By the weekend after Halloween, Harry still hadn't figured out how to broach the topic of his father with Remus Lupin. Aunt Pepper had gotten back to him that, indeed, that sounded like the weird name she remembered, but she couldn't be sure whether she'd actually ever met James' other friend. With him being from Midgard, maybe Lupin had just fallen out of touch with his school friends after graduation? It was certainly something the adults in Harry's life had warned him was pretty likely—most people didn't keep in touch with many childhood friends into adulthood.
It was also a little weird that, two months into classes, they hadn't actually seen Lupin do any magic.
It wasn't like Harry didn't have a lot of other things on his mind. Classwork was ramping up so much that he was really glad he hadn't taken three electives (and Hermione seemed to be regretting it). Wood still badgered him to come to quidditch practice more often than he'd like so his skills didn't atrophy. Even as most of the girls in the study group would rather spend their time in other ways, Dean wasn't letting up on making sure they got in plenty of practice for martial arts, fencing, and wandless magic, as well as the cardio exercise to back it all up.
And that was not to discount the whole dating thing.
In their month and a half or so of dating, Harry had really started to appreciate Lavender in a way he hadn't when they'd just been friends. She was funny, brave, and easy to talk to, even if what she wanted to talk about was mostly stuff that wasn't that interesting to him. And—though he'd never admit to anyone (except maybe Dean) that he was crude enough to notice—of all their female friends she was the one that was, well, developing fastest. He hoped he was being more gentlemanly with his hard-won summer experience of not staring at Natasha, but he certainly noticed.
By the end of their allotted dating window (before the girls pulled a Mad Hatter and yelled, "Everybody, switch places!"), they'd remained pretty chaste. Hand holding, leaning into each other at the table, and hugs were pretty much all they'd gotten to, though she'd given him a close-mouthed kiss goodnight on their last evening of dating.
And then he was on to Parvati.
That relationship was a little odd. For all that he'd known her only maybe half a day longer than Lavender, and a few hours longer than Hermione, she and Padma were the first school friends he'd met, during that very first trip to Kamar-Taj. Some part of his brain wanted to prioritize that relationship as if he'd known her since they were little, and consider her more like a sister than a potential romance.
Dean seemed to be having a similar problem with it being his turn to date Hermione.
The dynamic was a bit skewed, with the Midgard-based couples being confused about their brotherly feelings, while the Vanaheim kids had sparks flying. Neville had wound up with Luna for the second sequence, and he already seemed to be far more smitten with her than he'd been with Hermione (who he'd considered not just a sister, but a big sister, after all the mothering she'd given him over their first year). Ron had wound up with Lavender, who seemed to have gotten her confidence from her time with Harry to escalate far more quickly with Ron. Harry was really trying not to be jealous, since the entire point of this was to avoid jealousy.
At one point, when he was particularly annoyed at Lavender sitting in Ron's lap at the study table in the library, Luna glanced from them to Harry and gave him a shrug that clearly indicated, "I told you so."
But this whole thing was Parvati's idea, she was a social force of nature, and she was going to make it work. While in the back of her mind, she was pretty aware that of the Earth girls, Hermione or Padma were both probably a better fit for Harry, she wasn't going to give up. This whole thing was an experiment—her experiment—and her turn with Ron had been no fun, so she was dead set on having a good time with Harry.
And, unlike when he dated Lavender, during her time there was a Hogsmeade Weekend.
Hogwarts didn't really have a concept of field trips like Earth schools had. In addition to it just being overall more dangerous to have a bunch of kids out without much supervision (on Earth, trolls very rarely rampaged through a trip to the aquarium or botanical garden), Hogwarts was difficult to get to and similarly difficult to leave. Unless a convenient convergence happened to have shown up in the school, any student trip needed to make use of the Hogwarts Express to get out of the region of heavy magic that was difficult to teleport into or out of. That was a lot of time to devote, especially with how limited the school's teaching staff was.
But you could have the world come to Hogwarts.
While there was only one actual train on Vanaheim, the couple-hundred miles of smooth and level train tracks presented an interesting opportunity for a world whose transportation technology remained strangely medieval. Making a steam engine was hard, but building wagon wheels that could slot between standard-width rails was easy enough. The difficult part was just training the draft animals to walk on the wooden tracks without breaking an ankle on the ballast. Even with this challenge, quite a few traveling traders spent most of their year working the path between the two train platforms. In the last couple of centuries, villages had even sprung up next to the track just for this access.
A few arbitrary times a year, most of these traders made their way to Hogsmeade, ready to soak up the students' pocket money. A captive audience of two hundred shoppers was hard to pass up.
"This is neat," Parvati observed, as she grabbed Harry's hand when they stepped off the carriages that had brought them from the school to the town. "It's like a little Goblin Market."
Harry tried not to stare as Ron and Lavender skipped off into the town, arm in arm, and agreed, "Yeah. I don't think I've really seen the town in good light before. I wonder if this square is empty most of the year." The permanent buildings of the small village seemed to wrap around a large cobblestoned square which was currently full of dozens of pop-up merchant stalls. Most were basically just brightly-painted canvas tents, but some had managed folding wooden walls and even roofs. At the edges of the square, it looked like a few merchants had stalls built into the surrounding buildings, and it wasn't clear whether they just rented them, or they were permanent businesses in the town.
For the first part of the morning, the study group mostly drifted together, seeing what there was to see. Luna was too young to go, so Neville was flying solo, and Padma was once again without a match. Seamus rounded out the trio of friends without a date to Hogsmeade. Since Parvati was hesitant to just ditch her sister (the way Ron and Lavender had ditched all of them), Harry was able to treat the excursion as pretty much just a normal social outing.
Most of the shops were practical. There were stalls with clothing, book dealers, sellers of writing materials, tool vendors, and even various smiths that could custom-forge brass, bronze, or silver over small anvils and crucibles. At least a quarter of the stalls were various home goods that were of almost zero interest to students—traders that came for the actual citizens of Hogsmeade, but were willing to try their luck with the festival turnout.
What captured the attention of the children were the few stalls that were entirely designed to separate kids from their gold and silver. Mr. Honeyduke imported a vast array of candy. The Spintwitches had quidditch gear. Ms. Dervish and Mr. Banges had boxes full of reasonably-priced enchanted trinkets. And Zonko the Jester offered a panoply of gags, tricks, jokes, and pranks (the Weasley twins seemed to always be near his stall).
The festival square was anchored on either corner with two refreshment venues. One was a large, permanent building that seemed to be the town's regular inn; its signage was of three crossed broomsticks in an asterisk or snowflake pattern. They'd already heard stories of the "buttermead" concoction brewed up for the students (which they'd eventually try and realize was akin to a slightly-alcoholic cream soda; Vanaheim had many fewer restrictions on kids and alcohol than America). The other eatery was an immense tent in pinks and reds, which was rumored to be a fancy tea shop. A romantic, fancy tea shop.
Parvati was wistfully watching Lavender drag Ron into that tent, and Harry had to try something to distract her. "Want to check out the haunted house?" he asked.
"Haunted house?" Parvati asked, successfully intrigued.
"Supposed to be some kind of ruined fortress on the edge of town," he nodded, gesturing with the hand she wasn't holding. "The Roaring Rampart. Wood was telling me it's supposed to be the most haunted building on Vanaheim."
Parvati raised an eyebrow. "We live in a school that is literally full of ghosts. We can talk to them. One teaches our history class. You went to Niflheim last year."
"Right?" Harry nodded. "So if that's just a basic level of haunted, how haunted does this place have to be?"
"Good point," she acquiesced.
Unfortunately, none of the rest of the group was particularly interested in abandoning the shopping opportunities to go look at a ruined building of dubious hauntedness. Hermione and Padma were practically camping at the book seller and Dean couldn't leave his date. Ron and Lavender had already gone to the tea shop. Neville was looking through the trinket store for something that might help him in class. Seamus just grinned and said, "Three's a crowd, innit?" before waving them off.
The path out to the Roaring Rampart was clearly marked with spooky decorations, though it was a bit more of a hike than Harry had expected, the trail switching back and forth over the hills that marked the town's eastern boundary. He was almost certain they were technically pretty close to Hogwarts' northern fence, but the forest and hills were such that they could only occasionally even make out the school's towers through breaks in the treeline. There didn't seem to be too many other students coming out this way, though there were enough couples passing them coming back that it was clearly a pretty obvious day-after-Halloween date spot.
Which made Harry a little tongue tied about what to talk about.
Parvati was the one that broke the awkward silence, suggesting, "This is kind of like the cabin scene in Dead Before Arrival."
"Huh, yeah, I guess it is," Harry nodded, remembering the pre-credits scene from the recent Simon Williams movie. "I didn't realize you'd seen it."
She said, "It finally came out in India the week before school started. You'd mentioned it was good, so we talked Pitaji and Mataji into letting us go. They thought it was a little too scary, but I think Pitaji secretly really liked it."
"What'd you think?" he checked.
She shrugged, "It was intense. Williams is a good actor. He's no Kingo, of course."
"Who's that?"
"Prince of Bollywood," she explained. "He's, like, the latest of a family that's been starring in movies since the beginning. I guess you haven't seen The Shadow Warrior?"
"I don't think I've seen any Bollywood stuff," Harry admitted. "Well, I've seen some clips online. They have crazy superpowers and then have a musical built in, right?"
She nodded, "We like singing. And wire work. They have really good stunts. Kingo does all of his own stunts, and I've seen outtakes where it looks like he came close to dying to get the shot, and was having a really good time about it."
"Maybe he's a secret sorcerer or superhero," Harry joked.
"Right. Like someone with super powers would have nothing better to do than become an actor," she disagreed. "Though I guess maybe some actors could be sorcerers that didn't want to join the Masters."
"Master Mordo would be so mad," Harry grinned. In his teaching sessions, the extremely serious sorcerer inevitably worked in a note about how much responsibility they had, gifted as they were with magic. He realized he should ask Christine Everhart whether she ever got bothered by him, choosing to be a reporter.
Parvati rolled her eyes, "He's honestly part of why I'm thinking about staying here. It's so clear he doesn't think I'm working hard enough. He scares me a little."
"I think he had a hard early life," Harry tried to explain. "A bunch of the Masters seem like they basically found Kamar-Taj after their lives fell apart. That may be why they're the ones that make it to become Masters."
"Anyway," she said, not willing to forgive the creepily-intense sorcerer, "you should see some Kingo films. I bet at least some of them are online."
"Sure," he agreed. "We should probably figure out how to get the group together when we're not at school or Kamar-Taj. Maybe you can stay in London for the first couple days of winter break?"
"Probably," she smiled at the invitation, giving his hand a squeeze. "Oh! There's the ruin."
They'd finally made their way to the top of a hill where they could see the building in question. It seemed like it had once been a garrison fort for Hogwarts, maybe to make it difficult to siege the castle. Clearly made of old stone that had mostly fallen down, the core of the building was the size of a large house and surprisingly intact compared to old castles on Earth. It had a hill of its own with no large trees nearby, and it looked like it would be a steep climb for even adventurous students to get closer than a couple dozen yards.
And it was resolutely refusing to do anything haunted, loud, creepy, or eldritch.
"Maybe it only roars at night?" Parvati figured.
Harry frowned, "If this was on Earth, I'd just guess that it was something about the fallen stones and when the wind blows hard."
"Shame we don't have a broom to check it out closer."
Harry looked around and didn't see any other students currently at the overlook and smiled, pulling his broom from the bag of holding he'd bought at the last Goblin Market trip. "Knew this would come in handy."
"Why Mr. Potts, is that a broom in your pouch or are you just happy to see me?" Parvati smirked.
"Uh," he said, intelligently, before admitting, "I was going to ask if you wanted to ride my broom, but now that sounds wrong."
"Stop overthinking it," she insisted. "Let's fly."
He'd never really tried flying tandem before, especially with a girl that he was technically dating that had her arms tightly wrapped around him. But it was a good broom, he was a good flier, and the navigating gave him enough distraction to keep from focusing on the close contact. They slowly circled the structure, and still didn't see anything creepier than a little graffiti around the back ("F&G" marking the Weasley twins' venture past where most students could reach).
"No doors," Harry noted. "Not even to get out on the roof. I don't see a spot where there would be one." There were periodic arrow loops, so narrow that even a first-year wouldn't be able to squeeze through without shrinking down with magic.
"Maybe they transfigured the doors away to keep kids from going in," she figured. Reaching a hand out, she fluttered her eyes and extended her senses. "I feel a lot of warding magic."
"Yeah?" Harry checked. "I didn't know you were that sensitive. I don't really feel anything this far away."
"Trelawney is helping me work on it," Parvati explained. "I might not be that great at seeing the future, but she says I have a rare gift of being able to feel magic."
"That's really cool," he said, honestly impressed. "Seen enough?"
"Yes. And two people on a broom isn't as comfortable as I'd thought it would be," she agreed.
He set them back down on the overlook, not wanting to risk an adult seeing them fly into town and having a problem with him keeping his broom with him at all times. He didn't think it was definitely against the rules, but someone like Mr. Filch would probably figure out a way for it to be.
A moment of awkwardness set in again after he had the magical conveyance stowed and they weren't sure whether they should head back to town or make use of the secluded spot. Parvati started to say, "Well, I've been having a really good–"
"If it isn't Old Scarhead on a date," Draco Malfoy's voice interrupted as his pale hair and equally-pale face crested into view with his two bodyguards, Crabbe and Goyle. "Guess Brown left you for the Weasel." They stopped at the trailhead, spread out enough that Harry and Parvati couldn't just walk past them to go back to town.
Harry rolled his eyes and said, "We're done here, if you and your boyfriends want to use the makeout spot."
Draco's face flushed at the comment, and he drew his wand. "Big talk without your usual army of blood traitors and mudbloods."
He wasn't prepared for Parvati to yawn. "Are you and Draco going to fight?" she asked, managing to clearly convey that it wouldn't even be a contest.
"I've been trying not to," Harry shrugged. "Draco. How many times do I have to tell you that you're Ron's mean kid? Why don't you go pick on someone your own size?" Harry was really hoping that Parvati wouldn't pass that implied insult back to Ron, but it had seemed funny in the moment.
"I'll show you! I'll show you Potter!" the Malfoy heir snarled, and began flinging bolts of magic from his wand at the two of them. Notably, he was completely disregarding his supposed Hippogriff injury.
Harry was already moving and drawing his own wand. He wasn't actually that worried about fighting Malfoy, even with his bodyguards. Though the third-years were all getting pretty decent at magical firepower using their wands (Dean had blown the head off of a Hammeroid without one), Draco wasn't even at "Sokovian separatists with assault rifles" level of scary. What Harry worried about was simply Parvati getting hit, since she was the least combat-trained of the Midgardborn from the study group.
It helped that Crabbe and Goyle hadn't also drawn their wands. They honestly seemed surprised that Draco had snapped, and had mostly been expecting a bit of physical intimidation. Harry dodged two bolts of energy from Draco as the bookends slowly worked out that they might need to intervene, but noticed that a third bolt was potentially going to clip the also-flat-footed Parvati. (They'd been playing enough D&D that the terminology just slipped in.)
Rather than dodge the third bolt, Harry yelled and put his all into the little bit of defensive magic they'd been trying over the summer, and actually managed a rudimentary magical shield. It was basically a loose circle of orange light bisected by a triangle and maybe a line, compared to the densely-packed geometry of a real shield, and it instantly evaporated as it deflected Draco's bolt, but it worked.
Everyone standing on the overlook seemed duly impressed.
Harry was about to manifest his go-to whip to try to disarm Draco, when Parvati gasped, "It's the Grim!"
While Slytherin seemed like the house that would instruct their students to not fall for the "look out behind you" gambit, Draco and his cronies hadn't gotten the memo. All three turned and looked in the direction that Parvati and now Harry were staring, where an enormous, mangy, coal-black dog was rushing from the treeline, hackles up and growling.
A large dog, even a scary-looking one, shouldn't be any more of a threat to wizards than the snake had been at the dueling club the previous year. But there's the logical realization that your ability to violate physics is more than a match for a domesticated animal, and the emotional belief that angry beasts are dangerous.
The latter won out against the Slytherins, who made unflattering noises as they rushed back down the path toward town.
Parvati had finally thought to get her wand out, but seemed terrified by the very image of the death omen that her favorite teacher had been going on about. Harry wasn't much better off himself, just starting to ride the adrenaline of a spell fight with Malfoy and suddenly having an entirely unexpected threat before him. But he kept his wand level and skidded to a stop in position where he wasn't fouling Parvati's aim but would be able to move in between her and a charging dog.
Strangely, after having snarled and barked to scare off the Slytherins, the dog scrabbled to a stop and, if anything, looked frightened that it was against two children with wands trained on it. In the afternoon light filtering through the trees, they could see that the dog, though enormous, seemed pretty gaunt, and its fur was neither clean nor kempt.
In an eyeblink, it went from aggressive predator to a whining, embarrassed dog.
Harry's brain made some furious calculations. He'd already had the idea that the Grim might represent his godfather. He recalled seeing what might have been the same dog before getting on the train. Before he was consciously aware he'd made the connection, his mouth was asking, "Sirius Black?" and he was lowering his wand.
The dog cocked his head and then, in the same fluid metamorphosis that accompanied Rector McGonagall shifting from cat back to human, there was a tall man standing there instead.
Far from the crazed-but-young man they'd seen through the portal into the Dark Dimension, it seemed like over a decade of time was trying to catch up to Sirius Black all at once. His dark clothing was damaged and unraveling. His black hair and beard were nearly down to his waist and completely unwashed or combed. Inch-long fingernails were cracked, as if there was simply a maximum length they could reach before shattering. And the attempt at a smile he made revealed teeth in sore need of cleaning.
"I found you!" the man barked, beginning to step forward but reconsidering it as Parvati extended her wand further and Harry slightly raised his. "I saved you from those boys. Was that Lucius? Are you James? I… I can't keep track." Before he could get an answer, he madly rambled, "I saw you through a door in the sky. And I realized how much time had passed. So much time. But I'm here! Here now."
Harry nodded. That all tracked with what he'd heard. And he just had one burning question. "Did you kill Peter Pettigrew. And all those people?"
"Of course not!" Sirius snarled, face become a rictus of pain and anger. "Never trust a rat! He took my wand. I didn't notice it was gone until I suddenly remembered where the Potter cottage was! You have to believe me, James. I would have died to protect you."
"I'm Harry," he corrected the madman. "So Peter's the rat? And stole your wand?"
"He must have," Sirius nodded, pacing in agitation but not getting too much closer. Harry glanced back at Parvati, whose eyes were wide at the performance. "I remember I found you alive. You're Harry. You were just a baby. You had that scar, but it was new!" he gestured at Harry's forehead. "Hagrid was going to take you to safety. Your aunt, maybe—Miss Virginia. I saw you with her at the train! I told him where to find Hogun's skiff. I think. Then I went to see if someone had killed Peter. Broken the wards. I went to his house. I found my wand in the grass outside of the wreckage. I'd barely picked it up before the aurors came. The audacity of the prank! I couldn't help but laugh."
"You're saying Peter framed you? He let Voldemort through the wards and faked his death?" Harry tried to sum up, again lowering his wand.
"Exactly. Exactly. He must still be out there. Who knows what he's still up to. You're not safe. I have to keep you safe. I'm your godfather."
"I know," Harry nodded. His faint smile was more than mirrored by Sirius Black, who grinned a mad smile that his godson believed him.
"Someone's coming," Parvati warned, having lowered her own wand at the dramatic reunion. She had heard feet rushing up the trail before either of the boys.
"I'll be around," Sirius nodded. "I have to find Peter. Clear my name. Keep your eyes open!"
Before Harry could protest, Sirius was a dog again and bounding off into the woods.
A few seconds later, Percy Weasley rushed into the clearing, wand drawn, with Penelope Clearwater—the Ravenclaw prefect—not far behind him. The couple had probably been on their own way up to the makeout point and come upon Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle running away. They saw that Harry and Parvati seemed fine, though had wands out but lowered, and Percy asked, "What happened? Malfoy screamed there was some kind of beast."
Harry was about to come up with an excellent story about Draco just spooking a wild animal with his attack, but before he could begin Parvati opened her mouth. "It was Sirius Black! He's an animagus! And he's Harry's godfather! And he's innocent! It was the most amazing thing, because he said that he was framed by a friend of his named Peter, and also Draco was attacking us and that doesn't seem like something he should get away with, but Harry managed a shield and protected me (it was very gallant) and then the dog came rushing in and they ran away, but it wasn't a dog at all!"
As Parvati finally had to take a breath, Harry winced. There were no secrets when it came to Parvati Patil, the biggest gossip at Hogwarts. He'd forgotten that fact in the moment.
All he could actually hope for was that she'd forgotten his crack about Draco needing to go after Ron to fight someone his own size.
He wasn't optimistic.