The Upbringing of Harry Black

There was no Dark Mark.

That was the first thing Rubeus Hagrid noticed as he approached the hill of Godric's Hallow. In the gleam of the half-moon he could tell the house was destroyed-the roof was caved in at the middle and the windows all blown out-but the lack of the Dark Mark was like an unsigned death certificate. There might still be hope.

This was what was in Hagrid's mind as he ran up the hill. Maybe Dumbledore was wrong. The idea that Dumbledore could be mistaken about something was usually incomprehensible to Hagrid, but if it meant Lily and James were still alive...

Everything came crashing down again, however, as Hagrid stepped through the front door as found James sprawled out on the living room floor.

He didn't look asleep, but he didn't look like a corpse, either. He was like a fallen wax statue of the living James, limbs horribly stiff. The look on his face was familiar, an expression of determination. He had worn it before every Quidditch match, whenever he was preparing to ask Lily out again, and when Dumbledore had told him Voldemort was out to kill his family.

Hagrid held his fingers over his mouth, determined to keep from crying, but galloping gulps escaped anyway. He was about to bend down and close James's eyes when he heard the roar of an engine from outside.

"Where is he?" demanded Sirius Black, hurrying inside. Wind-blown, swept back black hair (he hadn't bothered to put a helmet on) contrasted with his pale white face, the color and consistency of a white candle. He seemed to look at everything but Hagrid and James. "What-"

And then he saw James.

Sirius halted, stopped, frozen for a moment in time. He couldn't understand what he was looking at. How could that be James?

Hagrid watched the young man walk over to his best friend and collapse on his knees by his side. He waited for Sirius to start shouting or crying or cursing the world, but Sirius remained quiet. He just let a finger stray out to touch the inside of James's wrist, like a child petting a dog for the first time.

"Sirius...Sirius, I'm sorry," whispered Hagrid as tenderly as he could.

"Why?" demanded Sirius, voice quavering. "You weren't the one that killed him."

Hagrid struggled to think of something to say, opening his mouth several times and shutting it again before more than a syllable could be let out. He was saved the trouble at last by the cry of a baby from upstairs.

Sirius looked around, eyebrows pressed together in wonder.

"Harry?" he whispered. "Is Harry..."

He didn't wait for a reply from Hagrid but bolted up the half-collapsed stairs. Hagrid attempted to follow but the creak of the first step warned him that the whole structure would fall under his weight. Instead he stood at the bottom until Sirius came back down, cradling a squirmy bundle of blankets in the crock of his arm.

"He's got a scar," said Sirius quietly.

Hagrid peered over Sirius's shoulder at the baby. Just as Sirius had said, there were a lightening-bolt shaped slash just under a tuft of the child's black hair.

They stood like that for a moment, an odd variation of the atomic family unit. Sirius jostled his arm up and down, trying to comfort little Harry who still screamed with all the force of his little lungs. Miraculously it began to work, Harry quieting down and settling into his godfather's embrace.

"I'm ter take him ter Dumbledore, Sirius," said Hagrid at last.

"Why?"

"He's ter live with Muggles. Lily's sister's family."

Sirius whispered something, something only for himself to hear.

"What?"

"No, no it's nothing," replied Sirius, as though snapping out of trance. "Hagrid, I know you've got your orders, but...but can't I please take him? Just...just to say good-bye?"

Underneath the mass of his beard, Hagrid frowned. Dumbledore had told him-no, ordered him-to bring Harry to Privet Dr. When Dumbledore insisted on things, it was usually for a good reason.

But Sirius was Harry's godfather, and had just lost his best friend and was about to lose Harry, too. It couldn't hurt, could it, to indulge the poor man?

"Al'righ," sighed Hagrid. "Be careful, though, and wear a helmet."

"I will," said Sirius.

Hagrid watched, as worried as a mother, as Sirius stepped out onto the front lawn. Still bent over Harry as though his body could be used to shelter the child from everything, he knocked the kickstand back, started up the motorbike, and disappeared into the sky.

Little did Hagrid know it would be over fifteen years before he ever saw either one of them again.

* * *

Fifteen years later, a man stepped out of La Guardia airport in New Jersey, U.S.A.

He was the sort of man you could instantly tell was a foreigner, if not able to guess his exact nationality. He just seemed to scream, "Look at me, I'm British," with his prim tweed jacket (which he wore despite the 90 degree American summer weather), trousers (not pants, mind you, trousers), and glinting metal-rimmed glasses that matched the gold-brown background of his silver-shot hair, which matched the gilded writing on his briefcase which read, "R.J. Lupin."

"Yo, Pointdexter, need a taxi?"

Lupin turned around to find a gum-chewing man sweating in a gray T-shirt and hat standing behind him. He blinked for a moment, as if he had never seen a cabdriver before, passing and hand in front of his face to remove the glasses he actually only wore for reading. It left his eyes-a warm amber brown like the heart of a fire that has just had water thrown over it-bare in the sunshine.

"What?" he sputtered in a crisp British accent. "Uh, no, I'm-"

"To the Stanhope hotel, please," instructed a young female voice cut with an American accent. "Fifteen percent tip if he doesn't throw up."

"Yes, ma'am," said the taxi driver, tipping his hat to the source of the voice behind Lupin. He scooped up Lupin's amorphous brown bags and carried them over to a cab.

Lupin turned around yet again to find what appeared to be a little pixie smiling up at him. On closer inspection she proved to be a young Asian woman. She would have looked quite respectable in her black tank top and pinstripe pants if it hadn't been for her hair, which was bright blue, and a pointy-looking stud in her left eyebrow.

"Here's a hint: Don't refuse a cab; you might never see one again."

"Um..."

"You're Remus Lupin, aren't you?" stated the girl before he could get out another monosyllabic non-word. She took his hand and shook it before he could fully grasp what was going on. "I'm Deirdre Yu, your American editor."

Remus had to ponder over those words before he managed to absorb them. American? Editor?

"But, you're twelve!"

He regretted the words the second they flew out of his mouth. She didn't look too young, he supposed, but was just rather tiny. She didn't look angry or offended, however, but said with a perfectly straight face, "I'm thirty-seven; Ancient Chinese secret of anti-aging. Involves a lot of green tea."

Deirdre frowned at Remus's blank look, finally looking offended. "I'm kidding. I'm twenty-four."

"What? Oh, I--"

"Did you really believe me?" she demanded, voice swelling with indignation. "Are you one of those stupid white people who'll believe any bullshit as long as you're Asian and put the words, 'Ancient Chinese secret,' in front of it?"

"What?! No! I-"

Remus's plea of self-defense was interrupted when Deidre's face broke into a luminous, mischievous grin.

"Kidding again," she said. "You look brain-dead. Let's head into the city and get you some bubble tea." She punched him lightly on the shoulder and jumped into the cab, leaving Remus to stand there and think, Wait, did she just hit me?

* * *

The New Jersey suburban wasteland fell away soon enough to make room for dirty, crowded little boroughs outside of Manhattan, and then they were over the bridge and were in Manhattan itself.

All the way Remus fidgeted, thumbs twiddling, fingers smoothing out the creases in his pants. It was all he could do to keep himself from reaching into the pocket of his coat and take it his wand so he could fiddle with that, too. He didn't feel like explaining to Deirdre why he had a security stick, however, so he settled for looking up at all the big buildings.

They didn't impress him too much; London had big buildings, too, after all. Still, as he watched the gleaming monuments of glass and metal slowly inch by, the thought, It's not like Hogwarts, still popped up.

Well, that's why you left, isn't it? he scoffed at himself. That's why you're doing this American book thing; New York is not like Hogwarts.

Dumbledore had been very understanding. Of course you can have some time off, Remus he had said. I know you need time to write your books.

Books. He had said books. Not "little books," or something equally condescending, but just books, as if they stood on the same level as Dickens or Nabokov as opposed to Stephen King or John Grisham or all the rest of the popular riff-raff.

Because Remus was popular. A Werewolf named Sammy, despite its horrid title, sold almost a million copies in England during its first couple of weeks. The foreign sales were even better. It was an idiot novel with an idiot plot but as Remus's Gringotts account grew from a sickly hatchling to a healthy phoenix, he found himself penning more and more of the Werewolf Chronicles. To his horror, he was now called, "the werewolf author," and not because of his peculiar condition.

"You fucking idiot! Learn how a fucking four-way stop sign works before you start driving that fucking SUV!" shrieked Deirdre next to him, snapping him back to obscenity-ridden reality. "God, stupid idiots," she murmured, leaning back in the seat as what looked like a black building swooped past, honking all the way.

Remus took a moment to catch a better look at his editor. She was rather pretty, but there was something about her that was a bit disconcerting. A second before she closed her eyes and sighed, he realized it: her eyes, despite their Asian almond shape, were the same bright, electric blue as her hair.

Remus pondered on this oddity-maybe she was only half Asian?-until the cab came to a shuddering, tire-squeaky stop. Deirdre shoved him out of the side of the cab and onto the pavement.

"Circle around for half an hour then come back," she instructed the cab driver, shoving a couple of twenty-dollar bills at him. "And you better come back with everything-I've got your cab number."

"Wouldn't dream of it, honey," he replied, taking the money greedily and speeding off. Deirdre rolled her strange eyes and turned back to Remus.

"Bubble tea?" she said with a smile, gesturing towards the colorful café they were standing in front of it. "Publishing house's treat."

Sticking his hands in his pockets, Remus shrugged. "Sure, I guess."

The coffee shop was just like any other coffee shop: polished tables, colorful walls, artwork, and the rich smell of fresh coffee actually sweeter than the brown stuff itself. Remus ordered a "grande" (whatever that meant) bubble tea and sat down at a table by the window with Deirdre.

They sat in silence for a while waiting for their drinks, Remus intently watching cars and pedestrians pass. It was a game he liked to play, picking out a person and imagining where they were going and what they were going to do, what their lives were like. He supposed it would have made a good writing exercise, but he always lost interest whenever he tried to make a story out of his daydreams.

"You know, you look like a professor."

Remus snapped out of his ponderings about an overweight woman doing a slow job with a corgi on a leash and found himself staring blankly at Deirdre.

"Wha-what?"

"You look like some stuffy kind of professor," repeated Deirdre. "With the tweed coat and all. You should probably take that off by the way."

"Oh, right," said Remus, slipping off the coat and feeling immediate relief. He felt a cool draft under his arms and hoped he didn't have sweat spots.

"Actually you look just like my old Shakespeare professor at Columbia. Didn't you actually teach at a school before you took up writing?"

"Erm yes," mumbled Remus, not wanting to go too far into the details. Hogwarts probably wasn't the sort of school Deirdre was picturing him in. "So..um, you went to Columbia?" he said to try and change the subject quickly.

"Yeah, B.A. in English right here," she replied with a grin. "Didn't do me much good in the end. But I still live in Morningside Heights, so whatever."

Remus nodded along, not quite sure what she was talking about but not caring either way.

"Deirdre and Ray-mass!" shouted the barrista, as if it were difficult to hear over the light cello music playing in the background.

"Oo, our drinks," said Deirdre, getting up. She came back bearing a chocolatey looking drink and something frothy with what looked like black marbles floating in it. Remus took the plastic cup and began poking at the beads with his oversized straw. Some bobbed back up to the surface but others sunk to the bottom.

"They're the tapioca," said Deirdre as she slurped up her drink. "Try it; it's really good."

Doubtful, Remus trapped a little black ball with his straw then drank from the straw. There was an explosion of earthy tea taste, sweet sugar and milk, and a smattering of tapioca in his mouth. It was surprisingly good.

"Mmm," he commented.

"Told you it was yummy," said Deirdre. "Totally worth the four dollars."

Remus spat out his mouthful of tea. The tapioca bead hit Deirdre in the forehead.

"Four dollars for a bloody cup of tea?!"

"It's not a cup of tea, it's a grande glass of tea," replied Deirdre, wiping off some tea and the bead, which had stuck in a curious manner. "Plus relax; company expense."

Remus still stared in wonderment at the overpriced beverage.

"I better write something damn good then if I'm going to last here," he sighed.

"Mmm, speaking of which, have you written anything?" asked Deirdre.

Remus bit down on the bottom of his lip, a vulnerable gesture that looked surprisingly right on him.

"A bit, I suppose," he muttered, tapping his briefcase with his foot. "It's a bit rough still, though."

"Well I'm the editor; I'll clean it up," she said. She stuck out her hand like a child waiting for a treat.

Reluctant (no matter how many books he published he still hated letting anyone read anything of his) he stooped under the table to fetch his briefcase. Unlatching it in his lap, he picked up the spiral notebook he'd been scribbling in on the plane and handed it across the table.

Deirdre took it eagerly and began flipping through it, impatient. After a moment, though, Remus saw the glee in her eyes fade away to childlike disappointment.

"This is a coffee shop in New York story," she pouted.

Remus frowned. "What?"

"A coffee shop in New York story," reiterated Deirdre. "You've got your characters sitting in an underworld coffee shop."

"Well, it introduces you into the scenario," defended Remus. "See, they're talking about war with the vampires."

"Yes, that's another issue," continued Deirdre. "Your characters are all as-you-already-know-bob-ing."

"What?"

"You know, 'As you already know bob we're at war with the vampires.' You're using dialog to give your reader information. It's a very poor literary device."

Remus just blinked. Literary what now?

"Instead maybe you could have them sitting in some sort of...werewolf den, you know," suggested Deirdre, playing with her straw. "And then the vampires attack and stuff so the reader can get that they're at war without you explicitly telling them."

More confusion. Was Deirdre actually giving him suggestions to improve his writing? He didn't know editors did that.

"Well, I guess we can work on it later," said Deirdre, tucking the notebook into her bag without even hesitating, as if she owned it. "The cab's here."

* * *

The hotel lobby turned out to not be on the first floor-he would later learn that very little in New York City was on the first floor-but on the second level. It was a lush, plush lobby with carpet that his feet sunk an inch into and many gilded figurines that actually pulled off looking tasteful. There was a line at the check-in desk, so Remus put down his bags and sat in one of the couches, a black-leather upholstered number that looked has hard as a rock but gave away readily to his body weight.

He felt exhausted, despite the bubble tea. He dozed off for what felt like a moment but the next thing he knew a young Hispanic woman in a suit was shaking him awake.

"Sir?" she said in a soft but commanding tone. "Sir? Can I help you with something?"

"Hermph?" Remus murmured, waking him. Heat flushed his face and he realized how much like a bum he must have looked, unshaven and hair askew, especially next to the socialite couples in their sleek designer clothes and the wealthy suburbia couples that looked expensive yet tacky.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, getting up and letting his nice British manners take over. He could already see the woman's annoyed expression soften at his accent. "I'm here to check in."

"Okay," said the woman, stepping onto the tiled part of the floor and heading back over to the desk. Her thick four-inch heels clunked away like hooves. "I can help you over here. Name?"

"Remus Lupin," said Remus, following her over.

The woman nodded, the snapped her head up to look at him in wonder. Remus watched, bemused, as she picked up a cheap paperback book-his fifth, book, he could see-and compare him to his picture on the back.

"Mr. Lupin," she crooned, now smiling and revealing a huge Madonna-like gap between her two front teeth. "Welcome to the Stanhope hotel!" She bent her head again and began clicking away furiously at a keyboard kept hidden behind a counter for aesthetic reasons. "Yes, yes, I have your reservation right here." She produced a paper packet of plastic cards and pushed it across the polished marble counter. "Will you be needing anything else this evening?"

"No, no I think I'll be fine," said Remus, taking the keys.

"Oh, and Mr. Lupin?" asked the woman as Remus turned toward the elevators.

"Yes?"

The creamy-brown of the woman's skin suddenly grew warm with the pink flush spreading from her cheeks to the rest of her face.

"Would you sign my book?

* * *

After examining his room, a ritual involving studying each of the complimentary toiletries and the drawers and poking a bit at the forbidden minibar, Remus lay back on his bed and thought.

If you had told him a year or two ago that one day he would be an internationally renowned author in a luxurious hotel room, he would have told you that you'd been eating a few too many mushrooms from the Forbidden Forest. Then he still hadn't written a word and was obsessed with his job, professor of the Defense Against the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts school for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

He had loved his job, working with the students, working the school he had spent the best years of his life, before Sirius and James had been killed and Peter had been revealed as the Death Eater he was. Not that he was alive long enough for anyone to do anything; Bellatrix Lestrange made sure of that the night James and Sirius had defeated Lord Voldemort.

After that night he had been so alone, bouncing around from temporary, low-paying job to the next. Then one day Dumbledore came and informed him there had been an...incident with his current DADA professor and would Remus come and fill in for a bit?

Yes, he had loved his job. He loved teaching the students, working with them, getting to know them. He would have still been there teaching, if it hadn't been for her...

But that was all in the past now. He'd taken a sabbatical and was now in New York City to promote his book, supposedly, and get a bit of a change of scenery, not to avoid any certain students.

At least, that's what he told himself.

Even though it was late afternoon turning to evening, Remus got up and changed into his pajamas and fell into a deep, black, dreamless sleep.

When Remus awoke he felt refreshed, renewed. Any ghosts in his past were firmly and forever dead and he had a new life now, a life in America. He was ready to go out and face it.

Except it was three in the morning, and he was hungry, and the complimentary breakfast wouldn't be ready for another three hours.

With a sigh he dug out the Spintzels he had saved from the airplane and his laptop-a new acquirement, as it had never worked at Hogwarts-and began to write.

Sam gently picked up the broken body of Raquel, the little being that had formerly been his daughter, his life. Now she was dead, and there would be hell to pay!

"Hello, Samad."

Sam looked up to see his mortal enemy, the vampire Darius, standing on the hill, smirking down at his werewolf adversary.

Sam ejaculated a cry of rage.

"What have you done, Darius!" he roared angrily.

"I think it should be pretty damn obvious," answered Darius, still smiling. "Mm, young werewolf," he murmured, licking his lips slowly. "How would you say it? Finger-licking good?"

Sam let out another cry of rage and went charging up the hill. By the time he got there, even though he ran lightning fast, Darius was already gone.

"Curse you Darius!" screamed Sam anguishly. "Curse you to hell!"

Remus paused, fingers over the keyboard, studying what he had just written.

"Oh god," he moaned, slamming his head against the lacquered desk. He hit the delete button and left his finger there to erase the horror he had already unleashed in the form of a seven-book series. "Anguishly isn't even a word."

* * *

"Remus! You look awful!"

"Thanks, Deirdre," gruffed Remus. "I can already tell you're always just a sunshiney-beam of encouragement."

"You've got a reading in ten minutes for god's sake," continued Deirdre, ignoring Remus in his early-morning sarcastic glory. She shoved a little black cosmetic bag at him. Remus was surprised to peer in it and see a toiletry kit, complete with razor, shaving cream, aftershave, face lotion, and nose-hair clippers.

"You don't think I haven't dealt with hung-over writers before?" she said. "Now go; there's a bathroom down the left hall. I'll get some coffee for you."

Remus wanted to argue that he wasn't hungover, just extremely pessimist about the rest of his life, but instead let himself be steered toward the tiny dimly let bathroom.

The bookstore he was reading in was one of those places that was expensive-artsy. No living in a gutter drinking cheap knock-off absinthe for these people. It was all beret-and-black wearing, Starbucks-coffee drinking here. Most of the people flocking in to hear him read were angry monochromatic teenagers coolly smoking cigarettes-or something else in cigarette form-and ingesting near-toxic amounts of coffee and, strangely, elderly people.

The bathroom was a tiny two-toilet affair with burlap sacks all over the wall for people to write on. There were the usual comment: "ASH WAS HERE," and "GREG+REBECCA 4EVER," but there were also the odd intelligent comment or quote from poetry. Remus read some as he spelled away his twelve o'clock shadow and combed his hair.

With a few splashes of water and a huge cup of coffee that made him have to pee within fifteen minutes, he was wide-awake and ready. His reading went by quickly, which was how he preferred it, not wanting to prolong the agony of reading his own writing, and then he was seated at a table, signing random comments like Good luck with the gall bladder surgery-Remus Lupin in his loopy writing. The faces flashed by, an undistinguishable blur, until....

"Here. Could you sign it to Harry?"

Remus took the book wordlessly then looked up at the scrawny teenage boy. He dropped his pen and his jaw.

No...

"James?"