Lost Boy 18

<<

Index

>>

Lost Boy

Part the Eighteenth

The summer of 1978 was coming to a close and everyone could tell that the Dark Lord was on edge.  Maia spent her days at Potter Abbey and Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.  Whenever they were in London, Regulus, Maia, and Harry went Muggle baiting.  Rather, Regulus and Maia went Muggle baiting and Harry tagged along, never wanting to be left behind.  He’d make the trees shake off their leaves and conjure butterflies for Muggle children to catch.

Maia cast a watchful eye on him, but never said anything to him.

In the third week of August, the Dark Lord called Harry to him.  “I have discovered where the Order of the Phoenix is meeting.”

Harry waited.

“Black’s Hole—Sirius Black’s cottage.”

Harry startled.  “Surely that cottage belongs to Stephagenia.”

The Dark Lord stared at Harry.  Oh.  It seemed like Evans, despite being engaged to the Dark Lord, was active in an organization that fought against him.  “You could feed her false information.”

“I’ve started doing that.  I need a man on the ground.  I understand Remus Lupin is sick periodically.  He is friends with your father.  I need you to discover the next time he is ill and then go to an Order meeting and report back to me.”  His dark blue eyes looked into Harry’s earthy green gaze.  “Do this for me, Hartwig.  I need to know Stephagenia’s involvement.”

Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to get between Evans and the Dark Lord, but he nodded his head.

He began to actively monitor Lupin’s comings and goings from Potter Abbey and James mentioned the day before the Full Moon that Lupin was feeling ill.  Now he just needed to know when a meeting was taking place.

On that Tuesday, James was finally ready to get his vined ring.

“Are you sure?” Harry asked, lounging under an apple tree at Potter Abbey.  “You can’t take it back.”  He thought of Evans and how she had had her husband killed to have her vined ring reset.  “They’re sung into the bone.  No one talks about it, but it’s quite painful.  You should be sure.”

“I am sure,” James told him, ruffling his hair a little in the wind.  His hazel eyes shone out from behind his glasses.  “I’ve talked about it with Dad a little.  He thinks I should do it.”

“Your father has been aware of his being only third generation his whole life.  He’s now a member of The Wicked Stepmother.  Of course he wants the status symbol.  He would get a vined ring himself if he weren’t turning one hundred and eighty next February.”  (Fleamont had gone to The Pumpkin carriage just a fortnight before to see about having a vined ring sung onto his own finger, but Mr. Greengrass had advised against it given his advanced age.  Fleamont had been disappointed, but he had his Wicked Stepmother card and could be seen having tea there with Aunt Euphemia or other wizards of society several times a week.)  “I know you’re eighteen,” Harry said carefully, “but it’s not like you’re going back to Hogwarts in a week and a half.”

“But you are,” James argued.  “I want you to help me pick.”

Harry gave him a small smile.  “You know I chose the simplest ring available.”  He flashed his left hand. “The only reason my engagement ring has an emerald is because Lucius wanted to show me off a bit.”

“Well, I might want something a little more ornate,” James admitted, “but I don’t want to take my one hundred seventy-two year old mother.  I love her, but she is so passé.”  He smiled casually.  “Please, Hartwig.  You’re the closest thing I have to a brother.”

Harry really couldn’t argue with that.  “We’ll have to floo into The Wicked Stepmother,” Harry warned.  “It’s not safe to step into Diagon or Knockturn Alley.”

“No, of course,” James agreed.  “How are you going to get your items for Hogwarts?”

“Mail order,” Harry told him.  “I sent Boleyn out for everything.  I just need a few new robes and I convinced Evans to let me floo into her father’s flat that’s above Fairy Woven Silks so I could just pop downstairs.”  He shrugged.  “Her being in love with me has some perks.”

James looked like he wanted to ask something, but he hesitated and the moment passed.

The two Potter boys went inside and dressed appropriately and flooed into The Wicked Stepmother before stepping out into Knockturn Alley and crossing the street to go into The Pumpkin Carriage.  A bell rang somewhere in the back of the store and one of the Greengrass daughters came out to greet them.

Harry placed his hand on James’s shoulder (he was a good four inches shorter than Harry) and he announced, “My cousin is six generations.  He would like a vined ring.”

She smiled at James.  “I read about your recovery, Mr. Potter.  We are all so glad.  Come.  We have a number of vined rings you may find to your liking.”  She smiled at them prettily. 

They went into the back room where there were several cases.

James gravitated toward gold and Harry browsed as he allowed James to gather an opinion on his own.  He had a draw for six hundred galleons from Fleamont who wanted to spare no expense on his son’s entrance into society. 

When James had pulled three, Harry came over to look them over.  One was a burnished gold and white gold vined ring, intertwined.  It was simple, just the two metal vines going up from the base of the third finger, then each vines splitting at the knuckle, and then joining again until they folded beneath the nail where there was a single cold leaf over the cuticle.  “Interesting,” Harry complimented.  He rather liked that one.

The second vined ring was a rose gold.  The vine came up, split at the knuckle, and then came up to the nail.  It had four leaves, each intricately carved with detail but no other embellishment.

The third vined ring was gold again and the same style.  It had several leaves, seven in total, all in emerald, laid flat against the skin. 

Harry liked the first and the second.

James tried them all on and discarded the third.

“Very few people have rose gold,” Harry commented.  “Then again, no one I know mix golds.  The lack of embellishments is also unusual.”

“The yellow gold and white gold combined is the embellishment,” the Greengrass girl informed them.

James was clearly torn, going so far as to put one on each hand, comparing them.  “What do you think?”

“What’s your gut reaction?” Harry asked.  “You’re going to have to look down at your hand for the rest of your life.  This is your commitment to your future wife—your commitment to perhaps Millie.  Which one is Millie?”

James indicated his right hand.  It was the rose gold with the four leaves.

Harry thought he had made the correct choice. 

It cost three hundred and seventy galleons, well within his budget.

James had the ring sung onto his left middle finger, grimacing through it, and then they walked back across the street to The Wicked Stepmother.  James kept on flexing his hand, feeling the ache in his bone.  The older you were when you had a ring sung onto your finger, the more it ached.  Harry had found it uncomfortable at fifteen, he couldn’t imagine how much more it would hurt at eighteen.  He’d heard stories of wizards passing out in their early twenties. 

“We’ll have to take a photograph and send it to Miss Flint,” Harry suggested, “unless you take her to tea this next week.”  He took a sip of his tea.

“Yes,” James agreed.  “You don’t think it’s worrying, do you?   That she’s a Flint.  That she’s Cousin Silvanus’s great-granddaughter.”

“No,” Harry disagreed.  “First, Cousin Silvanus is Aunt Euphemia’s second cousin, making Millie your third cousin twice removed.  The connection is so distant it’s hardly worth mentioning.  Are you worried because of Sirius and Stephagenia Black?”

James shrugged. 

“Something happened.  I know from Bellatrix Lestrange—”

“Who?”

“Cygnus Black’s daughter, Stephagenia’s cousin and Lucius’s greatest friend—that Sirius Black was ‘ungallant.’  That’s pureblood for ‘he did something unforgivable.’  I don’t know what it was—”

James leaned forward, “What do you think it was?”

Harry didn’t even want to guess.  If he stuck firecrackers into James’s trousers twenty feet off the ground, (and he had just dragged that out of James the week before more than a month after it had happened) then what had he done to a woman he was supposed to love and cherish?

“She’ll tell us when she wants to tell us.  Remember, I’m the wizard who wouldn’t go with her because she was a common Muggleborn, and you’re a wizard she hasn’t seen since first year.  It’s not like she’s going to trust us with her deepest, darkest secrets.”

“Stephagenia—” James looked away and took a large sip of tea.

Harry got a bad feeling.  “Stephagenia what?”

“Shesaidyoueithertraveledintimeorareillegitimate.”  James got it out all in one breath.

Harry blinked quickly.  “She said I—traveled in time or am—did you say ‘illegitimate’?”

James swallowed and took another large gulp of his tea. 

“Christ’s blood,” Harry swore under his breath.  “I—I can’t believe—.”  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.  “I am not illegitimate.”

“That’s what I said.”  James looked at him pleadingly.  “But does that mean you were born on July thirty-first, nineteen eighty?”

Harry blinked again.  “There is an old Potter magic.  If you are lost, you are brought to Potter Abbey to where—or when—you can be safely protected.  I am a Lost Boy.  There were no Potters left to care for me.”  He looked at James carefully.  “I think the Takeover somehow got out of hand and we were all gone.  I was the only Potter left.”

James looked stunned.  Carefully, he raised his cup toward the teapot, and it poured him more tea.  “We were all gone?  Not just Mum and Dad?  Me and Millie?  Uncle Charlus and Aunt Dorea?”

“Yes.”

“Then—does that mean that Stephagenia was somehow your mother?”

“She had no right to suggest that,” Harry said firmly.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me this?”

“Because—in another world when you didn’t have plague—you would have been my dad.”

James nearly dropped his cup.  He looked up with his hazel eyes and stared into Harry’s dark green gaze.  “You look nothing like me.”

“No,” Harry agreed.  “Not really.  I have your cheekbones.  The same jawline.  The same nose.  If you look at just our faces without the eye color and hair, we look the same.  We have the same forehead.”  He gave James a small smile.  “I didn’t want to burden you so shortly after you woke up.”

“Mum and Dad know?”

“Since I took the hereditary potion this past Christmas.  We suspected before then.”

James nodded and took another sip of his tea.  He seemed rather calm in all this.

“Why aren’t you—”  Harry leaned forward.  “Shouting or something?”

“Stephagenia told me.  I’ve been processing.  I don’t like Lucius Malfoy crawling into your bed.”

Of course he didn’t.  Harry fought not to roll his eyes.  “Aunt Euphemia suspects.”

“I don’t care—I don’t like it.”

“I’ll ask Lucius to stop, then, since you don’t like it,” Harry promised, thinking he could at least give his father this.  He was going back to Hogwarts in a week and a half.  Christmas would be interesting, but maybe James would have gotten used to the idea by then.

“How are we going to stop us all dying?  Mum and Dad are going to die by the time you’re eleven—Are you going to be born?”

“No.  We’re pretty sure I’m not going to be.”  Harry thought of Evans.  She was practically betrothed to the Dark Lord.  Harry also wanted to see James happy with Millie.  James and Evans would never suit.  She was too self-absorbed and too obsessed with Harry.  “Aunt Euphemia thinks it will be better if there aren’t two of me in the same timeline.”

“But how are we not going to all die?”

“I’m favored by the Dark Lord this time.  Stephagenia is favored by the Dark Lord, though he thinks she’s a spy.  You’re out of the war.  I don’t know about Uncle Charlus and Aunt Dorea.  I think Euphemia and Fleamont might die of old age.”

This didn’t seem to make James feel any better.  “I’m no use anyway.  I’m learning second year magic.”

“Which is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.  You’re still gaining your strength.  Your face is finally gathering some color.”  Harry smiled at him.  “You’ll be fully healthy in a year or two.  By the time Millie graduates in four years, you’ll be the picture of health.”

“I graduate in five.”

“She’ll be nineteen.  Perfectly respectable.”

James gave him a brilliant smile, his face only slightly gray.

The father and son, for that’s what they were now, finished up tea and headed for the floo.  James went in first.

Harry had an owl waiting for him from Rabastan Lestrange.  He had an owl trained from one of the Prewett brothers to come to him first.  Lord knew how he did it.  It seemed there was an Order Meeting the night of the Full Moon, which was, Harry checked, that night.

Writing to Lucius, he said he wasn’t going to be in tonight, but that he wanted to speak to him the next day as they had been found out.  He didn’t say who had found them out.  He wrote it in such a way that Lucius would think it was Euphemia or Fleamont.  It was a small deception.  Lucius would know all by August the first, nineteen eighty.  That was less than two years away.

Harry quickly metamorphed into Remus Lupin, threw on an old pair of robes he hoped were ragged enough, and made his way to Sirius Black’s former cottage.

There had been murder there.

He hadn’t expected the place to be haunted.  As it was haunted, Harry wondered who owned Black’s Hole—Evans or the ghost of Sirius Black?

“Moony,” Sirius Black’s ghost greeted in surprise before looking out the window.  “What are you doing here?”

“There’s a meeting, Padfoot,” Harry answered, trying to sound slightly ill.  “I dragged myself out of bed.”

“You—dragged—yourself out of bed?”  The ghost looked confused.  “Tonight?”

Harry coughed.  “Yes, tonight.  Why shouldn’t I?”

“Why shouldn’t—?”  The ghost’s pale eyes squinted.  “No reason, Moony.  Come on in.  Take a seat anywhere.”

The kitchen table had several mismatched chairs drawn up to it.  Harry recognized the Prewett brothers from Gryffindor.  He wondered which one had the compromised owl.  Evans was there.  Dumbledore, of course.  A rickety old witch with a cane.  Harry thought he recognized Frank Longbottom.

“Come to order!” Dumbledore was now saying.  “We have a report from Madam Black.”

Evans stood from her place at the table, a vision of pureblood beauty, and she cleared her throat, massaging it.  Odd.  “I still don’t know the location of Riddle House.  It’s definitely northward of here based on the weather.  I think it’s under a version of the Fidelius.  You-Know-Who won’t tell me, but I’m working on it.  As to identities of Death Eaters,” she took out a folded parchment from her pocket.  “Augustus Rookwood, the younger Lestrange brother, Mr. Avery, Mr. Malfoy.  Then there are the Hogwarts students.  Maia Gaunt, of course, who is You-Know-Who’s niece, and her closest friends, Hartwig Potter and Regulus Black.”

“Excuse me!”  A hand went up.  This was the rickety witch.  “Do these children know they are at You-Know-Who’s place of operations?”

“I haven’t been able to determine that.  I think Hartwig Potter and Regulus Black know.  They were talking about what great food his house elves make.  Beside them,” she went back to her list, “are Apricot Selwyn and Crouch’s boy.”

This caused everyone to start whispering at once.  “Barty Crouch!  He’s the Head of Magical Law Enforcement!”  “There’s no one like Crouch!  He’s going after the Death Eaters!”  “Crouch!”  “Who would have thought?”

“Come to order!” Dumbledore called over the cacophony.  “Thank you, Madam Black.  I know you have gathered this information with great risk to yourself personally.  Fooling the Dark Lord is extremely difficult.”

She nodded her head regally.

“Speaking of spies,” the pale ghost of Sirius Black put in.  “I think we have one among us.  Remus Lupin is supposed to be sick.”  He looked knowledgeably at Dumbledore.  “You know he’s sick.  What’s he doing sitting right over there?”  He pointed directly at Harry.

Dumbledore looked down the table and paused.  He looked out the window into the night sky and then turned back to Harry.  “Yes, yes, certainly a spy.—Take him out.  We’ll wait for the Polyjuice to wear off.”

Everyone seemed to pause and then Dumbledore shouted “Now!” and the Prewett brothers each grabbed Harry by an arm and dragged him up the stairs. 

He tried to go for his wand, but Frank Longbottom grabbed his wrist before he could get to it.  Harry supposed he was an auror for a reason.  The idiot hadn’t even taken off his red auror robes for the meeting.

Harry was well and truly trapped.

He was tied to a chair in a bedroom and he sighed.  They were magical bindings and his wand had been taken away.  At least it wasn’t the bedroom where Sirius Black had been stabbed to death.

After about two hours, the door opened and Evans walked in.  “Hartwig?” she asked, and Harry looked up at her.  She breathed out, taking in a shallow breath.  “I was afraid it was you.”

“You shouldn’t be spying on the Dark Lord.  He suspected.”

“He knew it was my plan all along.”

“Knowing and knowing are two different things,” he told her plainly.  “Now get me out of these things.”

She looked at him sadly.  “You know I can’t do that, Hartwig.”

“Surely you know that you can.”  He morphed his eyes back to an earthy green.  “I’m your son.”

“Not in this life.”

“In a life where you loved James Potter.  Thanks for telling him I am illegitimate, by the way.  I know it was my idea you marry Sirius Black, but James was sleeping the Living Death at the time.”  He threw her a look.

“But I don’t love James Potter!” she stated back viciously.  “I love you!”

He took a deep breath.  “By everything that is Holy, Lily Evans, let me go.  I’ll worry about my wand later.”

She startled when he used her Muggle name. 

“We’re just Hartwig and Lily.  Head Girl and Prefect.  I see you, Lily.  I see you biting your thumbnail.  I see how hard you work.  I see you with your friendship with Severus Snape.  I see you trying to get my attention.  Well, you’ve got my attention now.”  He took a breath.  “I’ll help you get to France.  You can start over.  The Dark Lord can’t get you there.  You know that his power is only limited to the United Kingdom.  He can’t even get to the Republic of Ireland.  You’ll find a nice French wizard.”

She shook her head.  “No.  My life is here.”  She looked toward the door.  “Change back.”

“What?” 

“Change back.” 

Harry didn’t need to be told again.  He broke his bones and reformed them into Hartwig Potter.  He let his face fill out, his jaw become more chiseled, smoothed out his face, grew his hair and curled it, grew over five inches so that his robes ripped, and looked up at her out of his earthy green eyes.  His bindings were now cutting into his wrists painfully.

She stared at him.

Carefully, she approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. 

Neither of their rings reacted. 

“Could you fix my wrists?” he asked.  “My bones are thicker than Lupin’s.”

She looked back toward the door and made quick work loosening them.  They were still magically binding, but they didn’t smart quite so much.  He’d have scars there for a good few weeks (unless he metamorphed his skin), but at least he wasn’t bleeding.

Stepping back, she looked at him and Harry stared at her. 

Then Evans did what he knew she would do.  She leaned down and kissed him.  Harry tilted his head back and let his lips relax.  She grasped his jaw and continued to kiss him.  He didn’t react but he did relax.  The kiss was soft and it gentled until she stepped back.  Her eyes were closed and then, after a few long moments, she opened them.

His wand shot out of her left sleeve and she put it in his hand. 

Stepping out of the room, Harry wondered if he expected his fingers to move in a bodybind, but she came back with a broom.

“Someone flew here,” she explained, and with a wave of her wand he was free. 

Harry stood and looked at her.  She looked so small and afraid.

“You won’t tell, will you?”

He knew she didn’t mean her defection.  She meant the kiss.

“No, Lily,” he promised.  “I won’t tell.”

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead before he flew out the window.

Potter Abbey was only a few miles away and he landed in the front garden, walking back into the house.  His robes were in tatters.  They were several years old, but Euphemia saved all old robes in case she wanted to reuse the fabric.  He could feel it hanging off his shoulders and ripped in the pants.  It was embarrassing.

Rushing up the three flights of steps, he went into this room and threw the broom into a corner, pushing the destroyed fabric from his body.

He was practically naked when James knocked on the door hurriedly and quickly entered the room.  Harry grabbed a sheet off his bed and wrapped it around his waist.

“Hartwig—”  James paused and blinked.  “What are you doing?”

“Could you give me a minute?”

“Is Lucius here?” James asked warily.

“I swear he’s not,” Harry promised, picking his wand off of his bedside table and awkwardly crossing his chest in a wizarding oath.  “I just need to get changed.”

James looked at him hard and then he nodded.  “Mum collapsed in the potions lab.  We’re flooing to St. Mungo’s.  Meet us there!”  He rushed out of the room. 

Aunt Euphemia?  In the potions lab?

Harry quickly threw on the first robes he found, the ones he had worn to The Wicked Stepmother earlier that day with James, and he rushed out of the room, back down the stairs to the floo.

He didn’t even skid to a stop as he grabbed a handful of floo powder and fell into the flames.  His mind was racing as he was shoved out on the other side of the fireplace into the main entrance of St. Mungo’s that was full of strange looking magical maladies.

“Euphemia Potter!” he demanded of the first orderly he came across.

“Fifth floor,” he was told and he quickly rushed up.  The lift took too long.  He was practically foaming at the mouth by the time he got there.

Euphemia had collapsed over a potion due to the noxious fumes.  She hadn’t been wearing proper protective gear.  How could she be so reckless with her health?

Fleamont looked so small sitting in the corner and James wouldn’t let go of Euphemia’s hand, even when the Healers came in to tell them that there was nothing they could do.

Harry hated himself, but the first thought he had when he was sitting by the bed and doing vigil was “What about the Gnascum Potion?”  Was it finished or would his engagement be cancelled?

When Lucius arrived two hours later in black robes with a hood shoved in his pockets, Harry collapsed in his arms.  He wasn’t sure if he was crying for the loss of his grandmother or the loss of his own future.