Disclaimer- Not mine. All characters and recognizable plot belongs to JKR.
Author's Note- Just because someone commented on the tattoo design, I'd like to say that there is a reason for Remus' tattoo. But after a little more thought I did decide to get rid of Harry's tattoo, so I edited the last chapter and got rid of it.
Oh, and I've changed a bit of the last chapter to make it so that Harry doesn't give them the whole story about how he fought Voldie and everything. I decided that if that happened one of them probably would've looked for more info on it and it would've been too suspicious when they found nothing. Now they just think it was impossible for him to go back to his 'old' school because the new headmaster, who killed the old one, didn't like him and would've killed him on sight.
To anyone who read this story before; I know it used to be Harry/Remus, but I've decided that I'm barely capable of writing a regular pairing that I'm familiar with, so I really can't write slash. So this story is now Harry/Hermione. There are a few new changes, so you might wanna re-read the first few chapters even if you read it before.
Big Thanks to everyone who reviews.
CHAPTER FOUR
Harry awoke to the alarm that he'd set the night before. He quickly cut it off before he woke anyone else up' he'd learned the hard way that dorm-mates don't exactly appreciate being woken earlier than they'd planned by some, crazy, early riser.
He decided that for the next few hours he might as well get a head start on the Wolfsbane potion for Teddy for the coming full moon. He checked the time after he'd gone through his morning routine, getting ready for the day, and realized that he still had at least two hours before most of the castle would be up and about.
He grabbed his shrunken trunk full of potions ingredients and equipment out of his regular trunk that everyone saw. Once he was sure he had everything, Harry left the dorm and tower. He had many trunks like the potions one, they were easy ways to organize his belongings and, with them being shrunken to not much larger than a matchbox, no one would ever really notice them; so, they made great ways to inconspicuously carry stuff around.
Once in the Hall it occurred to him that he didn't really have a place picked out to make the Wolfsbane.
He couldn't very well use the student labs to make a potion like this, even if it had been invented already.
He paced while thinking and the motion reminded him of one, little-known, room in the castle that he could use.
Harry headed to the corridor on the fifth floor where the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy was and looked at the wall across from the tapestry.
What do I need? What do I need?
I need a place that no one can get into for me to make Teddy's Wolfsbane.
I need a place that no one can get into for me to make Teddy's Wolfsbane.
I need a place that no one can get into for me to make Teddy's Wolfsbane.
After the third pass in front of the blank stretch of wall a door appeared. Harry opened the door and found the lab of every Potions Master's dreams.
There were three main areas of the lab: the fires, the preparation area, and the area with the supplies.
The countertops were a black-green marble that wouldn't react with any ingredients. There were rare ingredients that, though Harry had no idea what they'd be used for, he knew Snape would've drooled over. There were cauldrons, knives, and other equipment in all shapes, sizes, and materials.
Once again, it's a Potions Master's dream.
Harry only admired the place for a moment; he knew that he had work to do and no time for fooling around. The potion takes nearly three weeks to make and Harry had just the perfect amount of time to finish it before the full moon if he worked every spare minute he had on it.
As he began setting up his ingredients, Harry couldn't help but wish the potion was tasteless so he'd be able to slip some to Remus. It was a shame that the potion truly tasted horrid from what Harry knew about it; Teddy really seemed to despise it, and Professor Lupin wouldn't have taken it if he hadn't hated the experience of transforming so much.
He shook off the guilt he felt at having a way to help Remus and not using it and got back to chopping the Lacewing Flies.
After Harry got to a point where he needed to let the Potion simmer for 13 hours and 22 minutes he left to go back to Gryffindor Tower. He would've headed down to breakfast, but he needed to change his robes as he'd had a bit of an accident with the armadillo bile, dragon liver, and doxy eggs.
Long story short: it looked like he got hit by the insides of an exploding Blast-Ended Skrewt.
It was just his luck that he passed Sirius on the way to the tower.
"What the hell happened to you?"
"It was an accident. I was exploring the castle and…well, you don't really want to know."
"Yes I do!" Sirius always was curious, Harry really should've known better that to make it seem like something interesting happened.
"No you don't. I need to change, meet you in the Great Hall?" Harry asked, closing discussion of why he looked the way he did.
Sirius pouted but he agreed and went down to breakfast. As he left he shouted over his shoulder "I've got something I want to ask you about once you come down!"
Harry had no idea what Sirius would want to talk about.
Harry shrugged out of his robes before continuing his trek back to the tower; that way he could avoid any more questions about his disgusting robes.
He didn't pass anyone else that he knew, in this time or from the future, until he was walking into the full Great Hall.
He saw Lily sitting alone and decided to abandon his plans of sitting with the Marauders in favor of sitting with her.
"Good Morning." He said as he slid onto the bench next to Lily.
"Hello, Harry. How was your first night here?"
"I think I'm going to like it here at Hogwarts. I finally caught up on my sleep and woke up early enough this morning to do a little exploring."
""That's nice. Do you know which classes you're going to be taking?" She asked, curious about whether they'd be in many classes together.
He piled a bit of breakfast onto his plate before answering. "Er…I'll definitely be in Defense, Potions, Transfiguration, and Charms. I was thinking about Astronomy, Magical Creatures, Arithmancy and Runes."
Harry had learned up to NEWT level Arithmancy and Runes after the war so that he would be able to work in the Department of Mysteries. Making spells required both of those subjects, and Harry had become interested in making spells after his sixth year when he discovered who the Half-Blood Prince was. He'd actually gotten quite good at it and that was what he'd been doing for the Department of Mysteries before he'd had the idea to come back in time, even if he hadn't planned to come quite this far back.
"Eight classes? Are you sure about that? I've heard that seventh year gets quite stressful." She looked concerned for his sanity, and Harry could understand her concern. He'd felt the same way for Hermione in their third year when she was taking way too many classes
"I'll be fine. You have to remember, I told you all yesterday that I'm a few years older than you are. And I actually did a bit of learning in the last few years, so I'm probably far enough ahead that it won't be a problem taking all those classes."
"That might be true. How old are you, actually; if you don't mind me asking."
"It's fine, just don't tell too many people; Dumbledore wanted me to at least try to blend in with the rest of the students. I've just turned twenty a month ago." Well, it was sort of true. Harry's twentieth birthday would've been a couple days away in the future, and July the 31st had already passed in this year. And just saying he was 20 made more sense than trying to explain that.
"I never would've guessed. I doubt anyone will think you're over eighteen, so I think you'll be okay here. What've you been doing since that you left your old school?" She really was interested, and Harry didn't mind answering her questions. He knew he would've questioned any transfer students who came to the school in his time about their past.
"Mostly I've been working on learning more, Hermione, my fiancée, would never have let me get away with just stopping my education just because I could. I learned a lot of the rarer forms of magic that aren't taught in schools...Well, no, that's not exactly right. Mostly I've been taking care of Teddy. That's definitely a full time job in itself. Other than that, I also did quite a bit of creating spells."
"Who's Te-"
She was interrupted from her question by a semi-loud shout, from a few feet away, of "OI! Marks! Get away from her!"
They turned toward the shout and saw James barreling toward them. "What's wrong with you now, James? Don't you realize I can talk to anyone I want?" Lily asked, mad about the way James seemed to think he needed to keep everyone away from her.
"He's no good!" James said in a lower voice. He'd noticed the other people in the Hall looking in their direction. "He's just trying to get close to you because he wants you; he'll use you until he gets what he wants then he'll forget all about you, Lily."
"What?" Harry had no idea where James got that idea. Harry, in no way, liked his mum in the way James was insinuating. "Where on earth did you get that idea? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Harry was truly offended that someone could think so lowly of him.
"You know it's the truth! You told us last night that you've already got a son, and you obviously didn't marry his mum." James pointed at Harry's bare left ring-finger. "So you obviously have no proper respect for women."
Thankfully no one had been able to hear their conversation because of a silencing charm Harry had put up when he'd seen how James was going to start shouting. He could only Imagine the rumors those statements would've started.
James thought Harry was some sort of womanizing bastard who went around shagging random women and then forgot about them. And he feared that Harry was trying to snag Lily away from him.
It was kind of sweet that he was trying to protect Lily from Harry, in a twisted sort of way.
Harry just laughed at James. The accusations really were funny to him; James should've just waited until he had all the information before he went tearing off making accusations.
Harry made a wild guess that that was probably what Sirius wanted to ask him about earlier.
"That's ridiculous. My son is adopted. I was his godfather and when his parents were killed I adopted him. The girl I said was his mum, Hermione, she's my best friend, and fiancée, who moved here with me; they're staying at the house I bought for the three of us and she's taking care of him right now while I'm here at school." Harry explained in an icy voice. He said it all calmly and rationally, making James feel especially foolish about his comments. "And, though Lily is definitely beautiful, I have no intentions of trying anything with her, so neither of you has anything to worry about from me. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to be someplace else; perhaps I'll find people to be around where my intentions won't be insulted."
He took down the silencing charm and stalked grumpily to the other end of the Gryffindor table, where he could see Professor McGonagall approaching the table to hand out schedules. He really couldn't believe that James took such an instant dislike to him that he'd act that way without ever even trying to have a single proper conversation.
He went up to Professor McGonagall, before she managed to reach the table, and asked her for his schedule.
She was a little put-off by his scowl, but let him tell her what classes he wanted to take and gave him a schedule anyway.
She, like Lily, had warned him about taking too many classes. He'd simply told her that he would manage before stalking out of the Hall, shooting a glare at James on the way out.
He didn't really have much idea where to go, and his first class didn't start for another hour, so he headed outside toward the forest.
He figured a run through the Forbidden Forest would cool off his temper and let him relax. He walked a good fifty meters into the forest, well away from anyone looking's range of vision, before he transformed into his animagus.
There was something about being in his animagus form that just made it easier when things got stressful.
As a snow leopard Harry was able to easily climb to the top of the trees. He went as high up as possible and looked around to find out where he wanted to go. He'd never actually had much chance to explore the Forest before, and this seemed like as good a time as any to start. Nothing really caught his eye, so Harry went back down to the forest Floor and just began running.
It was twenty minutes before he found himself somewhere he recognized. And it wasn't exactly somewhere he had wanted to be again. Actually, it was somewhere Harry could have lived his life without seeing even the first time.
When Harry saw the first car-sized spider he'd seen since the Final Battle, he turned and bolted in a different direction. He was very grateful that his Leopard form was faster than his 12 year old human form used to be and could easily outrun the Acromantulas, because once the first one saw him it must've called for the others. Within seconds there were over thirty of the car-sized, or maybe even larger, arachnids coming from all over and surrounding him; and Harry had no desire to become breakfast.
He eventually ran up another tree and jumped from treetop to treetop. Once he was away from the spiders he still continued the tree-hopping; it was actually kind of exhilarating. The castle outline was dimly visible in the distance and Harry knew that by the time he made it back to the school he would have to rush to his first class.
As much fun as jumping from tree to tree was, it was a bit too slow. He climbed down slowly, disappointed at the boring prospect of running back to Hogwarts, and started to go back to the castle.
He realized that he'd never actually done much fooling around in this form to figure out what, exactly, he'd be able to do, so he tested the limits of his speed and agility as he ran.
It was incredible to Harry how quickly he was able to move as a snow leopard. His senses had improved after his first transformation; otherwise Harry was sure his speed would've made things a little blurry to his vision.
By the time he was ready to transform, still far enough into the Forest that he wouldn't be seen, Harry was feeling nearly giddy from the exhilarating speed and constant wind his running had caused to blow through his hair. He'd calmed down enough to realize that, though James had jumped a bit too quickly to his assumptions, it was slightly reasonable to think that Harry was actually the one responsible for Teddy being born; especially when Harry hadn't clarified the night before.
I wonder what he'd think if he knew who Teddy's real father was. I bet James would get the shock of his life with that bit of information; for that matter, so would Remus.
Professor Vector wasn't pleased when Harry slid into the Arithmancy classroom at the last second before the bell.
"Sorry, Professor. I got lost on the way here." He lied.
She wasn't exactly impressed, but he was still on time, barely, so she didn't take points or give a detention.
Harry hoped that he'd be able to get on her good side eventually, because he didn't really want to have a teacher making things difficult for him this year.
"You could've asked me how to get here." Remus whispered to him as Harry sat in the open seat next to him.
"I didn't know who was going to be in any of my classes." Harry answered before he started taking notes on what the professor was saying.
It was something he'd already known, like Harry had expected it to be, but he still took notes to keep up appearances.
Once Professor Vector had set them an assignment practicing what she'd taught that day Harry was able to actually talk to Remus.
"So what other classes do you have?" Harry asked, because he realized that he needed to at least pretend to not know where his classes were going to be and that he might need someone to guide him around.
As it turned out, they had all of the same classes, except Remus wasn't taking either Potions or Ancient Runes.
Now that Harry thought about it, he remembered the older Professor Lupin telling him once that he'd always been terrible at Potions.
Remus told him that Sirius, James and Lily were all in Potions and Lily was in Runes, so they'd be able to help him get to those classes.
After Runes came the class Harry was most looking forward to; Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry couldn't wait to find out if Dumbledore's latest recruit for the job, Professor Lovegood, was going to be up for the job. Whereas Remus had never heard of anyone called Lovegood, Harry couldn't help but remember Luna. And then he remembered her father and prayed that it wasn't him that Dumbledore had gotten to teach this year. That would've turned out worse than Lockhart.
When Harry finally entered the DADA room and saw the Professor for the first time, she'd been oddly absent from the Welcoming Feast, he had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn't seeing things. He could've sworn he was looking at Luna.
But that was impossible. Luna had died in the Battle of Hogwarts.
That must mean that Harry was looking at Luna's mother. Harry wasn't sure what to think about that; after all, he knew this woman's future daughter and from the way Luna had described her mother she'd been similar to both Luna and her father in her odd beliefs.
Harry, after seeing the familiar far-away look in the Professor's eyes, was thoroughly convinced that Dumbledore really was a lunatic.
He sighed, shook his head in a defeated sort of way, and went to get a seat.
It seemed like the students of this time were just as used to disastrous teachers as Harry was and were wary about this new Professor. The only seats left were in the very front of the room.
Sirius was looking as excited as ever as he sat down next to Harry. "Hey, Harry. How was your first class today? You know, I still have a question or two for you about what I wanted to talk about at breakfast before you left. Don't think you can get me to forget something simply by avoiding me for a couple hours."
Sirius said all this without any sort of pause and Harry wondered how he did it without taking a breath.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"If you'd given me a chance before James had caught up to you, I was going to warn you about how he was planning to be a prat." Harry saw James glare at Sirius, who only grinned in response. "But I wanted to ask you if you play Quidditch."
Well that wasn't what I expected. I thought for sure he wanted to question me about Teddy.
"Er…Yeah, I'm pretty good. Why?"
"Great! What position do you play? Wait, let me guess…Hmm, you look too small to be a Keeper, and you seem petty observant of you r surroundings all the time, so I'm going to say you play Seeker. Am I right?" Harry nodded, once again marveling at Sirius' ability to talk non-stop. "That's bloody perfect. I needed a Seeker, anyway. You see, I made a bet against this Ravenclaw girl I know that I could come up with a better Quidditch team than she could, and no one on either of the teams can be a player for either house's team. We're planning to have a match against each other's teams in two weeks."
"And you want me to play for your team?"
"Exactly. I just need a second Beater, Moony's the first, and a Keeper now that I've found you."
"Hang on Sirius; it's been years since I've even been on a broom, much less played a match. I haven't even been in the air on purpose since the motorcycle crash with-" Harry shut up suddenly, realizing exactly what he'd been about to say. He'd nearly revealed that he knew Hagrid and that would've been a tad suspicious considering that this was supposedly only his second day at Hogwarts.
"You flew on a motorcycle?" Sirius asked; an odd gleam in his eyes. Harry remembered how Sirius adored motorcycles.
"Sort of."
"Good morning, class." Came a dreamy voice, before Sirius could answer.
Damn, she even sounds a bit like Luna.
"Good morning, Professor." The class chorused back.
"I'm Professor Lovegood, and I'll be your teacher for Defense until winter break. Your other Professors haven't really left any notes on what you've learned, so I'm going to need someone to help me out a bit."
So far, so good. No mentions or Nargles or anything else crazy, yet. Maybe she won't be so bad. Except, I wonder why she's leaving after winter break?
Lily raised her hand and, when the Professor called on her, she told her what they'd learned the year before.
"Last year we started with stunners, shields, the exploding hex, bone-breaker curse, and other offensive spells. After that we started work on Non-verbal spells."
They just learned stunners? And shields? I know I was already doing those by the end of fourth year after the tournament.
Sirius must've noticed my furrowed brow, because he asked "What is it?"
I waved him off and muttered "Tell you later." hoping he'd forget about it.
"Okay, that's a little behind, but I'm sure we can work more on your spells this year. Do you have any experience dueling?" The professor asked.
"Too much." I muttered under my breath as the rest of the class responded in the negative.
No one heard me except Remus, but that was because of his superior hearing, so he kept it hidden that he'd heard.
"Then that's what I'll work on with you all, for now. So, get into pairs that you'll be able to work in."
Sirius paired up with James, one of Lily's friends, Alice, who Harry was surprised to notice was the future mother of Neville, got to Lily before Harry could, and Moony got grabbed by a Ravenclaw girl who Harry had seen trying to flirt with Remus earlier.
Looking around the room Harry mentally sighed when he saw that the only available person was Snape.
As he crossed the room to go stand next to Snape, Harry saw Remus' apologetic look in his direction. From the way he kept inching away from the Ravenclaw girl, Harry could tell that Remus wasn't exactly happy with the partnering.
Harry was actually interested in finding out if the younger Snape was just as snarky and…annoying as the old one. Harry had a feeling that he would be if his scowl was anything to go by.
Oh, well. I might as well be civil, though.
"Hello, I'm Harry."
Snape did not accept the offered handshake and instead just glared. "Snape." He said as an introduction.
Yep. Definitely still as annoying as ever.
"Alright, class. What I want you to do now is just an exercise to practice aiming and dodging. One of you will shoot light stinging hexes at the other and the one who's being shot at can try to dodge the hexes. Oh, and I want you to do this nonverbally, if you can. Do this for…10 minutes so I can see where you're all at. Go."
I knew that there was no way Snape would trust me not to try to really hex him, so I offered to let him try to hit me first. "You can do the shooting first, if you want."
He just nodded and, without warning, started shooting the little red beams of light at me.
My battle-honed instincts kicked in and I started dodging. Seeing that he hadn't hit me, Snape started sending the spells faster. His aim was good, but I knew that it would get better someday. I managed to avoid his hexes for the whole five minutes that it was his turn to shoot them. It was honestly a little fun; I'd started to enjoy dueling way back in my fifth year when I started teaching the D.A and this was really harmless, so I was totally in my element.
I was smiling like a maniac the entire time. By three minutes in I was laughing my head off as I ducked, jumped and rolled around the room. The whole thing really was fun. I probably thought it was a bit more fun than it should've been, but the fact that I knew even if I did get hit it wouldn't really do much damage made it more entertaining than it usually would have been.
Snape's annoyed face at my laughing made me laugh even more. This was more than I'd laughed in a while and I wasn't even sure why it was funny.
When Professor Lovegood told everyone to switch roles I gladly took a moment to re-compose myself as I wondered how to go about this.
Should I hit Snape with all I've got? Or go easy on him?
I decided to go slightly easy on him at first and find out whether he's any good with what we're doing before kicking up the difficulty to give him a bit of a challenge.
One thing about Snape, though, was that he'd never been much of a fool. He could tell I wasn't giving it my all at first and he obviously didn't like it. So I made it harder for him.
He wasn't graceful by any standards, and I could hit him with a hex every so often, but Snape did a pretty good job.
After the ten minutes were up Professor Lovegood called an end to our practicing.
Before we'd all begun shooting spells around she'd vanished all the desks and chairs, so when she told everyone to have a seat she got a few funny looks from the class.
Instead of replacing the furniture with something similar to what she'd vanished, the Professor just conjured a bunch of fluffy bean-bags before tucking her wand behind her ear in a gesture that definitely reminded me of Luna. The Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs in the room all happily flopped onto the comfortable cushions while the Slytherins sneered at them for a bit before eventually joining them.
Professor Lovegood spent the remainder of the class period pointing out our flaws and the things she'd noticed while we had worked.
She might have mentioned that laughing during a real duel wouldn't exactly help to keep me alive.
Believe me, though, I'd already learned that lesson from both Sirius and Bellatrix. Sirius let himself get distracted far a couple seconds and he was still laughing as he fell through the Veil; Bellatrix was just plain crazy and cackled right up to the end.
I wasn't stupid enough to follow either example in a real duel.
All in all, even though we didn't really do much, I was glad to see that the Professor this year wasn't 100 percent crazy; like, say, Lockhart or Umbridge.
In the corridor, on the way down to lunch, Sirius stepped up beside me and asked "Seriously, what was with all that laughing while you were dodging? All the cackling you were doing you were making me think you might be part of my family; the Blacks are known for being crazy, and most of us have a tendency to laugh at terribly inappropriate times." He said this in all seriousness.
"I just…enjoy dueling and I haven't had reason to duel anyone for a couple months now, so I'm going to enjoy Defense this year."
"You've dueled before?" Lily asked me.
"Way too much. I've been sort-of working on my dueling since I was twelve. I didn't really start working very hard on it until my fourth year, though. I was a couple months away from turning 15 when I had my first dangerous duel."
"How dangerous is dangerous?" Lily seemed to be getting that motherly worry that 'Mione was famous for.
I'd bet that if I tell her exactly how dangerous it was she'll start yelling at me exactly like I know Hermione would if I were to ever tell her exactly what happened when Voldemort kidnapped me from the tournament.
Should I tell her, or should I just smooth it over?
We'll see how bad she wants to know first…
"I don't think you really want to know, so I'll just keep that to myself for now." My voice was light and joking, so they all knew that if they pressed for information I would tell them.
I tried to walk away down the corridor, but soon felt a tugging on the back of the neck of my robes.
"Forget that idea; spill. I wanna know how dangerous it was. I need to know whether you're one of those people who needs to be watched carefully for trouble."
I smiled in a 'you asked for it' kind of way before answering, and expecting the explosion I was sure would follow. "Well, he definitely tried to kill me, and he did murder Cedric and that old muggle. And that was the first time I was tortured, at least that was the first time he tortured me with the Cruciatus; he had managed to get me a few other ways before that…So I'd say it was pretty dangerous."
Sirius and James were already backing away; and Remus was shooting wary glances toward Lily, who looked like she might start smoking at the ears any second now.
"Come again? I don't believe I heard that right." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself that she had heard wrong.
"I bet you heard right, you don't seem elderly enough to be going deaf." I knew I was asking to be yelled at by my mother, but I wanted to see exactly how explosive her protective temper was. All anyone in the future had ever told me was that she's fiercely protective of anyone she deems under her protection.
"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL WERE YOU DOING DUELING A MURDERER AT FOURTEEN?"
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Author's Note- Any good? Yes? No? Maybe so? Why don't you tell me about it….maybe in a review?
Sorry for the delay in updating, nut I've started a couple new stories, and I'm about to start typing one I wrote over last summer. And Winter break in Spain isn't exactly conducive to writing for me….
Oh, Well. It's here now, and it's probably the longest chapter I've ever written for anything.
Thanks For Reading,
21ShootingStars.