supposed to talk about this? He didn't even know what he was going to tell Ron and Hermione. Certainly not the whole truth; this was too much even for his own mind. How could he communicate it to someone else?

Harry shook his head. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it. Perhaps he could merely confirm that Jack was a spirit and beyond suspicion to him without… trying to explain everything else.

He would have to talk about it with Jack some day. He wanted to, even. But right now… now it was simply too much.

But he would tell his professor — his uncle — what he knew someday. Harry promised himself that.

A/N: You can stop asking me when Harry will find out now.

Also, Harry's internal thoughts roasting the way the book writer talks is me roasting the way I write academic papers. Because I write it exactly like that and probably worse.

VioletZap: Thank you so much! And the official is someone who popped up due to other things happening in the background that neither of our protagonists are noticing. Let's just leave it at that. *hides notes for the sequel* And yes, Jack does need to talk to Harry, but uhh oops Harry knows. Also what you said about stopping whatever else you're reading when I update made me audibly aw. I'm glad you like it so much!

Snowy Monday: Just this once, it's actually a Saturday, because it's a very special boi's sixth birthday and I don't wanna miss it.

Next update: Saturday, August 6th. McGonagall is everyone in Hogwarts' brain cells, and Harry starts considering other career paths besides auror.

Until next time! Koala789 out! *flies away on a flying-boat-fortress-thingy*