Author Note: Other than the few characters I've created, the characters and world belong to J.K. Rowling. I began this story back in 2007 under a different title and username right after the last book came out, "The Adventures of Albus Potter" by the book fanatic. Over a decade later, I have finally finished constructing and altering the plot from my original, unfinished tale. The story starts off from the ending of the 7th book, the majority of the plot written before "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." Enjoy!
Mature content and themes possible (will attempt to place alerts at beginnings of chapters with such content) and update rating as needed.
DESCRIER
Chapter 1: Chocolate FrogsHe doubted the hope surging inside his heart as the Hogwarts Express lurched into motion with a piercing whistle.
Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew. The words his father had just imparted echoed in his ears. The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account.
His fate would still be sealed based on some hat's judgment.
Albus sighed and shivered with uncertainty when his family's waving hands faded behind the train's cascading steam. Shutting the compartment window, he took the seat beside his cousin and best friend, Rose, who vivaciously chattered on about all the books she read about Hogwarts.
Both his brother, James, and close family friend, Teddy, had all been sorted into Gryffindor. Summer after summer, he'd listened, enthralled, with their adventures, classes, and tales of what students in the other houses were up to. Even his parents and most of their friends were Gryffindors and would tell him stories every blue moon of their adventures at the great castle. You were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew. He knew his middle name, Severus, was in honor of a deceased Hogwarts professor. He'd never reflected much on it before now. Who was Severus? Could a Slytherin really be braver then a Gryffindor?
His whole family was brave to the bone.
Everyone was always daring, competitive, optimistic, and adventurous. He knew his cousins and siblings called him the black sheep. Always cautious, quiet, listening, and observing. He could read his family's intentions in the blink of an eye and could spot their mischief from a mile away. Catch silent glances between his parents and words left unsaid.
His stomach twisted into knots. His father had given him hope. Hope that the sorting had would take his preferences into account.
He hated the feeling, hope.
It would have been better to spend the long train ride sorting through his thoughts and emotions, readying to meet his fate and become the first of the Potter and Weasley line to be cast into Slytherin. Hope left him vulnerable. Hope allowed him to be hurt. It let anxiety eat at him twofold. What if the hat didn't take his choice into account and he was cast into Slytherin? Would he be the bane of his family's stories? What would his cousins think? Rose was his closest friend, would she drift apart from him? Would James and Lily treat him differently?
Rose ceased talking, probably realizing he wasn't listening to her exude about the founders of Hogwarts.
"The hat's not going to sort you into Slytherin, Albus." Rose confidently took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze.
Rose was just as brave and optimistic as the rest of his family. She always went out of her way to include him, occasionally pushing him into her adventures around the secluded lake and hillside their families called home. But nothing like the trouble James, Lily, and Hugo would concoct.
"Look, you know that you don't fit the description of a Slytherin," Rose whispered, nudging him in the arm.
He doubted that and lifted an eyebrow. "Self-preservation, resourcefulness, cunning?"
"Oh please, that could just be the same thing as creativity and valuing wisdom. Besides, I know you best and you don't have a prideful bone in your body. Don't worry about the hat. Besides, it's not like the world would end if you were placed in Slytherin. Which you won't be!" Rose grinned with confidence, giving his hand a squeeze before letting go.
Albus was one of the bravest and kindest of her cousins. Why couldn't he see it? Sure, he had always kept most of his thoughts to himself and could read anyone like an open book. She was certain his conscientious nature would prevent him from landing in the house her dad had endlessly bashed during his tales of school though.
He was her best friend.
Out of everyone in her family, he was the only one who never once threw hurtful remarks at her, or anyone for that matter. Never goaded anyone on, never got overly competitive, never boasted. Albus, who'd willingly listen to her rant about books for hours while James and Hugo would just cut her short and label her a "nerd" or "geek." Albus, who endlessly rescued her from her carelessness during their secret adventures to search for magical plants and creatures around their home.
No, she wouldn't let his identity be doomed to the fate of a hat.
She'd tirelessly researched the sorting hat over the past month in her mother's little home library when Albus had finally opened up to her about what had been eating at his mind. She didn't think she'd ever fully comprehend all his concerns about being sorted into Slytherin. Their whole large family were Gryffindors through and through. However, the more she read about the houses and their founders, the more she secretly struggled to deny some of his concerns. She'd never tell him though, he just needed to believe in himself more. See himself the way she saw him. She believed in him! He just simply couldn't be put in Slytherin… right?
"No room here, better luck elsewhere mate," the platinum blond boy in the completely empty compartment bit.
He continued down the train. Bloody brilliant. At this rate, he'd be searching for a seat the whole journey.
He knew he shouldn't have worn his brown "muggle" jumper and denims. He just couldn't wrap his head around this whole magic thing. A month ago he was going for walks around London with his schoolmate and his neighbor's terrier, bashing on teachers and dreading pre-algebra next semester. His mother had even taken on a second part-time job at an abysmal restaurant to buy him some new threads and school supplies. But here he was in his new brown jumper with a rucksack full of texts on "charms" and "potions," and a balled-up black robe shoved under the textbooks. The black robe that the entire population on this train appeared to wear proudly like it wasn't some grim reaper costume.
It had just been another late evening watching the tube with his mum, sitting in their tiny London flat jammed with her half-wilting plants, year-round Christmas lights, and his doodles plastering the wall like wallpaper. It was the incessant pecking of large, black owl on the room's one and only window that somehow managed to turn his entire world upside down. An offer to attend a school called Hogwarts for witches and wizards had come clutched in the claws of the bird. He thought he'd been hallucinating. As soon as his mum read the letter of acceptance, he'd spilled his ramen noodle dinner all over the his futon bed they were crammed onto.
He'd been seeing things that summer.
His doodles would move or blink now and then. He had chalked it up to psychosis or unresolved trauma, or maybe about the father he never knew. Didn't tell a soul about it though. Just kept asking his mates if they saw anything odd about his drawings.
He'd almost begged his mum to get him tested when he'd fallen out of a tree in St. Jame's Park. He'd been sketching a raven that'd flown out of his pages and into… reality? He had definitely hit his head during that fall and his raven was nowhere in his sketchpad. He didn't want to go back to the juvenile psychiatric ward he had hazy memories from as a 6-year-old.
The letter had been the final straw. He thought for sure he'd be whisked off to the doctors to undergo their incessant tests and brain imaging. Were it not for the giant man who had come to collect him and take him shopping for "the basics" in Diagon Alley, he would have checked himself into the hospital. His mother had been dumbfounded, but quicker to accept the world tilting upside down. He still wasn't sure what to make of it all, whether or not to even trust his mind. His mother had been provided with a "support group" of other muggle families who had magical children.
I probably need that group more than mum.
To remind himself that this surreal experience was, in fact, very much real and that, no, he was not currently a patient in that juvenile psych ward again, he'd wrap his hand around the Cypress-wood wand that had chosen him. The spark of electricity flickering around his fingertips every time he touched the handle gave him the shock he needed to ground himself. This is all truly happening.
He knocked on another nearly empty compartment. Here goes, again.
"Mind if I join?" A boy in muggle attire and an anxious voice asked.
Albus suspected the boy had been declined quite a few times already by the tightness in his voice. Their compartment was nearly at the end of the train too. How many compartments had this boy already asked to join?
"Not at all!" He and Rose exclaimed simultaneously.
"Thanks, I'm Will Locksly by the way," The boy smiled with relief, brushing his long, sandy hair away from his freckle-splattered face. "Just found out I was a wizard this this past week."
"Wow, really? That must've been a bit of a shock! I'm Rose Weasley, and this is Albus Potter, my cousin," Rose interjected and shook the boy's hand with gusto.
"Nice to meet you, we're both first years too," he told Will.
"So how'd you'd find out you were a wizard?" Rose asked, leaning forward on her seat.
Albus was grateful to temporarily forget about his impending fate and the sorting hat. Will told them about the owl carrying a letter, shopping at Diagon Alley with a giant man, and about his sketches moving around on him during the summer.
"Honestly thought I'd done it and was going mental," Will explained when he told them about a drawing flying out of his sketchpad.
It was certainly more unusual. He couldn't remember hearing of anything quite like that, certainly of the portraits moving and speaking and disappearing. Never anything going out of a page though. Maybe Rose had read about magic like this somewhere.
Since Will didn't know anything about Hogwarts, he and Rose told Will all about the enchanted stairs, portraits that talk, ghosts that wander through the halls, and just about everything else they could think of. By the end of their tales, Will's mouth hung agape and his brown eyes widened with wonder.
"Albus here is scared that he will be sorted into Slytherin, even though he has all the characteristics of a good Gryffindor," Rose said confidently.
He rolled his eyes and gave his cousin a nudge, swallowing back the fear that was starting to bubble in his chest again.
"What's a Gryffindor?" Will asked, curious.
"Well, you see there are four houses that every first year is sorted into," Rose replied in her matter-of-fact manner. "Slytherin is the worst lot of them all, Hufflepuff kind of takes anyone, Ravenclaw takes brains, and the best of them all is Gryffindor, for those who are brave," Rose continued.
Will laughed. "Not biased at all, I see?"
Albus clenched his teeth at his cousin's description. "There's obviously a little bit more to it than that. Rose spent the entire month researching the founders of each house. She could probably give us an hour-long presentation if we let her."
"I'm just summarizing," Rose snapped, cheeks turning pink. "That's exactly how my dad likes to explain it, at least. I figured it was more concise than an hour-long presentation."
He smiled. It was an odd feeling, egging his cousin on.
"How are you sorted into the houses?" Will inquired.
"The sorting hat of course!" Rose carried on. "The headmistress will put in on our heads and it decides what house to place us in. I think it may somehow be connected to the Egyptian feather of truth that supposedly weighs souls in the afterlife, but I wasn't able to find anything more on the subject in my mum's library. I'm hoping the Hogwarts library may be more illuminating. My mum has told me so many stories about it, especially the restricted section!"
He laughed. His cousin was such a Gryffindor, bravely seeking trouble in the name of knowledge.
"Wicked!" Will exclaimed, enthralled by Rose's knowledge and description of Hogwarts.
Rose felt a blush of pride sweep over her cheeks again. It was nice making another friend who was interested in the knowledge she sought from all her readings. Another wrap on the door and a pleasant elderly woman with a trolly popped her head into their compartment.
"Anything off the trolly, dears?"
"Yes, please!" She felt her stomach growl. She knew she had inherited her love of food from her dad. He had such good taste in sweets and made the best lunches and dinners while her mum was away at work.
"Three chocolate frogs, please." Albus exchanged for a handful of Knuts and handed one to each of them.
"By Merlin!" Am I seeing correctly? You must be Harry Potter's son!" The trolly lady exclaimed. "Why I remember the first time I saw the boy-who-lived, he bought my whole lot! Great man, your father."
At that, the trolly lady closed the compartment door. Albus's face was twisted in confusion, meeting her own perplexed eyes as he handed her and Will a chocolate frog. Boy-who-lived? What was that about?
"This is Albus Dumbledore, the man my dad named me after. He was headmaster at the school when my parents attended. Someone my dad really looked up to, and a Gryffindor," Albus showed Will the familiar picture of a bearded man on the card.
"The picture moves!" Will exclaimed.
"Well, yes!" Albus laughed. "I forget muggle pictures are stationary sometimes. The pictures don't stick around all day though, they travel around and such."
Will shook his head in disbelief, carefully unwrapping package.
She looked at her own card and groaned, "I got Merlin, again! I must have at least twenty of him by now."
"Who did you get, Will?" Albus asked.
"Harry Potter" Will offered, squinting across the seat. "Are you related? You look just like this man... just a much younger version."
Electric-like jolts zapped down Albus' spine. Harry Potter... his father... on a chocolate frog card? He felt himself suck in the too-cool air through his lips, finding he'd altogether stopped breathing. His mind had already ached from doing cartwheels, perplexed from riddling out the meaning behind what the trolly lady had said about The-Boy-Who-Lived.
"What does it say?" Rose hastily jumped into the seat next to Will and peered down at the card. "That's my uncle! Albus, it's definitely your dad."
His feet took on the weight of molten Dwarf-lead, paralyzing him in time. "W-what?"
Will read, "The-boy-who-lived, only wizard known to survive the death curse, twice. Defeated the Dark Lord Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts. Successful Auror for the Ministry of Magic."
Surely the card was wrong. Well, the last part about being an Auror was true. His dad had just been a student at Hogwarts though, just a normal student. He'd been a seeker for Gryffindor. That was his claim to fame... not this.
"They never told us much about Voldemort or the final battle" Rose whispered across the compartment, now clutching the card in her shaking hand. Will's chocolate frog had jumped out of the window during the shock. He found himself giving Will his chocolate frog instead and taking the card into his hand, watching the portrait of his father smile back up at him, circular spectacles and all.
"Your father is a war hero?" Will asked, looking back and forth between Rose and him.
"I… He…" He didn't know what to say. His throat felt like a toad was stuck in it.
"My parents, both of our parents," he nodded to Rose, "had told us they were at the battle of Hogwarts when the Dark Lord was defeated. They've always been very quiet and hush-hush about it all. I always figured it must have just been a very traumatic experience. That maybe they'd talk about it more someday when we're older."
"I've never been able to find anything about the final battle in my mum's library," Rose hissed, furrowing her dark red brows, "despite having asked her about it a million times."
He felt a surge of cold wash over him as the realization that his dad, his whole family, had been keeping information from them. Lying. His parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, all had been lying. To all of them. Did James know? Did Teddy and Victorie know about this boy-who-lived? What are his parents? Was this why everyone had stared at them on the train platform and his uncle had cracked that joke about being famous? Albus gulped. His future and his past were now even more uncertain.
Will could've cut the tension in the compartment with a knife. He felt the tug of the hollow pit in his stomach where he kept all questions he had about his own father. The things he'd never know. However, his mother had never lied to him. He'd only pluck up the courage once a year to ask about his father. The answer was always silence.
"Five minutes until we arrive," a polished voice call out into the cooridor. "Please ensure uniforms are in order, ties are tied, shirts are tucked. And first years, to the docks please, others to the carriages."
Will frowned. "I should change…"
Rose and Albus gave him privacy as he pulled his wrinkled robes and uniform out of his rucksack. Yikes. He knew he shouldn't have thrown his text books on top of the robe. It had been an act of rebellion against the sudden change. A final denial that the world he knew and loved was now forever changed. That magic existed. That everyone he knew would continue to live in a world blind to the one he just entered, blind to magic. You're not losing your mind. He repeated the mantra to himself several times.
He hopped into a small rowboat with his new friends and some other nervous and giddy students and breathed a sigh of relief at the darkness. No one could see just how badly wrinkled his cloak was, for now at least.
"There it is, there's Hogwarts," Albus breathed, placing a hand on his shoulder.
The moon cast a dim glow upon a looming, turreted castle that jutted out from the rocky mountainside. He felt awe wash over him. Flickers of torchlight danced upon the stone walls and reflected like stars in the mirror-like stillness of the loch below.
"It's magical," he whispered.
The electric surge hummed around his fingertips as he gripped his wand, ensuring him that he was here. This is real, magic.
~oOo~
Author Note: This story has been swimming in my head for over a decade. I hope I've piqued your interest! I had always interpreted the last chapter in book 7 to mean that Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny's children didn't have a clue that their parents were famous and had saved the Wizarding World. There were so many little matters left unanswered, problems left unresolved and left to grow into political beasts and social unrest. This story will capture what I imagine would have come to pass all those years after Voldemort's defeat; with the next generation stepping up to sort through it all.