"No good sittin' worryin' abou' it," Hagrid said. "What's comin' will come, an we'll meet it when it does. Dumbledore told me wha' you did, Harry."
Hagrid's chest swelled as he looked at Harry.
"Yeh did as much as yer father would've done, an' I can' give yeh no higher praise than that."
-- Hagrid, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
*
Disclaimer: Do you know what I think? I think fanfiction.net ought to make a blanket disclaimer for everything on their site … that would save us the trouble of having to say, "This is a non-profit work of fan-fiction using characters, places, and situations that belong to other people, such as JKR and er, some publishing companies. Or something."
A/N: Charmed Curses has been temporarily discontinued! :-( I can't believe it … My life is ruined.
Apologies for the loooong time it's taken me to put this chapter up. It was tough to write, and I've been busy. In fact, I am going to continue to be insanely busy until mid-May, so updates will probably be rather sketchy until then.
Thanks to TheRedFeatheryPlug, PhoenixMage, Tarawen, Christa, Jeva, Xaiver, Jon'sSunshine + Rupert'sPrincess, Giesbrecht, soccergirl, Rose Fencer, spangle star, kaydee, Katie, Moonlight, Kay, Nicky, Luna Rose, livic88, thankssamigo, Storm Witch RD (and anyone who has reviewed since I last checked) for their comments on Chapter Four. I've spent many minutes sitting and studying them with a goofy grin on my face … reviews make me happy. And, oddly enough, that makes me able to go and write very non-happy conversations.
As before, questions and comments are addressed down at the end of the chapter.
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NO HIGHER PRAISE:
CHAPTER FIVE
"I think –" Harry swallowed, knowing how strange this was going to sound. "I think it was my dad."
Harry glanced up at Hermione and saw that her mouth was fully open now. She was gazing at him with a mixture of alarm and pity.
"Harry, your dad's -- well -- dead," she said quietly.
"I know that," said Harry quickly.
"You think you saw his ghost?"
"I don't know... no... he looked solid...."
"But then --"
"Maybe I was seeing things," said Harry. "But... from what I could see... it looked like him.... I've got photos of him...."
~ Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
* * *
Somewhere downstairs, that abominable cuckoo clock Aunt Marge had given Uncle Vernon for Christmas was striking two o'clock.
Harry Potter rolled over in his bed for the forty-second time and tried, without success, to find a comfortable position on the lumpy mattress. He wished, for the thirty-seventh time in the past three hours, that he didn't have to use his cousin Dudley's old mattress and bed … the bed springs were shot and the mattress had immense depressions in it. In short, it was frightfully uncomfortable, and he was finding it very difficult to sleep.
He finally gave up in disgust. Shoving the threadbare blanket away, he rose and padded over to the window. The moon outside was just beginning to wane. He found himself wondering how Professor Lupin was … and if Sirius was still with him. Really, he ought to write Sirius. It had been two weeks since he'd last written … but after getting his godfather's reply to the last letter he'd sent, he just hadn't felt like it.
Probably he didn't have any right to be sulking like this just because he couldn't go over to Ron's house this summer – it was stupid anyway to be feeling so sorry for himself when Cedric was dead, Voldemort was back, and he would only be putting the Weasleys in danger if he went. But that time at the Weasleys's house was the closest thing to a family life that he'd ever had, and he had been desperately looking forward to it. The Dursleys were as bad as they had ever been … though Dudley had lost three pounds over the last school year. And Mrs. Weasley had said she'd thought Dumbledore would let him go! Why had the Headmaster changed his mind?
He punched a fist into the windowframe, frustrated, then stalked back toward his bed. He would get some sleep, he thought with grim determination. Tub-shaped mattress or no, that bed would not defeat him.
Two more minutes of tossing and turning convinced him that sleep was overrated anyway. He fished a book out from under his bed (he had managed to keep his school supplies with him), and settled down to read about the sport to end all sports … Quidditch.
Maybe it would keep his mind off of Cedric.
He had reached the seventh word of the first sentence of the fourth paragraph on the second page when someone rang the doorbell. Loudly. And repeatedly. And kept on ringing it, interspersing the pleasant music with erratic thumps on the door.
Harry rolled out of bed and grabbed for his wand. His first thought had been that the newspaper must have finally heard about his cousin's record-breaking weight – but his second thought was that the Death Eaters had finally caught up with him. Wrapping suddenly cold fingers around his wand, he crept to the door.
His aunt's hasty footsteps passed in the hall, then his uncle's heavier tread; he counted to ten before opening his door. Running into his irate relations was the last thing he wanted to do.
Harry stole to the head of the stairs on silent bare feet, his heart pounding wildly. Downstairs, Petunia was complaining audibly that she couldn't see who it was. Harry silently went down the stairs, stopping once he could see the door. His aunt and uncle were huddled about it, their whispers now inaudible over the ringing of the bell. Then Aunt Petunia's voice rose in shrill anger. "We can't leave him out there – what will the neighbors say?!"
Uncle Vernon was cradling his shotgun. "Open the door, then," he growled. "If this is some sort of prank, they'll be sorry, that's all." Aunt Petunia fumbled with the lock for a moment, then jerked it open. Harry could almost see the flames of rage dancing in her eyes.
"Whoever you are," Aunt Petunia half-shrieked, "how dare you make a commotion at our door at two o'clock in the morning?! Who –"
And then her words cut off in a high, protracted scream of pure terror, and she stumbled backward, eyes and mouth as wide as if it were the lord of hell himself at the door. Harry's heart turned to ice in his chest, and he became aware that his wand was shaking, quivering violently.
"Petunia?" Uncle Vernon roared in astonishment as his wife cowered against a wall, her scream still ringing in the air.
"No – no – no – that's not possible!" she wailed, holding her arms protectively in front of her face. "Vernon!"
Uncle Vernon raised the shotgun decisively and spun toward the dark figure in the doorway. A faint tinge of bewilderment crossed Harry's fear … the silhouette obviously was *not* wearing robes. "You there," Uncle Vernon rasped, "put your hands in the air and – and – and move back into the light." The shadow didn't move, but Uncle Vernon's eyes must have been growing more accustomed to the light, for he squinted suddenly, then scowled. He lowered his shotgun and took an angry step forward, beginning to turn purple with fury. "Harry!" he snarled, the word sounding like a curse.
Up on the stairs, Harry blinked in bewilderment. What had he done now?
Uncle Vernon was bellowing with fury now. "What kind of a stupid game is this?! How did you get outside!? Get in here this minute, young man – you are in deep trouble! How dare you pull a prank like this? That does it – you are not going back to that stupid school ever again –"
Heavy footsteps shook the hall, and Harry spun around to see Dudley gazing quizzically down at him from the top of the stairs. Dudley blinked, rubbed a porky hand across his eyes, and winced as his father struck a particularly loud note in his tirade. Evidently annoyed at being awoken, he filled his lungs and shouted, "Daaaad! Harry's up here! Who are you yelling at?"
For perhaps ten seconds, there was utter silence. Then Uncle Vernon wrenched himself out of his frozen stillness and raised the shotgun again. "Y-y-y-you're one of th-th-them, aren't y-you?" he stammered, his face fading from purple to an unattractive green. "G-get away from my house! NOW!"
The figure took a step forward; Uncle Vernon dropped the shotgun, spun around, grabbed Aunt Petunia's arm, jerked her into the kitchen, and slammed the door. Dudley, showing a glimmer of intelligence of which no-one could ever have suspected him, thundered back down the hall and vanished into his own room. Crashing noises a moment later suggested that he was barricading it with old computers. Harry remained frozen on the stairs, wondering vaguely if hiding would do any good.
Downstairs, the visitor walked inside and closed the door behind him. Then he turned toward the light, looking up at the stairs, and Harry felt his knees go weak. Only a hasty grab at the banister saved him from crashing down the stairs. The world seemed to slow around him – his very breathing ceased – as he stared down, frozen.
A tall, thin man.
Untidy black hair.
Glasses.
A face incredibly similar to Harry's own.
James Potter.
"Harry?" the man whispered, and put a foot on the lowest step.
"No," Harry rasped, trying to back away and nearly falling again. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Was this another of his nightmares – a delusion brought on by overwork, stress, and lack of food? Surely the figure below him, so like to the photos of his father, was a mere figment of an overwrought imagination …
Or worse.
His thoughts suddenly snapped back into gear, time resumed its normal flow, and he jerked his wand up, pointing it straight at his – at that man. A clear, terrible certainly had sprung into his mind: this was a Death Eater, disguised in this way to trick him, defeat him and capture him – a horrible mockery of his deepest longings, intended to deliver him to his worst enemy. He neither knew nor cared how a Death Eater had disguised himself as a wizard who had been dead for fourteen years – his furious rage at seeing his adored, dead father degraded in this way even overpowered his fear.
"Stay where you are!" he shouted.
The man – the Death Eater – stopped short, one hand resting on the banister. The distance between them was short enough that Harry could clearly make out the man's features, identical to those he had studied wistfully in his cherished photo album. The grey eyes behind the spectacles – which were not identical to James Potter's trademark glasses – were wide with shock … and with some other emotion that Harry could not read. "Harry," he whispered, and Harry's chest constricted painfully.
The momentary weakness was overwhelmed by another flood of fury. "Put your wand on the floor, Death Eater," he spat, steadying his own wand and readying for a hex. "Now!"
The Death Eater stared up at him, shock overtaking the other expressions on his face. "What?"
"You heard me!" Harry half screamed, driven nearly to hysteria by his warring emotions. "Put your wand down and surrender!"
"Harry – Harry, I'm your father!" The grey eyes now held a dawning fear, mixed with an almost bewildered plea. "I'm not dead – I'm not a Death Eater."
The imposter's claim fanned Harry's anger to new, white-hot temperatures. "How dare you?" he snarled, his hand beginning to shake. "How DARE you?! I ought to use the Killing Curse on you, you filthy – evil – lying – scum! How dare you walk in here and claim to be my father?! Put your wand down NOW!"
"I don't have a wand," the Death Eater said quietly, and he held his hands out to the side, turning up empty palms. "I haven't got one. And I'm not lying," he added, almost numbly.
"Sure you aren't," Harry answered, taking a step down, "and Voldemort's going to reform and turn himself in to the Ministry, and Fudge is really a great Minister, and Malfoy is a really nice guy once you get to know him, and Professor McGonagall is secretly passionately in love with Lockhart, and Fred's going to be Head Boy, and Professor Snape's going to invent a cure for werewolfism for Professor Lupin, and my relatives think magic is the greatest thing since sliced bread." He laughed wildly. "Anything else you'd like to say?"
"Harry –"
"Sorry, not real convincing." Harry was wondering now if there were more of them waiting outside – should he stun the Death Eater, run back to his room, grab his broomstick, and take off for Hogwarts?
"Harry!" The Death Eater sounded almost desperate now, and he moved forward suddenly.
"Don't move!" Harry screamed. "Or I'll kill you, I swear I will!"
The imposter stopped, and stood quite still on the second step, hands still held out from his sides. He suddenly looked uncertain. "I am James Potter," he said, almost as if he was trying to convinced himself. "You – you are Harry, aren't you?" he asked, now sounding lost. "Harry Potter?"
"Yeah, that's right, I'm the famous Harry Potter. And guess what, I'm not an idiot, no matter what the Daily Prophet says. I'm not stupid enough to fall for that trick. Now – now you take off whatever charm is letting you impersonate my father, or I'm going to stun you and get a bunch of Aurors in here, and then – and then you'll be sorry," he finished, his breath hitching in his throat.
For perhaps two minutes, there was utter silence on the stairs of the Dursleys' house. Even Aunt Petunia's gasping cries from behind the kitchen door had faded away. The cuckoo clock struck a quarter past two, and Harry still had not decided what to do. He was transfixed again, staring at the phantom below. He couldn't bear to end the delusion quite yet … that filthy Death Eater did look just like his father, and … and … well, he wanted to look at him. He wanted to see his father, not as a picture, not as a smoky echo out of Voldemort's wand …
"What do you mean my father's not dead?" he snapped, breaking the silence. "I saw him come out of Voldemort's wand!"
But his fath – the Death Eater obviously hadn't heard him. He was staring at him with a bewildered, searching gaze. "Professor Lupin?" he said slowly, and for a moment Harry wondered if the man was a lunatic. Then he recollected his wild rant, and knitted his brows in confusion.
"What about him?" he demanded fiercely.
'Why don't you just hex him already?' growled an annoying little voice in his mind that sounded rather like Hermione. 'You're taking an awful risk, standing here bandying words about with him.'
"Remus?" the Death Eater continued hesitantly, his face reflecting the confusion that Harry now felt. What did this Death Eater know? Was he really off of his rocker, or was he just trying to persuade Harry that he was a confused-and-really-lost-but-back-from-the-dead James Potter, Remus Lupin's long-lost friend. "But … but isn't he …"
"A werewolf?" Harry growled. "Yeah. If you think you can persuade me you're my dad by knowing that, think again. The whole wizarding world knows that."
"But isn't he – isn't he dead?" the pseudo-Potter asked.
Harry blinked in confusion, thoughts of hexing the Death Eater momentarily slipping from his mind. Was Professor Lupin dead? Had somebody neglected to tell him something? But – no! He pushed the painful thought away firmly. Sirius had said Lupin was alive and well less than two weeks ago.
"No," he finally answered, and became further bewildered by the utter confusion on the Death Eater's face.
"He's alive?"
"That would be the logical conclusion from him not being dead, yeah," Harry snapped savagely. "Which brings us back to you – my dad's dead, and if you don't stop pretending to be him right now, I'm going to – to – to do something really awful!"
"Moony's alive?" the Death Eater whispered, hope springing onto his face. It faded into prompt bafflement. "But Peter said –"
An odd, cold lethargy seemed to wrap itself around Harry. There was something pounding on the door of his mind, trying to get in. Everything was going too fast, much too fast, and none of it made sense. There was an odd ringing in his ears, and he forgot about the wand in his hand, staring through wide eyes at the man on the steps below him.
Too much information.
Moony. A nickname for a Marauder. Would a Death Eater know it?
Peter. Peter Pettigrew. The rat. The traitor. What did he have to do with this? Any Death Eater would know that Harry knew that Peter was a Death Eater. Why would a Death Eater posing as James Potter mention Wormtail?
Whyever would a Death Eater posing as James Potter pretend to think Lupin was dead, anyway?
His mind struggled – struggled against vast, infinite obstacles – to wrap itself around the possibility that it might not be a Death Eater.
No.
He wanted to believe that too much. It could not be true, it could never be true. James Potter was dead, and whoever this was – whatever this was – it was not his father.
If wishes were horses, beggars could ride.
"I don't know who you are," he heard himself say, as if from a great distance, "and I don't know what you want, but you're not my father. And I want you to leave. Now. Please."
The man's eyes widened behind the unfamiliar glasses, all color draining from his face. Professor Lupin was apparently forgotten, as the man stared pleadingly up at him. "Harry – I am your dad. I didn't die – it was a curse – he didn't kill me – I don't even know why I'm back, but I am, and I – please, Harry, you have to believe me!"
"I don't want to hear it," Harry rasped. He was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. "I don't want to hear it, and I don't believe you anyway. You're trying to trick me – why wouldn't Voldemort kill you? Answer me that!"
He hadn't thought it possible for the thin man's face to get any paler, but it was now a sickly grey. For several long seconds, he didn't answer. "I can't," he finally said softly. "I can't tell you that. But there is a reason." Then his face shadowed over in further puzzlement. "Harry – why are you alive?"
This was just too crazy. Harry turned on his heel, hardly caring if the Death Eater hexed his back, and walked back down the hall to his bedroom.
Not until he had reached his room and slammed the door behind him did he hear other feet climbing the stairs, slowly and reluctantly. He stood stiffly, facing the barred window. Should he blast it out of the wall and just leave, leave this whole horrid, unreal situation behind him?
"Harry?"
There he was again, right on the other side of the door, rapping against it with his knuckles, calling in that voice that sounded so much like the voice Harry heard when a Dementer came near.
"Harry, please," the voice begged desperately, sounding genuinely heart-broken. "I am James Potter – I don't know what I can say to convince you I'm not lying. I don't know anything about this at all – I've been completely cut off from the world for years – I thought you were dead all this time – I've been telling the truth, Harry!"
What if it was true? Harry stood quite still, his back to the door, balanced between two terrible alternatives. He could refuse to listen – and then what if this man really was his father? Or, he could believe what he wanted so badly to believe … and if the man was a Death Eater, Voldemort would win.
"I'll leave if you want me to," the man continued wretchedly. "I – I know it must be hard for you to believe me, but I really am your dad." He paused, and his next words came out sounding strangled. "Good-bye for now, then. I'll be at Peter's house – you can contact me there if you … if you change your mind."
Peter's house?
The footsteps slowly began to move back down the hall, and the whole uncertain mess suddenly crystallized. Decision made, Harry spun around and leapt for the door. "Wait!" he cried, wrenching it open. The man stopped in the hall and turned, desperate hope lighting his face. One long step brought Harry to his side, and he grabbed the man's arm. "Wait – Peter's a –"
And then the horrible jerk of a portkey wrenched at him, his wand tumbled out of his loose grasp, the upstairs hall of the Dursley's house dissolved into a kaleidoscope of color and wind, the visitor's arm twisted under his hand as they were sucked forward together, and suddenly he was collapsing onto a cold cement floor, his hand sliding away from the slick grey sleeve it had been clutching. Beside him, the man struggled to his knees, his face twisted in horrified surprise.
Footsteps, measured and calm.
Black robes, only a few feet away from his face.
Harry looked up slowly, and met a pair of slitted red eyes.
"Harry Potter. We meet yet again."
END OF CHAPTER FIVE
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Responses:
Tarawen: I'm really flattered that you're psychoanalyzing this story so much. :-) I must admit that Peter's character intrigues me – I have to fight the urge to write thousands of words explaining why he acts the way he does, and what he feels as he does so. I think you're right: he does feel extremely guilty about the whole thing, and his tears were genuine. In fact, you phrased it better than I could! Reviews like that really make my day. Eep! I just realized I've been spelling your name as "Taracollowen" … argh! Sorry about that … I'm just … stupid. Yes, that's an excellent explanation.
Jeva: Yes! That's exactly why he was wearing gloves – well spotted, and thank you.
kaydee: Yeah, I noticed that … in fact, it was one of the things that prompted me to think something bizarre might have happened with James that night. (In reality, I suppose J.K.R. probably just made a small mistake … er … don't get mad at me, anyone … but hey, we can imagine, can't we?) I'll be having a semi-explanation for that later.
Katie: Really? Well, thank you – I didn't know that. I was going by a timeline I saw somewhere … I think.
Luna Rose: An idiot?! Poor James … everyone seems to think he ought to automatically know that Peter is lying to him … Peter is one of his three best friends, after all, so James would logically trust him unless someone gave him a good reason not to. Besides, James is still more than a trifle unhinged by what happened to him – more about that later.
Storm Witch RD: Thanks! I'm really thrilled that you like this since I absolutely love YOUR stories. :^) Wow … what compliments. I often have trouble with characterizations, so I'm delighted you like them. Oddly, I find Lucius easier to write than … say … Crabbe & Goyle. Maybe it's because I feel like Crabbe and Goyle *ought* to have hidden depths, but they're hidden so well that they shouldn't really show up anyway … urgh. I'm something of a "family" person, as my creation of an extended family for Neville Longbottom probably shows (insert nervous laughter here), which is part of the reason why I decided to write this. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on what you like to read), I prefer to write about dysfunctional families … so this isn't going to be a way-too-happy-ending. I'm on your Favorite Authors List?! Wow … Storm Witch RD, the Green Eyed Lady, put me on her list … speaking of which, when will you be updating your stories? :-)