Harry Potter and the Time of Good Intentions

Harry Potter and the Time of Good Intentions

(or: The Last Temptation of Harry Potter)

Chapter Four

The World As We Know It

Harry looked at his stepfather, Severus Snape, standing in the butler's pantry, smiling at him. He should have realized. Those pounding footsteps he'd heard on Halloween night...Harry and Hermione had seen it happen, in the Pensieve. Snape and Barty Crouch, Jr. had Apparated to the moors where Harry had been in the present day, where the clock Portkey had taken him, and after Crouch had put the Cruciatus Curse on Snape, he'd disarmed Crouch and run down into the hollow, hearing along the way the eerie sound of Voldemort's curse rebounding off baby Harry, reducing the dark wizard to less than spirit...

He and Hermione had seen Snape run into the garden, take his dead mother's body in his arms and weep over her, while the Boy Who Lived stood nearby in his nappy, finger in his mouth and blood running down his face from his new scar, crying like any other baby on the planet.

But this time, Harry reflected, Snape must have found his mother alive, weeping over her husband's death. She would have been able to tell Snape immediately that Peter Pettigrew had betrayed them, not Sirius...And now Severus Snape was his stepfather. He turned to Harry now, looking younger and happier than the last time Harry had seen him; his hair was cut short and his beard was closely trimmed; he gave Harry a genuine smile when he turned and saw him, the first Harry ever remembered getting from him.

"She sent you down to help me, eh?" Harry nodded and his stepfather winked at him conspiratorially, then shook his head. "Her grandmother's china," he held up one teacup as an example. "You'd think one of us couldn't just wave a wand to fix it if it broke, but she says she'd still know that it had been broken to begin with, and it just wouldn't be the same..."

He sighed and looked at Harry. Harry realized now that his brothers' coloring was from him, not Sirius, and although he was slightly disappointed, he remembered seeing Snape and his mother in the Pensieve, when they were sixteen. They had seemed to be in love at the time. And he was there for her right after the attack that Halloween night...

His mother tried to get his hair to lie down, but it never would. She gave up and instead tried to get Jamie to sit still to have her dark curls brushed and gathered together into a ribbon at her crown. He was only three-and-a-half, and his sister was nearly two years old. His mother was dressed in beautiful ivory-colored brocade robes with a red and gold braid running round the hem, down the front, and at the sleeves and collar. She wore lilies of the valley in her flaming hair and her emerald eyes shone with excitement.

"Come on, the pair of you...You'll be fine." Her voice had a nervous edge to it. Harry looked around the anteroom of the village hall, where they were waiting for their cue. His mother picked up Jamie and carried her on her hip, and reached down with her other hand to hold his. They went to the center doors; some music started to play and unseen hands opened the doors. The hall had seats on either side of a central aisle, and the music seemed familiar. Trumpet music. His mother started to walk down the central aisle, carrying her daughter and accompanied by her son, walking toward Severus Snape, in very formal-looking deep green wizarding robes, standing at the front of the hall beside a smallish wizard wearing a bowler hat, holding a book in his hands. Lucius Malfoy stood next to Severus Snape. He was also dressed formally. Harry turned; he saw his godfather among the guests. He also saw Malfoy's wife, Narcissa, standing opposite her husband. She was his mother's attendant.

He let his mind wander during the ceremony, looking around the hall, finally seeing another boy about his age. He had silvery blond hair that had been severely slicked down on his head such that it didn't move at all when he did. When he saw Harry looking at him, he stuck out his tongue. Harry returned this, then realized he might be caught, and hastily pulled his tongue back into his mouth.

Very suddenly, it seemed, the ceremony was over and his mother and new stepfather were kissing, and the music was playing again, and they were walking back up the aisle, Jamie on her hip still, her arm through her husband's, who was now Harry's stepfather. His stepfather held his hand gently, whispering to him as they walked down the aisle, "Do you mind me being your dad, Harry?"

He shook his head. He didn't remember his father. He knew this man, though, who was very, very tall and who often lifted him up to ride on his shoulders, and laughed at his mother's jokes, and told her jokes to make her laugh, and Harry knew that anyone who made his mother laugh instead of cry was all right, for when his mum said she was thinking of Harry's father, all she did was cry...

And then at the party afterward, he and his sister were given over to a woman the blond boy called Nanny Bella. The blond boy was already with her. Nanny Bella called him Draco. They had traveled by Portkey to a very grand mansion which the blond boy said was his home, and when they arrived in his room, it was filled with the most wondrous toys Harry had ever seen...He almost forgot that he was there because his mother had just gotten married again. He had the most wonderful afternoon and evening of his young life, playing in that well-equipped nursery with his new friend, Draco, and later being tucked into a large comfortable bed by the woman called Nanny Bella in a room he had all to himself, and being sung to sleep. He wasn't used to sleeping in a bed; usually he slept in a cot in the same room with his sister, who had her own cot. He snuggled down into the luxurious bed, listening to the singing, thinking about having a new father and a new friend, and wondering what the morrow would bring...

They finished packing away the china, his stepfather chatting easily to him about Quidditch. He was surprised to realize that not only did he like talking to Severus Snape like this, it felt completely natural, and there was a complete absence of tension between them, especially compared to the crackling in the air Harry had felt between him and his mother...

While he was talking to him, Harry gave automatic responses, realizing that when he tried to really think about retrieving information about this life it was more difficult than when he simply let the information rise to the surface of his consciousness. When they were done with the china, he walked with his stepfather through the dining room to the hall and stood at the bottom of the stairs. His dad--for he was now used to thinking of him this way--called to the others, "Time for lunch! We need to eat before the carriages arrive!"

Harry watched his sister and brothers thunder down the stairs, while their mother walked down with dignity, admonishing them merely with her aloof silence. They all went through the butler's pantry to the large old kitchen, which had a huge cast-iron stove, walk-in fireplace, stone sink with long, slanting wooden drainboards, plate racks above that, and numerous ancient-looking dressers with a variety of food and crockery. The ceiling soared a good twenty feet above the brick floor, the heavy timbers dark with age and cooking smoke. A large tufted leather couch was pushed against the wall on one side of the hearth, a worn tapestry-covered wing chair was nearby with a foot stool. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was glaringly bright outdoors, they needed to have a couple of dozen candles floating above the table to avoid eating in gloom.

Harry sat down at the oversized central work table with his family, his mind still reeling, although they clearly thought nothing of this simple family lunch in the enormous kitchen; nothing was new and different to them. Harry sat near the end of one of the long sides of the table; his sister was next to him and the twins opposite, while his parents sat at either end of the table. He looked down in confusion at the well-scrubbed table, which was completely devoid of food.

His mother calmly looked at her husband. "What do you think, Severus, just sandwiches and salad?" He nodded assent, his mother clapped her hands twice imperiously, and before he could process what was happening, a house-elf appeared with a loud crack! behind his chair and started putting plates heaped with sandwiches and large bowls of different salads in the middle of the table; he put individual plates and flatware and goblets at their places, moving almost too quickly to be seen. When the elf was at his place, Harry stopped him briefly by putting a hand on the small brown arm.

"Thanks, Tunny," he said to the surprised-looking elf, whose large amber eyes grew even larger. He disappeared with another loud crack! When he'd managed to get the elf to stand still momentarily, Harry could see that he was wearing a heavy canvas shopping bag with a picture of various fruits and vegetables on it (upside down, since there was a hole cut in the bottom for his head, and his arms were thrust through holes on the sides). The handles of the bag hung down below the elf's knees. It looked like he'd be hitting his lower legs against the handles with every step.

Harry looked up to find his family staring at him, and Jamie hissed under her breath, "What are you doing, Harry? Since when do you thank house elves?"

He had a sudden flash of being about ten, with Jamie only eight and the twins six, all four of them helping his mother make and decorate Christmas cookies, laughing as they all became covered in flour and red and green sparkling sugar (it changed colors as you ate the cookies). He remembered leaving the messy kitchen with his family and a plate of hilarious-looking cookies, and seeing a small, irritated-looking elf in the shadows, waiting unobtrusively to clear up the mess...

He swallowed. He remembered from his other life that Dobby was completely overwhelmed when he turned up in Harry's bedroom on Privet Drive and Harry had asked him to sit on his bed; wizards never asked elves to sit.

"I, um--"

But his little brothers seemed to have decided to make up with him for having threatened to hex them earlier. "Good one, Har! He'll think you're barking mad--or he is!" one of them said, and they both gave identical guffaws. His mother looked singularly unamused. She shook out her napkin in what seemed a very pointed gesture, and after laying it carefully in her lap, she took a sandwich from the platter immediately in front of her and handed it to Harry, on her right, giving him that gimlet eye to which he was still not accustomed.

Right, he thought. We live in a house this size, of course we have house-elves. And of course witches and wizards don't thank elves for doing things...Boy, Hermione will really scream at me when she--

Hermione.

He remembered Boxing Day, trying to wrestle the cleaning flannels from the elves, giving them that speech, and then Hermione kissing him in the large Hogwarts kitchen, and Dobby being surprised when he saw them...

It was the first time he'd thought of her since waking up in this strange new life. Where was Hermione in his life? He wracked his brain, trying to remember her, but all he could picture was the Hermione in his old life. Why should that be? Maybe she's in Ravenclaw now, he thought, instead of Gryffindor...

"So," his stepfather said to his mother, "I understand there are going to be over twenty-five first-years today."

His mother raised her eyebrows. "That's the highest number in years. That would be a lot all at once. Has Minerva adjusted the schedule accordingly?"

He nodded. "It'll be fine...You only ever have two houses at a time in the dungeons, anyway. They can't overload you without adding work stations..."

Harry frowned while chewing his ham sandwich. Potions dungeon? Yes, his new brain responded. Mum is the Potions professor...

He looked at Snape out of the corner of his eye. And he teaches too? What does he teach?

"If she wants to give me all of the first years together for Dark Arts, there's nothing stopping her. I've tried reminding her that when she taught Transfiguration she only ever had one house and year at a time, but it just falls on deaf ears..." He frowned at his sandwich before taking a bite of it.

His wife sighed. "Of course, there wasn't a labor shortage then..."

Dark Arts. So Snape was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at last. And he had once said to Harry that his mother was the most brilliant Potions student the school had ever seen. But what did his dad mean by "when she taught Transfiguration?"

"Minerva has her own way, Severus. Every headmaster or headmistress has to run the school as they see fit. She's under a lot of stress..."

Okay, thought Harry. McGonagall is the headmistress. So where's that leave Dumbledore? And who's teaching Transfiguration?

His head was starting to hurt again, but he decided against asking his mother the Potions professor for a headache remedy. He stood with the others when they had finished their sandwiches and salads and pumpkin juice and he started to carry his plate and goblet to the stone sink, when Jamie put her hand on his arm, saying softly, "Stop it, Harry!" He frowned at her, then looked down at the things in his hands and hastily replaced them on the table. He was doing it again. Some things were reflexive from this life, and some things were reflexive from his other life. He hoped he wouldn't get mixed up too often. The house-elf will clear the table.

He lagged behind the others as they left the kitchen, waiting for another sign of the elf whom he'd mortified earlier by offering thanks, but he was nowhere to be seen. Their trunks had mysteriously appeared in the front hall and the door was open. How many elves do we have? he wondered. Two horseless carriages from the school stood in the U-shaped drive before the house.

"Harry!" his mother said to him suddenly. He turned, automatically feeling guilty for no reason that immediately came to mind. Must be force of habit, he thought.

"Where are your robes?"

He frowned. "In my trunk, of course. I packed everything, I promise."

She stood with her arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, tapping her foot, clearly waiting for a different answer, and when she didn't get one, she looked very pointedly at his clothes. Oooooh, thought Harry. Damn! I was supposed to keep one set of robes out to wear up to the castle...

Harry had the good grace to flush as he went to his trunk and retrieved some rather wrinkled school robes that had ended up crushed under the erstwhile contents of his desk. His mother could also see now that he'd put everything in without any regard for organization whatsoever. He'd seen her packing jobs; everything was so tight it never moved a millimeter during transport.

He shook out the robes; they smelled a bit like ink. Once he'd donned them, he tried to brush them down with his hands, but it stilled looked as though he'd slept in them. Added to that, he could see in the glass hanging near the front door that his hair was as unruly (and like his father's) as ever. He tried getting it to lie down with his hand, to no avail. His mother surveyed him critically, then gave an exasperated sigh and turned from him. Harry's stomach clenched within him, and what seemed like an old, familiar thought popped into his head.

There's just no pleasing her.

She was clearly giving up on him temporarily. His mother and stepfather now used their wands to levitate the trunks into the carriages, after which they all boarded. Severus Snape guided his sons into one carriage, while Harry's mother beckoned to him and his sister, and they climbed into the other one.

As they rode through the village of Hogsmeade, Harry looked at his mother and sister, sitting opposite him. He could see now that Jamie was his mother all over again, the same features and eyes, but with chestnut brown hair that was a combination of his father's and his mother's. His mother was no longer a delicate young girl, but a strong, handsome woman, and Harry seriously doubted that her students got away with anything--especially her own children.

He thought about lunch in the large old kitchen; something his mother said had disturbed him, something about twenty-five first years. That number seems low, he thought. And she'd said it was high. Why would she say that? But even as he pondered this, another childhood memory came roaring back, as though it were yesterday...

Harry looked forward to the Malfoys' Christmas party every year. His parents took him and his sister and brothers to the Malfoy house every once in a while, and Harry was permitted to ask Draco to his house, but it didn't happen nearly as often as either boy would have liked. They could have seen each other more often if Mr. Malfoy had believed in sending Draco to school, but even though the labor shortage meant that Draco was without tutors for long periods of time, his father had not yet lost his resistance to sending his son to one of the schools that educated magical children before they were old enough for Hogwarts.

The year Harry turned seven, Malfoy Manor was decorated in its usual elaborate fashion for the holidays. It seemed that an enormous tree was in each room of the mansion: the grand entrance hall, the drawing room, the study, the dining hall, the ballroom, even the day nursery upstairs, where the children played with Draco's numerous toys. There were also Christmas trees in all of the bedrooms. Harry half-expected to see trees in the bathrooms.

The large painted portraits of Malfoys from other eras were all in the holiday spirit as well, each warbling his or her favorite carols, the tunes overlapping and sometimes growing quite cacophanous if the paintings were too close together. Harry dreaded having to pass the portrait of two elderly sisters that hung outside the guest room where Mrs. Malfoy habitually put him. The Malfoys in the portrait sang the same song each holiday season:

The Holly and the Ivy. The trouble was, they couldn't sing at all, or even stay in the same key (and they attempted to harmonize with each other).

In each room, the tree was decorated to coordinate with the decor, so that the blood-red dining hall had a tree with deep red ribbons, fairy lights and ornaments, and the drawing room, which was decorated in an icy-blue Swedish motif, had a tree with blue snowflake ornaments and fairy lights.

Before going to the party each year, Harry loved to see his mother come gliding down their front stairs on his dad's arm, looking almost like a carefully decorated Christmas tree herself (in a good way) with fairy lights in her long red hair and her sweeping green velvet robes touched with real holly berries at the hem. At the party, Nanny Bella was supposed to keep the children under control in the day nursery, but once enough guests had brought their children to her, it quickly spiraled out of control. Harry and Draco and Jamie could never resist playing tricks on the hopelessly slow and unimaginative Crabbe and Goyle, who were too dim sometimes to even know they were the butt of a joke (this wasn't as much fun, naturally, as when they knew).

But the most fun of all was to try to play Paper Chase throughout the house without the adults being wise to what was going on. (It was quite a challenge for a pack of children to impersonate a pack of hunting hounds without their parents figuring it out.) Harry's mother had taught this Muggle game to her children, and Harry had taught it to Draco and the other children of the witches and wizards they encountered at the large parties held by Draco's parents.

Harry loved being the fox that the hounds were chasing. He would slip nimbly through the rooms, plucking the scraps of parchment from his pocket, leaving a trail here and there for the "hounds" to follow, but trying not to make it too easy for them. You had to really have your eyes open to see where Harry was putting the torn slips; one might be on a book on a shelf, eight feet off the ground, or sitting right on the lap of an elderly witch having a heated argument with another witch about the Minister of Magic. Draco had complained of Harry many times when Harry had been the fox, but he also had to admit that Harry still played completely by the rules.

He was enjoying being the fox again, dashing through the public rooms, ducking under adults' arms lifting delicate crystal to their lips, magical bubbles twinkling into people's laughing mouths, as the orchestra played and Harry skittered across the ballroom floor, hearing the hounds entering noisily, risking discovery. He was always a step ahead of them and far too unobtrusive for the adults to catch on; no one made a better fox than Harry. He slipped into Mr. Malfoy's study after leaving the ballroom and cutting through the dining hall, where the table glittered with the real silver and gold and platinum laid out at each place, fairy lights clinging to the walls and heavy rafters in addition to ornamenting the tree. Harry was about to leave some parchment slips on a chair in the study when he heard footsteps and ducked behind the grand Christmas tree near the fireplace. It was Mr. Malfoy and his mum and dad. His mum sounded upset and Mr. Malfoy was trying to calm her.

"Now, now, Lily, please, let's do this in a less public place. Come into my study. You too, Severus; perhaps you can help me help her to see the sense in this..."

Harry swallowed and pressed himself into the corner behind the Christmas tree; if his mother caught him in here, she'd have a fit. He nervously fingered the parchment slips in his pocket, hoping the others wouldn't be able to adequately follow the trail he'd left so none of them would come stumbling in.

"Sense?

Sense? There's some universe in which this idiotic policy would make sense?" Harry recognized that his mother was up for a fight. She never backed down when she sounded like that. He noticed that his dad was silent, neither arguing with her nor agreeing.

"Please, Lily--sit. Severus--" Harry heard the three of them sit on the worn leather sofas. Leather sofas are

very noisy when you sit on them, he realized.

"Just because I'm sitting here doesn't mean I agree with this. What were the Governors thinking?"

"What were we thinking? Well, I can tell you what some of them were thinking--and I mean the ones who are opposed to the Dark Lord. They're trying to protect the Muggle-born children and their families. They think that they're better off not even knowing they're magical, so don't try to blame this on those of us who--who are trying to maintain some

standards. Arthur Weasley was the ring-leader on this. It was his idea to no longer accept Muggle-borns at Hogwarts. Maybe you should go get hacked off at him."

"Yes, but his argument is that it would protect people--not that I agree--while

your argument tends to contain the word 'Mudblood.' Have you forgotten that I'm Muggle-born?"

"Lily, Lily...surely as someone who is Muggle-born you can appreciate how important it is to keep the existence of the wizarding world a secret? This new policy will protect the wizarding community as well as Muggle-born children and their families..."

"You're repeating yourself, Lucius."

"I wasn't convinced you'd heard me the first time. You certainly didn't behave as though you had." There was a nasty edge to his voice and Harry felt himself growing angry on his mother's behalf, his hands forming hard little fists in his pockets, his heartbeat increasing.

There was a moment of tense silence, before Harry heard his dad say, "When will it take effect?"

"Next summer, the only children turning eleven during 1988 who will receive Hogwarts letters are those who have at least one magical parent. The Muggle-born students who are first years now will be finishing their seventh year in 1994. There's no reason to ask them to leave the school; they and their families already know about the wizarding world. If they choose to leave, of course, we will not stop them, but they are welcome to stay and finish their seven years. See, Lily? We're not ogres. There was a proposal before the Board of Governors to expel current Muggle-born students, but it was roundly defeated. And we're still going to be taking half-bloods. I mean, in those families, the damage is done before the child ever comes to Hogwarts; there's already a Muggle involved. Denying their children admission to Hogwarts wouldn't change that..."

"The

damage is done?" Harry's mother sputtered angrily. "Perhaps if you aspired to be an ogre, you'd be more civil, Lucius."

"Lily--I seem to be saying everything to set you off tonight...Think of what it was like when you were in school. Weren't your parents anxious about you? And not being magical, they had no way to protect you. It's a parent's natural instinct..."

She made a skeptical "hmph!" noise. "If you really believed that, then you'd let me--"

"No!" The voice of Severus Snape was unmistakable. "No, Lily," Harry's stepfather said more softly. "It's better this way."

Now Lucius Malfoy guffawed. "Are we

still fighting about this? It's been six years, Lily, and nothing has changed. The Dark Lord would never permit you to become a Death Eater. End of story. You're Muggle-born! And a former Auror! He doesn't trust you. And I think he's right not to. Hear me out--close your mouth! Listen: Narcissa has asked, too, just like you, time and again. He doesn't trust her either. You and Narcissa are Harry's and Draco's mothers. Your first loyalty, your allegiance, would never be to him, and he knows it. It would be to your sons. The instinct of a mother to protect her child is just too--"

"Oh, come off it, Lucius! If that were true there wouldn't be any other women in the ranks of the Death Eaters, and I know there are."

"Ah, but Lily, none of

them have children who are part of the Prophecy."

His mother's voice became very low and dangerous-sounding. "You

mean none of them are suspected of being part of the Prophecy themselves."

Lucius Malfoy stood and walked to the mantel, uncomfortably close to Harry's hiding place. Harry held his breath, sinking back into the shadowy corner. "Well, we still don't know, do we, Lily? Do you blame the Dark Lord for not wanting to be in the same place with you and your son and my son? Why he wouldn't want to take that chance?" He switched gears suddenly. "When is your birthday?" he demanded of her.

She didn't answer. Harry imagined her face, angry green eyes and mouth drawn into a line. He'd seen her like this often enough.

"The eighth of April." She had not answered; his stepfather had.

Harry could see Mr. Malfoy nod, his profile outlined eerily by some candles on the other side of the room. "See? You could easily be the flame-haired daughter of war. You are an Aries..."

"As are one twelfth of the people born on the planet. If half of

them are female, that makes one-twenty-fourth of the earth's population. That really narrows it down, Lucius. Brilliant. I also have the same birthday as Buddha. You know, the Buddha. Does that mean I'm also going to found a major world religion?"

Mr. Malfoy whipped out his wand and pointed it; Harry's hands were balled into fists so tight his fingernails were cutting into his palms; his teeth were clenched together so tightly it made his head ache.

"You will

not speak to me that way! Just one word from me and the Dark Lord will--"

Suddenly, his wand flew out of his grasp; it seemed to be drawn to the ceiling by a very strong magnet (if wands were magnetic). It did not make contact with the ceiling, but hovered a few feet below it, which still put it more than ten feet from the floor and well out of Mr. Malfoy's reach. He looked up, his mouth open. Then he looked in the direction of Harry's parents, glaring angrily. Harry was still shaking; he could feel blood on his hands where he'd broken the skin with his own nails. Mr. Malfoy had opened his mouth to speak again, but it was his stepfather's smooth, even voice that Harry heard.

"Could you give us some privacy, Lucius? I would like to speak to my wife."

Mr. Malfoy still glared. He glanced up at his wand, still hovering in the air. Harry swallowed and felt the tension drain out of him; he collapsed against the wall and the wand clattered to the floor. Mr. Malfoy leaned down and picked it up, putting it back in his robes and striding out of the room without another word, anger emanating from him like heat..

Harry shifted slightly so he could see his mum and dad through the branches of the tree. His mother sat on the edge of the leather sofa, looking as tense as Harry had just been. Her husband put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back to relax against him. She put her head on his shoulder with a tired sigh for only a moment before popping back up with nervous energy.

"Lily--"

She paced, throwing her hands in the air. "I know, I know, Severus. I shouldn't let him--"

"You shouldn't let him get to you." Their words overlapped and she smiled, lacing her fingers through his.

"Finishing my sentences. The only other person who did that was--"

"I know."

She drew her lips into a line. "I wish we didn't have to pretend to be friends with that--that--I can't even find words vile enough to describe him. And we had to have them stand up with us at our

wedding! Oh, Severus..."

"Well, who was going to do it if not them? You're not speaking to your sister--or she's not speaking to you--and I couldn't very well let the Death Eaters see Albus standing by my side, could I? Or do you think Sirius Black was wanting to be my best man? Pettigrew might have, I suppose, if he hadn't been Kissed...thank goodness for

that. It would have been nice to know who the third person in the Prophecy is, but at least he was rendered harmless before he could tell the Dark Lord...Look on the bright side, Lily: Lucius and Narcissa gave us a nice place to have the party after the ceremony."

His mother made the "hmph!" noise again. Harry heard her pick up something and put it down again with a heavy

thunk. "Oh, yes. A lovely setting. Everything in it the epitome of 'ill-gotten gains.'"

"Lily--"

"Yes, yes. You don't have to tell me. But he is so--so--" Harry could hear the frustration in her voice.

"Go on. Get it out of your system."

"

Scum. That's what he is. No--pond scum. No--he would have to spend several million years evolving into a higher form of life in order to be pond scum..."

Harry felt a fit of giggles coming on, but covered his mouth to avoid being discovered. His stepfather threw back his head, smiling and laughing. "That's my girl! A little creative Lucius-bashing is good for the soul."

"But not as satisfying as putting a good

hex on him...And as for letting him get to me--I can't help it. I can't accept that in nine or ten years, they're just going to take Harry from me, and there's nothing I can do; I can't be there to make sure he's safe--"

"I'll be there, Lily. I'll take care of him. I always have done."

She smiled at him again. "Yes, you have. I just wish--"

"Of course you do. It's only natural. Which is exactly why

he doesn't want you there, and Narcissa as well. You wouldn't want to see--" and he stopped, swallowing. It seemed to Harry that there was something he didn't want to say and did want to say, all at once. "There are things he'll have to endure, and things he'll have to do, that you shouldn't see..."

She stood still now, holding his hand. "You were only eighteen when he recruited you. What did you have to do? What did you have to endure?" she asked softly. He shrugged.

"I had it easy, compared to most. Recruiting a few people who were easy touches; if I hadn't approached them, they probably would have started asking people in every wizarding pub from the Orkneys to the Channel Islands about how to join the Death Eaters."

"And Barty Crouch's son."

His dad nodded. "And him. One good thing about recruiting him, though; if I hadn't been close to him, he never would have taken me to Godric's Hollow that night, and I wouldn't have been there when you needed me..."

"But he put Cruciatus on you!"

He shrugged. "And I didn't report him, so he believed me when I said I'd only told you because I loved you. I was never even punished for that, since I'd already suffered Cruciatus, and after six years Crouch

still has no idea I'm working for Albus. Which allows me to continue to watch him. Somehow--there are times he strikes me as being more dangerous than Lucius."

"That bad?"

He nodded. "He hates his father more than you can possibly imagine. I think what he'd really like to do is to get caught doing some spectacular thing, firing the Dark Mark into the air afterwards, and then--a trial."

She shook her head. "It would be the end of his father's career...Could you imagine what people would do if it came out that the son of the Minister of Magic is a Death Eater?"

"Yes." Harry's dad's voice was quiet and even. Neither one of them elaborated on this further. It sounded rather like his stepfather wanted to stop the conversation. His mother leaned over and kissed her husband on the cheek.

"I'm going up to check on the children. I think I saw slips of parchment in the ballroom. Harry was probably being the fox again. He's such a ringleader. I never should have taught them to play Paper Chase..."

"Now, Lily. He's a good boy."

"I know, I know. But Draco...do you think he's a good influence?"

"Lucius hired Bella back after Draco's first three tutors quit, so she'd be able to take care of him even when he didn't have someone to teach him. You know where her loyalties lie as well as I do--and Albus trusts her completely. I have no qualms about her taking care of Harry and Draco when they're together, and sometimes Lucius lets Draco come to our house..."

"Well, I have doubts about her being able to take care of large numbers of children during parties. I

know I saw that Parkinson girl running through the drawing room..."

Her husband smiled and laughed. "I'm sure they're fine, but why don't you go check on them anyway? They should probably be tucked up in bed soon, and you could kiss them goodnight."

She reluctantly separated her hand from his and walked to the door. When she was gone, his stepfather leaned back and put his hands behind his head, saying calmly, "She's gone. You can come out now, Harry."

Harry sucked in his breath and pressed himself against the walls where they met in the corner. His dad waited a minute before speaking again. "Continuing to pretend you are not in the corner behind the Christmas tree will not do any good." Harry let his breath out and gave up. He stood, edging past the sharp needles of the tree, walking over to his stepfather who was looking at him sternly from the couch. Harry did his best to look remorseful; he usually found this helped to shorten lectures and scoldings.

But his dad patted the seat next to him, saying, "Sit down, Harry."

Harry sat, looking straight ahead into the fire, remembering Mr. Malfoy standing there, dreadful and austere. Without looking at his dad, he said, "How did you..."

"Two things, Harry. One, you moved some branches. I noticed just as your mother said she was going to check on you. Two, I know that I didn't take Lucius'--I mean, Mr. Malfoy's--wand from him, and when I saw the tree branches move, I realized that it probably hadn't been your mother, either, although at first I thought so. She probably thought it was me. Once I saw that branch move, I realized that it was more the sort of thing

you might do."

Harry grimaced. "I didn't mean to. He was just being so mean to mum..."

His dad put his arm around his shoulders and Harry pillowed his head on his chest. "I know. You feel the anger rising inside you..."

"Yes," Harry mumbled, closing his eyes, still seeing the fire dancing on the insides of his eyelids.

They were silent for a few minutes, before his dad asked him quietly, "How much of what you heard did you understand, Harry?"

Harry opened his eyes. "Um...I fell asleep. I don't really remember what you were saying," he lied. His dad looked at him suspiciously.

"You don't remember." The older man sounded skeptical. Harry squirmed; his dad had a look in his eye that made it hard for Harry to lie.

"Well, except for a couple of things. What's a Death Eater? What's a prophecy?" His stepfather drew his lips into a line and looked very grim. Harry hoped he might find out, but he was disappointed. His dad did not answer his questions.

"I don't want a single word you heard in this room repeated to anyone. Understand, Harry?

Anyone." Harry nodded, then put his head down again and closed his eyes. What he'd heard was so confusing, he didn't really want to talk to his dad about it. He could remember the words, but what did it really mean, all of it? It was very confusing...

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there, leaning against his dad with his eyes closed, but suddenly he felt movement, and large, gentle hands picking him up; he laid his cheek on his dad's shoulder and knew when they were going up to the second floor because he could feel the jogs as his stepfather put his foot on each step. He thought about letting him know he was still awake, but decided to continue to feign sleep instead. Nothing in the world was as wonderful to Harry at that moment as still being small enough to be carried to bed; his mum hadn't done this in a while, as he'd had a growth spurt the previous year, but his dad could still manage it. There was a slightly queasy feeling of being lowered onto the bed in the guestroom where he always stayed, and then Harry felt his shoes being pulled off and the quilt being pulled up to his chin. His dad's chapped lips pressed briefly against his forehead, then Harry heard his steps receding, the door opening...But it didn't close.

"Lily!" his stepfather exclaimed softly. "Shhh! He's already asleep."

"Where was he?" Harry heard his mother whisper.

"Downstairs."

"He was the fox again, wasn't he?"

"I think so."

Harry heard his mother give a deep sigh. "The way they follow him...It's not like a pack of hounds following a fox. It's more like they're following the Pied Piper."

He heard his stepfather give a soft laugh. "He's a natural leader, Lily."

There was a longish pause before he heard his mother say, "That's what I'm afraid of..."

Then he heard her footsteps drawing nearer, and he fought the urge to hold his breath, instead keeping his breathing as steady and sleep-like as possible. He felt her soft lips on his cheek and forehead, then felt her hand brushing his hair from his brow. He heard them leave, and soon after, he was no longer feigning sleep...

The horseless carriage swayed a little as they made their way out of the village. "Mum," Harry said suddenly, "does it ever seem strange to you to be teaching at Hogwarts, when Muggle-born students aren't admitted anymore?" Now that he had remembered the Christmas party from when he was seven, he knew why the number of first years had seemed low to him.

His mother looked startled, then guarded. She drew her lips into a line, then clasped her hands; her knuckles were very white. "Sometimes, but--"

"When did they stop taking Muggle-borns anyway, Mum?" Jamie broke in. Their mother raised an eyebrow at her. "Er, sorry for interrupting, Mum."

She sighed now. "The last year they sent letters to Muggle-born witches and wizards was 1987. But it wasn't just--exclusionary. A number of people on the Board of Governors thought--what with everything going on in the wizarding world--that it was safer for those young people and their families not to be drawn into it..." Drawn into it, Harry thought. Into the hell in which they were all living because Voldemort had never fallen. Because his mother was still alive.

Harry looked at her. "But weren't most of them doing it because they only wanted pure-bloods at the school?"

She grimaced. "We don't have that rule yet, thank goodness. Hogwarts still takes half-bloods." Now she looked down at her hands. "Don't worry about it, Harry."

Harry was silent, digesting this information. Where is Hermione? Suddenly this question consumed his being, making his pulse quicken, his breathing difficult. The smartest witch--Muggle-born or not--to come to Hogwarts in ages, and she was out there in the world somewhere, not even knowing she was a witch.

"Wouldn't it have been better to keep taking Muggle-born students? I mean, the labor shortage is partly because of, er, casualties, but it's also because of the wizard population shrinking. Without Muggle-born students--"

"Harry. Trust me. They're better off not knowing." Either his mother had come to agree with the policy over the last nine years, or she was feeling an obligation to toe the party line, as a professor.

"But--" Harry furrowed his brow, trying to find the right words "--they're just out there, doing magic, unable to control it, maybe not even knowing they're causing the weird things that sometimes happen around them. Wouldn't manifestations of accidental magic be even stronger as a person gets older?"

His mother reluctantly agreed. "Technically, yes. But do you think the Ministry is that careless? They still know who the magical people are, and they keep track of the Muggle-born witches and wizards especially, so that when accidental magic occurs, the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad can be on-site and reversing the magic before anyone--including the witch or wizard--is the wiser. Perhaps one day it will be safe to tell them, but until then..."

"Anyway, Harry," his sister interjected now, "what was up with you and Tunny? I mean, being nice to a house-elf!" She ignored her mother glaring at her.

Harry bristled, and partly because he was suddenly acutely missing Hermione, he shot back at her, "I'm nice to people who are nice to me! I guess that leaves you out...Anyway, why should they have to slave away all the time and get nothing for it? Is that fair?"

He glowered at his sister; she was staring at him open-mouthed. But then he saw that his mother was staring at him too; he expected her to be as shocked and angry as his sister, but surprisingly, she was tearing up, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket and blowing her nose. Harry's eyes widened with concern.

"Are you all right, mum? What's wrong?"

She finished wiping her eyes and nose and put the handkerchief away, her eyes still red-rimmed. "Oh, nothing. I'm all right, really. It's just that sometimes--you remind me so much of your father..."

He looked at her in amazement. He remembered his mother and father staring each other down in the corridor outside Gryffindor Tower, pointing their wands at each other; he remembered his father saving Severus Snape from becoming Remus Lupin's midnight snack, and seeing her staring at his father in the hospital wing afterward. He remembered James Potter saying softly to her, "...if he had died, it would have made you sad..." and looking at her with his eyes full of love. And then there was the match during their seventh year, when his father had bested Severus Snape, and James Potter and Lily Evans had kissed on the Quidditch pitch, for all the school to see...

They rode on in silence. At last, the castle towers came into view; Harry stared at them hungrily. Now he felt like he was coming home; his chest hitched as the familiar emotions moved through him. There was no place like Hogwarts. It was still his favorite place in all the world.

"We're here," his sister announced needlessly. She smiled at him, having evidently gotten over his telling her off on the topic of house-elves. Their mother opened the door and climbed out, and they followed. His dad and brothers were already standing in the drive; the doors to the entrance hall were open at the top of the stone steps. Stuart and Simon were learning to temper their levitation charms so that the trunks would float gently into the castle, instead of soaring up over the roof.

Harry had a sudden mental image of Jamie trying this the previous September, and because her trunk wasn't properly closed and locked when it tipped at an odd angle in the air, all of her clothes and books and potions supplies--everything she'd brought to school--went tumbling down the steeply-slanted tile roofs and into the stone gutters; one of the gargoyles had suddenly woken up when her cauldron had struck it on the head, and it started directing a stream of obscenities at her. Harry found himself laughing at the memory.

"Hey, Jamie," he managed to say, at last, through his laughter; she was looking at him like he was daft. "Remember last year when you levitated your trunk up above the roof and then all your stuff spilled out of it? And that gargoyle was cursing at you..."

She grimaced. "Oh. That's why you were laughing."

Now his brothers joined him. "That was great, James!" Simon said. Harry thought it was Simon, anyway.

"You should have seen Binns' face the next day when he saw a bra hanging down in one of his windows, flapping in the breeze!" probably-Stuart chimed in. Jamie was looking like she'd be practicing hexes in a minute, rather than levitation charms.

"All right, all right," she groaned. "That's what I get for having all brothers. Hey, Mum! You're still young. How about giving me a sister sometime, eh?"

Their mother was moving Harry's and Jamie's trunks into the entrance hall, her levitation charm sure and steady. "Don't be impertinent. We are at school now. You will call me Professor Evans."

Harry thought about this. Yes, he remembered now; his mother wasn't Lily Snape or Lily Potter. She'd taken back her maiden name. She was Professor Lily Evans. It wasn't common knowledge that she and Severus Snape were even married, let alone that they were Harry's, Jamie's, Stuart's and Simon's parents. Those who asked Stuart and Simon about their relationship to Professor Snape were told that they were "related," but nothing more. Harry's own mother called him and his sister "Potter" (sometimes Mr. Potter and Miss Potter) and his brothers Mr. Stuart Snape and Mr. Simon Snape (Snape or Mr. Snape would be too confusing with two of them). She always called each twin by the correct name.

Harry looked up at the castle fondly, remembering running around it when he was quite small. They'd lived at Hogwarts from September of 1983 to September of 1984. The wedding had been on Valentine's Day in 1984. Right, he thought. That anniversary card looked like a Valentine because it was that too. And the twins were born about three weeks after his fourth birthday...

Oh, Harry thought, glancing at his mother and reddening. The twins were born six months after the wedding. Plus, they had all been living at the castle for months before the wedding. He'd never really thought about it before. Professor Dumbledore must have approved it. They had rooms in the staff wing, where the students never went. There was a sitting room, a day nursery where Harry and Jamie played with their mother, a bedroom for Severus Snape and their mother, and a night nursery for Harry and Jamie, their cots separated by a small table which held an enchanted glowing globe that served as their night-light. They played outdoors in good weather in a large, grassy courtyard which was overlooked by other rooms in the staff quarters. No students at the school ever suspected any of their teachers was married, let alone raising small children. Harry's mother wasn't teaching yet.

Harry had loved exploring the castle during the summer, when it was empty and echoing. Draco came to stay with them for much of that summer, and together, the four-year-olds found many fascinating nooks and crannies which they catalogued away in their minds for future use, especially a secret passage they found on the fourth floor, behind a mirror. Harry was rather frightened about it when he was young, but since he'd actually become a student, he had learned that the passage led to Hogsmeade (he'd finally had the nerve to follow it as far as it went). It wound up backstage in the village hall where his mother and stepfather had wed.

Now he remembered Fred and George pointing out this passage on the Marauder's Map, saying that it had caved in. As far as Harry knew, in this life, it hadn't caved in. The Map, he thought. Have Fred and George found the map in this life? He didn't know. They wouldn't even be students at the school any more, they would have finished their seventh year...

In fact, try as he might, Harry couldn't even remember speaking to Fred and George in this life. He could picture them in his mind, being rowdy in the Great Hall, at the Gryffindor table, flying around with their Gryffindor Quidditch robes flapping around them, or huddled over a parchment in the library, preparing a practical joke of some sort and already laughing in anticipation. But then he remembered that in his other life, Fred and George had immediately recognized him at age eleven by the lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. There'd be no reason for them to just walk up to him and talk to him in this life; he wasn't famous. He'd never even taken the school train, he realized with a jolt. So many things were different. He remembered more now...

After Stuart and Simon had been born, they'd bought the house in Hogsmeade, and the very next day after they'd moved in, Harry started attending the village school. His dad rode his broomstick up to the castle every day, riding back to have tea with them at five o'clock. Then he often had to go back to the castle to attend meetings or oversee detentions. Sometimes he stayed at the castle if it was his turn to patrol the corridors at night.

A couple of years later, Jamie started going to the village school. She and Harry walked down the High Street together, holding hands, while their mother walked behind them, pushing Stuart and Simon in a double-width pram. Harry still only saw Draco occasionally. When Stuart and Simon were ready for school two years later, Harry was shocked and pleased to see his friend when he walked into the fifth-year classroom on the first day of school. In a way, Jamie was his best friend, but she was also his sister, and two years younger than him. Draco was a boy, and just a few weeks older than him. He could really be a mate.

That year his mother started teaching Potions at Hogwarts and his dad switched to teaching Dark Arts. That was also the first year the Board of Governors did not send letters to Muggle-born witches and wizards, and the Headmaster left over it.

Now that both of his parents were teaching, home-life became hectic. His mother and stepfather took turns dashing home on their brooms to meet them at the house after school. Then the other one would dash home to give them their tea while the first one would dash back to the castle...

For his last three years at the village school, Harry felt like he only saw both of them in a room at the same time on the weekends and for holidays. This went on until it was time for the twins to attend Hogwarts; then his parents decided to rent the house out and live in the staff quarters during term, while Harry and his siblings lived in the dorms. Harry wished he could go live in the staff quarters again--it was quite posh--but he wasn't even supposed to let on that two of the professors were his parents. Draco knew, of course, and a handful of other students, but most people did not.

"Harry!" Harry jumped. His dad was holding up broomsticks. "Want to come down to the Quidditch pitch while we wait for the others to arrive? I have a Quaffle and a Snitch right here. Let's not use Bludgers."

"Aaaaw, Daaaad," the twins whined in unison. Their father laughed. Harry smiled at him. He like it when his dad laughed. He seemed to laugh a lot in this life; he was a happy person here, married, with children...

Harry nodded. "I'll be Seeker."

His dad's eyebrows flew up. "Are you sure? You're captain this year, but I hope you're not going to take Draco off the Seeker position. He'd be devastated." Harry felt his heart leap. Draco and I are on the same team! In the same house! And I'm the captain. I play--he thought about it--Keeper. That's it...

"I'm not changing Draco. I mean just for now. That way you can be Keeper and Stuart and Simon can try to score against you. You're better than me, anyway."

"Now, Harry, you're quite good. I've been teaching you to be a Keeper since you could fly a broom..."

Harry knew this was true as soon as it was out of his mouth. He pictured his stepfather as a seventh year, trying to keep the Quaffle out of the goals, and, if it was James Potter playing Chaser, failing quite spectacularly. If my father had lived, would he have taught me to be a Chaser? Harry wondered. He separated the two men in his head by thinking of his stepfather as his dad and James Potter as his father. Many times, though, he was just James Potter. An unreal, misty sort of person, not quite real. A person who only existed in photographs. And in the memories Harry had from his other life, from when he'd entered Severus Snape's Pensieve.

What would happen, he wondered, if you tried to put memories of being in a Pensieve in a Pensieve? What would happen if he tried to put any memories of his other life into a Pensieve? As he approached the Quidditch pitch with his dad and brothers, he shuddered. A Pensieve is expensive, he knew. I'm not rich anymore, he realized with a jolt. That vault of money at Gringott's isn't mine, it's my mum's and my dad's. And how much of that had gone to buy the Hogsmeade house? he wondered. It was huge. There could be a mortgage on it, he supposed, but given the ridiculous interest rates Goblins would probably charge, who'd want to have a mortgage if you could pay cash?

When they reached the pitch, Harry took his broom off his shoulder and looked at the handle. Thunderbolt 500 was burned into the wood. Thunderbolt? he thought, perplexed. It should be Firebolt. But try as he might, he couldn't remember ever hearing of a Firebolt broom in this life. He shrugged to himself; it looked like a good broom. He mounted it and pushed off, feeling the thrill of being aloft again, the wind making his robes flap, his hair whipping around his head...There was nothing like it. Good, he thought. That's one thing that hasn't changed.

His brothers gamely tried passing the Quaffle back and forth, but every time they tried to score on their father, he caught it handily. Harry laughed at the looks on their faces whenever their attempts to score were intercepted. He was enjoying just flying around the pitch, rushing through the air. He was also enjoying watching his dad's skill as a Keeper; he really was good. Harry smiled; that of course, meant that his father had been very, very good as a Chaser, to have gotten the better of Severus Snape.

After his dad had intercepted the Quaffle for more than half an hour, Harry thought he saw a golden glimmer near the ground. He had simply been enjoying the flight, circling the pitch, letting the wind caress him, his brothers and stepfather turning into blurs. Now he went into a dive; he had to have been a hundred feet up. He felt his stomach lurch in that way that was thrilling and vomit-inducing all at once. Before conscious thought could return, he had the small, winged ball in his hand and he'd leveled off, flying a mere four feet above the ground, grinning. He hadn't done that in so long; he'd forgotten how exhilarating it was! As he came in for a landing, joining his dad and brothers on the grass, he was met with shocked, disbelieving faces.

"Simon, you're standing on my foot," Stuart complained, as Harry joined them. Simon's mouth was hanging open, as Stuart's had been a moment earlier before the pain in his foot had prompted him to speak.

"Harry! I--I've never seen you fly like that--" Simon said. He only knew it was Simon because of what Stuart had just said.

Harry flushed, holding out the Snitch to his dad. "Here," was all he could think of to say, swallowing. His stepfather was looking at him appraisingly too, and Harry had the distinct impression that the older man was reading his mind. He shook himself; that was ridiculous. Children only think their parents can read their minds...

Then Harry noticed an ugly red blister on the back of Stuart's hand. "Stu!" Harry cried pointing at it, glad of something to distract from his uncharacteristic Seeking.

"Damn!" his brother cried upon seeing the blister.

"Language--" their dad cautioned, but not very strongly. He withdrew a tube of ointment from his robe pocket and handed it to his son. "Did you take your Porphyry Potion this morning?" he demanded sternly. Stuart pointedly ignored him. As he was rubbing the salve on his hand, he glared at his father. When he spoke, his voice was thick with tears.

"Don't know why you bothered even having kids. You knew we'd get your disgusting disease."

"Stu!" Harry said in surprise. His brother frowned darkly and ignored him, too.

"I'm sick of the vampire jokes, and so is Si." Simon looked at his father with wide-eyed innocence. "We didn't ask to be born..."

Harry sucked in his breath. This was such a sudden change of mood. But then again, Stuart had also just been frustrated by his repeated inability to score against his father. Harry remembered that porphyria also caused a person to be "tetchy" and experience mood swings, degenerating into dementia...Well, Stuart was certainly having a mood swing now, Harry thought. He looked at his dad. Harry had never seen such a stricken look on his face.

"I'll see you all back at the castle," he said tersely, turning, his robes swirling around him. Harry and his brothers followed at a distance, Harry seething at his brother the whole way back. Simon walked behind them with his hands in his pockets. Harry walked behind Stuart, boring holes in the back of his head with his eyes.

When they were close to the castle, Harry spoke to the back of his brother's head through gritted teeth. "That was disgusting. Dad's been living with porphyria all his life. Where do you get off whinging about it when you're only twelve? All you had to do was put the ointment on without screwing it up. How hard is that?"

They had almost reached the castle. His brother turned and faced him, the anger and resentment in his eyes surprising Harry. "Oh, yeah, like you know what it's like. You don't have to be his son, just his stepson. You're just so thrilled to have a dad, any dad, you don't care what he is. You don't have to care." He turned away from Harry again and walked up the castle steps into the entrance hall. "You know, don't you, that your dad dying was the best thing that ever happened to him? I'll bet he danced on Potter's grave..."

They were just inside the entrance hall now, and Harry lunged at him, knocking him down. Stuart managed to turn over underneath him. Harry knelt over his brother, his hands around his throat.

"He would never do that! Take that back!" Then he felt Simon leap on his back and put his arm around his throat. Harry grunted as the amount of air he could take in diminished markedly. Stuart reached up and put his hand on Harry's glasses, pulling them off and flinging them across the hall. Then he tried to grab Harry's nose. Harry yelled as his brothers assaulted him, and the twins hollered as he continued to fight them.

"Harry Potter! Stuart and Simon Snape!"

Harry looked up. The twins froze also. Even without his glasses, he could see that the person who had shrilly cried their names was Professor McGonagall, standing at the foot of the marble stairs, her eyes shooting daggers at them, her lips looking thinner than he'd ever seen them. The Headmistress. Harry turned his head slightly; by squinting, he could see his parents standing in the doorway of the Great Hall. His dad's face was paler than pale, his dark eyes blazing, while his mother's face was absolutely furious. Harry thought he could see some other blurry professors through the door to the Great Hall. Jamie stood next to his mother, a barely-suppressed merry expression on her face; she was clearly trying very hard not to laugh. Harry did not feel like laughing.

Simon climbed off Harry's back, looking sheepish. Harry rose also, extending his hand to Stuart, who ignored it and stood under his own power. Severus Snape had picked up Harry's glasses, and now he grabbed his stepson by the ear. Harry winced as he was dragged up the marble stairs and down a long corridor. He finally let go of Harry's ear and thrust his glasses at him when they reached his office. Harry remembered it being Remus Lupin's office, and Gilderoy Lockhart's, too. Plus there was Moody...the Moodies, rather, real and fake. It seemed odd that his office was no longer in the dungeons. That must be my mum's office now, Harry thought. He put on his glasses and rubbed his ear; it was rather sore.

"We haven't even been here long enough for the others to arrive, and you and your brothers are already at it. They're second years; I expect this of them. Not that I'm excusing their behavior; far from it. But you're a sixth-year now, Harry. I expect better from you. At least you didn't try to hex him. What could possibly make you do such a thing?" Harry grimaced. He didn't particularly want to reveal the reason for the fight. "Well?" his dad persisted.

Harry squirmed. "Stu said..." he began softly.

"What? Speak up!" Gone was the man he'd spoken to in the butler's pantry at home; here was the familiar stern professor Harry had originally met in his other life when he was eleven. He felt the urge to be obstinate come over him, and fought it. All right, he thought. Let him try to continue to scold when he hears what happened...

"He said," Harry said clearly now in an even tone, "that my father dying was the best thing that ever happened to you and that you probably danced on his grave."

His stepfather shrunk back in his chair, an appalled expression on his face. "He said that?"

"But I told him that you would never do that and he should take it back. Well, I jumped him first; then I told him that."

He was immediately sorry that he'd said anything when he saw the look on his dad's face: an unmistakable guilty expression. Harry understood; he remembered Cedric Diggory, and Dudley...

He tried to bring his dad back to the present. "Am I to have detention? House points deducted?" He would say anything to get that expression off his dad's face. His stepfather looked up at him, startled, as though he had forgotten why they were there.

"What? Oh, no. I think you should just wait up here until the train pulls in and the carriages have brought the other students to the castle. You can come down for the Sorting and the Welcoming Feast. I will make sure your mother puts the twins down in her office to wait, if she hasn't already. I'm sure they'll be getting an earful from her." Harry wondered whether they would tell the truth or some elaborately-embellished version of events that made him come off looking like the instigator.

"Maybe--maybe Jamie can come up and wait with me? If she wants, I mean. Unless my punishment is supposed to be solitary."

His dad smiled ruefully. "No, that would be fine, if she wants to come up. And it's not punishment so much as--keeping you and the twins apart." He rose, brushing down his robes, even though they looked perfect as ever.

"Dad?" Harry said suddenly. His stepfather turned, not correcting him and telling him to call him "Professor Snape" as his mother had done with Jamie.

"Yes, Harry?"

"I--I believe what I said. I don't think you hated my father anymore by the time he died. I--I think you were as sorry he was dead as everyone else. Maybe not as much as mum, but probably no one else--well, you know what I mean."

He peered at Harry suspiciously. "I didn't hate him anymore? What makes you think I hated him?"

"Well, er, because he saved your life. And then mum wasn't your girlfriend anymore, he was. When you were all still in school."

His suspicion seemed to be growing by the minute. "How do you know he saved my life? How do you know your mother and I--well, any of it?"

Harry swallowed. Was he not supposed to know this? He tried to recover. "You know; I've, um, kept my ears open, over the years...When Sirius tried to lure you under the Whomping Willow, during the full moon, and Remus was--you know."

His dad paced back and forth, looking angry--but not at him, oddly. "So you know about that, do you? About what Sirius did--by the way, Professor Black, to you--and you know about Remus, too?"

Harry nodded. Professor Black. Oh, right, Harry thought; that's who took over Transfiguration after McGonagall became headmistress. His dad's face was clouded over, remembering less-than-happy days at school.

"Why do you think she broke up with me over that?"

Harry was the one confused now. "Didn't she?"

He was terse and distant again now. "No. I broke up with her. And that's all we will discuss for now. I will go see whether Jamie wishes to keep you company." And his dad was gone.

I broke up with her.

What? Harry thought. That didn't make any sense. He was still in love with her. Why would he break up with her? Not that it mattered; they were together now. But still--very odd, that.

Harry went to the window to watch and wait for the carriages to come up the road from the Hogsmeade station; he wasn't sure how soon it would be, but it was getting dark. Probably soon. Almost half an hour had passed since his dad had left when he heard Jamie enter. He turned to see her bouncing over to him, smiling. He grimaced. Oh, she was probably loving this, he thought, waiting for the gloating to commence.

"So. You owe me ten Sickles," she told him, punching him lightly on the upper arm and then leaning her chin on her hands as she took up a position next to him at the window.

"What?"

"Our bet. About who would get detention first when we got to school. You owe me."

"But I haven't got detention..."

"Right. Try to weasel out of the bet by pretending you didn't bet you'd get detention first. Simon and Stuart do have detention, just like I said they would. You should have heard Mum lay into them. I was listening outside her office."

Harry turned his head, smiling at her. "Eavesdropping again?"

"Eaves were not required. You could hear Mum all over the dungeons. It's a good thing no one is here yet except for us and the other teachers."

"And the ghosts and house-elves..."

"Are you going to go off on house-elves again? Honestly, Harry, that was just weird. Are you sure you're my brother?"

Harry swallowed; no, that was the last thing of which he was sure. "I'm not your uncle..."

"Well, you still owe me. I can't believe I let you bet that you'd get a detention before Si and Stu. I mean, when I saw the three of you in the entrance hall, I was sure you'd staged that just to win the bet."

"I did not stage it. Stu said--"

He stopped looking at her and swallowed. She frowned at him. "What did Stu say?"

"Um...nevermind. But I did not stage the fight."

"Well, anyway, I knew that once Dad had taken you and Mum had taken them, they were the ones who were going to get the detention. You're Dad's pet."

"I am not..."

"Are so. I'm not jealous or anything. It's just a fact. And I'm their little girl, so that puts me in a class by myself. I wouldn't say the twins are Mum's pets, though; she hovers over them a bit, because of the porphyria, but that's natural, I suppose. Stu looked a bit better the last few days, didn't he? I mean, better than he has since getting back from hospital, anyway. I wonder why it's worse for him than for Dad or Si?"

Harry furrowed his brow. Hospital? Then he remembered; Stuart had spent half of his summer holiday in St. Mungo's. His mother had wanted to take him to a Muggle hospital and try to get him on a list for a liver transplant, but there would be too many questions from the Muggle doctors they wouldn't be able to answer (about the Porphyry Potion, for starters), plus his dad wouldn't hear of it. Wizards didn't believe in cutting open the body; the only acceptable cures were through spells or potions. No wizard would ever dream of letting himself undergo surgery (and with a Muggle doctor!) for any reason. Stuart had grown up with this proscription like any other wizard. His mother had screamed about this attitude being antiquated and dangerous, to no avail. Harry remembered Moody telling him about getting his leg amputated in 1915, by a Muggle doctor, with nothing for the pain...That was probably how wizards thought of surgery. A barbaric, dangerous practice. They didn't know the wonders that were possible with modern medicine, like organ transplants.

Stuart had to take the Porphyry Potion more often than either his father or his twin; somehow, his body wasn't coping as well as theirs, and he had more of a temper, too. Harry felt like kicking himself now for jumping his brother; he hoped his mother didn't go too hard on the twins. No wonder Simon jumped on my back like that, he thought.

Harry shrugged at his sister; he had no answer. Then he squinted into the dusk. "Look," he said to her, pointing toward the village. "They're coming."

He'd never seen this in his other life; it was a beautiful sight. Above the dark silhouettes of the village houses the sky was a watercolor wash in apricot and peach, shading upward to jade, aqua, and finally sapphire blue, punctuated by the bright evening star. The pumpkin-like carriages were outlined by small glowing dots, so that they seemed to be a very organized army of fireflies making their way to the castle. There were also lanterns hanging on each carriage, two in front and two behind, casting a golden glow on the dark landscape. The procession of carriages down the winding road in the diminishing light was breathtaking and--Harry had to smile at himself, since he could think of no better word for it--magical.

He and his sister opened the heavy metal-framed casement window, leaning out to look down at the first carriages arriving. Students climbed out, chattering to each other, continuing conversations from the train. Harry felt a pang of jealousy; he missed taking the Hogwarts Express. It was a wonderful transition from the Muggle world to this world. Of course, he thought, I don't live in the Muggle world any more...

As carriage after carriage stopped and students spilled out, there were more and more reunions in front of the castle steps, brightly illuminated by the huge torches on either side of the enormous front door. Harry saw Liam Quirke, looking just as he had at King's Cross Station that morning (in his other life) and he was wearing a shiny Head Boy badge on his robes. Well, Harry thought with satisfaction, that much is the same. Good for Liam. Except--Harry realized suddenly that Justin Finch-Fletchley would not be here if Muggles were not receiving letters any more. He'd probably be at Eton. Well, Harry thought, maybe Liam has found somebody else. He felt a little sad for him, though.

Some other Ravenclaws had been in the carriage with Liam. Harry saw Evan Davies and Mandy Brocklehurst, with their prefect badges on display. Then Harry had a sudden thought. He glanced down at his rumpled robes, then out at the other students again. I'm not a prefect. I'm not a prefect! he thought excitedly now, smiling to himself. No more prefects' meetings! On the other hand, he considered, Liam probably wouldn't be as bad as Roger was. And since he'd remembered that Cedric had been Head Boy during the previous year, that meant that Roger Davies hadn't been. He smiled even more broadly. Ha! to you, Roger Davies! He wondered what Roger was doing now that he was out of school. Who would hire that git? he thought.

Then he wondered who the Head Girl was, but he very soon had his answer when Cho Chang was helped out of her carriage, her badge glinting in the light from the torches. Harry smiled; good. She deserved it here, as in the other life. Then he noticed the boy who had emerged from the carriage first and helped her to climb out; more a man than a boy with those broad shoulders, he was exceptionally tall, wore a silver prefect badge on his deep black robes, and his hair was like fire. He leaned down to give Cho a quick kiss on the mouth, then walked with his arm around her toward the steps leading up to the castle door.

It was Ron Weasley.

Harry felt his jaw drop, then he closed his mouth abruptly, hoping his sister hadn't noticed. She hadn't; she seemed to be searching the carriages avidly for one particular face. Having seen her gazing at the framed photograph while she was packing, Harry had a feeling he knew who she was waiting to see.

But someone else was emerging from the carriage in which Ron and Cho had been riding; it was Neville Longbottom, but a Neville Longbottom Harry had never seen before. This Neville surpassed even the boy who had, with the aid of Eutharsos Potion and Mnemonis Potion, beaten Harry at dueling before the entire school. Harry remembered taking Polyjuice Potion during his second year, and Ron telling him how strange it was to see Crabbe (whose form Harry had taken) thinking. Looking at Neville now, Harry couldn't help wondering whether someone who was self-possessed and confident had taken Polyjuice Potion to look like Neville. He held out his hand to someone still in the carriage and helped a pretty, creamy-skinned girl with a generous helping of freckles on her face to step from the interior. Like her brother, she also wore a prefect badge. Her long red-gold hair fell to her waist, and her large brown eyes shone happily in the torchlight as she smiled at Neville.

Harry made no effort to close his mouth this time; he'd never seen Ginny appear so mature. She looked happy too, even happier than she'd been when Draco Malfoy had kissed her after Harry had tied Gryffindor and Slytherin for the Quidditch Cup...

"There he is!" Jamie cried excitedly, pointing down the line of carriages toward where Draco was standing. His hair appeared yellow rather than platinum in the firelight, and his prefect badge glittered. He laughed at something said by someone still in his carriage, then he reached out his hand and helped a girl with dark wiry hair emerge, and she clung to him after she was on the ground, as though she would fall if she did not lean on him for support. Mariah Kirkner looked up at him the way Jamie had been looking at the photograph, but with more of an expression of ownership. Harry looked sideways at his sister, who was frowning. Uh oh, he thought. Competition.

Then he had a memory that made him think that it might be far better if Draco did not think of his sister as dating material...

They crept quietly down the passages between the shelves of dusty books, holding their lit wands high before them.

"Are we close, do you reckon?" Harry asked Draco.

"Getting there. I hid it with the copies of

Hogwarts, A History. No one ever reads them, and a book mixed in there about shielding charms would never be noticed..."

"Yeah, well, maybe if we'd prepared sooner than the night before the O.W.L.s, we wouldn't need to be sneaking about the library at midnight, hiding books we don't want others to see..."

"It's fine to say that now, but in nine hours, Flitwick's going to expect us to know this stuff, and I intend to. Studying ahead of time's a waste. There are too many other more enjoyable things to do with my days--and nights--"

Harry thought of the many girls Draco was stringing along at any given time; he knew exactly what his best friend was talking about. Unfortunately, Harry did not have a girlfriend, so he had no real excuse for not being prepared other than not wanting to study alone. Just as they had reached the shelf with its multiple, pristine copies of

Hogwarts, A History, they heard the creak of the library door opening.

"Nox!" they both whispered quickly, putting out their wandlights. Harry's heart thumped painfully in his chest as he pressed against the shelves beside Draco, squeezing his eyes shut as though that meant the person who'd just entered wouldn't be able to see him. Steps echoed on the hard floor; Harry held his breath as the person came nearer and nearer. He could hear the person breathing. Was it one of the professors? They would be in so much trouble; maybe they'd be kept from taking their O.W.L.s. He should never have let Draco talk him into this, he should have been studying while Draco was up in the Astronomy Tower with his succession of girlfriends...

"Lumos!" a feminine voice said. She was standing not three feet away from them. It was Niamh Quirke. Harry groaned inwardly. Head Girl; great. Almost as bad as a teacher. She had as much authority when it came to giving out detentions and deducting house points. The undersides of her nose and chin were eerily illuminated by her wandlight; but although Harry had seen Niamh looking stern before, and giving out detentions and deducting house points, she didn't look like that now. She didn't pay any attention to Harry at all, in fact; just Draco. A slow smile crept across her face...

It happened so fast. Niamh agreed to keep quiet about them being out after hours. She'd overheard them discussing the plan when they were in the library briefly during the afternoon, and she'd come hoping that they wouldn't be gone yet.

"Well, actually, I was hoping

you wouldn't be gone yet," she said pointedly to Draco, her eyes burning. Harry saw girls look at his best friend like this often enough; he knew what she meant. He looked at Draco; was he interested? Who was he seeing right now? Susan something...or was it Hannah? It didn't seem to matter to Draco. Here was a girl two years older than him, and Head Girl, no less, offering herself and her silence to him. A slow smile spread across Draco Malfoy's face. Some opportunities were not to be missed.

He held out his hand to her and they walked to a corner in the rear of the library. Harry leaned against the shelves, sighing with relief that they weren't going to be caught, but also in frustration at his own girlfriend-less state (although he didn't really envy his friend these loveless physical encounters that seemed to be his hobby).

Harry heard the rustle of clothing being removed; he heard the unmistakable sounds of kissing, then moans and groans that made him cover his ears with his hands and hum the Holyhead Harpies fight song to himself. When that was done, he counted loudly to himself, ears still covered, eyes squeezed tightly shut. After a while, he opened his eyes, seeing the eerie outlines of the bookcases in the moonlight streaming in the windows. It was very quiet. Harry crept in the direction where he'd seen them go, holding his breath. He slowly put his head around the bookcase on the end, where Draco had had more than one assignation during the library's daylight hours (clothes usually stayed on then). Draco was leaning on her, trying to get his breath, his arms around her and her legs around him. Harry saw, unmistakably in the stark moonlight, a bare breast, and the nipple very dark at the tip...

He pulled back, embarrassed to his core. They'd just finished and they were still--were still--

He couldn't form coherent thoughts, so he stopped trying and ran to the door of the library. He hoped they hadn't seen him. He wished he had a different best friend, but after so many years at school (and before they'd come to Hogwarts, as well) everyone had their mates, their crowd. If he parted ways with Draco, he'd be alone. Jamie would be very unlikely to join him in the Draco-exodus. He swallowed as he fled the library.

Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea, he thought. Better no friend than one who uses people so blatantly, or who gives no thought to the fact of his best friend being in the room while he's shagging a girl...

He definitely did not want his sister going after Draco Malfoy. Or Draco Malfoy going after his sister. She didn't know about his numerous "conquests." And Harry didn't want her to become one. She wouldn't even be fifteen until February! Then he remembered that Voldemort had told him she was to be born in March. Well, he thought, she must have been born a little early. What was it? He tried to clear his mind of extraneous thought. February--21. That was it. His sister's birthday. He turned to his sister, trying to really see her; he looked at her pure profile in the reflected torchlight bouncing off the window, her freckled nose, her bright green eyes, her chestnut brown hair. Draco probably didn't know she existed anyway, he reasoned. He probably just thinks of her as a sister, Harry tried to reassure himself.

Then he wondered, Why was Niamh Quirke Head Girl last year? But he immediately knew; Alicia Spinnet had never been to Hogwarts. She was Muggle-born. She probably didn't even know she was a witch. Harry thought of Hermione again, looking down at the carriages, hoping against hope that she would be here anyway, even though all of the logic was against it.

Most of the carriages had emptied their human cargo, and Harry and Jamie closed the casement and left their stepfather's office to go down to the Great Hall. Did she have any clue at all what a cad her brother's best friend was? Harry wondered. Not that Draco would ever be insulted by such a label; he would laugh and wear it proudly. He didn't let such things get in the way of his fun. Harry both recoiled from this and somewhat envied his friend his ability to disconnect...No, no, he reminded himself. I do not want to be like that.

They reached the entrance hall, still thronged with students. "Draco!" Jamie called, her hand raised, her voice carrying above the tumult of voices. The silver-grey head jerked up upon hearing his name, and he smiled charmingly. Harry could see that this response was making his sister melt; this year was going to be trouble, he felt. Very big trouble. Draco Malfoy made his way toward them through the crowd. Jamie threw herself on him, and he returned the hug, his nose in her thick, shining hair, his arms spasming across his sister's back longer than Harry would have liked.

"Hey, Draco," he said, trying to sound casual about it. His friend smiled back at him, and then Harry noticed that Mariah had come along with him. He saw now that she too wore a prefect badge. Maybe things will change, Harry thought hopefully. Maybe he'll have a steady girlfriend...

"Let's go!" Draco said to all three of them now. "Let's get good seats!" They worked their way through the crowd, and once in the hall, Harry followed his sister and best friend to one of the long tables, and only after he was seated and noticed where he was did his heart leap into his throat. No, he thought, his breathing growing ragged. This can't be happening. This can't be...

He looked across the hall to where Ron Weasley was sitting with his sister. Neville Longbottom was next to her, and Seamus Finnigan was on the opposite side of the table from them. Katie Bell sat a few students away from Seamus, and there were some other non-Muggle-born students Harry recognized from his other life who were in Gryffindor. The trouble was, he wasn't in Gryffindor.

He looked at the people around him.

No, he thought. I'm not. I'm not I'm not I'm not...

I am.

I'm in Slytherin.

He felt tears prickle behind his eyelids. He swallowed, looking around the hall. I'm in Slytherin. How had this happened?

But now there were other changes at the school to consider. Up at the staff table, Professor McGonagall was sitting where Professor Dumbledore should be, Harry thought. She was flanked by Professor Vector (she was sitting where McGonagall used to, so Harry thought she might be the deputy headmistress now), and his stepfather, Professor Snape. Harry was still getting used to his new look, his neat short hair and close-cropped beard and mustache, and the fact that he wore a generally pleasant expression on his face. His mother did not sit next to his father; she was further along, next to an empty chair.

Other members of the staff were familiar. There was Sinistra; there was Flitwick; there was Trelawney (Harry noted this with a grimace); he saw Madams Hooch, Pince and Pomfrey, an unfamiliar man with horns whom Harry thought he'd last seen at the Ministry of Magic when he'd been there for Lucius Malfoy's trial (which had never happened now). Next to the horned man was Professor Binns.

Professor Binns?

Binns had been at the staff table for things like the announcement of the Triwizard Tournament and the House Cup, but Professor Binns had never come down to eat at the staff table during all of the years Harry had been at Hogwarts. Of course, during all that time, he'd been a ghost, and ghosts didn't need to eat. However, this Professor Binns needed to eat.

He was alive.

Harry closed his gaping mouth before someone threw a Bludger into it. Professor Binns had not died. Whatever circumstances had led up to his simply expiring by the fire in the staff room had not occurred in this world, and Harry saw his History of Magic professor in living color for the first time, red-faced and corpulent, looking like he very much wanted the feast to start, and also looking like a colossal bore. Harry groaned inwardly; the only interesting thing about History of Magic had been Binns drifting through the blackboard at the beginning of class, and clearly that was now out of the question.

Then Harry noticed the dark-haired professor to his stepfather's right; he immediately recognized the handsome, laughing face, as he listened attentively to Professor Sprout, on his other side. It was his godfather, Sirius Black, who now taught Transfiguration. He was not an escaped convict trying to stay one step ahead of the dementors, or even an illegal, unregistered Animagus. He'd been properly registered for years, and had taught in McGonagall's old classroom ever since she'd been elevated to headmistress by the Board of Governors, after Dumbledore's resignation. Sirius--Professor Black--was now head of Gryffindor, Harry remembered. It would have been nice to have his godfather for his head-of-house. His stepfather was head of Slytherin, as ever. Well, that's something, Harry thought; I'm still in good with my head-of-house.

But he was finding this small comfort, indeed, noting how few their numbers were without the Muggle-born students, thinking of all the people he should be seeing and wasn't. No Dean Thomas, he realized, nor his sister Jamaica. He'd already realized that Justin wouldn't be here, and he saw that Ruth Pelta wasn't either, at the Gryffindor Table. Ginny and Ron would never go to her bat mitzvah now, he thought. He did see Tony Perugia at the Gryffindor table, and Harry noticed his prefect badge. Another thing the same. But none of the Muggle-born Gryffindor first years from the year before were sitting there as second-years now. In fact, he realized, none of the first years who weren't Muggle-born were there either. He looked around he hall. He didn't recognize anyone who looked like they were younger than fourth year. There were students who seemed to be the right age to be second and third year, but not one of them was a familiar face to Harry.

Then he thought about when Jamie was born; late February of 1982. She'd been conceived in May of 1981...But Harry recognized quite a few of the other fourth years. Finally, it came to him: October 31, 1981. Any student who would have been conceived after that date no longer existed. The world was completely different after that day than the way it had been in his other life. And even if a couple conceived one day later or earlier, or even one hour, or one minute later or earlier than in the other timeline, they couldn't possibly create the same person. Harry thought about the Weasley family; the same two parents had produced seven completely different people (nine, if you counted, the lost sisters, but he didn't know them). Each of us being created is a billion to one shot, Harry thought, not really knowing the numbers, but that sounded pretty good to him. He scanned the Gryffindor table for someone who looked like Will Flitwick, hoping he was wrong about this, but he didn't see anyone remotely like Will. All of the younger students were complete strangers to him.

Harry moved his eyes around the Slytherin table; a number of familiar faces, but some people were missing from here, too. His brothers were chatting animatedly with each other as though the tussle in the entrance hall had not occurred. Where were Crabbe and Goyle? he wondered. Surely they had been born...

He turned and tried to unobtrusively check the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. Ah, there they were. They were Hufflepuffs. Why is that? he wondered for a moment, before remembering that he'd seen in the Daily Prophet that both of their dads were caught putting the Cruciatus Curse on someone and were sent to Azkaban. What was it, six or seven years ago? Perhaps without their dads' influence they'd become a bit different....Then he didn't see Padma Patil at the Ravenclaw table. Wait--there were two of her at the Gryffindor table. No, he corrected himself; one is Parvati. So, now both Patil twins were in the same house. And one of them was wearing a prefect badge. This was getting very confusing...

The hall grew quiet. Professor Vector rose and walked down the center of the room, her footfalls echoing from the stone walls. Harry raised his eyes to the enchanted ceiling; the sky was littered with stars and the moon was a perfect crescent. Not a cloud drifted in front of the heavenly show. Vector quietly opened one of the huge doors to the entrance hall and then went through to the entrance hall and closed it again. The entire school waited. After a few minutes, both doors opened with a bang! and Professor Vector returned, leading the new first years behind her, small and nervous, and not a Muggle-born witch or wizard among them.

At the end of the line of eleven-year-old boys and girls walked a stocky, muscle-bound red-haired man in worn-looking brown leather pants, a matching leather waistcoat over his homespun shirt, and long, scaly green-leather wizarding robes fastened at his throat with a silver brooch, like a cape. He wore heavy dragon-skin gloves and matching boots, deep green and scaly like his robes. He removed his gloves and strode through the hall behind the first years. Harry immediately recognized him as Charlie Weasley. His hair was slightly damp, and Harry realized that he must be the one who had brought the new students across the lake in the boats.

Harry frowned. Where was Hagrid? Wait; now he remembered. It had become common knowledge that Hagrid was half-giant years ago, before Harry was even a first year. Dumbledore left over the ban on Muggle-born students, and Hagrid was summarily dismissed as groundskeeper during the following year. Since that time, Charlie had been serving as groundskeeper, and since the old teacher left seven years earlier, he'd also been teaching Care of Magical Creatures. But Professor Weasley, Harry knew, slept in the staff wing. The hut where Hagrid used to live had been boarded up and abandoned for years. Professor Charles Weasley took the empty chair next to Harry's mother.

As the children approached the Sorting Hat on the small four-legged stool, Harry's heart went out to them; he'd been utterly terrified when he'd been sorted, in his old life. Now a rip opened near the brim, like a ghoulish maw, and the hat began to sing the song it had been composing for an entire year:

I'm nothing much to look at
But looks aren't everything.
I've got oh! such a lot of brain
So hear this song I'll sing:

Enchanted shoes may make a dancer;
Magic gloves a pianist rare;
But I make you a Hogwarts student
When you put ME on your hair!

Every thought you've in your mind
Is an open book to me.
I'll look in you, and tell you true,
Which house is yours, for free!

Do you belong in Gryffindor,
With other heroes brave?
Will you run into fire and ice,
Your enemy to save?

Or do you fit in Hufflepuff,
That faithful, toiling crew?
Your patience and your loyalty
May show your colors true.

But you might be a Ravenclaw,
A clever, savvy sort,
If your wit and erudition show
In matters of import.

Or finally, in Slytherin
You may yet find a place.
Ambition and a cunning mind
May hide behind your face.

So sit right down and put me on!
I never bite or lunge
It won't last long, I promise you,
So let's all take the plunge!

Harry groaned; the hat certainly hadn't gotten any better at making up songs. The rest of those assembled burst into applause, and Harry joined in half-heartedly. The hat bowed, acknowledging the acclaim, and then settled onto the stool once more, looking like any other battered old wizard's hat.

Harry saw some of the first years whispering to each other; he wondered what tall tales some of them had heard about the sorting ceremony. Harry remembered that in his other life, Ron had been told by Fred that they had to wrestle a troll. Harry had been afraid that he would have to perform a spell, and Hermione had thought that a possibility as well. Hermione. She kept coming back into his mind...How could she not be here? But then, the hat's song reminded him of his sorting ceremony in this life...

Harry twisted his hands in his new school robes. All he could see was the back of Draco's head. Professor Vector had led them into the hall and they had waited patiently while the hat sang its terrible song, clapped politely with everyone else, and stood nervously, sweat making his glasses slide down his nose, waiting for his turn on the stool.

"Abbott, Hannah!" called Professor Vector. Harry knew Hannah from the village school in Hogsmeade. Her blonde ponytails bounced as she made her way to the stool. The hat fell down over her eyes. It took only a moment before the hat cried, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

The Hufflepuff table burst into cheers, and Hannah was welcomed by her new family, smiling and blushing as she walked over to them. After that, Susan Bones became a Hufflepuff as well, and Terry Boot and Mandy Brocklehurst became Ravenclaws.

"Brown, Lavender!" Professor Vector called. When she became the first new Gryffindor, that table erupted with noise, and Harry noticed that two red-heads who appeared to be twins were definitely the noisiest. Millicent Bulstrode became a Slytherin; Harry wasn't at all surprised. He also knew her from the village school. Now it was their turn to cheer their new housemate. No one had ever cheered Millicent for any reason, Harry knew. She looked very pleased, trying not to smile as she ducked her head and walked blindly toward the noise.

"Crabbe, Vincent!"

A burly boy sat down on the stool now; it seemed possible that it might not support him, but the legs did not give way. The hat sat on his shoulders for a few minutes before it proclaimed, "HUFFLEPUFF!" The boy took the hat off with a sigh of relief, and walked to the Hufflepuff table, where they seemed to be as happy to have him as the others who had already been placed there.

Then Seamus Finnigan was placed in Gryffindor (the red-headed twins continued to go mad), and Gregory Goyle went to Hufflepuff, where he sat with Crabbe; they seemed to know each other. Neville Longbottom walked with dignity to the stool when his name was called, and when he became a Gryffindor, that table became even wilder.

"MacDougal, Morag!" became a Slytherin, and Harry twisted his robes in his hands; his best friend was up next. What if they didn't get sorted into the same house?

Draco walked to the stool confidently when his name was called; he'd no sooner put the hat on his shoulders than it cried impatiently, "SLYTHERIN," as thought it were so completely obvious the hat shouldn't even have been bothered. Draco took the hat off and rose, looking expectantly at Harry. "Nott" and "Parkinson" became Slytherins as well, then twin girls named Patil both became Gryffindors; after "Perks" went to Ravenclaw, Harry finally heard:

"Potter, Harry!"

No one took any notice of him. Everyone was waiting for the feast; they just wanted to sorting to end. None of the house tables appeared to be interested in such a scrawny, pale bespectacled boy with unruly hair coming into their house. Harry put the hat on his head, feeling it slip down to his thin shoulders. He stared into the blackness.

"Hmmm," said the disembodied voice, sounding very loud to him, although he hadn't heard anything but the house names when others had been wearing the hat, so he was fairly confident that no one else could hear what the hat was saying to him now. "Interesting. Good mind, very good mind. Brave, I can see that. Talent to spare, oh my. Ambition. That's good, very good. And you don't take insults lying down. I can see that. A very interesting combination. Where shall I put you? Hmmm..."

Harry felt the rough wood under his hands as he gripped the stool.

My best friend went into Slytherin, he thought. And my dad is the head of house.

"Slytherin. Yes, an excellent choice. You're brave enough and talented enough for Gryffindor..."

Slytherin, Slytherin. Please.

"...but you would do great things in either place, and Slytherin could help you on your way, no doubt about it..."

Harry waited for the hat's word, wondering whether he was going to be slapped around by the rather frightening-looking red-headed twins at the Gryffindor table. It wouldn't be so bad, he tried to tell himself. My mother and father were Gryffindor. I'd still see Draco a lot...

"SLYTHERIN!" the hat proclaimed. Harry was startled. It was all over. He was in the same house as Draco. He removed the hat from his head and walked over to the Slytherin table, smiling, and Draco patted him on the back when he arrived and started introducing him to the other house members whom he'd just met.

Harry was now a Slytherin.

The sorting was done and Professor McGonagall stood. She cleared her throat and spoke stiffly. "Welcome!" she said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! I will now give out a few notices..."

But the "few notices," went on and on and on. There was the usual prohibition against going into the Forbidden Forest; there was the list of contraband articles (although Harry didn't properly catch the name of the caretaker, it wasn't Filch); there was the announcement of the first Quidditch match in about a month's time, between Slytherin and Ravenclaw (cheers from Slytherin when they were mentioned and boos from Ravenclaw; cheers from Ravenclaw when their house was mentioned, and extended boos, insults and otherwise rather rude behavior from the Slytherins); there were warnings about leaving school grounds without authorization, and a reminder to those in fourth year and up to return their signed forms to be eligible to visit Hogsmeade on designated weekends. (They must have raised it from third years, Harry thought.)

The notices went on and on. Professor Vector had had this paper published; Professor Sinistra had discovered that new star cluster. Harry leaned his head on his hand. It was all starting to sound like, "Blah, blah, blah..." He stared at his empty plate. Food. Food. Food. Maybe if he thought it hard enough, the house-elves would send up the food before she finished talking.

Finally, he heard, "Thank you!" and the headmistress sat. The clapping and cheering was unbelievable; never was a crowd of people more grateful that an orator had shut up. Suddenly, the table was full of food, and Harry and Draco started filling their plates while Jamie looked on disapprovingly. While he ate, Harry heard comments around him from other Slytherins about "that old bat," and "I can't believe she finally decided to shut it." Was this how Slytherin students had talked about Dumbledore before he'd left? Harry wondered. He'd never heard such disrespectful talk at the Gryffindor table.

Then he heard someone further down the table--his own year, he thought--saying, "And just look at Evans. As hot as ever...I can't want for Potions...." and then while the boy next to him nodded and agreed, he suggested doing something to his mother that made Harry's throat seize up. He stood angrily and pointed at him.

"Zabini! Detention!"

The Slytherin table was silent, everyone staring at Harry. The other boy frowned at him.

"What?"

"You don't talk that way about a professor," Harry sputtered, remembering that this boy probably didn't know that Professor Evans was his mother. Zabini smirked at him.

"You can't give me detention, Potter. You're not a prefect."

Oh yeah, Harry thought. Damn! When I was a prefect, I never wanted to do this, and now...

"But I am," Draco Malfoy drawled, standing slowly. He glared evilly at Zabini. "Detention, tomorrow night with Professor Snape. I'll tell him the reason for the detention, too. You know he doesn't tolerate insubordination against any teacher." Harry looked gratefully at his best friend. He may be a cad with girls himself, but Draco wasn't going to stand for Harry's mother being insulted. Harry suspected that Draco respected Lily Evans far more than he did Narcissa Malfoy. Harry also thought his stepfather would probably be very interested to know what Zabini had been saying about his wife...

He and Draco sat again. Harry glanced around the Slytherin table. Until he'd challenged Zabini, no one here had batted an eye at his mother being discussed in that way. He gazed at the Gryffindors wistfully; just as he was doing this, Ginny Weasley had turned and looked in his direction. She caught his eye and smiled. Harry was shocked; he couldn't take his eyes from her. She turned back to the Gryffindors; Harry noticed for the first time that there was a boy at the Gryffindor table who bore an extraordinary resemblance to Neville Longbottom, but he seemed to be a little younger. And then Harry remembered that one of the first years was named Rupert Longbottom, but he was sorted into Hufflepuff, not Gryffindor. He'd noticed Neville frowning about this while the Hufflepuffs cheered. So, in addition to looking very, very in charge of himself, Neville also had two brothers. Did that mean his parents weren't in St. Mungo's? Harry wondered. Did they still work as Aurors? If so, that seemed to be another good thing about this life...

Suddenly, Harry felt a coldness pierce his chest, and he turned to see the Bloody Baron sitting next to him. He drew in his breath; when he exhaled again, he could see it as a small grey cloud before his face, the air around him had become so cold. The ghost's dark, disturbing eyes bored into Harry's. Harry was paralyzed with fear. He felt utterly alone, despite being surrounded by people.

"This is not right," the ghost hissed at him, making Harry's teeth chatter. Everyone around them ignored this interchange. "Fix it."

"What--?" Harry struggled to speak through his shivering. "What do you mean?"

The Baron fixed Harry with a stern and knowing gaze. "You know. You have done this. It is wrong. This is not how it should be."

Harry's bones felt made of ice. "How do you know? Does anyone else?"

"Only those of us who move between worlds. She knows, as well. But she does not know she knows." He pointed at the staff table, and Harry turned; the Baron seemed to be indicating Professor Trelawney, who was staring into space, eating her pudding with a blank expression on her face, her large owlish glasses reflecting the light from the many floating candles above the tables and the torches on the walls.

"But--I--I don't know how to fix it..." he stuttered, turning back to the ghost. He leaned back as the Baron moved his mouth very close to his ear.

"Find a way."

And suddenly, he flew up and up, through the ceiling with its enchanted sky, and was gone. Harry saw Nearly Headless Nick sitting next to Ron at the Gryffindor table. Nick turned to look at him.

Fix it, he mouthed at Harry.

Harry looked at the Hufflepuff table now; the Fat Friar gazed back at him, his dark eyes frightening instead of friendly, as he usually appeared. He shook his head mournfully, turning away from Harry. The ghosts knew. They didn't like it; it wasn't right. Harry swallowed, taking in this strange world, the world he--and Voldemort--had created.

The trouble was, if he was going to attempt magic of this magnitude, there were only three people he knew of who might be able to help him. One was Voldemort himself. Bloody unlikely; he'd wanted things to turn out this way. Another was Albus Dumbledore, who was no longer headmaster, who didn't approve of changing time, and who could be anywhere doing anything, and probably didn't even know who Harry was, except being the son of his former students. If Harry told him what had happened, he doubted he would be believed.

The third person he knew who might be able to help him was someone else who didn't know him, not anymore. She was probably the smartest witch in England and she didn't even know she was a witch. She was living somewhere as a Muggle, completely oblivious to her own considerable magical powers. Harry knew what he would have to do if he were ever to fix this, if he were to right this wrong that had resulted from trying to right the wrong of his mother's death. If this was ever going to be fixed...

He needed desperately to find Hermione Granger.

* * * * *