Chapter Text
“Do ya really think he put his own name in there?”
“Of course. Potter can’t stand it when the attention’s not on him.”
That was a lie. Harry didn’t care for attention. It wasn’t like the Dursley’s ever gave him much; he was used to being ignored.
Well, he used to be used to it. But since coming to Hogwarts, Harry was a celebrity, whether he liked it or not. And every year it seemed to get worse— he’d gone from the Boy Who Lived to the Boy Who’d Fought a Troll, Killed a Basilisk, and Outrun a Werewolf. Though, some of the younger years didn’t seem to believe that’d all really happened. Colin Creevey had once asked how substantial the rumors surrounding Professor Quirrel and him were— a 4th year told me you killed him, haha, but I’m not stupid enough to think that’s true— and Colin hadn’t even attended Hogwarts when Quirrell had oh-so-suddenly “quit” and vanished in the middle of the night.
Harry hadn’t technically killed Quirrell— just burned his face off, which forced Voldemort to abandon his body, which allowed Quirrell to die.
He was glad people were hazy on the details of what happened that night. If the “Boy Who Melted that Guy’s Face Off One Time” became his new nickname, Harry might actually kill someone.
“Aye, you’re right. I never liked the guy, you know. Everyone’s always raving about the great Harry Potter but meeting him was a bit of a disappointment, yeah?” That was Gaius Patel, fifth cousin twice removed from the Patel twins, Parvati and Padma. On the whole, he found the girls much more agreeable.
Harry distinctly remembered Gaius asking him for his autograph last year.
Titus, his brother, replied: “You’ve got Merlin by his robes with that one! I mean, why am I taller than the savior of the wizarding world?”
Malnourishment, according to Hermione.
“And what’s with those dorky little glasses? Don’t he know we’re wizards? My da took a floo to the mainland and got his eyes fixed when he was a wee lad. It’s a bit of money, to be sure, but are you tellin’ me ‘Arry Potter can’t spare a few galleons?”
The words didn’t upset him, exactly. They were more irritating than offensive (and, no, it hadn’t occurred to him that he could get his eyesight corrected. Four years, four bloody years, and no one had thought to mention that there was a magical cure for being nearsighted?) Still, it bothered him how quickly people were willing to turn on him— asking for his autograph one day, calling him a self-centered diva the next.
The two boys continued to talk loudly. Harry stayed where he was; he had no reservations about eavesdropping on his peers.
Especially not when they were having it in the Gryffindor common room, three feet away from where Harry was sitting with his freshly-brewed tea (a courtesy of a house elf who thought he “looked sad, no offense meant, Mr. Potter.”)
“And you know how Cedric Diggory is,” Titus said. He adjusted the Potter Stinks badge on his sweater with a sad shake of his head.
“Oh, aye, that fella is too polite to say a word about it!”
“Harry should feel ashamed of himself.”
At this, the two turned to glare at him. Anger curled in his stomach. He hadn’t asked for any of this! Not his fame, or his height, or whatever stupid quality they wanted to criticize next. As for the Triwizard Tournament— he certainly had not asked for his name to be picked. Harry, after three full days of thinking, had yet to figure out how, exactly, his name had gotten in the cup in the first place.
The obvious answer was that Voldemort had something to do with it. There was probably a Death Eater running around the castle at that very moment, giggling evilly to themselves and plotting out a new way to kill him, if past experience was any indication. Not that these boys, or anyone else for that matter, would believe him if he said so— no, the whole bloody school was convinced that Harry, a fourteen-year-old boy, had somehow, for the first time in the Tournament’s history, tricked the cup into accepting his name.
How he’d done this, no one knew (or cared.) All that mattered was that he was once again at the center of trouble, and Cedric, the most popular (and handsomest) boy in Hufflepuff, was another victim of Harry Potter’s penchant to hog the spotlight.
When he ignored them, downing his tea with forced calm (and burning the roof of his mouth in the process, ow), the boys continued.
“Apparently Potter’s da was an attention seeker too,” Gaius said. The other nodded and lifted his feet so they’d be closer to the fireplace. He had horribly ugly toes, all squashed and hairy. “And a bully.”
“Sounds like a prick.” They glanced over at Harry again, as if daring him to say something.
“Make you wonder. If his da was a prick, what kinda woman was his ma for marryin’ ‘em?”
That, unsurprisingly, was the breaking point. Insulting Harry was one thing. Insulting his family was another.
“Shut up,” Harry said. The sudden, overwhelming anger made it difficult to think. His grip on the tea cup tightened.
“What did you just say, Potter?”
“My father wasn’t a bully.”
“As if you’d know. Poor little orphan Potter.”
His hand began to tremble. They wouldn’t be able to react fast enough to deflect a hex. He could do it. It might get him in trouble, but with all the favoritism Dumbledore had shown him over the years—
But, no. If he did that, then he’d be exactly who they thought he was. Harry took a deep breath.
Not that he’d let them get away with being assholes.
He tried to remember what he’d heard about these two. They were third years, so a year below him. Brothers.
“Funny you lot would be insulting my family.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” Titus said.
“Aye, ‘Arry, why’s that?”
Harry thought quickly. He knew little to nothing about them, but Gauis had an accent, Titus didn’t— or, his was similar enough to Harry’s that he didn’t notice it, meaning he grew up in Britain.
“So, how old were you when your mum left your dad?” Harry asked, all innocence.
It was a reach. There were other explanations for the differing accents of siblings, but he knew divorce was the most likely option.
…divorce was a thing in the wizarding world, right? Four years, and he was still learning. He’d learn a lot quicker if anyone ever bothered explaining things to him.
Gaius’s cheeks coloured, while his brother glared at Harry in fury. Spot on, then.
“Where do you get off—”
“It was the other way ‘round,” Gaius murmured. “You didn’t need to bring that up. Merlin.”
“Oh, so insulting my parents is all well and good but insulting yours crosses a line?” Harry pushed up from the table so violently that his cup teetered, then tipped over. It rolled onto the stone floor, shattering. The boys went quiet.
Harry stormed out into the hall, feeling the gaze of the third years following him. At least the room had been pretty much empty; everyone was at lunch, so his outburst had been somewhat private.
Though, by dinner, the entire school probably would’ve heard about the incident. Damn blabbermouths.
He’d stopped eating in the main hall because Ron refused to sit with him. So did half of Gryffindor, and Hermione and Neville were the only two brave enough to actually speak to him. The twins occasionally did as well, but they never took anything seriously. Who was to say if they actually believed the rumors or not?
Harry wasn’t a stranger to isolation. But from Ron? It was different. He loved Hermione. She was one of his best friends— the sister he never had.
But Ron, Ron was his other half. If soulmates were real, his would be Ron.
And now they weren’t speaking. His best friend wouldn’t even look at him, and it wasn’t even Harry’s bloody fault.
His feet carried him to the seventh floor, past the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. Not wanting to go back downstairs, he paced in the hall, thinking about his father. James wasn’t a bully. Right? They were lying. Harry didn’t actually know much about his dad. Sirius had told him a little, but had to go on the run. They hadn’t had a steady line of communication since, just the occasional message from Sirius. Harry felt stupid for finding his godfather’s circumstances inconvenient. Of course they were bloody inconvenient, he’d die if he were ever caught. He didn’t have time to entertain Harry. Professor Lupin had talked about both James and Lily during their sessions, back when Harry was learning the Patronus spell, but it wasn’t enough.
He’d spoken of them with an aching fondness. After he’d quit, Lupin— or, rather, Remus now— had written a handful of times, telling Harry old stories about his parents and godfather (Sirius got stuck in a doggy door, once. James had to lather him in hair gel so Sirius could slip through.) Harry had written back, asking questions, telling Remus about his own life (The Weasley’s invited me to go to the Quidditch World Cup with them. It was brilliant. Excluding the part where Death Eater’s attacked our tents, obviously. Krum is brilliant.)
Even with all of that, though, he felt as if he barely knew them. Snape reminded him so often of how all of his negative qualities were exactly like his dad’s. Harry wanted to know, wanted to meet him and compare them himself. See if his dad really was a bully, or if it was all a horrible slander campaign. Harry knew a thing or two about that. Heir of Slytherin, Voldemort’s accomplice, Voldemort’s secret love child (what?), a changeling, a fraud (how, exactly, was vague, but there had been some whispers about his scar being a glamour. Another of his attention-seeking stunts, he supposed.)
He slowed to a stop. A flash of something on the wall had caught his eye.
Harry turned back. A door sat smack dab in the middle of what was once an empty wall. What the hell?
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but he’d survived enough near-death experiences in his life to know it was not easy to kill Harry Potter.
He approached the door and placed his hand on the wood. It was warm, despite the relative chill in the hall. Because that was normal.
Might as well go in. The last time he’d opened a strange door he’d come face to face(s) with a three-headed dog. Perhaps it’d be a dragon this time— he hadn’t fought one of those yet.
Slowly, he reached out and turned the knob. The door swung open to reveal a messy room.
The clutter was unimaginable. Aunt Petunia would have a fit at the sight of it.
Harry liked the room immediately.
What was it doing here? Who had built it? And why had it suddenly appeared? He mulled these questions over as observed its contents.
Where to look first? There was so…much. Of everything. Broken wands, weathered robes, suits of armor with wilting feathers stuck in their scuffed helmets, swords, maces, bottles (both broken and whole), furniture with missing legs (or too many), strange liquids in strange containers, a mummified horse wearing a tall pointy black hat, things Harry couldn’t begin to identify.
A bookshelf sat near the entrance, stuffed to the brim with textbooks, books as tall as a giant (and books about giants), a history book called An Insider’s View of Sri Lankan Vampires: Modern Sri Jayawardenepura in the Wake of the Crisis of 1690, cookbooks, and a thick dictionary with dried blood caked on the bottom. Harry moved on
Further in sat more objects, either bewildering or broken. Or both.
The thing that struck him instantly was that the room was quiet.
Harry sat down on…something. It was some kind of furniture, though he couldn’t recall what type of bench had thirteen legs, ten knobs that were functionally useless, and a small strip of paint on the…whatever part of the…bench…? that was supposed to be.
Finally, some peace.
“Stop elbowing me!” Sirius whispered into the darkness.
“You stop elbowing me,” James whisper-shouted back. Remus, who was sandwiched between them, stuck both his elbows out with a smirk.
“Oi! I said stop, Padfoot!”
Before Sirius could respond to that, Remus shushed them both.
“Can you hear anything?”
A pause.
“No, I think we’re good,” James said and, without consulting either of them, pushed through the cabinet doors. He fell out rather ungracefully onto the floor, as did Sirius, who landed half on top of him. James made a funny little wounded noise as if he’d been crushed by a hippogriff instead of a skinny teenager. Remus calmly stepped over both of them.
Filch had been chasing the trio. Peter was studying with Lily in the library, so it was only the three of them. James, who’d— somehow— stumbled upon this strange room a few weeks ago, had led them there in an effort to escape. He wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but Remus had watched as his friend muttered need a place to hide, need a place to hide, pretty please, hide us while running back and forth down the hallway.
Remus had been sure they’d be caught, but a door really had appeared (I told you so, Moony! Never doubt me) and they’d run inside as Filch’s dragging footsteps had sounded from the stairwell. Unsure if the door would disappear behind them or not, Sirius had grabbed James and Remus before shoving them into an old, beaten-up cabinet near the front of the room, where they’d been for the last ten minutes.
Hogwarts's caretaker was nowhere to be seen. Remus let out a sigh of relief— as a Prefect, he’d get a sterner talking to than his friends would by McGonagall. Lily, Gryffindor's other Prefect, refused to take part in James’s shenanigans, and therefore did not need to run away from Filch and his evil, (according to Peter) face-eating cat.
“Is it just me, or is it brighter in here than it was before?” Sirius frowned. He was right— the sun should’ve been growing dimmer as the day grew later, but the light shining in from the windows— and how, exactly, did that work, because those certainly were not visible from the outside of the castle— indicated it was closer to noon than six in the evening.
“Blimey! It must be a magic cabinet.” James gasped, then, still pinned under Sirius, exclaimed, “Merlin! What if we’ve been trapped in there for days? Lily showed me a Muggle book about that once.”
Remus rolled his eyes. “I doubt that. It’s probably an odd effect of the room.”
“No, really. The children go into the wardrobe and get tempted into betraying each other with Turkish Delight by a witch. Which kind of gives witches a bad rap, which I’m not fond of, because Lily’s a witch, and she’s not tried to tempt me— though I wouldn’t mind if she did—”
“James, what does that have to do with anything?”
“The point is, my dear Moony, that furniture, historically, makes time go all wibbly wobbly and upside down.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, James.”
“Thank you, Sirius.”
Remus pinched the bridge of his nose, then bent down to hoist his (sort of) boyfriend and best friend to their feet. Sirius winked at him, then, frowning, jerked his chin in the direction behind Remus. He turned to see what must’ve been a second or third year staring at them, an inscrutable expression on his face.
“Oh, there’s a little boy here. Hello, little boy! Sorry, we’ve got no Turkish Delight. But we do come in peace— I think I have a meat pie in my pocket, hold on—oh, it’s only half of one—”
“Nah, I’d say that’s more like a quarter. Why have you got a quarter of a meat pie in your pocket?” Sirius asked, curious.
“Lily gave it to me. I’m savoring it.”
“Gave it. You mean, she threw it at your head.”
“Yeah. Same difference,” James replied, a besotted grin on his face.
Sirius snorted. “Hardly.”
The boy stood staring at them blankly. His hands hung limply by his sides, and his breath began coming out in shorter and shorter pants. Remus hoped he wouldn’t faint. He didn’t have time to deal with unconscious 2nd years (or whatever he was); Lily had asked to meet him in half an hour so they could go over their Transfiguration notes together.
His eyes, which held a hint of panic and a lot of disbelief, were also very, very green. Unnaturally so.
Remus had seen that color before. He knew it well. But why a random underclassman would have Lily’s eyes, he couldn’t fathom. It seemed a big coincidence, when that color was so distinct. How had his friends not noticed? Merlin knows James, lovesick fool that he was, spent enough time gazing at Lily Evans to know what shade of green her eyes were.
Then again, his friend was, on occasion, denser than a bag of bricks.
James held out the meat pie— the quarter of it that was left, anyway— to the boy, and then, as if trying to win over a dog, said, “Here, boy. Come on.”
Merlin. “James, I know you’ve spoken with children before. What are you doing?” Remus asked, exasperated. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to face his friends. The boy didn’t even glance at the offering. His focus was completely on James…who he resembled quite strongly, as a matter of fact.
Remus did not like where this was going.
“Er.” James slowly lowered his hands, cheeks coloring. He adjusted his glasses with one hand and tucked the food back into his pocket with the other.
The boy also had glasses, and he too reached up to adjust them, grabbing the wire sides and gently pushing them back, just as James had.
Remus truly did not like where this was going.
“Who are you, anyway?” Sirius asked. He tilted his head to the side questioningly, a habit he’d picked up after doing it in his animagus form so often— when one couldn’t speak and didn’t have opposable thumbs, gestures of the head became a common form of communication. James, too, had developed a few funny habits, such as trying to ram his head into Remus when he forgot he no longer had antlers.
The green-eyed boy attacked. It was quick, his wand was out in a flash, Sirius responded instinctively by pulling his own wand out, followed by James and Remus, in slightly slower fashion.
It was too late, though— Sirius went flying back with an oomph, sailing into James, who tumbled backwards and into a rack of dusty dresses.
With a flick of his wrist and a mumbled spell, Remus disarmed their attacker. He scowled, that familiar anger building in his chest. It was at times like— taken off guard, his friends hurt, vulnerable— that the monster inside him welled up.
Remus wanted to bite. Wanted to use his claws instead of his wand to fight back.
The stranger’s wand flew off into the mess around them. Even if he dived for it, he was unlikely to find it before Remus hexed him.
“Now, what was that for?” James sputtered as Sirius helped him up. Dust coated his hair, coloring it grey instead of its usual black. He looked a bit like Fleamont— aged and wise, though Remus had trouble imaging his friend as an old man. James Potter would be forever young in his mind, no matter how many gray hairs he sprouted.
“Maybe he’s a vegetarian,” Sirius whispered into his friend’s ear. James laughed, and Remus smiled, the beast inside him subdued for now.
“Who are you?” Anger was evident in their attacker’s voice. So was youth. His jaw clenched.
“How old are you? Twelve?” Remus asked, frowning. “And why did you attack us?” This was Hogwarts, not a battle zone. The Marauders might get in scuffles occasionally, but to be so blatantly attacked by someone none of them recognized? It was downright odd.
Sirius slung an arm over his (maybe) boyfriend’s shoulder. “It’s funny. He looks a bit like Jamie here, doesn’t he?”
“Merlin, he does! Are you my cousin? I didn’t think I had any family attending Hogwarts at the same time as me.”
Took them long enough to notice. As if the boy wasn’t James’s twin.
“Hold on,” Sirius said. “Isn’t it weird we’ve never noticed him before? There’s a mini you running around, and we’ve never run into him?”
“That is odd,” Remus agreed. Mini-James sucked in a deep breath. His hands clenched and unclenched, as if he were thinking about hitting them. An admirable bit of bravery, to attack without a wand, but Remus had been in enough brawls at school to know he could take Mini-James down easily. It helped that he was a good deal taller.
“Why bother asking who I am? You know damn well. I don’t know what trick you’re playing—”
“Look, Mini-Me, I’m afraid to say I really don’t recognize you.”
A flash of realization passed over Sirius’s face. Their eyes met, and Remus instinctively knew what his friend was thinking— an illegitimate Potter. Some kind of bastard, probably Fleamont’s.
That didn’t feel quite right, though. If the boy was a bastard, where had he been this whole time? Their friend’s father might have made a mistake in his youth, that was believable enough, but he was hardly the type to go hiding his son from the world, only to drop him at Hogwarts on a random afternoon with no preamble.
“If we knew who he was, why would we be asking?” Sirius whispered, beginning to look vaguely annoyed. “Look, let’s just go. Filch should be gone by now.”
“No!” They all turned to stare at Mini-James. “Why are you disguised as those people? What exactly is your end goal here?”
“Disguised?” Remus asked, an intense feeling of foreboding crawling through his veins. Something was very, very wrong. The way the boy was looking at James…frightened and confused, hopeful and doubtful, angry yet on the verge of crying.
“You’re not Remus Lupin.”
“I—”
“Stop it,” he hissed. “You’re not Remus, or Sirius, and we all bloody well know you aren’t James Potter.”
James glanced down at his hands, as if to check. “Er, no, I think I am, actually.” He ran a hand through his messy hair absently, causing dust to rain down. Sirius coughed.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s dead.”