Harry knocked on the Headmaster's office, wondering what this was all about; he had never spoken to the Headmaster outside of the competitions where he had won points for his House, for things like DADA, charms, and transfiguration. But he had never been summoned to Fontaine's office before, and he wondered what the reason was.
As far as he knew, he was not in any trouble.
He had done his work, he hadn't hurt anyone, so why was he brought up here?
"Come in," he heard Headmaster Fontaine call; the young Thunderbird's sharp mind was already picking up the weary tension in the man's voice, but he opened the door. The moment he walked in, his eyes widened when he saw who was in the room with Headmaster Fontaine, the Headmaster of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
There, sitting in chairs, looking tense and nervy, were his so-called parents.
Lily and James Potter.
Harry had never laid eyes on them in the past, but he had seen pictures of them both, and he had sworn never to have anything to do with them, not after the way they'd abandoned him to the tender mercies of the Dursleys after they'd thought he was a squib following Voldemort's attack on the Potter family back in '81.
Only he was not a squib.
Harry would never forget the way the Dursleys had punished him for living until he had lashed out at them, and he had then fled for the streets; he had only gone back to them to force them to tell him the truth when he had learnt about Hogwarts; his powers had grown over the years, through practice and he had used his newfound knowledge to discover the truth. He had always known the Dursleys knew more about him than what met the eye, and he had fled them to get away from their abuse after lashing out, and wanting to make a new life for himself.
What he had discovered horrified him and destroyed whatever feelings of goodwill he had towards his parents, although there weren't many.
His parents had abandoned him to the Dursleys…all because they believed he couldn't do magic.
They had paid the Dursleys to look after him; for his bitch of a mother to believe Petunia Dursley would be a nice person and do the right thing, she was either incredibly optimistic or extremely stupid. And…Harry truly didn't want to know which it was.
The moment Harry had learnt the truth, he forced the Dursleys to take him to Diagon Alley, where he then learnt more about his past, and it was through the goblin contacts he had made contact with the Potters living in the MACUSA, and he had moved. Harry had been…wary of trusting them, but frequent acts of love and visits to the mind healer had healed the pain he had gone through, even if he was still bitter about it; those sessions ensured he came out much more mentally healthy.
But he had gone for Ilvermorny so then he could be educated far from his family, who'd abandoned him on the word of a single stupid healer and his parents had raised their perfect Boy Who Lived, Charlie Potter, and his prissy perfect sisters.
Harry didn't want anything to do with them, and he had vowed never to contact them.
But why were they here?
"Harry," Harry turned and grinned when he saw Aunt Miranda and Uncle Isaac sitting opposite Lily and James, but before he could greet them verbally, Fontaine broke the silence.
"Ah, Mr Potter, please come in. Thanks for bringing him, Jake," Fontaine said while Harry hugged the life out of his American relatives.
"What's going on?" Harry whispered in his uncle's ear. Isaac sighed. "You're not going to like this, sport," he whispered back. "Something big's happened in Britain."
Harry tensed. "What?" He ground out.
"Please, sit Mr Potter," Fontaine broke through the reunion. Harry broke away reluctantly, knowing if he could hug Isaac and Miranda more, then he could hold off looking at his biological parents, the people who'd abandoned him. But as he broke away, he had another surprise; he had focused so much on Lily and James (they were not his parents; Uncle Isaac and Aunt Miranda were his parents, and even Vernon bastard Dursley and Petunia mutant horse bitch Dursley, and Sandra, the girl in the gang who'd taken him in on the streets, had a more parental hold over him than these two fuckers) he had failed to notice they had come with an entourage.
Lily and James had brought their brood with them. Harry recognised Charlie Potter from international newspaper photos after he had entered the Triwizard Tournament, and he recognised Rose and Dahlia, Charlie's sisters. Harry and Charlie were virtually identical, but where Harry's eyes were a hardened emerald which had shown signs of softening over the years he'd lived in the MACUSA, they were still harder than Charlie's.
Another thing they didn't have in common was the lightning bolt-shaped scar, which was on Harry's forehead; the Boy Who Lived had some kind of twisted, scythe-shaped scar on his cheek; Harry's elective in Ancient Runes had allowed him to learn the bolt was a protective rune, and so he grudgingly thanked his 'mother' for that, but not what she did next.
But the Potters had come with a surprise. Like all modern wizards, Harry recognised Albus Dumbledore when he saw him. But why was he here?
"What's this about?" Harry asked as he moved to sit down in the chair indicated.
This was too much for Lily. She stood up, her eyes filling with tears. "Harry, my baby!"
Harry jumped back with a snarl. "Stay away from me!"
Lily looked like she was going to collapse. "Harry, please-."
"Please, just leave me alone!" Harry snapped. "Just tell me why you are here, and then go back to where you came from."
Lily backed away, her face crumpling while James quickly took her in his arms and held her while she tried valiantly not to sob her heart out. In the meantime, Charlie looked at him in sorrow. "Harry, please-," his twin tried, looking like his own world was collapsing while the girls looked upset. Harry didn't care. The only Potter children he cared about were either at their homes or wearing Ilvermorny uniforms.
"Just tell me why you are here. How did you find me? I went to a lot of trouble to cover my tracks after the Hogwarts letter came for me, so why are you here?" Harry shot out his questions fast.
But Charlie was more focused on what he had just said about covering his tracks. "Y-you didn't want to come to Hogwarts, why?"
"What, and see you after you've lived a life of luxury?" Harry spat at his twin brother. "Would you want to even look at the family who'd abandoned you because they thought you couldn't do magic, to be abused in some filthy No-Maj hovel while the rest of the vermin did nothing about it, only to run away to the streets where you found a better family, only to discover your parents were not only alive but didn't want you?" He finished pointedly so they could see things from his point of view.
"A-Abuse…?" James whispered.
"Tell me they didn't!" Lily pleaded.
But Harry was unmoved. "Why do you care now? You never bothered to come and check whether I was alive or dead, so why pretend now?"
"We're not pretending!" Lily's agitation was making her voice rise in pitch. "What did they do to you? Why didn't Petunia stop Vernon?"
Harry couldn't believe how stupid his so-called mother was being. "You mean, you didn't know? Your bitch of a No-Maj sister helped Vernon; they mentally and physically tortured me; if I didn't master my accidental magic and lashed out before leaving, I would be dead by now." He gave them a hard look. "Do you blame me for hating your guts? I also found out you paid them for my upkeep, but I never saw that money. Oh no, they used it for themselves, the filthy animals."
"Harry," Lily whispered in horror.
But Harry was on a roll while his aunt and uncle watched on, silent for now so then he could get this off of his chest. "They shoved me in a cupboard under the stairs, stupid, all because you couldn't be bothered to check if I was a wizard or not. The intelligent thing to have done would have been to get someone else to give a second opinion, but that would have been too easy for you, wouldn't it? And then you packed me off to your filthy sister. You knew she resented you, hated you, and yet you expected them to look after me?" Derision and contempt filled his voice. "Do you mean to tell us you didn't know her?"
Lily looked like she wanted nothing more than to go back to Britain and discover what her sister had done to her son.
'Filthy Mudblood,' Harry mentally spat the insult he had picked up in Britain, the insult he had longed to throw in his mother's face for years, the insult he would make an exception of in her case. In the meantime, Charlie, Rose and Dahlia were crying.
"Just tell me why you're here now," Harry demanded. "I have better things to do, like learning how to be a wizard, you know the heritage you tried to steal from me."
Dumbledore sighed. "Hello Harry, I am afraid we need you in Magical Britain."
"Why?" Harry noted his aunt and uncle's tension, so they knew what was going on.
Finally, Aunt Miranda sighed. "Charlie is not the Boy Who Lived, Harry. You are."
"What?" Harry swung around in horror. He knew the story of the Boy Who Lived, it hit him too close to home after all, but he hadn't expected to hear this.
Dumbledore looked put out by the fact he couldn't be the one to talk, to explain, but he nodded. "It's true," he said. "Lily and James, your parents, have been looking for you for over a year after Voldemort used Charlie's blood in a resurrection ritual. They learnt you'd run away and then discovered your heritage, but they drew blanks when they couldn't find you; tracking you down became more important when Voldemort projected his memories of what happened that night; many of them were fragmentary, but it was clear you generated a shield to protect yourself and your brother-."
"Charlie is not my brother," Harry interrupted; while this was intriguing he wanted to get this point across, "None of them," he spat the word them as he gestured at Lily, James, and their kids, "are my family. Get that in your head."
Dumbledore glowered at the interruption but he nodded sadly, "But the Killing curse, which I am sure you're aware is what you survived that night, rebounded off of your forehead and tore Voldemort out of his body. He has only just regained his strength and now he is after you."
"Why? Why would a powerful Dark Lord who should have been dealt with years ago want to kill a teenage wizard?" This was too much for Isaac Potter.
"There's a prophecy. We don't know the wording but the long and the short of it is you will be marked as his equal and have the means to kill Voldemort; he knows it exists, but he doesn't know what it says, and he wants to kill you to prevent you becoming a threat," James said.
Harry looked down as he considered; he had always possessed an adventurous and logical mind, and he could see with it now that there was desperation in Voldemort's actions; he couldn't dare risk letting Harry become too powerful, so he had to hunt down the real Boy Who Lived, so he had to hunt him down.
"I don't want this for him," Miranda shook her head, tears trickling down her caramel-coloured skin. She wasn't able to contain the impulse, and she hugged Harry tightly. "Y-you're so young!"
Harry, far from being embarrassed, leaned into the embrace.
Lily looked on, her heart breaking as she saw her son with a different woman.
A different mother.
She had felt like a disgrace since discovering the truth about Harry before discovering where he was, but now seeing Harry gladly accept the love of another woman… she felt like grabbing a powerful time turner and changing the past so this never happened.
"Harry," Dumbledore said, "you must leave the MACUSA and be protected from Voldemort and his Death Eaters. At the same time, you must transfer from Ilvermorny, and enter Hogwarts-."
"Now, wait a minute!" Fontaine had been largely silent during the meeting, but now he was outraged. "You have no right to tell one of my students what they can do and where they can learn magic; you might have won against Grindelwald, but I think those adulations have gone to your brain."
"He's right; we're Harry's guardians," Isaac quickly spoke before anyone defended the decrepit old wizard. "We are the ones who say he will stay in Ilvermorny."
"We're his parents!" James protested.
"Yeah, he's our brother," Rose held her sister as they cried.
"Doesn't matter, I made sure they had the last word in what I do before I reach my majority in a couple of years. You gave up the right to be my guardians and parents when you threw me away, remember?" Harry said.
"But Harry must be trained to face his destiny," Dumbledore protested.
"Then train me here. I am not going to that dump across the Atlantic. And I certainly don't want anything to do with them," Harry spat as he looked at his upset parents and crying siblings.
"Harry, I was hoping you could forgive your parents," Dumbledore was disappointed.
"Don't tell Harry how he should act, Dumbledore," Fontaine snapped. "From what I've learnt, they abandoned him because they could not be bothered to look after him. Bring whatever you need to help him to Ilvermorny."
"And don't even think of applying pressure via the MACUSA through the ICW," Isaac added. "Our documentation is perfectly valid, and we have proof the Potters willingly threw Harry away long ago."
Lily had tears trickling down her face. Miranda couldn't help but be vicious. "Hurts, doesn't it? I would never abandon my children, and I would have gotten them double-tested."
That only made it worse.
The meeting went on for another hour, with Dumbledore and the Potters trying to make their American brethren see sense, but it was no good; Lily and James were no longer Harry's magical guardians and it was so legal it was airtight. Isaac and Miranda had both known there was a chance Lily and James would discover the truth about their son, and they had made sure nobody could take him away.
While they knew it could have happened, Isaac and Miranda didn't want to take the chance of losing Harry, who'd wormed his way into their hearts.
Finally, Dumbledore had to accept the terms of the deal; he would bring in the materials needed to help Harry survive, although secretly Harry planned to look into what linked him and Voldemort together without the Headmaster of Hogwarts knowing.
Harry left the office with Aunt Miranda and Uncle Isaac, chatting when they heard someone shout, "Harry, wait!"
They turned and found Lily Potter rushing after them, her eyes were red with tears. Behind her were James and their kids.
"Go away," Harry said.
Lily stopped. "Please, I'm so sorry," she cried and threw her arms around him.
James looked on, his own heart breaking as he watched his wife hug their son, seeing his cold, glacial and surprised expression as Lily held on to him. And then he whispered something in Lily's ear, and whatever it was, it made Lily leapt away from Harry, and she began to shake in a way that told James she was trying hard not to cry. Unaffected by his mother's agony, Harry turned and walked away.
James stepped closer to Lily, seeing the utterly destroyed expression on her lovely face. "Lily? What did he say to you?"
But Lily hadn't heard him. "No," she whispered, shaking her head. "No."
"Lily, what did he say to you?" James repeated, expecting the worst.
But even he was stunned when Lily turned to him, her expression one of pure heartbreak. "He said," she choked, "'I will never forgive you, you filthy mudblood."'