Harry curled up in an armchair by the fire in the Gryffindor common room, watching sleepily as snow drifted past outside the windows. Ron speared a third English muffin on a toasting fork, resting the handle on the arm of his own chair as he extended his treat towards the flames. "Tomorrow about this time, we'll just be finishing up Christmas dinner," he said. "What sort of hat do you want out of the crackers?"
"What sorts are there?" Harry yawned through the final word.
"Anything you can think of, really. Bonnets, top hats, sailor caps—" Ron broke off with a yelp as the fire suddenly turned emerald green. Harry sat up, staring, as a figure appeared within the flames, growing more distinct with every second—
"Tonks!" he and Ron exclaimed in unison as the Auror apprentice caught herself on the side of the common room mantelpiece.
"What's wrong?" Ron asked urgently, setting the toasting fork aside. "Did something happen?"
Tonks shook her head, waving away Harry's offered hand. "No, nothing wrong," she said, catching her breath. "Happy Christmas Eve, you two. Harry, got a moment?"
"Sure." Harry looked around, then motioned for Tonks to follow him up the boys' staircase. "I didn't even know the common rooms were on the Floo Network," he said as they climbed.
"Restricted access. Firecalls only, unless you know the code." Tonks grinned briefly, though the expression looked strained. "Kingsley handed me his credentials to look up a load of contacts in the Floo directory a couple months back, so I figured I'd take advantage."
"Cool." Harry stepped into his own dorm and shut the door behind Tonks. "What's going on?"
"Well, here's where it gets complicated." Tonks started to pace around the room, brushing her hand past the bedcurtains of the four-posters as she passed them. "I know we talked one time about my cousin Sirius. I just don't know if you know who he was. To you, I mean."
"My godfather." A cold chill shot down Harry's spine. "The person my parents wanted to take care of me, if something bad happened to them. Only…"
"Only he was the bad thing that happened." Tonks turned to face him, her hair mouse-brown and lying limp against her head. "Or that's what everyone thought. What everyone's believed, these last ten years. But now—" She shook her head impatiently. "I shouldn't have come here. I shouldn't be telling you about it. It's cruel, dangling it in front of you like this, making you think it over, when there's nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can do."
"No." Harry shook his head hard. "I want to know. Tell me. What is it? What's changed?"
Tonks drew a deep breath and explained.
When she'd finished, Harry sank down onto the foot of his bed, feeling his world spin around him, as though his soul were about to part company with his body again. "He never did it," he whispered. "He never did any of it. So then he could have—he should have—"
"Raised you, instead of the Muggles?" Tonks gazed out the window. "Don't I wish. But there's one tiny problem with that."
"He's dead." The words left a sour slick on Harry's tongue as he spoke them. "Even if his name gets cleared, it's too late. He won't ever…"
His throat squeezed shut, and he stared down at his hands, feeling a rush of mixed hatred and longing which startled him. For the first time he could recall, he was genuinely jealous of his other self, furious that Henry Blake should have something which Harry Potter had been denied.
"Hell of a Christmas gift." Tonks smiled one-sidedly. "I'm almost sorry I found out, if it's going to make you look like that."
"I'm not," said Harry automatically, and discovered as he said the words that they were true. "I'd rather know the truth. Even if it hurts some." He dredged up a tiny smile of his own, and got to his feet to cross the room. "Thanks for telling me."
"You're welcome, I suppose." Tonks slid an arm around him, tucking him briefly against her side. "Still nothing I ever wanted to say. But I'd better get used to it, hadn't I? Aurors aren't in the business of delivering good news to people very often, I don't think…"
Chatting about inconsequential aspects of Tonks's proposed career, they made their way back down the stairs, where Tonks greeted Ron more fully and asked after the Weasleys' journey to Romania (accomplished safely, though Mr. Weasley had almost missed one of their connections when he caught sight of a new type of electrical plug at one of their stops and insisted on sketching it in his notebook before he'd leave). This done, she excused herself and tossed a pinch of Floo powder from her pocket into the fire, calling out a series of numbers as she stepped into the emerald flames and whipping out of sight.
"Coded firecall, huh?" Ron picked up his toasting fork again. "Suppose she can't have an ordinary one, she is in the Auror program after all. Be pretty bad if some Dark wizard could walk right into her flat just by knowing what she calls it. Say, what'd she want?"
"She had to tell me something." Harry glanced at his watch. It was just past three o'clock. "I'll be back in a little bit."
"Suit yourself." Ron held his muffin over a section of glowing coals. "Maybe swing past the kitchens, if you're going that way, and see if the house-elves can dig up something sweet for us? Marshmallows'd be good, or even apples if that's all they've got."
"Something sweet. Got it." Harry climbed out through the portrait hole with care, paying close attention to where he put his hands and feet as an alternative to thinking too hard about what he'd just learned. Down staircases, through doorways, around the section of corridor where Peeves was playing darts with decorative icicles from the entrance hall, until he was standing outside a particular office, raising his hand to knock on the door—
It was opened from within before he could make contact.
"Good afternoon, Potter," said the person standing in the doorway, his voice dark and smooth.
Harry took a step back in surprise.
"Looking for Lupin?" inquired Professor Snape, his mouth twisting to one side. "I'm afraid he's not here. Called away unexpectedly, he said." His eyes raked Harry up and down. "Did you have some urgent need for his assistance, or were you simply hoping to exchange Christmas greetings?"
"Just wanted to say hello." Harry swallowed against his nerves. "I'll come back later."
"Make it tomorrow, or possibly the day after." Snape glanced back at the desk. "His note claimed he would be gone for some time."
"Thank you, Professor." Harry turned to start for the kitchens, his mind whirling. Gone for some time…could that mean…
Hurriedly he cut off his speculations. Whatever this world had or hadn't chosen to give him, tomorrow was still Christmas, the first Dursley-free Christmas of his life. He had a Hogwarts feast to look forward to, and Ron and his brothers to share it with, and his other friends to think about, celebrating with their own families far away.
And that's enough.
It'll have to be.
Draco stared at Tonks, not sure he trusted his ears. "Are you saying—"
"Yeah." Tonks laughed shakily. "Pretty safe bet it wasn't him after all. At least I think so. But I popped back to the Office and showed it to Kingsley, just to see what he thought, and he says diagrams and recreations and the like never hold up well in court." She snorted once, a sound echoed by Orion where he lay with his head on his paws, his eyes intent on her face. "Not that they cared about that in the first place. Almost deserved what he got, old Barty Crouch did…" A quick shake of her head. "But that's ancient Ministry politics. Nothing you need to worry about. What matters is, far's I can tell, Cousin Sirius never murdered anybody." She scowled, her hair fading out of pink into midnight blue. "Not that it really does matter now."
"How'd Harry take it?" Draco smiled lopsidedly when Tonks blinked at him. "You can't tell me you didn't go to him first. I won't believe you."
"Get out of my head." Tonks swatted his shoulder. "It's not a nice place to be. But yeah, I did, and he wasn't any too thrilled. Held up pretty well, though. He's one tough kid." Her scowl deepened. "Had to be, to survive those relatives of his. Been an absolute pleasure writing those fake school reports for them, knowing they can't ever mess up his life again." Turning away, she pounded a fist lightly against the kitchen wall. "Damn it, why'd it have to happen like this? If anybody deserves some happiness in this world, he does."
Draco laughed reluctantly. "Aren't you the one always telling me life isn't fair?"
"Once again, I repeat." Tonks tapped her fingertips against his temple. "You, head, out."
Orion sighed gustily and rolled onto his side, his tail thumping once or twice against the floor before it stilled.
Remus sat in a stiffly-cushioned chair done in a bright shade of orange, cradling a cup of lukewarm tea between his hands. Even with the hasty Freshen-Up Charm he'd done in the gents' at the Portkey Center, he knew he looked decidedly less than his best, and arriving out of the blue at noon the day before a holiday and asking to see a high-ranking employee of a financial institution didn't seem like a wise idea on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.
But she's my best option to find the person I need quickly. I have a name, but nothing other than that, and even that might not be the same by now—
"Mr. Lupin?" The brown-haired assistant who'd greeted him at the security desk downstairs and escorted him first to the breakroom, then to this office, poked her head around the corner of the door. "Come right in, please."
Setting aside the tea, Remus rose and crossed to the door, stepping inside as the assistant slipped out. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," he began, but the dark-skinned, strong-featured woman sitting on the other side of the desk raised a hand to halt his speech.
"Here," she said, holding out a slip of paper. "This is what you'll need." She smiled slightly at Remus's raised eyebrow. "Didn't think I'd know who you were, or what you wanted with me? I may be old, but I'm not stupid." She nodded to the paper. "That's their address. Fenced-in spot in the back parking lot, warded for sound, so you can Apparate without scaring the neighbors." Her eyes sized him up. "Glad you had the sense to wear Muggle clothes. Door'll let you in on the fourth floor. You want the sixth. All the way at the end of the hall, on your left."
Remus closed his mouth over several questions and simply nodded. "Thank you," he said again. "Do I need to go down to the lobby to leave?"
The woman shook her white head. "Unrestricted for Disapparition," she said. "Good luck."
Focusing his attention on the numbers and words on the paper in his hand, on the warded spot where the whip-crack noise of Apparation wouldn't startle the Muggles among whom his old friend undoubtedly lived, Remus turned in place. The neatly appointed office squeezed away into darkness, replaced after a few seconds with high wooden walls and pavement underfoot. Catching his breath, he tucked the address away into the pocket of his jeans and stepped out of the little alcove, glancing around to get his bearings. Cars were parked in tidy rows along the outdoor deck, with a glass door nearby, leading into the building.
"Entry on the fourth floor," he murmured, approaching it and trying the knob. It was locked, as he'd expected, but a quick tap of his wand solved that problem, and he stepped into a tidy lobby with a square spiral staircase to one side. "So if I want the sixth…"
Two flights of stairs later, he was hurrying down a lengthy hallway, checking the numbers on the doors as he went. Last door on the left, number twenty. This is it.
Drawing a deep breath, he knocked.
The door flew open almost before the sound had finished echoing.
Silver-gray eyes stared at him from a smaller version of his friend's face.
"That's their address," Amy Freeman's voice rang inside his head for some fraction of forever.
Then he was down on one knee, a shaking little girl in his arms, her face pressed against his shoulder and her own arms wrapped desperately around him. "Mom's scaring me," she whispered, turning her head so that her voice could be heard. "She's been in her room all morning, and I can hear her crying but she won't answer me, and I didn't know what to do…"
"Well, that doesn't sound good." Remus scooped his friends' daughter off the floor long enough to step inside the apartment with her, closing the door behind them with a foot. "I think I may be able to help. But first, what might your name be?"
"That is kind of important, isn't it?" The girl giggled, a thin and watery sound but true nonetheless. "We don't want to say the wrong things and get lost in the dark. Especially not right now." A shadow of Pearl Blake's confident smile trembled on her lips. "I'm Meghan, Meghan Lily Freeman. I'm nine and a half. How about you?"
"Remus Lupin, though you might prefer to call me Moony. It's an old nickname of mine." Remus stroked his fingers along one slender braid above Meghan's ear. "But I'm afraid I'm not going to tell you how old I am, not even in the interests of sharing."
"That's okay." Meghan's smile strengthened briefly. "I know you were a year ahead of Mom at school. So if I really needed to, I could figure it out by thinking about her…"
Her eyes traveled to a door halfway down a narrow hall, and she shivered all over. Remus tightened his arms around her, feeling her lean into the embrace. "I want to tell you everything will be all right now," he said, keeping his voice quiet and level. "But I try not to lie when I don't have to. I can't be sure what will happen with your mother, or if I can help her. All I can promise is that I'll try my best." He looked down at her, meeting her eyes. "And no matter what, you won't be alone anymore."
"Thank you." Meghan pressed her face against his side once more, then pushed away. "Should I go start packing?"
"That might be a good idea." Remus waited until Meghan had closed her bedroom door behind her, then stepped up to the room she'd indicated and knocked firmly, three times. "Aletha," he said, pitching his voice to carry. "It's Remus. Let me in."
A stifled oath from beyond the door brought a small smile to his face, which he firmly suppressed as he heard the sound of a chair being shoved back. A lock rattled, and then the door creaked open.
"It needed only this," said Aletha Freeman, a weariness in her voice so deep that Remus could feel it pulling at him. Her brown eyes held traces of abiding sorrow, a few threads of silver formed patterns within the soft helmet of her black hair, but otherwise she looked remarkably similar to the dark young woman who had watched over one of the best refuges the Order of the Phoenix had been able to maintain through the final years of the war with Voldemort. "Hello, Remus. What a surprise."
"Somehow I get the feeling you don't mean that." Remus glanced past Aletha into the room. A translucent partition sectioned off the far area, with a cauldron, workbench, and shelves of ingredients visible beyond it. The remainder of the room was dominated by the desk beneath the window and the bookshelves which flanked it, the bed against one wall seeming almost like an afterthought. "May I come in?"
"If you like." Aletha stepped back, motioning to her desk chair. "Just don't touch anything, please. I've finally finished a personal project, something I've been working on for a while."
"This?" Remus nodded to the two capped vials which sat in the center of the desk, each half-filled with a clear liquid that seemed to hold a faint iridescence in its depths.
"Yes." Aletha sat down on the edge of her bed. "Remus, forgive me if I'm not very polite, but it's been a difficult day for me already. Why are you here? I haven't heard anything from you for years, I thought you'd forgotten about me…" Unexpectedly, she smiled. "Though I suppose I didn't help matters much, when I moved out of the country and never sent you my address. How did you get it?"
"Your aunt gave it to me. She's worried about you." Remus glanced to his left. "As is someone else. Aletha, you're a grown witch, I have no right to tell you what to do, but you're frightening your daughter. She ran into my arms when she answered the door, and she's never seen me before in her life."
"In this life, you mean." Aletha's smile turned thin and cold. "Let's not mince words between friends, shall we? We both know why Meghan was so glad to see you. Why she's packing up her things even now. She's still young enough to believe her dreams can come true. That they could lead to something good in the end." She extended her hands, turning them back and forth. "We know better, you and I. Even if you're not quite ready to say so out loud yet."
"I'm not ready to write off dreams altogether, no." Remus resisted the urge to reach into his pocket, instead sitting quietly to watch his friend. "It's been very hard for you, hasn't it? You might have had an easier time of it if those dreams had never come. If you'd been able to leave everything in the past, to say that none of it mattered to you any longer."
"I might." Aletha laughed, the sound as chill and brittle as an icicle. "But whether I wanted them or not, there they were. And I was never quite strong enough to tell them to go away, and mean it. Never quite strong enough to keep from wanting…" Her voice choked off, and she covered her face with her hands. "What's wrong with me, Remus?" she whispered. "Why can't I stop loving him?"
"Nothing's wrong with you. And that's why I'm here." Remus pulled out the sheet of parchment he'd shrunk down to hand-size for travel, returning it to its proper dimensions with his wand. "Look at this. It's called a vector diagram. I can't recall if you ever took Arithmancy, but—"
"I played enough Quidditch." Aletha accepted the diagram from his hand and spread it out on the bed. "I'll manage." Her brow furrowed as she traced lines with her finger, between the two markings at the center, then outward to the fan shape at the top. Remus stepped back, watching the slow understanding grow on her face.
In three, two, one—
Aletha looked up, her eyes alight with a mixture of vindication and hot, helpless fury. "Would you care to tell me," she inquired, each word precisely enunciated, "why we are the first people to discover this?" With a sweep of her hand, she sent the diagram slithering to the floor. "Ten years after the fact?"
"I spent some time wondering that myself, while I was waiting at the Portkey Center this afternoon." Remus retrieved the diagram and shrank it once more, sliding it away. "And I think it came down to a three-way collision of exhaustion, fear, and ambition. We were all so tired by the time the war ended, Letha. Tired of running and hiding, of not knowing who to trust, of having to choose every day to get up and keep on fighting. Tired, frightened people will agree to almost anything that lets them escape from that life, even symbolically. Especially if, on the surface of things, it makes sense to them as well." He looked down at his hands. "Bartemius Crouch knew that, and used it without mercy when the opportunity arose."
"See how much good that did him, in the end." Aletha had picked up a pillow from the head of her bed and was twisting it between her hands. "My God, Remus. And all this time—all this time—" She choked once, caught between laughter and tears. "Why did you have to find it now? How did you find it, for that matter? I can't imagine diagrams like these are public record."
"I've made a new friend. Or renewed an old acquaintance, really. Do you remember Sirius's cousin Andromeda?"
"Yes, of course. She gave me some good advice for continuing with my Healer studies off the books while I was undercover in London." Aletha frowned. "But how did she—"
"Not her. Her daughter, Nymphadora. She's an apprentice in the Auror Office now, and her mentor assigned her some of these diagrams to study. We ended up looking at this one together, trying to sort out the lines, and…" Remus spread his hands. "Here we are."
"Yes. Here we are." Aletha set the pillow down. "I suppose I should be grateful I learned the truth before I did anything irreversible, but I'm afraid I'm not there quite yet." Her hand closed into a fist briefly, then relaxed. "And isn't this just like that crazy man I loved? He never could do anything at a convenient time." Slowly she lowered her hand to the bedcovers. "Not even die."
"But he's not dead."
Both Remus and Aletha whirled. Meghan stood in the doorway of the room, her arms full of a sleek black cat. "He's not dead," she repeated, hoisting the cat a little higher. "My dad, I mean."
"Meghan." Aletha pressed her lips together briefly. "This is no time to play games. I've never told you anything about your father—"
"His name is Sirius Orion Black," Meghan interrupted. "He's pureblood, but he ran away from home when his mother tried to make him behave like it. He can turn into a big black dog anytime he wants to. And." She glared over the top of the cat's head at her mother. "He is. Not. Dead."
Aletha flattened her hands against the quilt which covered her bed. "Well, I can't argue with your first two items," she said after a moment. "Though I'll need to defer to the expert for the third one."
"She's correct." Remus nodded. "But I'd like to see your evidence for your last point, Meghan. Assuming you have some?"
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't." Meghan set the cat on the floor. "And if you didn't want me to find things out," she added to her mother, "you shouldn't have taught me how to do research." Turning on the ball of her foot, she darted up the hall towards her room.
"Oh, you and Hermione are going to be good friends," Remus murmured.
"Hermione?" Aletha looked sharply at him. "You're not saying—"
"Professor Dumbledore contacted me shortly after the school term started. I've been teaching at Hogwarts ever since, handling the lower-level classes for Defense Against the Dark Arts." Remus smiled. "Some of the students are surprisingly endearing, I must say. Like the son of a certain pureblood house, who striped his hair black and yellow for the Quidditch match last Saturday."
"Oh, Remus." Aletha laid her hand on his arm. "I'm so glad. And of course you've…" Her eyes roved down to his left hand and stopped. "Or maybe not."
"I'm sorry?" Remus frowned. "Is something wrong?"
"No, it's nothing. I just thought…never mind me." Aletha shook her head as Meghan came skidding back into the room, her hand clutched around a sheet of parchment. "All right, young lady, let's see what this is…"
Harry stood by the window in his dorm in Gryffindor Tower, gazing out over the darkened, snow-covered grounds. Ron's quiet snores blended with the little rattles of the windowpanes as the wind tried to find its way inside. The light of a single hovering candle shone down on the picture frame Harry held in his hands, its smiling, waving occupants caught forever in their moments of joy.
For a long time, he watched the photographic people mill about, James and Lily posing ever more extravagantly in the center of the frame, their friends offering congratulations or laughing at their antics. Then he folded the frame shut and slid it back into its place in his wardrobe, climbing into bed and pulling his bedcurtains shut.
He knew exactly what he wanted to dream about on this Christmas Eve night.
XxXxX
Henry Blake opened his eyes in the dim, pink-tinged light of a snowy Christmas morning. Moving with care, so as not to wake his cousin or his friend, he clambered down from his top bunk, shoved his feet into his slippers, and padded along the hallway towards the living room. Moving lights and shadows ahead told him what he would see.
His dad stood in the center of the room, his wand pointed towards the ceiling, moving in measured circles and swirls. Tiny balls of colored light, red, green, yellow, blue, emanated from its tip with every rotation and joined their friends in a stately dance around the edges of the ceiling. If someone added music to the mix, Henry knew, either live with one of the family's instruments or a recording from the stereo in the corner, the lights would speed up or slow down their movements to match its rhythm, forming patterns and pictures high above everyone's heads.
Ryan turned, and his easy smile spread across his face at the sight of Henry. "Morning, kid," he said softly, sealing off the spell and tucking his wand into his bathrobe's pocket. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas." Henry crossed the room to stand beside his dad. "Pretty big day in the gray life yesterday."
"Wasn't it just." Ryan slid his arm around his son. "How's he holding up, that alter ego of yours?"
"He was kind of upset at first. Really upset, actually. Angry and hurt and…" Henry trailed off. "I didn't know," he said, leaning into the solid warmth of his dad, the strength he'd always known would shield him from harm and fight on his side. "I didn't know you could hate yourself. Not like that. Or maybe not exactly yourself, when it's him hating me, but pretty close." He glanced up at Ryan, seeing the silver-gray eyes thoughtful, listening, understanding. "It didn't last long, but it still felt weird."
"It does. But at least you figured it out quickly. Or he did." Ryan gazed at the dancing spheres of light. "You can waste a lot of time on that if you're not careful. Hating yourself, blaming yourself, even for stuff that's not your fault, or not entirely. Smart people, especially, seem to fall for that trap. They're so used to figuring things out first try and fixing all their problems just like that—" He snapped the fingers of his free hand. "—that it knocks them robes over wand when they run up against an issue they can't change. And instead of admitting they don't have all the power in the world, or looking for some way to help fix what got messed up, they go into full-out 'woe is me, I have failed, I must wallow in loathing forever' mode."
Henry frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"News flash, kid." Ryan chuckled. "Humans usually don't. Glad to hear your alter ego's got some, though. And you can tell him from me…" He looked directly into Henry's eyes. "Don't give up hope. Things aren't always what they seem. Now, then." After tightening his arm around Henry once more, he let him go. "Shall we get the oven heated up, to bake off those sweet rolls Gigi was putting together last night? And then maybe put on a little music to get all those slugabeds up and about, and I'll pop the bacon on the griddle while you start cutting the fruit?"
(A/N: Homemade sweet rolls, tropical fruit salad, and bacon is my family's usual Christmas morning breakfast. I will also neither confirm nor deny that I fall into the 'blame self for everything' category of human weirdness. And yes, there are quite a few buildings in Pittsburgh with their entry doors on the fourth floor, or even higher. We have hills.
As you may be able to tell from the pace of updates, this story seems to be (knock on wooden head) gathering momentum. I hope to use this to write, and post, some other words as well. A plotbunny or two has poked up its head regarding some of my older AUs, and "how would I write that idea if it came to me fresh today?" So maybe I'll do that. Tell me if you'd like to see it.
Next time: presents, discoveries, friendships, and other such lovely Christmas-y things. See you then!)
