Harry and the Pirates

Chapter 59

A Christmas Visit

by Technomad

While the Granger parents were off at their party, Hermione, Helen, Harry and Dudley were at the Grangers' house alone. Hermione's mother had said that she trusted them not to run amok, and they'd all agreed to behave themselves. Neither Harry nor Dudley were even tempted to misbehave; they had enjoyed their stay at the Granger house, and wanted to be welcome back. Hermione buried herself in books, and Helen found herself invited off to spend the day with some of her friends from St. Trinian's. "I'd ask you boys along, but this is a girls' day out. We're going to be doing girly things, and you'd either be bored or embarassed."

An hour or so after Helen left, they were surprised by a knock at the door. Hermione went to answer it, while Harry and Dudley took position to cover her with their wands. While they weren't really expecting trouble, Roanapur reflex made them suspicious of any unexpected development.

Hermione opened the door, then gasped. "Professor Lupin! What a surprise! Do come in, please! Happy Christmas!" Sure enough, it was the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. He stepped in, brushing a light dusting of snow off his clothes, as Hermione stepped back. Under his arm, he was carrying a big thick book.

Seeing who it was, Harry and Dudley stood down, at least most of the way. Having had bad experiences with the first and second Defence teacher he'd ever had, Harry was permanently rather wary of them. He stepped forward to greet their teacher, but watched him narrowly. Dudley was equally cordial on the surface, but Harry knew his cousin, no one knew him better. He knew that Dudley was on the alert, too.

"What brings you here, sir?" asked Hermione, as she fluttered over their teacher, taking his coat and getting him seated in a comfy armchair. "Do you want tea? Cocoa? Coffee, maybe?" She hovered, ready to head for the kitchen.

"Any of those sound wonderful, Miss Granger. And I'm glad to see you, Mr. Potter. I came specifically to see you." Harry pricked up his ears. He'd never had a professor visiting him over the holidays. What could Lupin be up to?

Once everybody was settled with their beverage of choice (Harry, Hermione and Professor Lupin all took tea, while Dudley had developed an unaccountable taste for coffee) Lupin picked up the book. "Mr. Potter, I mentioned that I knew your parents when we were at Hogwarts together. I had kept this album at home, but since I knew you were here, I wanted to take this chance to show you some pictures of both your parents."

"My mum? And dad?" Harry was consumed with curiosity. He leaned forward eagerly. "Show me!" Dudley was equally interested; he had mentioned that his mother seldom or never said much about his Aunt Lily, and he wanted to know more about her.

Lupin opened the book, to show a wizarding photograph of a large group of children, all about the right age to be entering Hogwarts, gathered together. All of them wore red-and-gold-trimmed robes, and their ties were also in Gryffindor colors. "This was taken the first day we were in school, once we'd all been Sorted. The background is the Gryffindor common room." He pointed. "There's your mother, Mr. Potter. That red hair is quite distinctive, and I've heard that the other girls quite envied her for it. Down there, in the front row, is your father." Harry leaned closer, looking carefully at the picture. His mother seemed to be awfully young, but still a very attractive girl, while his father looked startlingly like he had at that age. They shared the same messy hair, their faces were the same shape, and from what little Harry could tell, they were even roughly the same height. He stood with three other boys, one of them recognizably Professor Lupin at eleven years old, the other ones a study in contrasts. One of them was tall, black-haired and black-eyed, with a wicked grin, while the other one bore a striking resemblance to a small burrowing creature.

At Harry's questioning look, Professor Lupin nodded. "Yes, that's me. Your father was my roommate, along with Peter Pettigrew and…" his voice grew sharp with distaste… "Sirius Black."

"Sirius Black?" Harry's eyes went wide. "The man who's supposed to be looking for me?"

"Yes. We were all very surprised that he'd Sorted Gryffindor; his whole family was Slytherin for centuries back, and according to rumour, up to their necks in the Dark Arts and every kind of nastiness you can think of." Professor Lupin suddenly visibly remembered their own House affiliation. "Goes to show, you can't go by House to know who's good or bad, no matter what some people think!"

Harry, Dudley and Hermione all nodded. They had noticed that some other people were prejudiced against their House, and also that good and bad people were found in all four Houses. It had not been "evil" Slytherins who had pranked Luna Lovegood and put her in danger, after all, but members of "good" Gryffindor. And nobody at all could call Luna evil. She was one of the least malicious people they knew, and they'd have sooner believed that Argus Filch, the cantankerous caretaker, was the Dark Lord in disguise than that she would deliberately do anything evil.

Harry knew that he, at least, was evil, or at least, that he'd done evil things. He knew that most people would call Balalaika evil, and he'd been in Balalaika's service from the time he was first old enough to run errands in Roanapur, along with Dudley. He'd been complicit in quite a few crimes, even though he'd never taken a major part. And he knew that most if not all of their friends in Roanapur were what most people called "evil." Being evil, in itself, didn't bother him. Even though Balalaika was evil, she was also his protector, his mentor, his fountain of wisdom, and where she led, he would follow. And if that makes me evil, so be it! he thought defiantly.

Out loud, he asked: "So what were my parents like back when you knew them? Were they friends?"

Professor Lupin laughed rather ruefully. "Not at first! Frankly, Mr. Potter, your father was not a nice person when he was younger, and your mother detested him. He was panting after her from the moment he saw her…along with almost all the other boys in the school…but she had no time for him, or the rest of us. She was great friends for a long time with your House head, Professor Snape. They'd apparently grown up in the same town and knew each other before coming to Hogwarts."

"Professor Snape said he knew my Mum." Harry said, rather sadly. Normally, he seldom thought about his orphaned condition; it was just one of the facts of his life, like living in Asia. Now he was wondering what his real mother was like. Dudley was also interested, and Hermione had put her book aside to listen as well.

"Yes, he did. Their friendship came to an end in our sixth year. Professor Snape had been hanging around with a crowd of people in Slytherin of whom your mother strongly disapproved…they were all bigoted against Muggles, and not shy about taking it out on Muggle-borns such as your mother. Finally, in a moment of great stress, when your father and Sirius Black were tormenting him and I, to my shame, was standing aside lest I lose the only friends I had, Professor Snape lashed out at your mother when she tried to come to his defense. What he said…well, that was the end of that friendship."

Dudley gave their teacher a suspicious look. "Why were you standing aside? If you didn't approve, why didn't you do something?"

Professor Lupin looked pained. "I'd never had friends before I came to Hogwarts, and I was terrified of losing their friendship. Not only would that have been painful, but both Sirius Black and James Potter had well-earned reputations as diabolically ingenious pranksters, and I had no desire to become their next target." He gave them a rather haggard grin. "We all shared the same dormitory room…and they knew secrets I would have done anything to keep."

"Oh." Put that way, Harry understood, and he could see that Dudley and Hermione did, too. He thought of how uncomfortable it would be to share a dorm room with the Weasley twins if he were tops on their "Target for Today" list, and shuddered slightly.

"In any case," said Professor Lupin, "here are some pictures of your parents during their Hogwarts years." The pictures, being magical, moved and waved at them as Harry looked. He stared particularly at the images of his parents. At first, they appeared separately, never in the same picture, and the pictures that showed his mother usually had many other Gryffindors in them, while his father and friends were posing by themselves. Then, suddenly, his mother and father were often together, arms around each others' shoulders as they beamed out at the camera.

"Her eyes are like yours, Harry," Dudley commented. Harry nodded. He felt a little like crying, but wouldn't do it in front of the others. Only Dudley. Dudley was family, close as any brother. Dudley would understand. He'd suffered loss, too.

"In other ways, you favour your father, Mr. Potter," Professor Lupin said. "I must say, meeting you for the first time was quite a shock." He smiled, and it lit up his face for a second. "Luckily, you're nothing like what your father was like at that age!"

For a while, Professor Lupin reminisced about his days at Hogwarts, telling Harry and his friends quite a few interesting things about the forebears of people they knew. "Lucius Malfoy was a few years older than we were, and he strutted around the school as though he owned it and we were all his serfs. Sirius and James pranked him, many times, but the message never got through to him. He had a marriage all arranged, the way rich purebloods normally do. Merlin help anybody who married that ice queen, we all thought!"

"Hang on," said Dudley. "Is her name Narcissa?"

"Narcissa Black, as-was. She and her sister were cousins to Sirius Black, but they were completely typical of that family. They were pureblood supremacists and Narcissa's sister, Bellatrix, turned out to be one of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's best lieutenants. She was a terror on the battlefield! After her master disappeared, she and her husband, Rudolphus Lestrange, claimed to have been under the Imperius Curse. The explanation was accepted, although, personally, I'd say that the Black family fortune had a lot to do with their acquittal. Then about a year after their master was gone, Bellatrix, her husband, her brother in law Rabastan, and a fool they'd inveigled into following their lead struck at the Longbottoms, torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom into insanity."

"And straight off to Azkaban they went, I take it?" asked Hermione.

"Quick as boiled asparagus, as the Emperor Augustus would have said, Miss Granger! I will admit, I have had my doubts about their companion, but the Lestranges, all three of them, were clearly as guilty as could be. There was a huge scandal about that trial, although the details were mostly suppressed. All that is known is that afterward, Bartemius Crouch, who'd been bidding fair to be the next Minister of Magic, was in disgrace. Nobody would say why, but he's never risen as high as he had before the Lestranges were captured."

"So what happened? You're still here; I know my father's dead," Harry said. "What was with Sirius Black? And that other kid…what was his name?"

"There were four of us. We called ourselves the Marauding Four, or just the Marauders. The fourth member of the group was Peter Pettigrew. He wasn't honestly a strong wizard, but he was as brave as could be." A shadow passed across Professor Lupin's face. "Sirius Black betrayed your parents to You-Know-Who, and Peter tracked him down and tried to take him in. There was an explosion, and all that was left of Peter was his fingers. His courage got him the Order of Merlin, posthumously."

"And now he's somehow or other crashed out of Azkaban, and they think he's after me, is that right?" Harry's hand crept toward his armpit, where his Makarov rode. He had not mentioned it around the senior Grangers. Like most British people, they had a superstitious fear of firearms. Harry and Dudley, on the other hand, had been trained, and trained well, and were both fine shots. If this "Sirius Black" character showed his face, they had a surprise waiting for him, in nine-millimeter size. And Harry had long since figured out that between unfamiliarity and unwarranted contempt of "Muggle methods," most wizards and witches would be easy targets at first.

"Yes, that's right. That's why they have Dementors around the school grounds." Harry growled low in his throat. He had not enjoyed his past experiences with Dementors, and was looking forward to learning some spells that would make them say "Uncle!" Or, if they spoke Russian, "Tovarishch!"

"But, to continue down Memory Lane," Professor Lupin said, "for years the four of us were inseparable friends. Oh, the fun we had! The pranks we played! I will say, I should have reined them in. That may have been why Dumbledore made me a prefect in the first place, but I couldn't bear the thought of losing my only friends!"

"I see," Harry said. He and Dudley exchanged glances. Neither of them was fond of practical jokes and pranks, and the Gryffindor girls' pranking of Luna had made their disapproval very firm. Harry rather thought that had he been his father's schoolmate, rather than his son, he might have come into conflict with the Marauders. And he also thought it would not have ended happily for the Marauders. "What sort of pranks did they play?"

"Well, James and Sirius were the ringleaders at that. They developed a variant of the Summoning Charm that could have a girl's knickers off her and in their hands before she knew what had hit her. I remember how furious Frank Longbottom was with them, when they did that to Alice! I thought he was going to draw his wand, but he saw he was outnumbered four-to-one, and he had to back down."

Harry glanced at Hermione, and saw that she'd narrowed her eyes dangerously. She was an atypical girl in many ways, but she felt the solidarity that held the girls at Hogwarts together as strongly as any of their female schoolmates. He figured that anybody stupid enough to de-knicker her would be on the receiving end of a barrage of spells before he knew what had hit him. And Dudley was also looking distinctly ominous. In some ways, Dudley took mistreatment of Luna more seriously than Luna herself did. Off in her own little world as she was, Luna might forgive someone who did her wrong, but Dudley would not rest until he'd paid the affront back, preferably several-fold.

In Russian, Harry murmured: "Good thing Malfoy or the Weasley twins don't know that spell, isn't it?" Dudley and Hermione both nodded. Harry was gratified to see how fluent Hermione had become in his and Dudley's second language. At Professor Lupin's puzzled look, Harry blandly explained: "Oh, sorry, sir. It's just that Dudley and I both speak Russian, since our employer in Thailand is Russian and we picked the language up from her employees. Hermione got curious and swotted the language last summer hols. I wasn't thinking, and what I was saying came out in Russian before I knew it." Which was a load of utter codswallop, but it satisfied Professor Lupin, to Harry's gratification.

The news of their linguistic accomplishments distracted Professor Lupin. "You do know, of course, that the default language of instruction at Durmstrang is Russian, don't you? After you take your OWLs, you might want to consider applying for one of the programs to allow students to study overseas. Durmstrang has some special courses of instruction that Hogwarts doesn't have."

"We didn't know that!" Harry made a mental note, and he could see that Hermione would definitely remember this little fact. He rather imagined that Hermione'd be eager to go. For himself, he lacked her driving ambition to be the best. Passing his NEWTs with good scores and going back to Thailand to be Balalaika's wizard summed up what he wanted to do with his life. Roanapur was his home, Balalaika his leader, and that was that. If he had to go through the smoldering ashes of the evil wizard that had orphaned him to get to that goal…that was a bonus in his eyes. Nothing in his upbringing had made him one bit forgiving.

He had a brief fantasy of subduing Sirius Black and bringing him back to Roanapur somehow, and explaining to Balalaika just who he was and what he had done. While his employer was ladylike at all times, even when angry, and almost never raised her voice, Harry knew that she was utterly ruthless toward anybody who threatened or, God forbid, harmed one of hers. Balalaika would love to get in on the revenge, Harry thought happily. And Aunt Petunia would also probably want to take a hand. After all, while he had lost a mother and father, Aunt Petunia had lost her sister, and lost any chance for them to reconcile.

Some while later, the senior Grangers came home. Their surprise at seeing one of their daughter's teachers unexpectedly at their house was quickly turned to delight at Professor Lupin's praise of Hermione's intelligence and application. Mrs. Granger insisted that Professor Lupin stay for dinner, and since he was seated across from her, Helen spent much of the evening giving him appraising looks. Harry smiled at the byplay, and noticed that once the meal was done, Professor Lupin pleaded other engagements as his reason for leaving so soon. Harry was glad that Professor Lupin had stopped by; he had found the information he'd been given most enlightening. Not least, he now thought he knew why Professor Snape seemed cold and distant to him, more so than to the other Slytherins. His resemblance to his father was enough explanation for that. Professor Snape, no more than most Slytherins, was not one to forgive or forget easily.