Chapter Text
Harry clenched his hand in the handkerchief as he walked slowly towards Hogwarts.
It was confusing. He had a lot to ignore. His head was still whirling with what had happened to him in the graveyard, and seeing Cedric fall dead and Voldemort rise from the cauldron. And then Voldemort and Pettigrew had both vanished, leaving Harry tied to the headstone.
And his classmate Blaise Zabini and a woman who called herself Aradia, his mother, had come and rescued him from the graveyard and taken him to Hogwarts.
Another Hogwarts. Where there was already another him.
That Harry’s words echoed in Harry’s head as he walked along and ignored the people chattering around him, trying to get his attention and offering theories about what had happened and debating where he should go.
“Grow up and survive! Maybe you can trust people and maybe you can’t, but that’s something you’ll have to work out for yourself. Just don’t do it blindly. And be careful of that Moody man when you go back to your reality.”
Moody was walking on Harry’s left now, having tried and failed to drag him to his office. Harry had blurted out that Cedric had died and he didn’t want to go anywhere to a professor’s office, he just wanted to go to the hospital wing. Professor Dumbledore and McGonagall and Snape were all walking with him now, so Harry didn’t think Moody would manage it.
If he were Moody.
Snape accused me of stealing Potions ingredients from him this year.
If someone was stealing Potions ingredients that included boomslang skin and the like, then maybe that person could have brewed Polyjuice Potion the way that Hermione had in the girls’ bathroom a couple years ago.
Harry kept his breathing as slow as possible while they walked into the school. Sometimes Dudley’s gang used to start charging towards him if they heard him breathing fast, because they thought from that that he was going to run.
That might not really be Moody at all.
It would make sense of the vision the other Harry had had of Moody urging him towards the center of the maze in his Third Task. It would make sense how someone could have put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire and he wouldn’t know who. Moody would have had access, as a professor, and he could have used Harry’s name from an essay he’d turned in.
But why? That was what Harry didn’t understand. Even if “Moody” was really a Death Eater who wanted badly for Harry to be killed by Voldemort, why not just kidnap him and take him to the graveyard early on? Why put his name in the Goblet at all?
It was a mystery, and Harry was starting to think that he shouldn’t count on solving it himself. But still, he had to survive.
He could still trust some of the people walking with him, he was sure.
Just don’t do it blindly.
“I won’t,” Harry whispered.
*
“Don’t see why we had to come here, Albus. The boy seems perfectly all right to me.”
Harry tensed at the sound of Moody’s voice, but he didn’t look up. He was afraid the man might read the truth in the lines of his face or something. Instead, he just held out his arm as Madam Pomfrey bustled over to take a look.
“Mr. Potter! You’ve been cut!”
“Yes, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry said softly as he watched her swish her wand and diagnose something. A second later, he’d been ushered into a hospital bed and was being keenly watched as he downed something that tasted like a Blood-Replenishing Potion. Harry hid his grimace and leaned back against the pillow.
“Harry, my dear boy, are you capable of telling us what happened?”
“If I can talk to you alone, sir.”
“What, Mr. Potter, afraid that someone might poke holes in your story that would make you look less than glorious?”
“Severus, please.”
Harry kept his head down and didn’t burst out yelling the way he wanted. Cedric was dead. He’d just been in a world that had a Snape who seemed reasonable and on that other Harry’s side. He might have thought it was a dream, but he had that handkerchief from Mrs. Zabini in his pocket to prove it.
He’d try things differently for a while.
“I think I ought to stay at least, Albus,” said Moody’s rough voice. “No telling whether whoever kidnapped him might be connected to the Death Eaters.”
“Only you, Professor Dumbledore,” Harry said, and kept his head down. It just seemed like a good thing to do.
“Now, my dear boy, are you sure?”
“He’s just been traumatized, Albus,” Madam Pomfrey snapped, so loudly that Harry blinked in surprise. “I think you could grant him this one wish.”
Professor Dumbledore sighed, and made Harry wince a little. But he didn’t say anything. He was trusting his instincts. And it wasn’t like it was a huge problem to ask Snape and Moody and McGonagall to leave. Professor Dumbledore could always tell them later if he thought they should know the truth.
If that even was Moody.
Harry sat there and didn’t say anything, and finally Dumbledore waved the other professors to leave. Then he sat down on the end of the bed and stared long and hard at Harry. “I’m listening, Mr. Potter.”
Harry nodded and wished he could have some water to clear his throat. But he didn’t want to ask Madam Pomfrey and put off the conversation again.
“Cedric and I decided to take the Cup together. We arrived in the graveyard, and immediately…”
Harry told the story as calmly as he could, with of course no mention of a trip to a different reality. He talked about how Wormtail had cut his arm and put the blood in the cauldron, and then suddenly vanished, even though he seemed to still be doing something for the ritual. And the way that Harry thought he had seen a version of Voldemort rise out of the cauldron, but then he’d vanished, too.
“Vanished?” Dumbledore interrupted at that point.
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t see him come back?”
“No, sir. It was really weird. He took a step towards me, but then he just disappeared like he’d Apparated without a sound and left me tied to the headstone. Can you Apparate without a sound?”
“It’s possible for truly powerful and experienced wizards,” Dumbledore said, and from the sound of his voice, he was frowning. “I simply don’t know why Tom would have wanted to Apparate when he finally had you right where he wanted you.”
“I don’t know either, sir. But he left me alone.”
“How did you escape, my boy?”
“I don’t remember that much,” Harry said, and that was true. He’d been so busy staring at Aradia and Zabini suddenly appearing out of nowhere—or a curtain of blue sparks that he might have seen—that he didn’t remember the exact moment Aradia had cut the ropes. “I think I must have wished enough to be free that I could cut the ropes with accidental magic.”
“You think that, my boy?”
“I’m really not sure, Headmaster.”
Harry kept his eyes down and focused on his fingers, which he was weaving back and forth among each other. He thought Dumbledore would ask more questions, but instead the man sighed and shook his head.
“If that’s all you remember, Harry, that’s all you remember,” Dumbledore said, his voice heavy with disappointment. “But I’m afraid that I can’t go to the Minister and convince him that Voldemort has returned with a report that you might have seen him.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Dumbledore sat there for a moment longer, and then stood up. “Very well. I’ll contact Mr. Diggory’s parents to retrieve his body. And you might think about what story would convince other people instead of what was lost in the gaps between your memory.”
Harry blinked down at his hands and then at Dumbledore’s body as he walked out of the hospital wing. Wow. That had been—sort of mean? Dumbledore had never talked to him like that before.
But then, Harry didn’t know that he’d disappointed the Headmaster like that before. Harry had mostly talked to other professors when he was trying to investigate something without proof, and Dumbledore had come in at the end when it was obvious that Harry had defeated the basilisk or could rescue Sirius or whatever.
Harry took a deep breath. Cedric was still dead, and Voldemort might be out there somewhere. But he tried to be quiet and listen to his instincts, which sounded like the voice of his other self in his head.
It’s not your fault. They could come up with proof if they wanted it. And probably Fudge wouldn’t listen to any proof Dumbledore could offer him. He didn’t believe that you hadn’t put your name in the Goblet of Fire, after all. None of them believed it.
Harry nodded slowly. That was true. Even the adults that he thought might have known better hadn’t believed him, or hadn’t acted like they did, except for Sirius. Karkaroff and Maxime had no reason to think he wasn’t a liar, but Dumbledore hadn’t really spoken against it, either.
So I should talk to Sirius.
Harry had just opened his mouth to ask Madam Pomfrey if he could leave the hospital wing when the door opened again. But it did so very quietly, as if whoever was there was trying to creep in.
Harry rolled over to the edge of the bed and dropped behind it.
He watched from around the curtains that Madam Pomfrey hadn’t pulled shut as Moody clunked into the infirmary. He paused when he saw the empty bed and looked around carefully. Then he gave a rough chuckle.
“Good try hiding, lad. But I see you.” And his magical eye was pointing right at Harry.
Harry took a deep breath and reached down for his wand, which was still in the holster at his side. He knew Moody would see him do that, too, but it was the only weapon he had.
“What happened when the Dark Lord was resurrected, boy? That’s all I want to know.”
Harry swallowed thickly and thought back to what the other Harry had said, again. Maybe he wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been more upset or been ushered to Moody’s office right away, but he did now. The man was calling Voldemort “the Dark Lord,” and most people didn’t do that unless they were Death Eaters.
“That’s all I want to know. Tell me!”
“Expelliarmus!”
Harry lunged to the side as he spoke, so that at least Moody’s next spell would miss him if he didn’t manage to get the man’s wand. But he did. It soared through the air and settled into Harry’s hand. The wood thrummed under his hand and gave a tug on his arm as though it wanted to pull to point at Moody.
More evidence that the man wasn’t who he said he was.
“Oh, you dare.”
The voice sounded different than Moody’s now, with a different accent and emphasis. And the man was stalking towards him. Harry backed up. Even with two wands and the fact that “Moody” had a wooden leg, he didn’t like the odds.
That was when Madam Pomfrey popped out of her office.
“Stupefy!”
“Moody” collapsed to the floor. Harry let out a long breath as he stared at him, and then up at the mediwitch, whose face was as pale as glass. But she stepped grimly forwards and bent down to force a potion of some kind down the imposter’s throat.
“A sleeping potion,” Madam Pomfrey said, when she noticed Harry staring at her. “I was going to give it to you so you’d settle, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary now.” She swallowed slowly, shoulders going up and down. “I had my doubts about him earlier in the year, when I thought I smelled some of the ingredients of Polyjuice Potion wafting from that flask of his, but no proof until now.”
“Thanks, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry whispered. He was shaking, and Madam Pomfrey clucked and ushered him to a bed—a different one, at least—and brought him a Calming Draught. Harry swallowed it and settled back against his pillow to wait for the next round of questions.
He knew they’d be coming.
*
Harry held on to Sirius and refused to let him go. His godfather seemed intent on doing the same thing to him.
Harry closed his eyes and held on harder. Whatever sins the Sirius Black in the other Harry’s world had committed, Harry was sure that his Sirius, at least, loved him. And he wasn’t going to let Harry go back to the Dursleys.
“You know that I need to send Sirius on a mission,” Dumbledore said softly from beyond them, near the door of the hospital wing. It seemed that Madam Pomfrey was still upset with him and wouldn’t let him come any further in, although for some reason she hadn’t objected to Sirius. Maybe Dumbledore had told her the truth about Sirius in the past.
“No.” Harry clamped himself harder around his godfather.
“I truly do need him, Harry. I hoped you would trust me enough to believe me when I told you something like this.”
“I don’t trust because you didn’t know that a Death Eater was impersonating your old friend,” Harry said, and glared at Dumbledore over Sirus’s head while clamping Sirius harder.
“That was—a mistake, Harry. I deeply apologize.”
Harry held on to Sirius.
“What kind of life will you have when Sirius is still a hunted fugitive?” Dumbledore tried. “You’d hardly be able to go outdoors in the summer, especially if Voldemort did resurrect and he’s waiting for you. Living in the magical world still wouldn’t allow you to have much freedom or use magic during the summers—”
“The Dursleys keep me prisoner anyway,” Harry snapped, and slid to the floor, breaking his embrace. He kept one hand on Sirius’s arm, though, and saw the conflicted expression on his godfather’s face as he looked at the Headmaster. Sirius really hadn’t been impressed with the fact that Dumbledore hadn’t known the truth about “Moody.” “And I’d have the freedom not to be abused or denied food or locked in my room.”
“What?” Sirius barked. For a moment, his arm trembled under Harry’s hand as if it were about to become a furry leg.
“Yes, that’s what they do,” Harry said. It still tore something inside him to talk about that, but he was trying to trust his instincts. And they said that Sirius probably would leave on the mission that Dumbledore needed him to do unless Harry could convince him to stay. The details about the Dursleys would have to be what did that. “And I know Sirius wouldn’t do any of that.”
“You still wouldn’t be able to use magic during the summers.”
The way that Sirius twitched said that probably wasn’t true. Harry didn’t need him to speak, though. “Why do you want my relatives to abuse me, sir? Why does that matter to you so much?”
“Of course I don’t want your relatives to abuse you, Harry. But they keep you safe on Privet Drive with the power of familial love.”
Harry burst out laughing before he thought about it. But that was another thing his instincts were telling him to do. He bent almost double, his hands on his knees as he laughed, and Sirius looked back and forth a little uneasily between him and Dumbledore.
“They don’t love me,” Harry gasped as he straightened. “Of course they don’t. What kind of loving family locks you in a cupboard when you’re little and swings frying pans at your head and constantly tells you that you’re a freak and your parents were drunk freaks who died in a car accident?”
“They said what about Lily and James?”
Harry turned to Sirius and nodded. “Hagrid was the one who told me how Mum and Dad really died. I didn’t know about magic or that I was famous or that my parents were murdered or anything like that until I was eleven.”
Sirius stared at him, then up at Dumbledore. His upper lip trembled as if he were going to snarl. “That’s it. He’s coming with me.”
“Sirius—”
“You assured me he was safe! That he was loved!”
Harry sighed and shook his head. He had known that Dumbledore didn’t tell him everything, after the Headmaster had said in Harry’s first year that he couldn’t tell Harry why Voldemort was hunting him. But he should have thought better before lying to Sirius about things he couldn’t possibly know.
“I didn’t mean for him to have years as dark and difficult as these seem to have been—”
“But you knew I’d have some?” Harry asked, following up on an implication in the words that he might not have allowed himself to notice before, looking up into Dumbledore’s eyes.
Dumbledore hesitated. “Yes.”
“We are leaving,” Sirius said, and marched Harry out the door so fast that Harry barely had time to make sure he had his wand.
*
“Wow, mate. So you’re going to live with him?”
Harry nodded at Ron as he hastily tossed clothes into his trunk. Sirius didn’t want Harry to attend the Leaving Feast or ride the train in the morning, probably because he assumed someone would try to make Harry stay if he did. Harry was perfectly all right with that. Missing the feast was fine with him when he thought some people would probably try to blame him for Cedric’s death. “Yeah.”
“Just like that?” Hermione leaned over the lid of Harry’s trunk and frowned at him.
“Just like that.” Harry looked around, spotted his Potions book half under the bed, and picked it up reluctantly. Maybe wherever Sirius lived would have some nice books on Potions or a lab where he could brew or something. Harry wanted to learn, because they seemed useful, but his Snape was still a git.
“I think you ought to think some more about this, Harry. Your family—”
“Who abused me.” Harry had somehow become comfortable with saying that in the last few hours. Maybe saying it once, to Sirius, was all he’d needed.
“What?”
Hermione’s eyes had gone big, and her lower lip trembled. Harry stepped around the trunk to hug her. “Yeah, they did,” he said softly. “Made me sleep in a cupboard and took food away from me and everything.”
“The bars on your window the summer before second year!” Ron said, snapping his fingers. “And the way your uncle tried to stop you from leaving.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and glanced at Hermione.
She swallowed and nodded. “Why didn’t you ever say anything, Harry?”
Harry shrugged, not sure he could explain it. The shame and the pain and the tangle of emotions inside him when he thought of the Dursleys. He hoped that Sirius wouldn’t try to make him talk about it, or anyone else who might come to stay wherever they were staying for the summer. “It was hard,” he finally said, when Hermione stood there looking at him as if she wouldn’t let him go until she got a satisfactory answer.
Hermione sighed and hugged him long enough that Harry wheezed a little when he stepped back. “Well, if you decide that you want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”
“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said, and turned to be caught in a crushing hug by Ron. It was a little annoying that both of his friends were taller than he was. Maybe Sirius knew a potion that could correct that?
Better in another world or not, Harry wasn’t about to ask Snape.
“Got everything?” Ron looked around as if he thought that one of Harry’s robes might have tried to sneak out and hide under his bed with the Potions book.
“Yeah.” Harry glanced towards the stairs and winced when he heard Dean and Seamus’s voices. They hadn’t apologized like Ron after the First Task, and for all he knew, they still thought he’d cheated to get into the Tournament, or maybe that he’d murdered Cedric. “Sirius wanted to go quickly.”
“Go quickly, then,” Hermione said, and pulled him in for one more hug. Ron clapped him on the shoulder.
Harry had left his Invisibility Cloak out, and he draped it over himself now and waited until Dean and Seamus were in the bedroom. He heard them asking his friends where they were, and Ron and Hermione’s vague answers. He slipped down the staircase and out into the corridor.
Sirius was waiting in the form of Snuffles. Harry patted him once and followed him down a few staircases and out a secret passage, long and winding, that he’d never seen before, in search of freedom.
The night wind felt blissful on his face.
*
“What is this place?”
Sirius grimaced and looked around the dark, gloomy entrance hall with more dislike than Harry had thought he could muster towards anything, except maybe Snape. “The house I grew up in,” he said shortly, and then turned and bowed to Harry with a sarcastic flourish. “Welcome to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.”
“This is your—house?”
“Yeah. We need to use some magic to clean up the curses and things like that, but I’m dead sure that no one else has access to it anymore. Narcissa used to, but she and Mother had some petty squabble that made the papers years ago—I read about it after I got out and didn’t have much to do except go through Prophet back issues—and Mother took her out of the wards.”
“Why would Draco Malfoy’s mum have access to the house in the first place?” Harry asked in bewilderment, as he blinked at a troll’s leg umbrella stand that looked like it might creep close and kick him.
“Oh, right. You don’t know. She’s my cousin.”
“She’s what?” Harry asked, but he asked it a little too loud, and there was a mad screeching from their right.
“FILTH IN THE HOUSE OF MY ANCESTORS, FILTH IN THE HOUSE OF MY ANCESTORS!”
Which was how Harry got to meet Sirius’s insane mum. And, after Sirius had slammed the curtains shut over his mother’s portrait and led Harry up the stairs, a tapestry full of terrible Black family members and a house-elf with a foul mouth. Harry was sort of interested to see what kind of words he could learn from Kreacher, but Sirius sent him off with instructions to clean the bedrooms. Harry pouted.
“I can’t say it won’t be an adventure, living here,” Sirius panted, pushing his hair back from his face. Kreacher had tried to lunge at him when they’d first entered the tapestry room. “But the good thing is, the protections on the house are the old, screwed-up kind that give the Ministry fits. You can use magic here and they’ll never know.”
Harry cheered.
Then Sirius explained about the Order of the Phoenix and how they’d have to see Dumbledore sometimes since Sirius had said the Order could use the house as the base for their meetings, and Harry stopped cheering.
*
But honestly, it was still a dream, living with Sirius.
It took a couple more battles with Kreacher and the discovery that the elf was more than clever enough to try to poison them unless given strict orders, but in a few days they had clean (and safe) bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen, and food that definitely wasn’t poisoned. It was sometimes lukewarm or outright cold, and several times Sirius sneezed with the pepper that Kreacher added, but Harry took over a lot of the cooking, and that helped.
Hedwig could fly to her heart’s content. She spent a lot of time in the overgrown back garden that Harry thought Neville would be fascinated by.
Sirius told him so many stories about James and Lily that Harry started feeling like he really knew them, and enough that were funny enough that Harry got used to the feeling of liquids going up his nose.
And if there was always the fact that the Order would be along in a few weeks once Sirius and Dumbledore finished discussing the kinds of wards they should layer over the house and whether the Fidelius Charm was really safe, well, Harry could stay out of the way. Sirius certainly wasn’t enthusiastic about Harry meeting up with Dumbledore. He seemed to think the Headmaster would persuade Harry to go back to the Dursleys or something.
Harry exchanged lots of letters with Ron and Hermione and was cheered by the thought of seeing them soon, along with having a real birthday party.
Of course, he should have known that things were going along a little too perfectly.