Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The world seemed like a place he must have known once, long ago, half-remembered, half-familiar, but at the same time utterly strange.

There were too many funerals to be held. Funerals were supposed to be some sort of comfort, Harry thought. That was what people said—a chance to say goodbye, to celebrate someone's life, to find some closure. Maybe they would be comforting to look back on, when time had turned searing wounds into scars. He couldn't say he really felt it yet, though. Mostly what he felt was a sort of cold, aching numbness, as if there was only so much pain you could take before your heart switched it off and held it all at a distance, before something inside you said, 'No. No more.'

They buried Remus and Tonks together, and Harry was half-surprised by just how many people came. The Order, of course, but also all that remained of the Auror Office, in their uniforms, and a whole crowd of people he assumed must be Tonks’s friends. Most of the people Harry had been at school with seemed to be there to pay their respects to Professor Lupin, as well as all of the surviving staff. Even Narcissa Malfoy was there, alone and dressed in stark, black robes.

‘Who’s that woman, talking to McGonagall?’ he asked Ron and Hermione, when it was all over, and people were gradually making their way out of the graveyard and Disapparating. ‘I recognise her.’

The woman in question was too old to be one of Tonks’s crowd, forty maybe, with dark, curly hair, and she wasn’t wearing Auror robes. Harry didn’t think he knew her, but there was something somehow familiar about her nonetheless.

Hermione looked in that direction. ‘Oh, isn’t she that woman who came to Grimmauld Place a couple of times, the summer before fifth year? She’s in the Order. But I thought that was before you arrived. Did she come again afterwards?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ He didn’t think that was it, but he supposed it could be.

‘She’s French, I think,’ Hermione went on.

‘No, I’m pretty sure she was English,’ Ron objected, from the other side of her. ‘She didn’t have a French accent.’

‘Well, some people can speak a foreign language without an accent. I’m sure she was French. She had a French name—I don't remember what it was, do you?—and I heard her talking to Dumbledore about allies in Paris.’

Harry zoned out their disagreement, which he thought they were only having so as not to have to think about other things. He kept looking at the woman, and she glanced up from her conversation with McGonagall and met his eyes.

He was reminded, in a peculiar flash, of the moment in his first year when he’d been looking at his new teachers, and had met the recognition and dislike in the eyes of Severus Snape. This, though, was almost the opposite. The woman’s expression hardly changed, but it was as if she knew him. A flash of pleasant recognition, like seeing an old friend, except that he was sure he'd never met her.

McGonagall said something, and the woman looked away again, the moment over. Harry took a step in their direction, curious to know who she was.

‘Harry.’ A deep voice spoke behind him, and he turned to find himself facing Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Harry gave him a small smile. ‘Hey, Kingsley. How’s it going?’

‘About as you might expect. The Ministry’s in chaos.’ Kingsley looked hard at him. ‘How are you doing, Harry?’

Harry paused, because people kept asking that sort of question, and he never knew how to answer it. He didn’t even know what the true answer was.

‘I’m okay,’ he said, using his stock answer. ‘You know. Keeping going.’

Kingsley gave him a look that suggested he wasn’t entirely fooled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to bring this up at a funeral, but I wanted to give you a heads up. All of you,’ he added, looking at Ron and Hermione too. ‘The Auror Department’s recruiting, and they’re not going to hang around about it.’

Hermione frowned. ‘None of us are qualified to be Aurors. We haven’t got our NEWTs yet.’

Kingsley looked grim. ‘Things are a bit too desperate for that, to be honest. All you kids who fought have proved you’ve got the skills. You’d need some departmental training, but the main thing is to get the manpower out there. We’ve got a whole lot of Death Eaters still alive and active, and we’ve lost too many good Aurors. We don’t have the numbers. And I’m—well, I’m being pulled in a different direction at the moment.’

‘You’re not leaving the Aurors, are you?’ Ron asked.

‘Something like that. Can’t say too much about it at the moment, but you'll hear soon enough. This isn’t official, by the way—Robards is head of the department; he’ll be getting in touch. I just wanted to let you know—give you a bit of time to think about it, before they come around offering you all jobs.’

Harry nodded. ‘Yeah. Thanks, Kingsley.’

As Kingsley departed, he looked around at the others.

‘Wow. What d’you reckon?’ Ron asked.

Two years ago, it would have been a dream coming true. Now Harry couldn't really feel anything about it. He supposed he’d take the job, if it really got offered—there was still work to be done, after all. And what else was he going to do? Go back to school?

‘I don’t know,’ Hermione said doubtfully. ‘I never really thought about being an Auror. I’m not sure it’s what I want, to be honest. What are you thinking, Harry? Don’t you want to do your NEWTs?’

‘I don’t know either.’

In everything that had happened over the past year, he’d never planned for after.

‘What’s the point in NEWTs if you’ve already got a job offer from the Auror Department?’ Ron asked. ‘I mean, that’s an open door straight in at the top.’

‘Well, that depends where you’re aiming for, doesn’t it?’ Hermione objected.

Ron and Hermione started to debate again, and Harry looked back across at where he’d seen McGonagall and the strange woman. McGonagall was still there, but she was talking to Professor Sprout now, and there was no sign of the other woman.  Harry scanned the rest of the diminishing crowd, but she’d gone.

Harry sat at the kitchen table of Grimmauld Place, inspecting the shiny remains of the burn he’d got on the mission that day. His healing spells could use some work, although he’d managed to improve it. Neville would probably know a plant or something that would help—he’d have to ask him.

His fireplace glowed green, and he looked up, expecting Ron or Hermione, but the face that appeared was older and greyer than either of them.

‘Harry, dear,’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘May I pop over for a moment?’

'Oh, hello, Mrs Weasley.' Harry glanced around at the kitchen, which he would have tidied up a bit if he'd known she's be visiting. 'Yeah, of course. Come on over!'

Her face withdrew, and a few moments later, she was stepping from the fire, clutching something in a casserole dish.

It was the first time she’d visited him at Grimmauld Place. He’d seen her at the Burrow, of course, but things were different there now. Quieter and sadder. Mrs Weasley still spent all her time cooking and knitting, which should have been comforting, but there tended to be a tremor in her hand as she stirred her pots, and tears often fell on the lumpy jumpers and scarves.

‘I think she thinks if she just keeps going, she can make it seem normal again,’ Ron had said miserably on one occasion. ‘Like we’re all still here.’

However, there were no tears and no tremor as she put the casserole dish down on the table and hugged him tightly. He returned it warmly, because, if he was honest, he'd missed her.

‘Hello, Harry,' she said as she released him, her eyes scanning the kitchen, although she said nothing. 'I made far too much of this, so I thought you might like some.’

‘Well, thanks,’ Harry said genuinely. ‘It smells great. D'you, er, want to sit down?’

‘No, I won't stop. Arthur's due home any minute—you know they've made him Chief Warlock on the Wizengamot?' Her voice glowed with pride. 'It's wonderful, but he's rushed off his feet. But you know you’re welcome at the Burrow any time you like, don’t you?’ she went on. ‘Any time, really. You’re family, Harry. You and Hermione both.’

‘I know.’ He smiled at her. ‘I appreciate it. Really.’

And he did. He knew that she worried about him, almost as much as she worried about Ron. Where exactly things stood between him and Ginny was a little up in the air at the moment, and Harry wasn't entirely sure how to fix that, but one thing was certain, and that was that there had been no wavering of affection from Molly Weasley. He didn't know exactly what Ginny might have said to her, and he'd noticed her eyes flicking between them on the few occasions he'd been at the Burrow during the summer, but she'd never asked. Had never commented at all, just continued to treat him exactly the same.

She looked around again, a little anxiously. ‘Is this really where you want to live, Harry? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to insult your home, and I know it means a lot to you, because Sirius left it to you, but… well, I just worry about you, all by yourself here.’

Maybe once he’d have been offended by the suggestion, but he was past that now.

‘It’s not that bad,’ he said, only very mildly defensive. ‘I mean, it’s a bit messy right now, but that’s my fault. I got rid of all the cursed stuff—reported it to the Ministry and they took it away.’

‘But you haven’t thought about redecorating?’ she said, almost hesitantly.

‘I haven’t really had time. I’m on Auror missions all the time.’

‘I know. I understand, I really do. Ron tells me some of the stories, though I know he’s not telling me the worst bits. And I read it in the papers. You’re always in the thick of things. But if you’re going to make this your home…’

‘Honestly, I don’t know if it’s really home,’ he said bluntly. ‘It’s a place to eat and sleep. That’s all I need right now.’

‘Oh, Harry, love.’ She reached out and put a kindly hand on his arm. ‘I know you’re needed in the Auror Department, and I know you want to fight, but you can’t give everything to it, you know?’ She paused, then went on. ‘I saw Andromeda Tonks yesterday. She said they hadn’t seen you for a while.’

A rush of something like shame went over him.

‘Oh. Yeah, it must have been a few weeks.’

‘Nearly two months, Andromeda said. Not since September.’

‘I just don’t get time.’

She said nothing, just looked at him, a little worried frown on her face.

‘I couldn’t do much for them anyway,’ Harry went on. ‘I don’t know anything about babies. He’s better with Andromeda. And…’ She kept looking at him, so he took a deep breath and continued. ‘I’m an Auror. I go on dangerous missions. What if I make myself part of his life, and then something happens to me? That’s not fair on him.’

There was a silence.

‘No,’ she agreed quietly, in the end. ‘It’s not fair when that happens, you’re right. But he’s still your godson, Harry. You’re one of the only people he’s got.’

He would visit, he told himself. He’d Floo or write to Andromeda and fix a time to go over. But then there was another big case, and he was working long hours, overnight missions out in the field, spending most of his free hours sleeping, and somehow, before he knew it, another month had gone by. The nights were closing in, and it would be Christmas in a couple of weeks. He’d been invited to the Burrow, of course, and he supposed he’d go, although he didn’t feel very Christmassy.

He had a rare night off, but he’d been too tired to think about making plans. It was sleeting outside, and he’d pulled the curtains closed and lit the fire in the kitchen, which was the room he used most often, as it was the cosiest.

It wasn’t a night for going out. He had a letter from Ginny that he needed to answer, which was at least quite a pleasant task, so maybe he'd do that. He'd see her at Christmas too, which was a good thought, even though the closest they'd got to talking about things was, 'Let's see how things go'.

The fact that Ginny was still one of the brightest thoughts in his head was not really in question—but beyond that, he wasn't quite sure of anything, especially what he should do about it. They weren't kids any more, and a relationship wasn't dream-like afternoons by the lake, where nothing really mattered except her. Too much had happened to both of them since then. So they were friends, and maybe they could be more than friends, except that he was in London and she was at Hogwarts, so there was nothing more really to be, and nothing that could be done except write.

He was about to summon the letter when the doorbell rang, and Harry paused. Number 12, Grimmauld Place was no longer under a Secret Keeper’s protection, but it still had many careful wards on it, and his friends were more likely to Floo over than to stand on the doorstep in this weather.

Harry made his way into the hall and looked out through the one-way window in the door. It was dark outside, and the sleet made it hard to pick out a face just from the light of a street lamp, but he felt there was something vaguely familiar about the figure.

He pressed his wand to the window and spoke. ‘Who is it?’

It seemed a bit rude and stand-offish not to open the door immediately, but there was always the risk that a journalist—or even someone worse—had got hold of his address and managed to track him down.

‘Hello!’ a woman’s voice called back. ‘Is that Harry Potter? Sorry to call by unannounced—Molly Weasley told me how to find you. I’m afraid that, unlike her, I don’t come bearing casseroles, though.’

The detail about the casserole persuaded him that she was telling the truth. And, after all, the wards would still hold even after the door was open. Harry opened the door, and the light from the hall spilled onto the person on his doorstep.

It was, unmistakably, the woman he’d seen talking to Professor McGonagall after the battle, over six months ago. Curiosity overcame him.

‘Oh. Um, hello,’ he said. ‘You’d, er, better come in.’

In the hallway, she pulled off something that was halfway in between a long coat and a robe, then looked around herself, steam starting to rise slightly from her wet things.

‘Jesus,’ she remarked. ‘You could have done something better with the décor.’

Harry’s mouth opened slightly, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. She caught his expression and chuckled.

‘Sorry. Your parents could have told you to expect no tact or politeness from me.’

Harry regained his voice. ‘You knew my parents?’

The laughter died from her face. ‘I did. Quite well, in fact.’

Harry knew, in a flash of extraordinary memory, where he knew her face from.

‘God, you were—I mean, I saw you. In a memory.' She'd been a teenager, and he'd hardly taken any notice of her at the time, because he'd been much too focused on other people in that memory. No wonder he hadn't remembered. But this woman, whoever she was, had been one of the girls standing with Lily Evans in that first awful memory he'd seen of Severus Snape's. The same curly hair, the same freckled face and broad, upturned nose, the same wide, dark eyes. She'd been right there. She might even have been in other memories of Snape's—he couldn't remember, because he'd been paying even less attention to background characters then. But he was in no doubt about the first one.

She looked curiously at him. 'A memory. Interesting. I won't ask whose. So you know who I am?'

Harry shook his head. 'No, I'm sorry. At least, I think—you were friends with my mum?'

'I was.' Her eyes clouded again. 'Good friends. And not only that, I knew your dad since we were babies, because my mother was friends with your grandmother. My name is Odette Thibodeau.’

‘Er, nice to meet you,’ Harry said, his mind struggling to keep up. ‘So, you’re French? Hermione was right,’ he added, remembering that conversation.

‘Well, no,’ Odette Thibodeau said. ‘My mother was French, and my husband is French, and my daughter is certainly more French than English, but I was born and grew up here. Thibodeau is my married name.’ She looked thoughtfully at him. ‘Look, I know I’ve just dropped in very unexpectedly, but do you have some time to talk? I should have introduced myself a long time ago.’

Well, he had nothing else planned tonight, did he? And he was curious—very curious. How had he never heard of this woman?

‘Yeah, that’s fine. Come through. D’you want some tea or something?’

‘I’d love that. If there’s one thing I miss in France, it’s a decent cup of tea.’

He showed her through to the kitchen, and she looked around herself as she took a seat.

‘Well, this room’s a bit more pleasant, anyway,’ she remarked.

He filled the kettle and stuck it on the stove, then turned back to her.

‘So, you must have known Sirius and Remus too?’ he asked, then something else occurred to him. 'Hermione said you were in the Order. You came here that summer everyone was here.'

She paused for a moment, before speaking. ‘Yes. I joined when they did. The whole crowd of us did, straight out of Hogwarts.’

‘Wow. Okay.’ Harry summoned a couple of mugs and the teabags, processing all of this. ‘But—Sorry. How come I’ve never heard about you then?’

She sighed. ‘Well, this is partly why I haven’t turned up before now. I owe you an apology, Harry. I think a lot of people do, in fact, but most of the others either don’t know they do or aren’t here to apologise anymore. I am here, so I’m sorry. More sorry than you could imagine.’

Harry faced her, examining this strange woman who seemed to have come from nowhere. There was so much he didn’t know about his parents—even about Sirius and Remus. She seemed to be talking about a part of the story he didn’t know at all.

‘Why?’ he asked, at last. ‘I mean, no offence—I’ve just never met you. Why should you owe me an apology?’

‘Not strictly true,’ she said. ‘You have met me, even if you don’t remember it. And the fact that you don't remember me is exactly why. I should have come to find you a long time ago. There’s no excuse, really, except that I took the coward’s way out, which isn’t something we Gryffindors like admitting. Dumbledore told me that you were best off where you were, and I chose to believe him instead of trusting my own instincts, and I let you down by doing that—let you down badly.’

In the silence that followed, the kettle boiled, its whistle bringing Harry back from the memories of Privet Drive as a child. He tried not to analyse those memories too much, generally, or to think about how he got there, or where he might have ended up if different decisions had been made. He’d barely started healing from more recent wounds, and opening up those ancient ones came with a world of emotions he had no idea what to do with.

‘There were reasons I had to stay at the Dursleys,’ he said, turning to take the kettle off the stove and fill the two mugs. ‘It wasn’t… your fault.’

It felt strange, trying to reassure a woman he didn’t even know. What, after all, did she think she should have done about it? And why should it have been her doing anything at all?

‘Milk and sugar?’ he asked.

‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘Just the one sugar. And I know all about Dumbledore’s reasons. He told us all about them, and whatever Dumbledore said, we all trusted—that was the problem. And I’m not speaking ill of the dead,’ she added, before he could protest. ‘Dumbledore was a great man, who did a lot of great things. I don’t regret for a second that I followed him in the Order. But sometimes—and I think you, of all people, have to know this by now—sometimes he sacrificed things for the cause that weren’t expendable.’

Harry attempted to smile as he carried the mugs of tea to the table, but it came out small and twisted.

‘Like me?’

‘Well, to be candid. Yes. Not just you, but yes.’ She took the mug he offered and pulled it towards herself. ‘Thanks.’

‘No problem.’ Harry sat down at the table opposite her. ‘Look, I know… I know some of the things Dumbledore did were…’

‘I’m not here to rake over the ashes of Albus Dumbledore’s strange life,’ she broke in. ‘To be honest, I think you probably knew him a lot better than I did. It’s my part in it that I regret—or rather, my lack of part.’

She stopped and looked at him, but he waited for her to go on, since she clearly had more to say.

‘I was in France when your parents were killed,’ she went on, slowly. ‘I’d gone over there as a translator—as I say, my mum was French, so I spoke the language—but my real work was undercover for the Order. The French Ministry had decided that the Lord Voldemort problem was nothing to do with them, but not all French people felt the same. I was drumming up some support there—working with activists, that sort of thing. That’s how I met my husband. By the time I knew about it, it was all over, and you were with your aunt. You-Know-Who was gone, Sirius was in Azkaban, and we all thought Peter was dead too. Half our other friends really were dead. And Dumbledore told me you were alright and in the best place, so I decided to believe him, and I ran away back to France, even though I knew what sort of relationship Lily had with her sister. For that, I am very, very sorry.’

She stopped, still watching him carefully. Harry took a mouthful of tea to avoid having to answer immediately, and found it slightly too hot still. He swallowed, trying not to wince.

‘It’s okay,’ he said uselessly, although it wasn’t really, was it? It had never quite been okay, but he couldn’t feel any anger or blame towards someone he didn’t even know. ‘It… Well, I survived.’ He pulled his mouth into what he hoped was a reassuring sort of smile.

‘Yes.’ She took a sip herself, her expression hard to read. ‘You did.’

‘I saw you,’ Harry said abruptly. ‘At… at the funeral.’

She nodded, a shadow passing over her face. ‘Yes, Remus was a good friend of mine. And I’d have spoken to you then, but it didn’t seem the right moment. That was the problem, though—there was never a good moment to try to explain to you why you’d been abandoned.’

It reminded him a little of what Dumbledore had said to him once, about telling him about the prophecy. Never a good moment. Well, no, sometimes there were only bad moments.

‘They told me you’d seen photos of the first Order,' she said abruptly, when he didn't reply. 'You might not have seen these ones, though.’

She reached into the bag she had with her and pulled out an envelope, sliding it across to him. Harry took it and opened it, pulling out a small stack of photographs. He blinked at the top one. Three girls, about twelve years old, giggling at the camera. One, unmistakeably, was his mother. Lily Evans, her dark red tied back in an untidy ponytail, standing in between the other two. Harry’s eyes dwelt on her for a moment, taking in the carefree smile and the way her eyes screwed up at the corners when she laughed. Then he looked at the other two girls. The one the left was tall and blonde and blue-eyed, and the other, the smallest of the three, could only be Odette.

Harry looked up, smiling. ‘Wow. Thanks,' he said. 'Really, it's good to see this. Who's the other girl?'

‘Her name was Evie Farrall. She died too,’ Odette Thibodeau said softly. ‘Not long after your parents, trying to take down some Death Eaters who’d managed to avoid arrest. I’m the last of the gang.’

Evie Farrall's story reminded Harry of the work he was doing himself—and she’d died doing it, even though the first war had been over by then. Odette couldn’t even be forty yet, and yet all her school friends were gone. Harry knew about losing people, but he couldn’t imagine being the last one left.

He leafed slowly through the photographs. There were several more of the same three girls at various stages in their teens, and then he came to one that showed two much younger children, maybe four or five years old, chasing each other around a green lawn. The one in front was holding what looked like a bright red toy Quaffle. They were both in shorts and t-shirts, and it must have been summer. Harry stared at them. The one out in front could be Odette, with the mop of curls and the freckled nose. The one chasing her could only be…

‘Is that—’

‘James. Yes. I told you, our mothers were friends.’

Harry had never seen an image of his father younger than eleven, and he grinned despite himself at the scene. He supposed he must have looked very like that himself, at the same age, but the only photographs he ever remembered seeing of himself were posed school ones that the Dursleys had only bothered getting so that the school didn’t think it was strange. He was sure he’d never had such chubby legs as his dad, though.

He looked back at the other photos, the ones of the girls.

‘I thought my parents weren’t friends at Hogwarts?’ he said.

Odette chuckled. ‘Oh, they weren’t. Neither were James and I, for a good few years. Furious rivals, more like.’

‘So, what happened? I mean, they got together, obviously. But you and my dad—’

‘We all grew up and got over ourselves. Took a while, but I’m glad we managed it while we were all still around.’

Harry had a million questions. So many things he’d never asked Sirius or Remus, while they were caught up with the war. He knew more about his parents’ years at school from Snape’s perspective than he did from their own. But he had other questions too, about this woman herself.

‘Did you say you’ve got a daughter?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Yes. Her name's Nina, but we call her Ninette, and she’s thirteen, about to start her third year at Beauxbatons. I’d like to introduce you some time, if you’re up for it.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Harry said slowly.  In another world, he and this French kid might have grown up knowing each other. Weird to think of all the things that might have been different.

‘You’ll never know how much I regret leaving this until now, Harry,’ she said, as if she was reading his thoughts. ‘When you were little, Dumbledore said you were better off away from our world entirely, and god damn it, I believed him again. And then when you were older—I couldn’t face it. I turned my back and made excuses every time. Should have been more like Sirius, fighting his way to you even when there were Dementors all around you, the idiot.’

Harry grinned in spite of himself. ‘To be fair, I think he was fighting his way to Peter Pettigrew more than to me.’

‘Bullshit. He told me he went to find you at your aunt and uncle’s before you even went back to school.’ Her eyes softened somewhat. ‘At least he found his way to you eventually, although it’s bloody unfair on both of you that you didn’t get to spend longer together.’

Harry stared down at the photos again, mainly so that he didn’t have to look at her. Sometimes, missing Sirius was still a physical pain, so sharp he couldn’t bear it. She was right—it wasn’t fair. Twelve years in Azkaban, then two on the run, and Sirius had never even got to see his name officially cleared.

‘At least you had the time you had, though,’ she went on. ‘Better to have known him and loved him, even if you had to lose him, than never have known him at all, am I right?’

‘Yeah.’ Harry swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘Of course. I’d never want to—to not have known him.’

‘I think there are one or two pictures with him on in there,’ she added, pointing at the photos. ‘And Remus too.’

They went through the photographs, and they drank tea, and by the time she left, Harry was starting to feel as if he’d known Odette Thibodeau much longer than he had.

‘Come again,’ he said, impulsively, as she prepared to depart. ‘Any time.’

‘Thanks—I might just take you up on that,’ she said with a smile. ‘Think about redecorating a bit, though, if you’re really going to live here—I’m very sure that Sirius wouldn’t want you living with his parents’ wallpaper choices.’

The next morning, he woke up with a clear thought in his mind.

Sirius Black had been a reckless and irresponsible godfather in very many ways. He’d taken risks, he’d acted on impulse, he’d lost twelve years of his life—and Harry had lost twelve years of knowing him—in Azkaban, and in the end, he’d died, and none of it was fair. Losing him had been one of the hardest things Harry had gone through in his life, and that was saying something.

But he would not, for a second, have preferred not to have had those two years. Knowing him and losing him was infinitely better than never having known him at all.

He had the weekend off. And he was going to spend it with Teddy Lupin.