Chapter Thirteen
July 21st, 1981
The Elder wand had not been Draco's only procurement from Hogwarts.
"The last time I touched this, it was burnt and empty," Harry said with a scowl. He could feel the Dark Magic pulsing inside of the diadem, and it made him sick to his stomach.
When Draco's bag—which had been left behind in the Death Eater trap in the garden—had been brought inside, he removed the sparkling tiara. Harry and Hermione had both flinched angrily at the sight, but neither did much more to react until Lily—suspecting the item to be exactly what it was: the lost diadem of Ravenclaw—reached for it with an inquisitive stare. Draco had yanked it away before she could touch it, and Harry was on his feet standing protectively between his mother and the Horcrux.
"There are currently five," Draco informed everyone.
Harry concentrated on how much he hated Voldemort. He must have become visibly enraged because Hermione snatched the diadem from his hands, and immediately reduced the anger. "Thanks, Hermione."
She gave him an understanding smile before slipping the diadem back into Draco's bag. He handed her his wand and watched as she cast an array of enchantments over the bag, some of which he recognised as repellants. The last thing they needed was for another unsuspecting person to think that the Horcrux was just a pretty trinket.
His family, thankfully, seemed to understand the severity of the situation. James and Remus were glaring at the bag with nervous disdain. Sirius was glaring at Draco for bringing it into the house. Harry decided to look at the silver lining in that no one was hexing each other.
"The diadem of Ravenclaw," Draco continued, "a ring that will be found in the ancestral home of Voldemort's mother, a cup that once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff, an heirloom locket of Salazar Slytherin, and a diary that Voldemort carried with him at Hogwarts."
"Nothing of Godric Gryffindor's?" Sirius asked, looking just a little smug.
"The sword of Gryffindor is what we used to destroy some of the Horcruxes," Harry said.
"We can't do that this time," Hermione muttered with a heavy sigh. "It doesn't have any basilisk venom imbued in the blade."
Groaning, Harry scrubbed his hands down his face, exhausted. "I'd forgot about the bloody venom. I really don't want to go down into that chamber again." At the curious looks given him around the table, he shook his head. "It's nothing."
Hermione offered a polite smile. "Something we can think about later on."
"Harry killed a basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets," Draco blurted out.
Gaping at him, Harry threw his hands up incredulously. "Really?"
Draco shrugged unapologetically. "Basilisk venom would be the easiest way to destroy the Horcruxes as far as I'm concerned, and I, for one, am not keen to revisit Fiendfyre, thank you very much."
"We can discuss how to destroy them later. Right now, we need to talk about their locations and how we can get to them," Hermione interjected, effectively cutting off James, Sirius, and Remus, all of whom looked like they were ready to burst at the seams with questions.
Harry glanced at his mother, who remained quietly staring at the centre of the table. He might have assumed she was not listening had he not seen Hermione so often with the same expression of intense contemplation.
"I can get the diary," Draco said. "It's likely that he's already given it to my father. If so, I know exactly where it's being kept."
As though he just remembered who Draco was, Sirius narrowed his eyes at the blond. "And what exactly do we plan on doing about Lucius Malfoy? Something tells me that he wasn't exactly forced or coerced into becoming a Death Eater."
"That's not a priority," Harry said, trying to stop an argument before it even started. Despite being a Death Eater, Harry knew that Lucius had tried to do the right thing—at least for Narcissa and Draco—in the end. The idea of having the man thrown in Azkaban now made him uncomfortable. Draco, likely due to his upbringing, kept his face blank as he met Sirius's stare.
"I think it's something we need to talk about. You say that your boyfriend here became a Death Eater under duress, and we're speculating that something might have happened to Wormtail . . . but what about the others?" Sirius demanded. "Are we going to just give every Death Eater a free pass? We've been fighting these bastards for years, Harry. We've seen them murder our friends. They've tortured us. They are, as we speak, trying their damnedest to figure out how to murder you."
"Pads," James said pleadingly.
With no answers of his own, Harry looked at Hermione.
She sighed and stood, making her way across the room where she pulled a pad of paper from the top of the refrigerator and snagged a pencil from a ceramic cup on her way back to the table.
Trusting Hermione to handle it, Harry instead focused on the cup. It was clearly homemade and had tiny red handprints all around the sides. He wondered which of his parents had helped his younger self make it. Likely James, he figured. It seemed like something his mother would have appreciated. He remembered that Petunia had kept a painting that a five-year-old Dudley made her in a frame next to her bed.
"What are you doing?" Remus quietly asked.
"Writing down a list of Death Eaters we know and their crimes," Hermione replied stiffly, using a tone that she usually reserved for when people interrupted her revising schedule. "People should be held accountable for their actions, but Sirius is right."
"I am?" Sirius asked, sitting up taller.
"If we're going to give Pettigrew a chance to explain, then we should learn what we can about the others. Hold them responsible only for actions they have already committed. Not for things we know they are capable of in the future." When her list was finished, she passed it down the table to James, who held it while Sirius and Remus read from over his shoulders.
"Merlin, it's like a guest list to one of Walburga's dinner parties," Sirius muttered. "We were right about Dolohov killing Gid and Fab." He pointed a few lines down the list. "What about Dorcas Meadowes? Moody said that Voldemort was the one who . . . but some of us suspected Bellatrix because they'd not gotten on well in school."
"Voldemort is responsible for killing Dorcas Meadowes. At least as far as we know," Hermione said evenly, scratching at the sleeve of her forearm. "Bellatrix is guilty of enough on her own without being given credit for the sins of Voldemort."
Sirius, looking relieved that his cousin would not be given a second chance like they had planned to potentially offer others, let out a heavy sigh. "Good. Now, which one killed my brother? I know he was a Death Eater as well, but he was also just a stupid kid. Death Eater or not, I want my revenge on whoever murdered him."
Draco cleared his throat and looked down.
Harry felt a hand rest on his knee, and he sighed. He did not want to have this conversation. The death of Regulus Black had always been a sore spot for him. There was an odd sort of kinship he felt with the boy who had died at only seventeen with the same mission in mind—of taking down Voldemort. Harry wondered how many people really, truly knew what it was like to face death at such a young age. Having been terrified himself—not to mention having seen the cave where Sirius's brother died—he did not suspect that Regulus passed into the afterlife peacefully.
"Harry . . . do you want me to—?" Hermione began.
"I'll do it," he said, standing up. "Sirius, can we talk in private?"
"Do you think he'll shift back anytime soon?" Hermione asked quietly.
Harry and Sirius had stepped into the living room to afford them privacy for discussing Regulus Black. She was not sure what she expected from the man, likely anger and maybe a bit of shouting, but listening to Sirius Black sob in grief was a painful reminder that the adults she had known in her future were so very young now. James and Remus had gone to Sirius, cocooning their friend in a tangle of arms and whispering words of comfort that Hermione tried her hardest to not eavesdrop on.
By the time James and Remus rejoined the still-silent table in the other room, Sirius had become Padfoot and outright refused to change back.
Hermione did not blame him. She often wished that she could hide her emotions behind an expressionless mask of fur and whiskers.
"Hopefully," Harry said, sounding weary and looking exhausted. "We have too much to do. I almost think that constantly being on the run for our lives was easier. At least we didn't have Horcruxes left to find and destroy."
She smiled at him in understanding. "Hot water is nice, though."
Harry chuckled.
Perched as they were on Harry's bed, they could easily hear the sound of the shower running in the bathroom across the hall. Hermione wondered if Harry had left the bedroom door cracked open on purpose, just so that he could partially monitor Draco while he took his first real shower in months. Hermione had actually cried when she had taken hers days earlier and was grateful that Remus had given her the privacy to do so, despite the look on his face that said he would have been more than willing to join her.
She tried to not wonder if Harry would have rather been in the shower just then with Draco. A giggle slipped out as she assumed his parents were the only thing keeping him from doing so.
"Something funny?" he asked with a raised brow.
She waved him off. "Ignore me. I'm delirious due to stress."
"I can't believe he stole the Elder Wand from Voldemort," Harry whispered.
"I can't believe he got the diadem as well." Hermione turned on her side to look at Harry, who had his back up against the wall near the window. When they had come up to his room, they'd crawled into the bed, curling up together the way they had when it had just been the two of them alone and afraid in a tent. It brought a small comfort to know that they had come so far and were finally somewhat safe. "Where's the stone?"
"In my pouch," Harry answered. "I only remove it every now and then to make sure it's still there. Took me long enough to find on the forest floor. Still can't believe I just dropped it."
"In your defence—"
"I thought I wasn't coming out of that forest alive?"
Hermione cringed, remembering Harry's body hanging limp in Hagrid's arms. When he had quite literally risen from the dead, she felt a hope like nothing ever before, but that happiness proved short-lived when friends began dying around them. Harry had tried to corner Voldemort into a battle one-on-one, but the Lestrange brothers had gathered around their Dark Lord, and even the true Master of the Elder Wand was no match against three without the wand in question in his possession. After trying to fight their way to victory only to watch their friends die around them, escape had been their only option for survival.
Pulling her from her dark thoughts, the sound of the bedroom door creaking drew both Hermione and Harry's attentions.
She rolled her eyes at the sight of Draco standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist, water glistening off of his too-pale chest. Honestly. He had the towel right there. What was the sense in wearing it if you weren't going to dry yourself? Glancing back at Harry and the stupid way his eyes had glazed over, she imagined she knew the exact reason that Draco was currently letting water pool all over the floor.
"You're in my spot." Draco sauntered over to the bed, giving Hermione less than a second to move before he dropped the towel.
"Oh my God!" She jumped from her spot next to Harry, covering her eyes with one hand as she dove out of the way lest she accidentally get touched by the wretched snake's snake. "You're so disgusting." She bristled only slightly at the sound of both wizards chuckling behind her as she made her way to the door, unsure as to why she was still covering her eyes.
"Off to bed?" Draco asked.
"Yes."
"And where, might I ask, do you sleep, Granger?"
Feeling her cheeks warm over and her blood thrum in her veins at the mere thought of Remus waiting for her, she slowly let out a breath and cleared her throat. "I'll see you both in the morning. Do try to find clothing between now and then, Malfoy."
"I see the eighties have done little to remove the stick from her arse," Draco commented affectionately when Hermione closed the door behind her. He sat back in the bed, putting his good arm behind his head and favouring the other across his chest.
Harry did not bother to reprimand him for his comment. Hermione gave back just as much as she took when the two bickered, and Harry had long since abandoned the idea that his best friend and boyfriend would communicate without sarcasm and insults.
He opened his arm to Draco, smiling when he curled up against Harry's chest. Wet hair tickled against the stubble of Harry's chin and neck, the blond strands looking almost translucent in the waning moonlight streaming in through the window. He briefly wondered if he should tell Draco about Hermione's condition but quickly rid himself of the notion. As much as he was determined to not keep secrets from Draco, this was not his story to tell.
Even if he had wanted to talk, Draco sat up and kissed him, making the ability and desire to talk completely irrelevant.
Eager and desperate and hungry, Harry returned the kiss, pressing his tongue against Draco's with practised movements. His hands slid over a freshly-shaven jawline and back through wet strands of hair, following down the damp skin of Draco's back until he was able to grip a handful of arse. He tried to be gentler than usual, keeping Draco's injury in the back of his mind, but the small gasp of breath against his lips had Harry pushing the blond onto his back.
The sound of a baby crying in the other room broke the headiness that had settled over him.
"I can't do this."
Draco looked up at Harry incredulously. "Because of that?" he asked, gesturing at the closed door. "Cast a Silencing Charm around the room."
"It's weird," Harry mumbled, shaking his head.
"It's not your baby," Draco muttered. "You've no responsibility there. Unless you're in the mood to get up and go breastfeed yourself."
Cringing, Harry pulled away from Draco—who was, of course, now laughing at his expense. "Jesus Christ. Why do you have to take things too far? Besides, I don't . . . I don't think he's . . . I'm . . . Ugh."
Draco laughed louder. "You're thinking of your mother's tits now, aren't you?"
"Fuck off," Harry angrily muttered as he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.
"Would you rather think about Granger's breasts and what Lupin is likely doing with them right—"
"I am almost—almost—regretting springing you from Sirius's Death Eater trap." When Harry pulled his hands away from his eyes, Draco was grinning. "You're a shit."
"Love you too, Potter. So Granger's really shagging Lupin? That didn't take long. I knew something was going on just observing them tonight, but she's really gone off to his room?" Draco looked amused by the story he was likely creating in his head, which Harry knew was much more entertaining and less horrifying than the truth of how Hermione and Remus had ended up together.
"You need to not bother her about this," Harry said seriously. "Look, I can't . . . It's not my place, but they—Hermione and Remus—are kind of . . . mates."
Draco's silver eyes widened almost comically, but he did not laugh—for which Harry was abundantly grateful. "You're having a laugh."
"I'm really not."
"That's . . . adorable."
"Oh God," Harry groaned.
"Are they going to get married and everything? Does he know that he used to be her professor? Merlin, how are the rest of you not continually taking the piss out of them? A real romantic fairytale sprung to life right off the pages of a children's book." When Harry narrowed his eyes, Draco corrected, "Or maybe one of those trashy werewolf romance stories. Nothing but smut on every other page."
"How would you know?" Harry asked, unable to hold back the laughter at picturing Draco curled up in the back of the Hogwarts library with a werewolf romance novel hidden behind a potions book, his cheeks pink as he looked up from the pages every few seconds to make sure no one caught him.
"My mother owned some," Draco said casually. He must have found Harry's shocked expression amusing, because he added, "Everyone's mother has a smut-filled werewolf novel somewhere in the bottom of their old Hogwarts trunk. Even yours."
"Please stop talking about my mother," Harry begged. When Draco grinned and tilted his hips—and erection—against his thigh, Harry shook his head. "I'm not having sex in my parents' house, so you can stop while you're ahead."
Pouting, Draco fell back against his pillows and huffed. "Have you always been such a bore? I seem to remember you being more interesting than this back in school."
Amused, Harry traced his fingers over Draco's chest—mapping scars that had long since been forgiven. As though he needed the reminder, Harry said, "We fought back in school."
"Yes," Draco said with an annoyed look, taking Harry's hand and threading their fingers together. "And you would get all hot and bothered. Now you're bothered but lukewarm. Like stale tea."
Sighing, Harry pressed his lips to Draco's temple. "Can we have a mature discussion about this?"
"I hate stale tea."
"You're insufferable."
"I brought you the Elder Wand," Draco said, pouting. "You'd think I would, at the very least, get a blowjob for my efforts."
"My parents—my actual parents—are across the hall."
"That hasn't stopped Granger, I assure you."
Harry thought about making sexual references to Draco's family, only to find himself grimacing before he could manage to get the words out. "They're not her parents. Plus, she's a . . . She has this wolf mate thing with Remus now," he said, catching himself. "I'm blaming any lack of control on her new condition."
Grinning, Draco tilted his head to the side. "Please let me be there if you ever have the chance to say that to her face."
July 22nd, 1981
It was a long night. Lily spent most of it soothing her small child, who was fussing over some cutting teeth that were not responding to the usual potions. Then again, Harry had been stubborn with Muggle methods as well. She argued with James, insisting that at least one of them should get a good night's rest, but honestly, she felt a strong need to just mother her baby. She wanted to make his pain go away.
The moment that the older version of her Harry had turned up on her doorstep, she had known—no, felt—who he was. Something inside of her magic pulled to him the same way it did the baby in her arms. The potion confirming his identity only solidified the feeling.
When she was pregnant, she had been terrified. Having grown up at a boarding school, she never had much experience with babies. Petunia's boy was just a month older than Harry, and Lily had not even met him. Her only other friend with a child was Alice, and the two were barely acquaintances as the Longbottoms had graduated Hogwarts several years before she had.
Harry was, in fact, the first baby that Lily ever held in her entire life. And up to the moment he was born, she was positively certain she was going to muck it up. She spent the majority of her pregnancy dwelling on the war and prophecies and whether or not her husband and friends would come home from missions, but the moment she went into labour, dread sank into her chest at the thought of actual motherhood. She cried and cried. James held her hand, his lips pressed to her head in an attempt to kiss away her every worry. Sirius sat at the foot of the bed—explicitly where she had told him not to be—having a panic attack of his own as though he were now entirely responsible for the life that she was bringing into the world.
But the moment the Healer had pulled Harry from her body and placed him on her chest, she had known. She had known how to hold him, how to soothe him, and she had known that she would give up her own life if it meant that he could breathe a single second longer than Voldemort wanted. He was hers.
And so, too, was the older version that had shown up at her door with dirty skin, sunken eyes, and blood-stained clothes. Every scar on his body made her ache with that same old panic she felt before his birth. Every story of battle left her internally shaking with dread. Every mention of Voldemort's name had her homicidal.
She accepted him—every bit—instantly, but it had all come down on them so fast that she had not had time to breathe.
And now there was a Death Eater, a Slytherin, a Malfoy in her home, sleeping in the room across the hallway with her son. Lily actively tried to not think about what they might be doing—what she would do in their place if parted from James for more than a day with life and death hanging in the balance.
God, how was she supposed to mother that?
She felt helpless.
When little Harry slept past his normal waking hour, she let him. He was exhausted and so was she, but he had the luxury of being able to rest his weary little eyelids. She had work to do.
Stepping into the kitchen, she let out a sigh of relief when someone—James, Sirius, or Harry she suspected from the blur of black through her fatigued vision—placed a cup of coffee in her hands.
"Love you," she muttered, not caring which wizard received the sentiment. Spotting Hermione and Remus at one end of the table, she took a seat beside her fellow witch and smiled as she sipped her drink, testing the temperature.
"So how did you two get together?"
Lily looked up at the sound of Sirius's voice to see him sitting at the other end of the table beside Harry, who was shoulder-to-shoulder with the Malfoy boy—man. He was a man. Just like her son. Jesus Christ, magic was complicated sometimes. Coffee, though. Coffee was good. Coffee made sense of things.
Harry shrugged, running a hand through his hair in a move that James had perfected decades earlier. It was something that used to annoy Lily. Now she found it endearing.
"I dunno. How does anyone get together?"
"Well, in your parents' case, one person obsessed about the other one to an unhealthy degree," Sirius said, snorting in amusement.
Lily could hear the offended scoff from behind her at the cooker. She grinned knowing full well that her husband had repeatedly made a complete arse of himself for far too long before she decided to give him a chance. She had always thought he was pure ego. Now she knew that he was just a bit of an idiot. Her idiot.
"That's exactly how it happened," Hermione muttered.
Lily watched with a smile as her son narrowed his green eyes at his best friend.
"I was not obsessed."
"You followed him around the castle and stalked him using the map," Hermione said incredulously.
Draco laughed, looking incredibly smug. He was handsome, Lily would give him that, and much more so when he smiled. When he smiled at Harry, however, she felt an odd little tug at her heart. The same little tug she got when her baby cried for hours only to be comforted by the sound of Sirius's motorbike roaring from the street. Relief that her son's sadness was washed away, but envious that it had been someone else to make him smile.
Hermione pinned Draco with an amused look. "You don't get to laugh, Draco. You were just as bad."
"I'll have you know, Granger," Draco said tersely, "that I felt nothing but disdain for him during the entirety of our time at Hogwarts and then some."
"Oh please, you both were ridiculous. Always showing off for one another and teasing each other." Hermione cleared her throat and then took on a lower pitch as she mockingly quipped, "I think Malfoy's up to something, Hermione. I'm going to spend every waking moment of my year following him around beneath the cloak." She changed her tone just slightly, using a bit more of a posh accent. "How dare you catch the Snitch before me, Potter. Wait until I tell my father about this."
Everyone but Harry and Draco laughed.
"I refuse to admit that I felt anything but contempt for him when I was younger," Draco insisted, grabbing a piece of toast from a plate that he looked to be sharing with Harry. "My taste in men was more refined back then. I wouldn't have fancied him due to his ridiculous hair alone."
"Offence taken," James muttered as he pulled up a chair next to Lily, setting down a plate of toast in front of her. "Morning, love. You like my hair, don't you?"
"Eh." She shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. "It could use a trim."
"So could yours," Draco said to Harry.
Lily wondered if he was trying to get on her good side by just agreeing with her. She was not opposed to the idea.
Harry smiled, running his hands through his hair again at the same time as James. "You could try. Hermione's the only one that's ever been able to cut my hair with any real luck."
"It looked horrible," Hermione said with a smile. Next to her, Remus anxiously scratched at his own hairline, looking as though she were about to attack him with the shears any minute. She laughed and nudged him playfully with her shoulder.
"It wasn't that bad, Hermione," Harry said. "At least the hair stayed cut when you did it. When I was little, it would always grow back anytime Petunia would lop it all off and—"
CRACK!
Silence filled Lily's ears until the muffled sound of chairs scraping across the floor drew her attention.
Her face was hot, and she could feel her heartbeat behind her eyes. She turned to watch as Remus carefully waved his wand in an attempt to repair the cracked window behind her. James was holding her hand, looking at her with worry in his eyes; the gentle warmth of his touch felt like it was drawing the angry heat down from her head. Without looking, she could feel Sirius hovering on her other side the same way he used to in school when older years would call her Mudblood—protective; he had done so long before they were even friends.
Licking her lips, she tried to remember the last time she'd had a bout of accidental magic.
She had suspected when Hermione had mentioned that Harry had been raised Muggle. Knowing that Peter had betrayed them, Marlene had died, and Sirius had ended up in Azkaban all but confirmed her worries. The Ministry would have never let Remus raise her son despite her and James's wishes. That only left . . .
She met Harry's stare across the table, and goddamnit, he looked like he had done something wrong which was most certainly not the case. He remained silent, so Lily glanced to Hermione for confirmation, but the witch turned her eyes downward and awkwardly cleared her throat.
"Harry?" Lily asked quietly, not knowing if she were ready to hear the answer. She knew what her sister was like. Worse, she knew what her sister's husband was like. Freaks, they called witches and wizards. Petunia went so far to pretend she was above everyone else that she had purposely changed her accent and acted like she was better than some girl from Cokeworth.
Lily's gaze landed on Draco's hand as it settled on top of Harry's in a gesture of comfort and support. Vernon would have said horrible, disgustingly cruel things about that.
She wanted to show her son and Draco that she was not her sister or Vernon Dursley. She would never look at them with disgust. Harry was no longer looking in her direction though, his eyes downcast.
Draco, however, met Lily's stare head on; he looked as furious as she felt.
"Petunia?" was the only word she was able to get out as her fingers clenched into a tight fist.
Draco nodded his head once, and then coldly remarked, "They kept him in a cupboard under the stairs."