Work Text:
An Apology to the Potters
Son, Nigel, NOT involved with You-Know-Who’s demise.
The Prophet had, of course, printed a retraction the next day, apologizing for the mix up, and went on to explain that it was most likely the wards on the Potter House that had been the reason of the Dark Lord’s demise and that the forehead marks on the boys were from debris made from the backlash of the Dark Lord’s death.
James had spent the entire day with his lawyers at the Prophet insuring the retraction was printed, and insuring the paper wouldn’t print their names any time soon without their permission. Lily had spent the entire day at Hogwarts, hurling curses at Dumbledore in between taking care of the twins. The next time Dumbledore was seen in public he had two new crooks in his nose, was missing part of his left ear, wearing a horrible wig, and walking bowlegged.
It was too little, too late.
A large portion of the Wizarding World missed the retraction entirely, sleeping off their hangovers for the entire day. An even larger portion believed that Dumbledore was infallible and so couldn’t possibly be wrong and that the retracted article was true and the apology fake. The remaining few either hated or loved the Potters for getting rid of Voldemort and didn’t care either way, planning to kill or thank the entire family.
As far as the Wizarding World was concerned, Nigel Potter was the reason Voldemort was dead.
Being too busy dealing with the side effects of Dumbledore’s article, it was understandable that they hadn’t noticed the lack of Sirius until Remus showed up bemoaning the man for betraying them.
“Wait, what?” James asked.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Remus. Sirius wasn’t our secret keeper,” Lily said.
“He wasn’t?”
“No, you idiot. He was the decoy. Peter was our secret keeper.”
“Oh.” Remus paused for a moment, and then immediately began bemoaning Peter for betraying them.
“Where is that mangy mutt, anyway?” Lily asked.
“He’s been arrested,” Remus said. “We should probably go tell Crouch he’s got the wrong guy.”
“Eh, it can wait. The mutt ate the last of my cauldron cakes last week. He can suffer in a holding cell a little longer,” James said.
“Yeah, it’s not like Crouch is the type of guy to just throw someone in Azkaban without a trial.”
As it turned out, Crouch was exactly the type of guy to just throw someone in Azkaban without a trial. When James finally went in to clear up the misunderstanding, Sirius was understandably perturbed that he had taken so long.
“You let me rot in Azkaban for two days because I ate your cauldron cakes!? I hate you, you jackass, and I’m never ever EVER speaking to you again!”
Sirius, being the type of person to hate silence of any sort, and not having anything to make explosions with at the time, cracked within three minutes of the boat ride back to the mainland, and asked James who had won the latest Quidditch match between the Tornadoes and the Kestrels.
“Wouldn’t know,” James said. “Dumbledore decided to make everyone think Nigel killed Voldemort.” And also, he was an Arrows fan and didn’t follow any of the other teams’ scores.
“And what a wonderful boy he is, for doing so,” the boatman said, cheerfully.
James and Sirius spent twelve hours in a holding cell for assault, after they got back to the mainland; James having punched the boatman, making him fall out of the boat, and Sirius having whacked him with an oar, for no other reason than that James had hit the man first.
Lily was unhappy to have to bail them out, but did so anyway, because the twins hadn’t stopped crying (save for the few hours of sleep they got) since James had left, and Remus had continued bemoaning Peter for the entire time he was awake (Lily had finally dosed him with a sleeping potion to get him to shut up), and there was only so much one woman could take before she cracked and became a Dark Lady to rival Voldemort.
Besides, it was perfectly understandable for a Dark Lord/Lady to go after the Light Lord/Lady, and Lily really wouldn’t mind another shot at Dumbledore.