Alright, I'd like to address a couple of things brought up by guest reviewers, if only to get them off my chest. First, the Harry in this story is human. He has flaws. He has not activated degreelessness mode. As such, he makes mistakes. Please also note that this fic is mostly written from the standpoint of an 'imperfect narrator,' that meaning that not everything that the narrator says will be correct; the characters' thoughts are the characters' thoughts, not Gospel truth. One old saying that I have found to be very true is, 'Men plan. God laughs,' My stories in progress and any future ones will tend to reflect this.
Second, there is a longstanding record of formerly great cultures falling on their faces and trying to hold on to past glories. Look at the Arab world. While Europe was in the grips of the Dark Ages, the Arabs were building water clocks of stunning complexity and beauty among other feats of science. Even as recently as the 1700s, Arabic doctors were preferred over those trained in Europe because they had their shit together and didn't kill their patients nearly as often. Now, we look at a lot of the Arab world with disdain because they haven't done anything since. A culture that would have once been considered liberal with respect to the treatment of women is now deservedly scorned for their poor treatment of them. For that matter, America, who once had one of the most competitive education systems in the world now has a public school system that is a shambling wreck(thank you teachers' unions!). I see no reason that, given the corruption we see in Fudge's office in canon, we should have any expectation of effectiveness elsewhere. Harry Potter's Magical England is stuck in the glory days of Merlin. Just like the actual Arab world: What have they done lately? Other than sponsor terrorists, that is.
Alright, rant over, on to chapter two
XXXXX
Tempus Fugit
Chapter Two
Once the chaos of their arrival was sorted out, the Order set to fixing the cottage with a will even as several new arrivals stopped to be messily sick at the sight of the various remains the car-turned-cat had spread all over the vicinity. Har-Hadrian noted that even Dumbledore's eyes opened wide at the carnage the transfiguration appeared to have inflicted. The old man's gaze focused briefly but intensely on the twenty-something turned preteen before sliding past him to his assumed persona's sister-in-law. "Lily, we came as quickly as we could," he said, and Har-Hadrian, he reminded himself again, made sure not to look at the lying bastard.
Your familiar could have had you here before Sirius if you cared at all, Hadrian thought while using his occlumency to keep his true emotions off his face, and hoping the expression of fear and pain he'd pasted on his features looked more believable than it felt.
"I heard about James, my dear, I'm sorry for your loss," he continued, kind grandfatherly expression firmly in place. It would have been easy to miss how his eyes took in Harry in his transfigured cradle, and tightened slightly as they revealed no marking of any sort on the child. "At least young Harry seems to be alright."
Hadrian felt Lily tense slightly behind him for just a moment before she relaxed. He didn't know her well, but he suspected their plan had just survived a near-miss at disaster. At least now I know I inherited the temper honestly.
"Thank you Headmaster," Lily said, not having to fake the grief in her voice at the reminder of her murdered husband so much as suppress her anger. "I suppose you want to see what's left of his body then?" she asked, inclining her head at the dust and robes that were all that remained of Voldemort's corpse.
Hadrian watched out of the corner of his eye as the old meddler cast several spells at the remains and hid his smile at the man's befuddlement. That at least confirms that he's never run into a Mortivore before. Though the wraiths were rare, perhaps even undiscovered entirely at this point in time, they left a distinct magical trace behind them.
Finally, he turned away from the body and re-approached Lily, casting another subtle confused glance at Harry. "My dear, I'm afraid I don't recognize the spell used to defeat Voldemort," several of the Order members in earshot flinched with Hadrian a heartbeat behind them as Dumbledore continued, "could you tell me what happened?"
Lily nodded before beginning to spin out their engineered story of the fight, with James using a spell she didn't recognize to transfigure the neighbor's car into the giant metal monstrosity that was still lounging in their yard and Peter and old Snake Face breaking inside and leaving the other Death Eaters to face it alone. She claimed Peter's death as a result of a curse deflected by Voldemort before describing the spell that wounded James and taking the hit from the debris, but inserted James's death to coincide with Hadrian's arrival. " . . . and then . . . I'm not sure, Headmaster, it looked like accidental magic," she claimed as she hugged Hadrian tightly.
The preteen in question made sure to get a good look at the expression of Dumbledore's face. It was absolutely priceless as his personal theory appeared to have been stood on its head. "You mean . . ." he trailed off, looking like a balloon someone had just deflated.
"He stepped inside just as V-voldemort killed James," again, Lily didn't have to fake the grief in her voice of the tears in her eyes. "He must have seen something out of the corner of his eye, because he whirled and cast a spell at Hadrian. Hadrian yelled, and this cloud of blue burst from his hands. When it cleared, the body had cracks running through it and just," she gestured, as though scattering something from her hands, "just fell to dust."
Hadrian couldn't believe how good a liar his mo-his sister-in-law was. She injected just the right amount of awe into the statement to make it sound like she could hardly believe what she'd seen without quite going over the top and exaggerating it.
Even through Dumbledore's disciplined façade, Hadrian could tell he was reevaluating his assumptions. Hadrian knew what would happen next. Dumbledore, in his own way, was every bit as predictable as Tommy-boy. When in doubt, gather information.
"Hadrian?" he asked, kneeling down, full Grandfatherly act employed, "Can you tell me what happened? How you came to be here?" Even knowing it was coming, the Legilimency probe was almost a surprise.
Harry didn't so much as flinch. He gave no indication at all that he'd felt anything. Though rare, natural Occlumens were far from unheard of. Still, because of the eye contact, Harr-Hadrian was glad he'd cast a cosmetic charm to turn his eyes a robin's egg blue. "I-" he started, and then pretended to hesitate. He looked down and swallowed as though trying to fight back tears. It wasn't hard to fake, all he had to do was remember that once again Harry Potter would grow up without a father and he found producing tears quite easy. "My mum, sir, she'd been sick a long time. When-when she . . ." he trailed off, turned his head aside and swallowed before continuing, "Before she passed, she told me my father's family lived here. I looked earlier today, but I couldn't find it. When I came back tonight-" Hadrian cut off again and looked to where, James Potter's body lay under a conjured sheet and permitted the tears he had restrained to flow.
"He looked like the picture of my dad, but younger. And he just . . . just fell and-" Harry gathered everything he could behind his occlumency shields and pushed his grief forward. He tucked his head into Lily's chest and began to sob.
Albus too-bloody-many-names and his mother both began to comfort him, though only Lily's efforts were truly sincere. "I'm truly sorry you had to see that, my boy," Dumbledore said, though Harry could see from his peripheral vision that the Headmaster's eyes didn't quite match his tone. It was obvious he'd put together 'Hadrian's' fabricated lineage. His next question confirmed it. "Lily, I'm sorry to presume upon you given what you've suffered, but I must ask you, would be willing to take young Hadrian here in?"
Lily shot the old man a look before she replied, "Of course I will, Headmaster. I can tell just looking at him that he's related to-to James. How could I turn away family?" The Meddler in Chief's benevolent smile seemed to assure that he had entertained no such thoughts, but that he merely hadn't wanted to presume. Hadrian had to bite his tongue to keep from trying to hex the old sodomite.
"Just a couple more questions, young man, and then I will let you get comfortable with your new arrangements," he said, benevolent smile and eye twinkle firmly in place. "Have you had any formal schooling yet?" he asked and Harry immediately knew where he was going.
"Not at school, sir. Mum hired tutors for me when we moved back here." That caught Dumbledore's attention.
"Oh, and where did you live before?"
"Mom said I was born back in the States, and that she moved back here when I was two to be where my dad was from," And, Hadrian considered, that also neatly explains why I'm not in the Hogwarts book. I wasn't born here.
Dumbledore apparently came to the same conclusion. "And when is your birthday, young man? As you might have gathered, I'm the headmaster at a very prestigious school in Scotland, and I'd like you to attend."
And here we come to the crux of it, Hadrian realized. The entire conversation had existed so he could ask that one question. "I'm twelve, sir, my birthday is September the Thirtieth," he said. For a moment, more sensed than actually seen, Dumbledore froze. I wouldn't be surprised if his heart skipped a beat, Hadrian thought irreverently before he seemed to consider something. "I'm not sure I'd like to go to a school though," he said, lowering his head shyly.
Dumbledore's face broke into a smile that seemed quite sickly for just a fraction of a second before he recovered his composure, "I'll give you and Lily here some time to think it over before next term starts," he said. "Unfortunately, this was not the only attack tonight, and I am needed elsewhere, so I must bid you all good night," the old meddler concluded as he began to somewhat abruptly leave.
Hadrian smiled to himself, his face still inclined towards the ground.
Mission accomplished.
XXXXX
It was all Dumbledore could do to make it back to his office in Hogwarts before collapsing into his chair and beginning to swear. How could I have been so wrong? he asked himself, going over the prophecy's wording once given the new information he'd obtained.
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. He'd assumed that the verse meant that 'the one' was going to be born soon, but it could just as easily, he realized, refer to the boy returning to England from the Americas or even approaching Godric's Hollow for the inevitable encounter.
Born to those who have thrice defied him, If the boy was the bastard son of Charlus Potter, the man's legendary denouncement of several Pureblood-supported pieces of legislation in the Wizengamot might very well qualify, though finding out what the boy's mother had done to defy the dark lord would be harder.
Born as the seventh month dies. That had seemed so obvious. July was the seventh month of the calendar, but September bore the Latin root sept, which meant seven. It was horrifically embarrassing that he had not even considered the possibility.
And the Dark Lord will mark him his equal. Again, he'd assumed that the mark must be physical. What if he had been wrong? Was the fact that he turned to attack the boy as a serious threat enough to be considered the mark? He would not have even considered it the day before. On the other hand, he also hadn't even conceived of the idea that he was looking at the wrong month the day before either.
But he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not. That was also less than clear. The spell residue from Voldemort's corpse was completely incomprehensible. Was something about the boy's magic different from that of others? Albus simply didn't know. Abruptly, he was reminded of an offhand comment Nicolas Flamel made back when he was studying alchemy as his apprentice, 'The only certainty about foretellings is that they are subtle and difficult to understand. Even if you happened to know the prophecy in question was in process, you likely wouldn't recognize the fulfillment until it was over.'
One thing he did know, however, was that it was imperative that the boy attend Hogwarts where he could keep an eye on him.
XXXXX
It was nearly four o'clock in the morning before the last of the Order of the Phoenix and the few Aurors who'd bothered to show up hours late and several pence short left the newly repaired cottage. The deceased Death Eaters, including, much to the surprise of the Order, one Peter Pettigrew, had been hauled off to be reassembled, bagged, and tagged at the ministry while several members of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad had, after much difficulty, managed to turn the metallic feline on the lawn back into a car for the neighbor. Sirius had contacted Andrews and Sons Funeral Parlor to take James's body away for burial preparations, and one of the Andrews boys had been and gone. Lily had just managed to get Harry down for what remained of the night when Hadrian reappeared, a floating chest and tent bag behind him.
She shot a questioning look at him, so he explained, "Don't know if the Ministry is monitoring the area. Lots of people were casting levitation charms here a bit ago not much cause for shrinking ones though."
Lily's left eyebrow inched upwards, though in surprise or suspicion Harry would rather not speculate. "You think they'd be bothering with that right now?"
Suspicion then, he thought before answering, "Are they doing it? Don't know, but the way they've set up the system means they can do it. And Dumbledore is interested enough in me right now that I wouldn't put it past him to order it done in the next few days. Better to get into practice."
His mother's right eyebrow rose to join her left, "What do you mean, Albus is interested in you?" she demanded.
The concern in her voice was like a balm to Hadrian's soul. It was good to know that his parents had cared. That his mother still cared about him. He'd always thought they had, but his upbringing had meant that a small part of him always wondered. Having that question answered brought a sense of peace to him that he hadn't experienced since-
He shied away from the comparison he'd been about to make. "Did he tell you about the prophecy?"
"Yes," Lily answered, drawing the word out, as though questioning the relevance of the line of inquiry.
"Did he tell you the text of the prophecy?" Hadrian continued.
His mother stiffened and drew herself upright, "You know what it says?" she asked just as Sirius walked into the room?
"What what says?" the dog animagus asked.
"The prophecy!" Lily said caught between excitement and shock. She turned back to Hadrian. "Well?" she demanded.
"'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies, and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies,'" he quoted solemnly. Sirius just seemed shocked. Lily, however . . .
"What a bunch of hogwash!" the redhead growled out as she leapt up and began pacing. "That could mean almost anything!"
"Truth," Hadrian said, making calming motions in an attempt to settle his mother down. "The Meddler in Chief never believed in Divination before he saw Trelawney give that prophecy to him during her job interview. I can almost understand why. He's jumped to Divination's defense with the zeal of a convert. The problem is the old man is convinced that it refers to Voldemort and either baby Harry or Neville. This despite the fact that anyone who has undertaken a cursory study of foretelling knows that they are almost impossible to understand. Cryptic doesn't even begin to describe them." he says before correcting himself. "Or rather, he was convinced that it concerned either Harry or Neville. I managed to deflect suspicion onto myself." And something in that last sentence had tickled his memory.
The gears in Lily's brain were visibly turning, but before she could come to a conclusion, Sirius spoke up, "Why?" he demanded before expounding on his question, "Why is he so sure that Harry or Neville was the child mentioned?"
Hadrian opened his mouth to answer bet was cut off as Lily spoke, "Seventh month. He assumed July. Harry and Neville were both born at the end of July."
Hadrian nodded in affirmation, "Correct, but I shouldn't have to tell you two how badly the good guys were losing this war. The Order of the Phoenix was the next best thing to useless, but even so, they were far and away more effective than the Aurors. The ministry would certainly have collapsed before Christmas given the way things were going," he explained. "Dumbledore latched on to the prophecy as a propaganda coup in the beginning, but best I can tell, as things got worse he tried to force the prophecy into fulfillment in order to take down Snake Face before the house of cards fell in on him." He turned back to face Lily fully before he spoke again. "I took his attention on myself because of what he would have tried to do to Harry. What he did do to me in the world I left."
Hadrian took a deep breath, "If you need to take care of any necessities, you'd best do it before I get started. This'll take a while, and it's not the sort of story I want to repeat."
XXXXX
Lily knelt in front of the toilet as she finished emptying her stomach. Sirius was holding her hair back and looking decidedly green himself. Strange, she considered, that hearing about his death affected me more than it did him. She wiped her hand across her mouth without really thinking about it, then reached for her wand. Sirius, however, had anticipated her need and hit her with a breath freshening charm to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth.
Hadrian was leaning against the wall outside the first floor powder room and appeared to be caught somewhere between regretful and embarrassed. "Sorry abou-" he began to apologize before Lily caught him up in a hug worthy of Molly Weasley.
And promptly burst into tears. Hadrian carefully returned the embrace, patting his mother's back. Lily got the feeling that the extradimensional version of her son was uncomfortable with crying women. In other circumstances it might have surprised a laugh out of her. Given what she'd just learned about what her Harry would have had in store for him if Hadrian hadn't arrived, it only made her cry harder.
It took several minutes for her to recover enough to speak clearly, but when she did, Lily was sure to display her gratitude. "Thank you so much, Harry," she said, using his real name, "Thank you for making certain my baby won't have to survive what you did," she continued, choking back another sob. "Thank you so much for coming here to save us."
Hadrian's eyes weren't exactly dry either by that point in time. "And I did a wonderful job at that didn't I?" he sniffed and used one hand to scrub at his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't save Ja-Dad too," he said, eyes bright even if his tears seemed unwilling to fall.
The words hit Lily like a banisher to the chest, but she pushed past the grief and kept on point, "But you saved me. And you saved baby Harry from growing up like you did. You even saved Sirius from a decade in Azkaban." She stared directly into her grown son's eyes, willing him to believe her, to understand what she felt for him. "You left your home with, I assume, no way to return in order to help us. So thank you."
"Not as if there was anything left for me there," Harry admitted softly. Lily shot him a concerned look. Harry shook his head, "We left off after fifth year, right?" he asked. Lily nodded before she realized the question was meant to be rhetorical. Harry acknowledged her affirmation and continued, "I told you that several of the students who went with me to the Department of Mysteries were injured, but we had to take a break before I got any farther . . ."
XXXXX
Har-Hadrian trailed off almost absently. Remembering hurt. A lot. But it was an old, familiar pain by this point.
And as cliché as it was, telling his mother and godfather the story made the pain more bearable still. "Hermione was one of the ones that was injured. She took a weakened curse designed to pulp organs to the chest. Since it wasn't designed to be easily reversible, she was in the hospital wing recovering," he spoke, reminiscing. "She was my best friend, despite what I told Ron by times. She was the only person still alive who I could depend on completely, and seeing her in that hospital bed, it suddenly struck me that I loved her. I depended on her for . . . everything really. Need an obscure fact? Ask Hermione. Spell research? Likewise. Hell, despite being a muggleborn she was the one who identified Slytherin's monster in the Chamber of Secrets, not Albus kiss-my-ass-and-I'll-give-you-crumbs Dumbledore. A thirteen year old girl solved the mystery that had everyone considering shutting down the school," Hadrian cut himself off realizing that he was starting to ramble and refocused. "Anyway, she was lying there, just having finished the sixth out of ten potions she'd have to take that day, and all because I screwed up. And the realization that I never want to be separated from her hits me like a truck as I'm looking at her."
Ha . . .Hadrian shook his head as he continued, "I think, if I had left before speaking to her, I could have talked myself out of it. Convinced myself that caring about her that way would be nothing but a disaster for both of us." He snorted inelegantly, "Of course, I was almost right. Not quite, but close," and there was the sharp, stabbing pain in his chest that he remembered, "still, that's jumping ahead. In any case, I never had the chance to flee from the revelation." To that day, Hadrian had no idea what had given him away; Hermione had never told him how she knew something had happened. "Long story short, Hermione somehow knew I'd had an epiphany. Maybe she saw the light bulb come on over my head. On the other hand, maybe she just knew me that well. She wouldn't let me leave the Hospital Wing before I told her what it was." He smiled sadly as he remembered the discussion.
"I did a lot of tripping over my tongue before I manned up and told her. Finally just blurted out that I'd realized that I loved her." Hadrian's smile abruptly became less sad as he remembered her expression, "Right afterwards, she had this look on her face like I'd hauled off and slapped her with a dead fish. Given that my sum total of dating experience before that had been the Cho disaster, I panicked, stumbling over my words and trying to turn a confession of love bordering on a marriage proposal into something platonic." That drew a laugh from Lily and Sirius.
"Yeah," he acknowledged, "Snowflake. Hell. I probably would have managed to cram both feet into my mouth if she hadn't reached up, grabbed me by the collar, and pulled me down into a kiss," Hadrian again trailed off for a moment. That particular memory had been burned into his synapses so deeply that even Lockhart couldn't have obliviated it out. "Turns out she'd had a crush on me since the troll incident in first year, she was just more mature about it than Ginny and she'd convinced herself in the intervening four years that I didn't even see her as a girl. I reminded her of the Yule Ball. She was still concerned that the only reason I was acting the way I had been was the result of seeing Sirius go through the veil." Hadrian shook his head, "I admitted that I was still dealing with it and that it hurt, but that I'd realized, seeing her in that bed, that if I lost her too it would kill me. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon holding hands and talking." Seeing the look Sirius was giving him he admitted, "There may also have been the occasional kiss. It isn't central to the story."
Recovering from the Sirius-invoked tangent, Hadrian continued, "It was surprisingly easy to go from best friends to a more romantic relationship. We more or less continued on as before, but with more hand holding and the occasional snog in a broom closet. But even though my personal life was turning around, the lives of a lot of people in the Wizarding World were going right directly to hell," Hadrian continued, his tone turning dire. "Since he'd been revealed at the Ministry, Voldemort had no reason to hide his presence further. All summer there we murders in the paper and notices of attacks on non-magicals. Then when we returned to Hogwarts in September, Hermione and I discovered that Draco had taken the Dark Mark and had a mission at school." Hadrian's eyebrows turned down into almost a 'V' shape in remembered aggravation.
"We told Dumbledore, but he didn't seem concerned, and since we hadn't seen the Mark, he refused to believe us. In the end, it got several people hurt and a lot of others, including him, killed when Death Eaters stormed the school. Snape hit him with a Killing Curse and knocked him off the Astronomy Tower."
That statement occasioned quite a bit of chaos, "That worthless, sniveling bastard!" Sirius growled as he leapt to his feet and began to pace. Lily simply scowled. Hadrian couldn't be certain, but he suspected that it was at what lengths a man who had once been her friend had fallen to.
"Calm down Sirius," Hadrian ordered before he continued, "That wasn't the worst of it, really. Dumbledore promised me personal lessons at the beginning of the first term that year, but they were a complete waste of time. All we did was look at pensive memories of Snake Face's formative years. We could have done that the first night and then started on something worthwhile, but he managed to stretch them out until the Death Eaters hit. Only useful thing I learned was that the bastard made a half-dozen soul anchors called Horcruxes. Maybe if he'd taught me something worthwhile, I could have helped keep casualties down when the bastards hit the school. Instead, it was a bloodbath.
"Hermione had contacted the DA while Dumbledore and I went to a cave near the ocean trying to retrieve one of Tommy-boy's Horcruxes. All we found were a fake and a lot of Inferni, but thanks to Hermione several members of the DA had packed their things and convinced a few of their housemates to be ready to leave. They're the only reason any of us got out, but a lot of the muggleborn who didn't come with us were murdered before the Order and some of the teachers managed to force the Death Eaters to retreat." Hadrian looked up to see his mother and Sirius looking pale.
"How did they even get inside the wards in the first place?" Lily demanded, outraged, "Hogwarts is supposed to be the safest place in the country!"
Hadrian snorted before answering, "Draco had been fixing a vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirements all year. They bypassed the wards completely. But that's not the best part. The best part of the whole farce was that Dumbledore knew all year what Draco was doing. And let him do it because expelling him would have gotten the murderous little bastard killed." Hadrian had expected shouts of outrage when he finished his statement. Instead, Sirius and his mother simply stared at him openmouthed for several seconds before finding their voices.
"You mean to tell us that, instead of keeping the students safe, he knowingly permitted a marked Death Eater to bring other Death Eaters inside the wards?" his mother asked, sounding almost disbelieving.
"Yeah, apparently students' lives only matter if they might be convinced to turn away from the Dark Side," Hadrian replied.
"How could he even contemplate something like that!?"
And there was the explosion he'd been expecting. "Best guess? He was either well on the road to senility, or he had an ax to grind. By that point, he knew he was already dying; what better way to go out than as a martyr? After all I was the only one who could have refuted the legend of his 'heroic' death, and I was all but persona non grata for telling people truths they didn't want to hear!" Hadrian shook his head while his mother and godfather looked on openmouthed. "By then it was obvious that the ministry was less than useless, and even though we never expected just how bad things were becoming, Hermione and I had a plan.
"The previous summer, Hermione had convinced me to jump through the hoops required to get a muggle passport. I used it to book a flight to Japan. We'd done some research and discovered that the best programs on the planet for Defense, or what they called Law Enforcement Prep, were in Japan and the Americas." Hadrian paused before continuing to give voice to his memories; the next bit was going to be hard for him, but it, especially, needed said, "Originally, the plan was for both of us to leave for training. I had enough raw magical strength to match Snake Face despite the power-enhancing rituals he'd used on himself, but I lacked skill and experience. I needed to correct that imbalance before I could hope to face him with a reasonable expectation of killing the bastard. Unfortunately, neither of us had anticipated what had happened at Hogwarts. Hermione convinced me that someone had to stay behind to manage the DA and the remnants of the Order and turn them into a proper resistance. And it couldn't be me.
"Looking back, I know it was the right decision. Without her planning and running operations, the resistance to Voldemort would have collapsed inside a year. With her in charge, they managed to bog him and his fellow scum down in an endless guerrilla war. They sabotaged stockpiles of potions ingredients, ambushed parties of Snatchers, and assassinated Death Eaters in positions of power in the ministry. She almost singlehandedly turned the tables on him. Instead of being free to focus on taking over France he had to focus almost a third of his resources on quelling the rebellion at home. It bought the governments on the continent months of time after his first attacks to build forces and plans. Anytime Snake Face showed up himself, they still lost, and lost badly, but against lesser raids, they were able to hold their own." Hadrian paused momentarily; his eyes refocused on the world in front of him, and noted the looks on the faces of the two adults. They were entirely caught up in the telling of a future he hoped they would never experience.
He cleared his throat and continued, "I spent more than a year in Japan. I had some trouble at first with getting the right tutors, but after the first major raid in France that changed literally overnight. I learned both wand and bladework while I was there, though the former was much easier than the latter. Still, the pure cardio benefits would have made it worthwhile much less some of the things I learned later." Cutting the tangent, and the adults' questioning statements short he continued, "In any case, after that year they shipped me off to the United States and ran me through the magical equivalent of their SEAL training. Hostile environment, combat potions, magical creature recognition and combat, tactics, the whole lot. That took almost two years. . . "
Hadrian trailed off again and took a fortifying breath, "I was less than a month from finishing up there when the story broke. The leader of the British Resistance had been captured and Voldemort was going to execute her in front of the whole of the British Wizarding World the next day," Harry looked up, straight into his mother's eyes and saw the knowledge reflected there. They had both lost someone they dearly loved to the madman. "There was no way for me to get there in time. You couldn't get a portkey onto the island for love or money without a dark mark. The bastard had adjusted the admittance wards to preclude it, and apparition was tracked so heavily that trying it was suicide. Not even muggle methods were guaranteed to work since the Death Eaters had imperioused most of the movers and shakers in the government.
"There was nothing I could do to save her. I hoped that the resistance would have a plan to spring her, but it turns out the cell structure she'd built them into meant that they couldn't put one together because they couldn't communicate fast enough. I listened to it on through a relayed Wireless transmission. Later, we even found some photographs. They're what we used to piece what happened at the end together," Hadrian could see in Sirius and Lily's eyes what they expected to hear next. He was glad he'd be disappointing them. "Hermione was a brilliant witch. She'd realized what a target she was and what her treatment would be like if she was captured. At that point, Voldemort was still trying to game the system here. He wanted it to look like the laws still meant something; as such, he wanted his prisoner in good condition for the observers." Again, Hadrian ground to a halt momentarily, remembering what had happened after the bastard had stopped caring about pretenses before he began again.
"So when Voldemort and his chief lieutenants hauled her out onto the stage in front of what had once been Gringotts for her show trial, Hermione hadn't been forced to use her final resort yet. The 'trial,' if you could call it that, went more or less as expected. When she realized she was about to be caught, Hermione wiped her own memories of any useful information about the resistance, so they didn't get anything out of her, which frustrated her captors, let me tell you. When it came time for the execution," he related pausing for a heavy swallow and with a heavier heart, working his jaw in remembered frustration and anger, "When it came time for the execution, Voldemort himself finally made an appearance. That was what she'd been waiting for."
Hadrian turned to his mother, "What do you know about the Bloodfire Elixir?"
Momentarily taken aback, she paused only a moment to think before responding, "It's a legend. Frankly, I thought it was nothing more than a myth! It's said that the Atlantians used it to create explosions of enormous power, but it's been lost ever since the island was destroyed!" Lilt's professional attention had been engaged, and there was a spark in her eye. "You mean she managed to reconstru- oh!" she said as her face fell.
The look she was giving him, in combination with his memories, almost made the tears gathered in his eyes fall. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than it had been, "She made two refinements to the original version: a spell to hold the serum in stable form after introducing it into the bloodstream and an activation rune that would act as a catalyst for the Elixir to overcome the stasis spell. She created the rune so that breaking it would activate it and then apparently tattooed it onto her tongue," Harry ignored the twin winces that came from that statement. "The last picture in the series we found shows Voldemort approaching her, then her sticking out her tongue at him and biting down. Then the explosion. Based on the size of the piece of debris flying past the camera, we can guess what happened to the photographer," He concluded with a macabre grin, absently noting Lily holding her clenched fist in front of her mouth, crying while Padfoot winced, apparently at the thought of having to bite off one's own tongue for any reason at all. "I still don't know what warned him, but Voldemort survived by triggering an emergency portkey. His inner circle wasn't so lucky. Every last one of them was on that stage, and all of them died instantly in the explosion.
"Two weeks later, I used Gillyweed to swim the Channel from Brest to Plymouth. Luna Lovegood, one of the members of the DA had managed to keep the Resistance from splintering completely, and I managed to get in contact with them a month and a half later. She was the one who'd found the bits of 'Lantean scrolls that Hermione used to reconstruct the Bloodfire Elixir. She also had a name to go with them: Peverell."
Sirius, unsurprisingly got it first. "You mean, Peverell, as in the Deathly Hallows? The story of the three brothers is real?" he demanded, eyes wide.
Amazing how enthusiastic he can be. of course if I discovered one of the fairy tales I heard Petunia tell Dudley was real I'd probably get excited too. "In a way and after a fashion, Padfoot," he replied. Seeing his mother's confused look, he took pity on her and explained. "Beedle the Bard is sort of like the Wizarding World's Brothers Grimm. One of the stories he tells is that of the three Peverell brothers. Working together, they thwart Death's plan to kill them. In admiration, Death offers each of them a reward. The first asks for an unbeatable wand, the second asks for a way to bring back the dead, but the third brother is smart, and realizes that this is just another ploy to kill them all. He asks for a cloak that would hide him from even Death's sight. Sure enough, the other brothers die swiftly: the first knifed in his sleep for the wand, the second kills himself in despair when he realizes the people he brings back are nothing more than shades. The third brother lives a long life and dies content. Standard fairy tale." Hadrian pauses and takes a deep breath. "Except this one has its roots in fact.
"Instead of receiving the so-called Hallows from Death the Peverell brothers inherited them honestly. They're artifacts from Atlantis." Now both of the adult's eyes were wide. "Oh, and just so you know, the Potters are descended from the Peverells."
Sirius fainted.
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"I did not faint," Sirius pouted several minutes later.
Lily rolled her eyes at him and continued laying a sheet out on the couch. Apparently, Padfoot was spending the day. "Yes, you did, and now you're pouting. I swear it's like you're still twelve sometimes."
As she headed upstairs, Sirius shot Hadrian a look. He appeared to be trying to figure out what to say when the dimensional traveler save him the trouble. "Go to sleep, Sirius. I napped all day yesterday. I'll stay up for nightmare watch."
The animagus seemed almost ready to argue before closing his mouth and nodding. Instead he commented, "You did a good job keeping her distracted."
"Better to have something to do than sit and be miserable. I could tell she wasn't ready to sleep when baby Harry went down. Besides, you both needed to hear my story anyway." He grimaced thinking about what he'd told them and what he still had to tell, "Frankly, what I told you this morning wasn't nearly as bad as what happened next."
"And with that charming thought," Sirius interrupted, "I'll focus on trying to sleep and not think about what could qualify as worse than what you've already described."
Hadrian couldn't help but smile at the irreverent quip. "See you later, Padfoot."
He walked to the stairs and for a moment just looked up them. His mother had told him where the guest bedroom was, but it struck him that this was the first time he'd ever been up there when the building was intact. For a moment, he considered looking through his things, but quickly decided against it. The wards Dumbledore had thrown up were adequate for the moment, though he'd have to see about repurposing some of his ward stones to strengthen them if they were going to stay in the cottage. And that was a big 'if.' No idea if Mum will be able to handle living here without . . . Dad. Ha-Hadrian took a deep breath and decided to look around. If nothing else, he wanted to know where baby Harry's nappies were kept for when his alternate self woke up.
The first door he opened, just to the right at the top of the stairs, was the loo. Despite his need for a shower sometime soon, he moved on. Down the hall to the right was baby Harry's room. He snuck in quietly; just because he knew he'd have to take care of his young analogue while his mother slept didn't mean he wanted to start right now. Fortunately, the changing table was well stocked.
The only other room on that side of the house was his guest room looking out over the back yard. Harry knew the master bedroom and his parent's study were on the other side of the second floor. Quietly, he slid his mother's door open just enough to cast a monitoring charm before silently closing it.
Hadrian glanced at the door to his dad's study for a moment before deciding not to snoop. He shrugged to himself a moment later and headed to his room. Might as well get things organized a bit. If nothing else, I can get started on figuring out which wardstones con be modified most easily. I wonder which schema Dumbledore started with. If he just did a standard McClure setup I can . . .
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Hadrian was almost startled when twenty minutes later, he heard baby Harry start fussing across the hall. Thankfully, his diaper was just wet instead of dirty so the mess was easily enough dealt with. It only took holding him for a few minutes to calm him down and reassure him the all the strange things that had happened over the last day didn't mean he wasn't appreciated. Baby Harry took an instant like to Hadrian. I wonder, he considered absently, looking into his own green eyes, is it because I look like James, or can he tell that we're connected? Hadrian shook his head. Harry was just a baby; besides, if their eyesight was similar, Hadrian probably only showed up as a blur. Which reminds me, I'll need to pick up some colored contacts to keep people from getting suspicious. One more thing to add to his list.
Knowing it was only a matter of time before his mini-me got hungry, Hadrian snuck down to the kitchen, careful not to disturb Sirius snoring on the couch, and fetched some liquefied peas. Sure enough, by the time he made it back to the nursery with his younger self's meal the fifteen month old was starting to fuss again.
Feeding him could have counted as one of the labors of Hercules. By the time he was done, Harry had nearly half his meal spread on his face and clothes and Hadrian was beginning to contemplate switching spells. Hadrian was just starting to clean up the mess when the monitoring charm on his mother's room went off. It was enough of a surprise that he was glad he wasn't holding the baby when it happened; he wasn't interested in learning if Harry could imitate Neville's accidental magic yet.
Hadrian secured the crib, his . . . nephew's messy face notwithstanding, and took off down the hall, haste tempered only by his desire to not wake Sirius. When he arrived in the master bedroom, he found more or less what he'd been expecting. Lily had managed to coil the covers around herself like a snake and her forehead was damp with sweat. She was also muttering unintelligibly but in a tone that clearly indicated distress. Hadrian carefully moved to her side and gently shook her shoulder.
Instantly, her eyes snapped open. She had an air of disorientation surrounding her as her brain abruptly kicked back to something closer to full function. Immediately, her eyes darted to him. "James, I-" she began, and for a moment there was relief in her eyes before she noticed that the person she was addressing wasn't her husband. A hurt sound escaped her throat that Hadrian found difficult to hear. All he could do was envelop her in a hug as tears gathered in her eyes. The grief she'd hidden behind action and exhaustion while awake had bubbled forth in sleep where she had no defense against it.
Looking at his mother sobbing her eyes out, Hadrian had to suppress the desire to find what had hurt her and break it. He'd done it to Death Eaters or other criminals often enough that it had become something of an entrenched response to a crying woman over the years. Unfortunately, there was no one he could conveniently exorcise his anger on; it would likely have been counterproductive in any case. Instead, he rubbed his mum's back and murmured vague reassurances to her until she got herself under better control.
Finally, she choked back her sobs enough to talk, "I forgot," he finally understood the third time she said it, "I forgot."
"And that was the whole point," Hadrian reassured her. "This isn't the first time I've had to try and put the pieces back together after an attack where I lost people. Give someone something else to concentrate on, a task to accomplish, and they keep their heads. The entire point was for you to forget for a while." Hadrian hoped that would calm her down.
"You want me to just forget him? What he meant to me?" It seemed he was destined to be disappointed.
"No!" he declared quickly, cutting her off before she could build any more steam, "But I did need you to keep you head until things cooled down. Grieving is fine. Blaming yourself for things you had no control over is not." Lily broke into fresh tears and began to try to apologize and sob at the same time. Hadrian moderated his tone, "It's alright. Been here. Done this. I understand."
He stayed there and held his mother until she cried herself back to sleep. Hoping that was the only nightmare he'd have to deal with for the day, he finally returned to his own room to try and catch a nap.
Just as he was about to fall asleep, he remembered the mess he left in his little brother's room and cursed.
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Hadrian drifted toward wakefulness slowly with a dreamy sort of awareness that he was waking up, but no real urgency requiring him to act on the information. Idly, his drifting mind tried to recall the last time he'd been able to just enjoy sleeping in a bit. The last time must have been back in the Gryffindor dorms with- Hadrian shot up in bed suddenly wide awake. "Shit!" He turned to the clock, eyes wide and saw that it was just after nine in the evening. Maybe I can get there in time. He immediately started throwing his armor on only to stop and stare at the gaping hole in the chest. "Son of a bitch!" Thanks to the peculiarities of undiminished basilisk hide, the armor could be mended easily, but it would still take several hours of work. He was still trying to figure out what to do when Sirius threw open the door to his room bare moments later, wand in hand.
"Har-Hadrian? You alright?" he demanded, eyes searching the room for a threat, Lily right behind him.
"Neville Longbottom's family was attacked sometime tonight. He survived, but his parents were driven insane by Cruciatus exposure. I-" Hadrian tried to explain quickly while digging into his pack for the invisibility cloak before he was cut off.
"That happened last night, Hadrian," Lily said and the dimensional traveler froze. "Professor McGonagall said it's why the Order took so long to respond when Sirius sent for help."
Hadrian felt the bed contact the back of his thighs as he sat down involuntarily, mind running a couple hundred kilometers an hour. "Damn. Damn, damn, damn," he muttered as he franticly tried to calculate what could have caused that particular change in the timeline, but still half relieved that a long nap on his part hadn't cost one of his friends his parents.
"Hadrian?" Lily asked leadingly and he abruptly realized he'd been silent for more than a minute.
"Sorry, Mum," he replied and ran a hand over his much-faded lightning-bolt scar. "I came here with the idea that I knew what I was going to find, but all I can say for sure is that I have no idea what's coming next. In my dimension, Neville's parents were attacked tonight by the Lestrange's and Barty Crouch Junior-" He was interrupted by gasps at that statement.
"You mean the son of the Director of the DMLE is a Death Eater?" his mother demanded incredulously.
"You mean they weren't captured last night?" Hadrian demanded right back.
"No, in all the confusion the Death Eaters slipped away with portkeys keyed into the wards they threw up. Though from what Professor McGonagall had to say, Alice didn't seem to be in as bad a condition as Frank. The healers at St. Mungo's said her prognosis was good."
Another divergence in the timeline. It was humbling to realize just how much he didn't know despite everything he'd done to prepare for his trip. "Hopefully they'll be able to help her recover. Maybe in this timeline both Harry and Neville will get to grow up with their mothers."
"Oh, speaking of, thank you for taking care of yourself this afternoon," Lily remarked her tone indicating the somewhat fragile attempt at a joke, "Though next time you'll want to mix the peas with peaches. I'm surprised you managed to get him to eat as much as you did with them by themselves."
Hadrian grimaced despite himself at the thought of that particular gastronomic combination as he got up to follow his mum and Godfather downstairs where a small meal was just about ready to be served. For a long moment, he was tempted to move the conversation back to business. It wasn't as though his list was getting shorter while he relaxed. Then he looked around him and reconsidered. After dinner would be soon enough to alter and reinforce the wards, and nothing else was important enough to make him forfeit time with people he'd always withed he had gotten to know or know better.
Still, he couldn't help but frown and consider, If so many things are different, how much of what I think I know is wrong?
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Not quite as long as the first chapter, nor does it have any real action in it. For those of you who liked the fight scenes in Chapter-the-first and wanted more . . . you'll be waiting a bit. Hopefully the data dump didn't come off as too much. I actually cut Hadrian's monologue short because it seemed like it was taking forever. More alternate history in the next chapter. No discernible progress on SotBP. The Thirty Xanatos Pileup is still kicking my ass.
And that's it for this episode! Please review; it is, after all, the coin of the realm.