When they reached the castle, they discovered that there was not, in fact, a great deal to be done. House elves had cleared away all the debris and the school's professors were scattered about transfiguring new stone to replace broken bits of architecture and respelling protective charms and wards that had been compromised or had failed entirely during the battle.
Harry stopped short suddenly outside a room off the great hall and Ron nearly walked straight into his back. He stopped and stared at the door, feeling as though someone had just stepped over his grave.
"He's in there."
Ron stepped around him and tried the door handle and a quick alohomora and found it was locked and warded.
"Who, exactly?"
"Voldemort."
Harry felt sweat beading up on his neck. Hermione spoke to him slowly, as though he might be dense.
"Harry, Voldemort is dead."
Harry continued staring at the door. Hermione took his hand in her own.
"You defeated him, Remember?"
He tried not to feel annoyed with her patronizing.
"Of course I bloody well know he's dead, Hermione. But he's in there. His... body, I guess."
Hermione let out a breath she'd apparently been holding.
"Oh thank Merlin, for a minute there I thought you'd—Harry!?"
Hermione stepped around him bringing her face directly in front of his, their noses nearly touching. She was looking at him like McGonagall had earlier.
"Harry, your face—"
Harry stepped back and turned away from her.
"Yea, I know, okay? Something funny's been happening since I woke up this morning. It's probably nothing. It just changes for a moment but it goes away. I was probably hit by a weird jinx or something yesterday."
Ron stepped away from the locked door concealing the corpse of the most evil wizard in recent history and rushed over to him.
"Bloody hell, Harry! You look like almost like Sn—Ow! What was that for?"
Hermione had stepped on his foot.
"Harry, one minute you looked like you always do and now... Oh, come on and look for yourself."
Hermione grabbed him by the hand and dragged him toward the toilets down the hallway. Ron blinked several times before trotting after them, his sore toes forgotten. Hermione pushed him through the door, trusting that with no classes, nobody else would be inside at the moment.
She went over to stand with him in front of the long mirror over the row of sinks.
The face that stared back at him was the one he'd seen briefly earlier, but even expecting it this time, it still managed to shock him. He struggled to draw in a breath, reaching out to touch the image of his face in the mirror.
His hand... even his hand was somebody else's now, he noticed. Long, thin fingers had replaced his own broader, sturdier ones. He stared at them, turning them over and back again, flexing them as though he were not quite sure they were actually attached to him.
Finally he placed them both on either side of his reflection, leaning close to the mirror.
"Hermione..."
He was breathing again, finally, but too rapidly. He could not stop himself. Ron came up and stood behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing briefly.
A thin, pale face stared back at him through his own familiar almond-shaped green eyes and round-framed glasses, now somewhat crooked perched on a longer, narrower nose that had a slight hook at the end. He definitely had never had cheekbones like that before. His hair was black and messy but his fringe lay more or less flat against his forehead rather than sticking out at the sides and the ever-present cowlick at the back of his head was, for once, tamed.
He again had the weird thought that it looked like it needed a cut. He hadn't needed a haircut even once his life; it kept to the same length, no matter what his aunt did or had done to it, always returning to its original shape by the next morning.
"Harry, you haven't taken any potions lately, have you? Or had anything that tasted funny? Some kind of botched polyjuice maybe? Although it doesn't usually..."
Harry shook his head slowly, as did the stranger in the mirror. A black fog was gathering at the edge of his vision. He felt dizzy and moved his hands from the mirror to the edge of the sink, staring down at the brass tap and trying to steady himself. It won't last, it will change back, like it did earlier.
"Some kind of glamour, then, a charm, maybe..."
He looked up, expecting to see himself again. He did not.
A weird sense of panic clawed at him.
"What did he do to me? What did Voldemort do to me? Some kind of last revenge, he did something—"
Ron gave his shoulder another squeeze. "Bit of an odd sort of revenge, don't you think?"
Hermione stood looking at him still, a softness in her expression that might almost have been pity. Harry closed his eyes and tried to breath more slowly through his nose, mentally willing himself not to snap at his oldest friends. They were trying to help him, he knew.
When he opened them again, Hermione had stepped back and was staring out a window, thinking.
"Perhaps we should go find Professor McGonagall? There are plenty of ways to change a wizard's appearance, besides polyjuice, I've read about... well none of them sounded exactly like this and I'd prefer not to... um, yes, let's just go find her, shall we?"
Harry did not speak while they wandered the nearly deserted hallways, trying to find Professor McGonagall or perhaps Professor Flitwick. Ron and Hermione walked behind him, content to let him lead the way, apparently, while they carried on a conversation between themselves.
"Hermione, I don't know why you won't just go. Everybody would understand, and it's not like I can't survive for a while on my own."
"I never said that you couldn't!"
"So just go on, then!"
"They're safe enough where they are, and a few more weeks is hardly going to matter! I'll go after Fred's... I'll go after, okay?"
Their voices then receded and Harry realized he'd left them behind. He backtracked to where they were still standing in a hallway, continuing an argument that had clearly started much earlier that day.
"Hermione, they're your family, you need them! It's not fair that... you should just have them with you, okay? They're your family..."
Harry stopped a few feet away from them, his unfamiliar face flushing with embarrassment. He suddenly felt like he was eavesdropping.
"Ron—" She looked up as she'd just noticed Harry's presence and sighed. "We can talk about it later, okay?"
Ron hesitated for a moment, then stepped toward Harry without replying to Hermione.
"C'mon mate, let's get you sorted out."
Ron glanced back at Hermione before turning and taking the lead. They'd already checked most of the ground floor and other than a few stray students who had not left or been taken away by their parents, they'd failed to find anyone who might shed some light on what had happened.
Harry garnered a few odd looks from passers-by, but was suddenly grateful that nobody seemed to recognize him, now. He wasn't sure he could deal with being The Boy Who Lived (Twice) at the moment. Perhaps the change was a blessing in disguise, then. He pulled at his fringe, making double sure that it concealed his famous curse scar, which, like his eyes, had not changed one jot.
Harry picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of his shirt and watched as motes of dust danced in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the high windows of the library. They'd been unable to locate Professor McGonagall or Professor Flitwick, or any other Hogwarts instructor who might have had something to say.
Even Madam Pince was absent from her desk, leaving them free to ransack the stacks of books without interference. Hermione had stepped through the shelves, knowing precisely where to go, as though no time at all had passed since she'd last visited the Hogwarts library. She had pulled books off the shelves with precision, passing them to Ron or Harry without comment until they were both struggling under the weight of them.
Now, Harry sat beside her as she flipped through book after book on charms and potions and even transfiguration that might be used to change someone's appearance. Occasionally she glanced over at him, as though she were afraid he might evaporate into the air. Ron had sat beside them for a few minutes, then gone to pace about restlessly between shelves before coming to rest standing with his hands behind his back in front of a window, his back turned on Harry and Hermione.
Harry thought about their argument earlier. He felt both guilty and slightly jealous at the same time. Guilty that his friends seemed to be putting off time with their own families to look after him, and an old jealousy that they had family to be putting off in the first place. He thought he'd gotten past such feelings towards his friends and the resurgence of that longing made him feel a tad shameful.
He wondered how Dudley was getting on, wherever he was. Maybe some day he'd go find his cousin and see how he was doing. It was odd to think that when they'd parted they'd... well, not exactly liked one another, but Harry felt that they'd sort of gotten over something, maybe. He didn't care if he ever saw his uncle and aunt again, though.
He knew he could not go looking for the cracked stone that had fallen to the forest floor as he had gone to meet his fate at the hands of Voldemort. He'd told the portrait of Albus Dumbledore as much and he meant to stand by it. His parents were dead. So was his godfather, and now many of his friends. He now felt certain he would meet them all again, when the day came that he died, but they were, for the time being, beyond his reach. There was a feeling of danger in longing after them too much; Harry recalled Dumbledore's warning about the Mirror of Erised back in his first year. Knowing that didn't take away that empty aching feeling, though.
Harry reminded himself that he still had friends here and now, two of whom were taking time out of their own lives to help him at the moment. He tried not to fidget as Hermione worked, scratching notes on a spare bit of parchment she'd taken off the absent Librarian's desk. Someone walking by might have thought them to be studying for an exam. They had spent more than enough evenings just like this, surrounded by stacks of books, Hermione doing most of the hard searching while Harry and Ron faffed about. In some universe where there had never been any Voldemort, they might have been studying for their N.E.W.T.s this very minute.
Harry picked up a book Hermione had already discarded, a thin tome with the title Fair Witch Charming. It was a collection, apparently, of charms used to change hairstyles and mimic cosmetics. His mind drifted back to the Yule Ball during the Tri-Wizard Tournament and he idly wondered if Hermione had used any of them then. It had seemed like an overwhelming event at the time, but now he felt childish thinking about how nervous he'd been over a school dance, given what had happened after.
He wondered if everything in his life was going to be like this, now. He almost felt that a line had been drawn across his life. Or perhaps a massive, impassable wall. Was everything now to be split between before and after? He suddenly felt like he'd aged a century in less than a day.
He was pulled from his meandering thoughts as Hermione suddenly snapped shut an old, thick book she'd pulled from the Restricted section and stared at him, her mouth slightly open as though he'd just shouted something vulgar. She stood and turned away from him, walking over to retrieve Ron and pull him back toward the table.
Hermione began shoving books back into Harry's and Ron's arms, all except that last book, which she kept tucked under one arm. Harry looked at Ron, who shrugged.
"Er, Hermione?"
She gave him another look, the worry on her face giving him a bad feeling. The expression passed and she gave him a strained smile.
"If the two of you don't mind, just put the rest of the books over on the resorting shelf, or Madam Pince will be even more annoyed with us than usual. I think we really do need to speak Professor McGonagall and Flitwick first, though."
Harry tried to read the title on the spine of the book she had kept out, but the old, ragged cover was too faded to discern.
"What do you mean?"
Hermione hesitated. Harry's patience snapped and he reached for the book in her arms, but she turned away from him, dodging the grab.
"Harry, I don't want to speculate, not about something like this. Please just be patient, I don't know anything yet. Not for certain. Why don't the two of you wait in the Tower or maybe the Great Hall? I'll come find you when I have something to report."
Ron unceremoniously dumped his armful of books on the resorting shelf and then grabbed Harry's stack out of his arms to do the same with them. He gave Hermione a questioning look and she just shook her head at him.
"Sorry, mate. You know how it is when she gets like this."
Harry ignored Ron, not content to be left waiting around while other people discussed him behind closed doors. He'd had more than enough of that for one lifetime.
"Hermione, whatever it is you are thinking, I have a right to know. This is my life. You of all people should know by now what happens when people don't bother to tell me what I need to know."
Hermione sighed and looked about the room, avoiding Harry's stare. She chewed at her bottom lip for a moment and came to some sort of decision, again meeting his gaze.
"Oh, fine, you're probably right. But promise me you won't do anything, er... rash."
Harry raised one now finely arched eyebrow at his friend.
"Why would I do something 'rash'?"
She hesitated again, glancing at Ron as though looking for support.
"Harry... there is a charm, a somewhat dangerous and definitely illegal one, that can be used to change someone's appearance permanently... if, that is, it is used before or immediately after that person is born. It isn't generally considered reversible but sometimes it can fail under extreme circumstances, such as being subjected to repeated, powerful curses or hexes."
Harry stared at her as he absorbed the information.
"But, Hermione, why would anyone have done that to me? And who would have?"
Hermione stared down at her feet, not answering him immediately.
"Harry, I'm not even entirely certain that's what this is, okay? Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
The gargoyle outside the Headmaster's office refused to let them through, although they'd tried every password they'd ever known. Granted, those passwords had all belonged to Albus Dumbledore. Harry doubted Severus Snape would ever utter the phrase "fizzing whizbee" to access his own office.
They'd run out of any other ideas, though, having searched through most of the castle. They'd finally run into Professor Sinistra earlier. Harry had hanged back, letting Hermione speak to the Astronomy professor to inquire if she'd seen McGonagall or Flitwick. She'd glanced over at Harry, her expression slightly confused but unconcerned. She had not spoken to him or, apparently, recognized him at all. She had also not been able to tell them anything useful.
Finally the three of them gave up, wandering back down toward the Great Hall. Harry shuddered involuntarily, again, as they passed the locked room where Voldemort's body lay. They had walked a few yards further when the door suddenly opened and both of the professors they'd been seeking all afternoon stepped out, the tall transfiguration instructor with a hardened look on her face and the small charms professor looking as though he might faint at any moment.
Harry, Ron and Hermione stopped and watched the two of them, unsure if it was was wise to approach them just yet.
They were spared the decision, however, as McGonagall and Flitwick came over to them on their own. Professor McGonagall stopped short, however, peering at Harry, who was all but hiding behind the tall frame of Ron Weasley.
"So it's not going away, now, then, Mr Potter?"
Hermione clutched the book she was carrying, squeezing the fragile binding in an uncharacteristic manner (she normally treated books like veritable holy objects). She glanced at Harry, waiting to see how he'd respond. Professor Flitwick stepped around McGonagall and looked up at Harry.
"Minerva, are you sure this is Mr Potter?"
Harry blushed and forced himself not to duck further behind Ron, feeling suddenly very young, as if he were a first year being called up to the front of class again. Hermione was chewing at her bottom lip again and Harry knew she was about to make some sort of decision.
Hermione opened the book she was carrying and flipped a few chapters in, placing her finger at the page she'd searched up earlier and thrust the book toward Professor McGonagall without preamble.
McGonagall hesitated a moment, then took the book, careful to open it to the place Hermione had indicated. She pulled out her reading glasses and began scanning the text as they stood in the hallway. A few students walked past, stopping to stare at them before a hard look from McGonagall sent them on their way.
McGonagall snapped the book shut, keeping one finger at the chapter she'd just read and put her reading glasses back into a pocket in her robes. She looked Harry over again like he were one of the jarred specimens in Snape's old office. He shivered slightly, feeling like something was crawling over his skin. Shame crept up the back of his neck, feeling under her gaze as though he'd committed some error, but he did not know what.
"Filius, I think we'd better retire to a more private location."
Flitwick merely nodded and glanced over at Harry before walking off toward Firenze's old Divination classroom. Harry felt like he'd been spending entirely too much time in there lately. He wanted to stop them and ask about what they'd been doing in the room with Voldemort's corpse but pushed his curiosity aside.
Impatient with their hesitation, apparently, McGonagall turned her head and spoke over her shoulder without slowing her stride.
"Well? The three of you had better come along then."
Harry sat in the old chair where he'd been pushed by Ron, with Hermione seated on his other side, as though the two of them thought they could shelter him between them from whatever was to come.
McGonagall had seated herself, crossing one leg over the other under her robes and was waiting for Flitwick to finish reading the chapter that Hermione had brought to them. The diminutive charms professor kept glancing up at Harry every few moments with an increasingly sad expression.
Harry was starting to get fed up with other people's apparent pity toward him. He wasn't some fragile thing who would crumble under every difficulty. He'd fought Voldemort at dawn that very morning! Why were they all walking on eggshells about him?
He cleared his throat noisily and caught McGonagall's attention.
"Professor, would you please just tell me what's going on?"
McGonagall looked over at Flitwick, who finally closed the heavy book and set it aside. She did not answer Harry's question.
"Well, Filius?"
"Just a moment, Minerva."
Flitwick glanced at her meaningfully and reached into his robes for his wand. He stood up and levitated his chair directly in front of Harry, and stood upon it. He pointed his wand directly between Harry's eyes and incanted something unfamiliar. Harry shivered slightly but nothing seemed to happen.
Flitwick scratched at his scalp for a moment, then cast another spell, this time beginning with his wand above Harry's head and moving it in a sweeping motion down and across him in a curving line. A slight shimmer flared around his entire body, giving off a wavering golden hue, then dissipated.
Flitwick gave him another pitying look and it was all Harry could do not to reach out and shake him. He must not have kept his annoyance out of his expression though, as McGonagall cocked an eyebrow at him and pursed her lips.
"Harry, we are doing our best to help you, do please have a little patience. I am afraid this is not a simple matter.
"Filius?"
Flitwick stepped down off his chair and returned his wand to the pocket in his robe.
"He is not currently under the effect of any charm, but most definitely has been quite recently, and a very powerful one. Hmm. I do wonder..."
Flitwick turned and looked at Harry again, suddenly pulling his wand back out and casting yet another spell. A buzzing in his ears that faded after a few seconds was the only effect he could discern, but the spell appeared to indicate something to Flitwick, who sighed as he continued looking at Harry for several long moments.
"Yes, as I suspected. An echo of Lily's magical signature. I'd recognize it anywhere. She was so very talented at charms when she was a student, I should not be surprised she'd been able to... well."
Harry's temper flared, finally slipping the tenuous control he'd exercised all morning as he stood, his chair skittering backwards. Hermione and Ron both stood a heartbeat later, ready to restrain him, apparently, if necessary, which only annoyed him more. Hermione's gentle hand on his arm stalled him somewhat, but not enough to keep him silent.
"Somebody had bloody better well tell me what is going on. Why the hell do I look like this!?"
Flitwick flinched slightly, stepping back and looking to McGonagall for some sort of direction, but McGonagall did not react to Harry's outburst.
"Mr Potter, sit down. And do please watch your language. This is a serious situation but it is certainly not life-threatening nor does it portend the end of the world. After all, Voldemort is quite dead and any other matter certainly seems minor by comparison."
Harry stood a moment longer, not sure if he wanted to challenge her or do as she said. After all, he was technically no longer her student; it was not as though she could take house points or assign him a detention anymore. Of course, a small voice said in the back of his mind, she could always just throw you out. Then where would you go?
Finally, as Hermione tugged at his sleeve gently, he relented, pulling his chair back underneath himself and sitting stiffly. The moment's energy drained from him and his earlier feeling of exhaustion returned.
Ron remained standing, shifting slightly behind Harry as though guarding him. Hermione sat down beside him.
"Fine, fine... okay, Professor. Um..."
"Harry, I'm afraid the answer to your current situation is not easy one. A charm, apparently, was placed upon you many years ago, quite probably weeks before you were born, by your own mother, which altered your appearance. This sort of charm is rare, difficult and intended to be permanent. But I suppose what you experienced last night at the hands of Voldemort... well the charm can be broken if subjected to multiple powerful curses."
McGonagall paused in her explanation, considering something. She looked momentarily as though she might begin weeping again, but the moment passed.
"Last night was just one killing curse too far, apparently."
Harry rubbed at his forehead, the headache he'd awoken with returning with a vengeance.
"But why would my mother have done something like that, Professor? I don't understand—"
McGonagall stood and began pacing the room. Flitwick's face reddened as he looked anywhere but at his three former students. McGonagall's pacing stopped and she returned to stand before Harry and his friends.
"Harry, I cannot say with absolute certainty, but... well, I am not sure how to put this, ah, delicately, but..."
McGonagall paused again, looking this time at Ron and Hermione, then at Flitwick.
"Perhaps the rest of you could leave us in private?"
Flitwick breathed a sigh of apparent relief and motioned Hermione and Ron toward the door. He picked the book up off the floor and handed it over to McGonagall before departing. Hermione paused at the door after Ron had stepped out into the hall.
"Harry, if you need us later, we'll wait in the Great Hall. It's nearly dinner time anyhow. Come find us later, alright?"
She glanced at McGonagall briefly, who nodded at her, dismissing the younger witch. She took over Flitwick's abandoned perch and sat down in front of Harry, setting the book in her lap and gently taking Harry's slim, unfamiliar hand in her own.
"Harry, this particular charm... it has been used in the past primarily to hide a child's true identity. Sometimes during war, sometimes by families suffering under persecution... but it's most common use by far has been to..."
McGonagall hesitated for a moment. Harry stared down where his hand was held within hers, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Well, Harry, I'm afraid you may have to consider the possibility that James Potter is not your father by blood. I know you have seen your own reflection by now, you must see that you no longer look at all like him?"
Harry stopped breathing, now staring up at her as though she'd just slapped him.
"No, Professor, that's... that's just not... It can't be possible. My parents, they..."
Harry stood suddenly, pulling his hand from her grasp, overcome with a sudden need to escape, his mind rushing back to memories of the night before, his mother and father both walking beside him through the woods... McGonagall did not move to stop him, but remained seated, staring at the door through which he'd hastily departed long after he'd left.
"Well, Minerva, you could have handled that better," she said to herself. She looked at the chair where he'd just been sitting between his two oldest friends, the Golden Trio as some of the staff had somewhat sardonically called them in the staffroom in years past (or quite venomously, in Severus's case).
As she'd looked at Harry, though, her mind had gone to even more distant memories, of another troubled young man she'd once taught, and later had worked with for years, but apparently had never really known at all. A man who now teetered between life and death.
She knew that he and Lily had been friends, at least, at one point. Perhaps they had been more than that, however briefly. But if he slipped away before she could get the truth out of him, Harry may never have answers. She felt she owed Slayer of Voldemort (as the papers had already labeled Harry, a fact she hoped he would not discover for at least a few days) at least that much.
"Well, Lily, you've certainly set the cat among the pigeons now."
After a moment's brief regret, she gathered herself and stood, tucking the mouldering book with its damning testimony under an arm as Hermione had done before, steeling herself for a conversation that she knew would not be easy.