Chapter Fifteen
July 22nd, 1981
Lunch was an awkward affair—in that it wasn't awkward.
Harry had spent his childhood with the Dursleys, trying to put on a facade for the neighbours. That was followed up by years with the Weasleys who always wore a brave—sometimes stubborn—expression when faced with any adversity. He learnt quickly to never draw attention to himself with the Dursleys and to never draw attention to money—especially his own—with the Weasleys. The few times he had offered to buy things for Ron were usually accepted with begrudging gratitude, so Harry had eventually stopped trying to show his appreciation through those means. Instead, he talked about Quidditch, learnt to play chess even though he never really picked it up, talked at length about Muggles with Arthur, and ate up as much of Molly's cooking as humanly possible, because that was something he could do to make them happy.
The meal that followed the news of Harry's childhood was lacking the usual tension he was used to feeling over subjects being purposely ignored. When he and his mother had eventually gone back downstairs to the aroma of lunch cooking, the only person that gave him a sideways glance was Sirius, and it faded once Draco brought up the Wolfsbane Potion.
There was no market for the potion yet, but Remus and Sirius had both heard word about a supposed temporary "werewolf cure" being sold out of back alleys and on black markets. Knockturn Alley would eventually be a place to procure it, but both Draco and Lily shook their heads.
"If we're able to buy such a potion, I'd rather break it down into its individual components before building it back up just to make sure that it's clean and safe," Lily said, eyes full of intrigue and a studious nature that Harry thought could rival Hermione's.
"I don't know the ingredients the way I know others, but I remember seeing various stages of the brewing process. I'd be happy to work with you on it," Draco offered.
Harry had watched with amusement as his mother and boyfriend shared a look of what could only be mutual respect between potioneers—he wouldn't presume to know exactly what that felt like; he had only been a temporary potions prodigy himself.
The rest of the day was spent mostly in quiet contemplation, everyone off in their own corners of the cottage.
Hermione and Lily spent their time in the garden with Remus, looking over the wards and angrily muttering to one another.
James and Sirius took turns looking after little Harry while the other read what few books they had on hand that might offer an advantage in destroying Horcruxes, though both Harry and Hermione were certain that they had already exhausted that subject on their first Horcrux hunt.
Draco read by himself, looking over potions books, of which Lily had in abundance.
Harry spent his day looking through the items he kept stashed in his moleskin pouch, checking that the diadem and Hallows were being kept separately. He was not sure that anything would happen if they were to touch—hell, he'd been a Horcrux for sixteen years and the Cloak of Invisibility never so much as flickered when he wore it—but having things of such importance so close to a bit of Voldemort's soul made him feel uneasy.
Dinner was much like lunch had been, except that instead of talking about the Wolfsbane Potion, they discussed what both Lily and Hermione had discovered about the wards.
Draco had been livid.
Harry felt sick to his stomach. Dumbledore was a topic of conversation he never liked brought up. In their own timeline, it was a non-issue, since the man had been dead going on three years. The older he got and the more removed from the end of the war he felt, the more Harry realised how much of a weapon he had been shaped to be by Dumbledore—a means to an end. It made every happy memory of the man sour in his mind, and what was worse, it also began tainting his memories of other authority figures like Professor McGonagall and Hagrid. Though he knew neither of them had anything to do with the planning of his death, it set a precedent for trust issues which had already been fragile thanks to Petunia and Vernon.
He stayed quiet for most of the night, opting to go to bed early, and was grateful when Draco immediately followed him. With the door closed and a Silencing Charm thrown up, Harry broke his own rule about sex in his parents' home.
Though his boyfriend would likely never come right out and apologise for revealing his secrets, tonight he was a bit more forward and eager to please, as though he knew he had something to make up for.
Harry didn't blame him.
The sex at the beginning of their relationship had been almost entirely one-sided because he couldn't look at Draco's chest and see the Sectumsempra scars without feeling the need to make up for it somehow. It actually ended in a fairly epic row that Ron had walked in on, which only added fuel to an already out-of-control fire. Ron and Draco had shot insults back and forth before the truth of the argument had come out, leaving Ron with bright red ears and a desperation to leave the room.
Harry's fingers threaded through white-blond hair, every panting exhale perfectly timed with Draco's movements.
"Christ, that's good," he moaned, feeling the skin of his neck heating up as his stomach muscles began to tighten. Sex—and life—was so much better in the comfort of a well-heated home with clean linens on the bed.
The last time they'd had sex was in a closed down shop off the back end of Horizont Alley inside Weeoanwhisker's Barber Shop. The place had been shut down for over a year because the proprietor had been caught trying to smuggle Muggle-borns out of Britain. After his murder, the Dark Mark had glowed above the shop for a full month as a warning. Most of the other shops on the alley had relocated because of it. The security on the location had not been the best, but there were residual wards bleeding over from Cogg and Bell Clockmakers next door, and Hermione had figured out a way to blend the two locations into one. It offered them safety for one night.
Hermione had fallen asleep in the back office, and Draco and Harry fucked each other in the front of the store; broken barber equipment, broken glass, hair, and old pamphlets on Mudblood propaganda had littered the floor.
Trying to erase the memory from his thoughts, Harry concentrated on the smell of a clean room and the feel of soft sheets beneath him.
"Are you trying to hold back? This is taking forever, and you know that my jaw still clicks—"
Harry's laughter cut off Draco's complaint. "You always bitch about your jaw. Yes, I know that it clicks because Hermione punched you one time." Nevermind that her fist had broken his nose, not his jaw. "Come up here."
As Draco crawled his way up Harry's body, rubbing his nose lightly against the dark stubble beneath his jaw, Harry sighed, letting out a heavy breath and relaxing against the mattress.
"Oh, are we done then?" Draco muttered sarcastically, but Harry could feel him shift against his side, stretching with limbs splayed in various directions before pushing his face up under Harry's chin much like a cat would.
It was nice to see Draco unwind in a way that none of them had been able to do in months, maybe years. Harry had honestly lost count. Hermione had been the one to keep track of the calendar long after he insisted that it was pointless. He had only two goals: keep Draco and Hermione alive, and kill Voldemort. He never saw anything past that.
But now, being back in a home surrounded by loved ones that he never thought he would see again and his parents, whom he could not even remember without nightmares following the memories . . . Harry was beginning to have hope again.
"It's just been a long day. I have a lot on my mind."
Draco must have been truly tired as no sarcastic comment followed. Harry had all but expected a "that must be a new feeling" or at the very least a "you don't even do half the thinking that I do, Potter."
Instead, he heard soft breaths and felt puffs of air push out against the sparse black hairs on his chest, letting him know that Draco was already easing into sleep. Harry envied him for the ability to doze off so easily, especially after everything they had been through. Hermione had been a bit of an insomniac even before Voldemort came back at the end of their fourth year, and Harry had trouble sleeping sometimes due to either nightmares or his inability to get comfortable for any length of time—something he blamed on sleeping in a cupboard for ten years. Draco, on the other hand, seemed to drift into slumber as though he knew that it was the only kind of peace he would get compared to the waking hours.
Harry let the soft blond hair tickle against his chin and lips, moving his face back and forth as the feeling soothed him. He did not regret Draco sending them back to save his own life. It gave them a chance to fix almost everything that Voldemort had done. It also, Harry hoped, gave them a chance at a fresh start and a new life in a world that had not fallen apart.
Just as his own eyes began to close, he whispered softly, "Love you."
July 23rd, 1981
Harry sometimes wondered if the various events of his life had taught his body how to respond to stress in odd ways. He had never slept well, not until Hogwarts, but even then he struggled some nights. However, after any stressful event—everything from a Quidditch injury to a confrontation with Voldemort—Madam Pomfrey had been there with charms to ease his pains and potions to help him heal. In the safety of the Hogwarts hospital wing, Harry slept easily. Perhaps that was why, after any unusual amount of trauma—having one's parents discover your childhood abuse, for instance—within the safety of his bedroom at the cottage, Harry slept deep and well.
Deep and well, that is, until the blaring sound of music jolted him from his rest.
Blinking rapidly, Harry tossed his arm out in search of his glasses, bumping Draco in the back of his head with an elbow. He did little other than mutter angrily under his breath about having a bony boyfriend and the disgrace that was Muggle music.
Slowly recognising the sounds drifting up from the floor below, Harry relaxed and laughed.
Sirius.
Crawling over his boyfriend, Harry went to grab his wand only to see it tucked beneath the pillow that Draco was snuggling. He sighed, wondering if he had snagged it during the night. Draco had been known to sleep with a wand—they all had really. Harry felt guilty knowing that both of his companions were without wands of their own when, technically, he had two.
With a heavy breath, Harry took the Elder Wand with him as he left the room, figuring that he should probably learn how to wield the thing if he were truly its master. A part of him wondered what would happen if he were to face off against Dumbledore—as insane as that sounded. Would each individual Elder Wand react as though it were one and the same? Or would the two wands fight and collide, much like his original had done with Voldemort's?
Considering how loud the radio was blaring, Harry half expected to find all the occupants of the cottage in the kitchen, but instead he only found little Harry sitting in his high chair at the table, laughing as Sirius sang in front of the cooker while making breakfast.
"'Cause I'm back on the track. And I'm beatin' the flack. Nobody's gonna get me on another rap," Sirius sang into a wooden spoon as though it were a microphone. He spun around, grinning at Harry standing there.
Harry's eyes widened.
There, perched on Sirius's shoulder like a parrot, was a grey cat. He did not know why it hadn't occurred to him to ask about the cat; Harry remembered reading a letter his mother sent to Sirius long ago about how his younger self had tormented the feline with a broom. He thought that might have been an exaggeration, though, because this cat stayed on Sirius's shoulder with what looked like little effort or concern, even as Sirius danced around the kitchen.
"Well, I'm back in black. Yes, I'm back in black!" Sirius leant toward little Harry with the wooden spoon. The child reacted by screaming excitedly and reaching for it. Sirius pulled it away just in time, and turned to Harry, holding the spoon out for him to sing to.
Awkwardly, Harry stared at it.
After a beat, Sirius shook his head. "Oh no. Don't tell me you don't know it?"
Harry smiled and shook his head. "Not my era, I guess?"
Tossing the spoon into a frying pan of eggs that looked close to burning, Sirius pulled his wand from his back pocket, flicking it at the radio and turning the volume down. "Well, it's your era now, and we're going to educate you, mate. Once this Voldemort mess is done and over with, I'll put together a list of concerts to go to at underground clubs that Lily will protest even though everyone knows she'd love going."
The smell of burning food reached him, and Harry instinctively leapt toward the stove, stirring the eggs with a grimace as he tried to save them. "How is no one else up yet?"
"Oh, those lazy sods all got used to me playing stuff like this back at Hogwarts. It wasn't a good morning unless you were woken up by Queen, Bowie, or Ozzy," Sirius said with a smile as he reached for a box of cereal, pouring some on little Harry's plate like one would for a pet. The cat on his shoulder jumped down, sitting on the dining table in front of the high chair, batting its tiny paw at a piece of cereal before eating it.
"I put a Silencing Charm around James and Lily's door so they can sleep a little longer through this," Remus said as he tiredly walked into the kitchen with Hermione following behind. Harry said nothing as he noticed that she was wearing what looked like a man's t-shirt. "You're lucky he's already awake," Remus added, gesturing to little Harry. "Lily would kill you if you woke him with that music."
Before Sirius could reply, Hermione gasped, her eyes alight with sudden, unfiltered joy. "Kitty!"
There were few things that could reduce the normally more-adult-than-anyone-else Hermione to childlike wonder and excitement, but cats were one of those things. Few people in Hogwarts had opted for cats instead of owls, which were more convenient and useful, but Harry remembered seeing her making friends in other Houses just by asking to pet their familiars. Her own cat would snarl, hiss, and claw anyone else, but Crookshanks let Hermione kiss him right on his squashed little face without blinking an eye.
"Hermione, I wouldn't . . ." Remus cautioned as she approached the cat.
She ignored his words, hand outstretched to pet. The cat, however, turned around, arched its back like something out of a cartoon, and hissed before leaping from the table and escaping the kitchen.
The expression on Hermione's face was devastating.
"What happened?"
Sirius gave her a sympathetic look. "Sorry, love. She doesn't care for Remus either. You're going to find that animals, in general, will react to you a bit differently than you're used to."
Harry could see the information strike her as much as a hand across the face would. He wondered if she had already planned on tracking down a younger Crookshanks in a few years when he would be born. "What about Kneazles?" he asked for her, looking hopefully at Sirius. "They're smarter than regular cats."
Nodding thoughtfully, Sirius shrugged. "They might not care. Haven't seen one in a few years, though. Pretty sure they're regulated. Not exactly a pet type."
"I know someone who breeds them with regular cats," Harry said, thinking of Mrs Figg.
Hermione sent him a grateful look as she sat down at the table, tucking in next to the highchair. Remus brought her a cup of coffee, and Sirius sat down on the other side of little Harry, pulling his hair back into a knot at the top of his head, securing it with a wand.
Harry and Hermione shared a look and chuckled softly; Luna used to do the same thing.
"What the hell are you wearing?" Hermione asked when her gaze fell on Sirius's t-shirt.
Harry leant to the side to examine it himself, turning the cooker off entirely after moving the pan to a cold burner. Sirius sat back, stretching the t-shirt out to let them read the faded words Fanny Magnet on the fabric.
"I thought Lily burnt that thing years ago," Remus muttered as he tucked in next to Hermione at the table.
Sirius laughed proudly. "Tried and failed, Moons. Tried and failed." When Hermione stared at him disapprovingly, he shrugged his shoulders. "What? It's not like Harry can read." At her sudden chuckle, Sirius corrected, "Little Harry. Bloody hell, that is getting awkward, isn't it?"
Harry shrugged. "I offered to change my name, but Mum wouldn't have it."
"You know what this means, Moony?" Sirius asked, a mischievous grin on his face that actually worried Harry a bit. He tried to ignore those concerns as he separated the burnt bits of eggs from the edible before transferring them onto a plate. "Little Harry can now, finally, be called Elvendork."
Almost dropping the plate of eggs as he made his way to the table, Harry's mouth fell open. "Elvenwhatnow?"
Remus rolled his eyes. "Some stupid bet he and Prongs made. Whoever lost had to name their firstborn child Elvendork."
"I won," Sirius said emphatically. "And that loser backed out of the bet, blaming it on Lily."
"That's a cruel thing to do to a baby," Hermione insisted. When Sirius looked at her and smiled, she narrowed her eyes. "Don't even think of making fun of my name."
"You'll need a new one anyways," he said. "Your furry name."
Harry watched as Remus pressed against Hermione's side as though offering comfort. For her part, she did not betray any emotion she might have felt at the second reminder that morning that she was now a werewolf. Instead, she sat up straighter and cleared her throat. "Well, what should it be?"
"Gotta meet her first," Sirius said, pushing a few more bits of cereal toward little Harry that were out of his reach. "That's how it's done. We all picked names for each other after the first full moon we spent together in the Shrieking Shack. I picked Moony's, Prongs picked mine, Moony picked Prongs', and we all actually voted on Wormtail."
Either due to their early morning fatigue, the interesting conversation, or the music still playing in the background, none of them had heard the front door open.
"Talking about me?"
Harry turned, eyes wide at the stranger in the doorway. Taller, thinner, younger, and saner-looking than anytime he had ever seen him before, Pettigrew almost looked . . . normal. But it was surely Pettigrew. Harry had been given a photograph of the original Order of the Phoenix, so he knew what the man had looked like when he was younger, however, to see him in the flesh was something quite different. Suspiciously different, in fact.
First, Pettigrew was not short, or at least not as short as the twisted, hunched version Harry remembered. He was almost as tall as Sirius, who was shorter than James by just shy of an inch. Remus, by comparison, towered over them all. This Peter Pettigrew, unlike the hideous Death Eater Harry had confronted, was average looking with a bit of baby fat still clinging to his cheeks and belly that added to a look of youth and innocence that Harry was not expecting.
Hermione, too, must have been perplexed by the appearance because she had not said a word or done a thing. Sirius and Remus, on the other hand, stood from their chairs but neither were fast enough to make a move before a silent Stunning Spell shot from Peter's left, hitting him in the shoulder and knocking him to the ground with a thud.
Harry ran toward the body, only to be stopped by Draco, who came swiftly down the stairs with Harry's wand in his hand.
He pinned them all with a cold look, raising a pale brow. "I take it that the Death Eater trap wasn't reset?"
Hermione side-stepped in front of Remus and Sirius—both seemingly stuck to the ground in abject horror—and sighed irritably. "It's been a distracting day. Horcruxes and Hallows, you know."
Draco and the Dursleys, Harry added to himself.
Sounding sickened, Remus muttered, "Check him for the Dark Mark. Not you, Sirius. Stay back with the baby."
Already knowing what he would find, Harry knelt down beside Pettigrew's unconscious form, lifting the sleeve of his left arm to show the Dark Mark, clear as day. He didn't take his eyes off of the man, not even when he could hear someone retching in the kitchen sink—Remus or Sirius, he wasn't sure. He wanted to reach for the wand in Draco's hand before he remembered that he had the Elder Wand tucked in his pocket. Pulling it out, he bound Pettigrew tightly, this time determined not to let the man escape.
"Granger, do you know those Animagus spells?" Draco asked.
Hermione nodded, taking Harry's wand from Draco as it was held out to her. She flicked it several times, looking like extra effort had to be put in for it to obey her. A blue light fell over Pettigrew's body before sinking into his skin. "He won't be able to transform until that's released. Though, I'm not sure if it has a time limit."
"Are you sure you still want to know why he took the Dark Mark?" Draco asked, looking into the kitchen.
Harry followed his gaze. Remus and Sirius looked ill, heart-broken, and on the verge of tears or violence, he wasn't sure.
Harry sympathised with them. Ron had never betrayed him, but when he left that night during the Horcrux hunt, only Harry's anger had prevented him from feeling the full weight of devastation. Just thinking about his best friend taking the Dark Mark . . . it would be unthinkable. Harry didn't think he could have recovered from something like that. The fact that Remus and Sirius were even still standing was a testament to what they had already endured during the war.
"I need to know why," Sirius muttered angrily. "Why he would do this."
"Oh my God! Peter!"
Harry stood just as his mother barrelled down the stairs, eyes wide. "He's bound and unconscious."
She touched Harry's cheek as she turned toward the kitchen to spot the baby in the highchair, offering Harry a brief look of relief before she pushed past Draco and Hermione to make her way to little Harry.
Turning his attention back to Pettigrew, Harry saw that his father had joined them.
Unlike Remus and Sirius, who had yet to come closer, James knelt by Pettigrew's head, shifting it to a more comfortable-looking angle since he had landed awkwardly. He glanced at the Dark Mark, shuddering with disgust before focusing again on Pettigrew's face as though the arm were disconnected from his friend's body; as though it belonged to a different person.
"Let's find out what happened," James whispered, his voice cracking slightly. "I want to know who this man really is in his heart, and what they did to my friend."
"Put him in a chair," Draco instructed James and Harry before looking into the kitchen at Lily. "Do you have any Invigoration Draught? I need to be at full capacity if I'm going to use Legilimency on him. He's not great at Occlumency from what I remember hearing from other Death Eaters—" Sirius confirmed this with a sharp nod. "—but I'm not ruling out that there might be other issues inside his mind. For all we know, he might have been Obliviated."
"What do we do if that's the case?" Remus asked hesitantly. "Can you reverse an Obliviation?"
Harry watched as Draco tensed, knowing that he had been able to do it once before.
"Technically," he muttered coolly. "I did it once to another Death Eater named Rowle that had his memories wiped. Voldemort learnt that an Obliviation can sometimes be reversed . . . with the Cruciatus."
James stood up, looking righteous in his anger. On instinct, Harry stepped protectively in front of Draco, earning a surprised look from his father, who took a moment before holding his hands up. "We're not going to torture anyone. We don't use Dark Magic. We're not Death Eaters."
"Two of us in the room are," Draco pointed out.
"You don't use Unforgivables," James reiterated firmly. "I don't care about tattoos, I care about actions. We kill only in defence of ourselves and our families. This is war, we're soldiers, that can't be helped. But we do not torture."
Harry nodded in agreement, struggling to bury the memory of how he had used the Cruciatus Curse on both Bellatrix Lestrange and Amycus Carrow or how he had used the Imperius on a goblin inside of Gringotts. He bent down, pulling Pettigrew up with James helping on the other side. Remus brought a chair over for them. After depositing Pettigrew in it, Harry looked up to see his mother whispering to Sirius as she passed little Harry into his arms.
Sirius nodded, casting an angry look at Pettigrew before taking the boy and disappearing upstairs.
Lily stepped forward, handing a small phial to Draco, who sniffed it once before swallowing it.
"Do you think this will help?" Harry asked, offering the Elder Wand to Draco.
"No. You keep that. I don't want that thing for a single second to think that anyone owns it but you."
Draco stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders, muttering under his breath about how Occlumency was easier because it only required a person to block what someone else was looking for, whereas Legilimency felt like being thrown upside down into a constantly swirling Pensieve that may or may not even have what you were looking for.
After dragging another chair forward opposite Pettigrew, Draco cleared his throat, pointed his wand at Pettigrew's face, and exchanged a look with Harry before casting, "Rennervate."
Small eyes flickered open, but Pettigrew had not even had time to focus his gaze on any one person before Draco was in his line of sight, making eye contact.
"Legilimens!"