The Marauders' Sons

All Hermione could do was stand there, dumbfounded, with Tom sobbing in her arms. She couldn't believe what she had heard. Tom, her Tom, had been through so much, and done so much himself. He had killed a man in cold blood! She didn't know what she was going to do in the long term, but for now, he needed her. This is what I wanted, isn't it? I asked him to open up, and he finally delivered.

She held him, and tried to calm him down, but the whole time she was deep in thought. No wonder he is so skittish about his past, he has been traumatized beyond even Harry. They stood there for what seemed like hours, and Hermione's shoulder was thoroughly soaked through. It did give Hermione the time she needed to think, however. She was not going to abandon him, and not only that, but she was going to help him through it. The first step was acceptance, and he had evidently gotten that far, as he had described the murder of his mother, and his own crimes, in detail. Now he needed to keep talking if he was ever going to move past this.

"Tom," she said, as he looked up with his blue eyes looking into hers with fear, "I'm here for you. I want to help you, but you are going to have to tell me more about what happened if you are ever going to move past this. What happened after it was over?"

Since the worst was over, he decided to keep going, as it was actually helping him.

"After, I ran. I just ran and ran. As I ran, I decided to go the post office and send for my father. I knew he was somewhere for a long time, as my mother says his letters stopped when I was about one, but then they started again a few years ago. They weren't signed, but there were always some galleons inside the envelope, and he even knew my birthday. I don't know why he never told my mother or me his real name, but I knew he was alive. I figured that if there was one man who would know all of the wizards in Britain, it was Albus Dumbledore, so, on a whim, I sent it to him. I described myself, told him that my father was in America for eight months in 1979, was hiding there, and his alias in America was John Godric."

"How did your parents meet?"

"How else, a bar. He met my mother in about his second month here, and evidently they went out a little, here I stand after all, as I would have been conceived sometime in month six. Anyway, I sent the letter to him, and went home."

"You went back?"

"I had some things I needed to get done. I was so numb at this point, that nothing really bothered me. I grabbed my family vault key, the knife they used, and a picture of her that I found in her desk. Then I went and hid on the Common."

"You took the knife? Why would you do something like that?"

At this question, the old, steely-eyed Tom returned with a vengeance. "They ruined my life with this knife," he said as he pulled out the offending dagger, "and I will not allow it to ruin another innocent life, ever again. The only kind of person who will ever feel what it's like to be stabbed by this blade will be a Flanagan."

Since this was a topic best left for later, she moved on. "Why didn't you go to the American Ministry after all of this?"
"Do you really think they would let me run off to my father if I did? They would want to know what happened, and then they would want me under lock and key, if not on trial. I decided to try and find a way to England, but then one day I turned a corner and ran into a Brit who knew who I was. It was Dumbledore. We talked for a while_" Might as well tell her everything, " and he said that he could help me, and that I could help him. He needed a place to hide for a while, and as I knew Boston pretty well, we both stayed in a hotel as grandfather and grandson. In exchange, he would take me to England, and I would help fight Voldemort."

"I asked him about my father, and he said he couldn't tell me who he was. Dumbledore was in and out quite often, but he never left for more than two days. Then in June, when we were eating lunch, he received an urgent message, and left. When he came back, he said that he had actually dueled Voldemort, and that he was ninety percent sure that he knew my father, but that man was dead. Killed by the Death Eaters. I asked him to tell me anyway, but he had no way to know for sure, so all he said was 'I wish I could tell you.' Eventually he went back, but not before he told me what he wanted me to do for the Order. I am Harry's personal bodyguard."

"WHAT?" she was not expecting to hear that.

"My job is to keep Harry alive. That's why Neville was sent to America as an alibi, a man named Col. Avery is tutoring him and teaching him to fight. Evidently, after the Department of Mysteries, he asked for personal lessons, so he was conveniently sent to America for a year, and I took his place. That's why I started a new part of the DA, so Ginny is my backup and the other three spies."

"You trust Malfoy that much?"

"He's an asshole to be sure, but he is trustworthy as far as the war goes. Now that he is a traitor to the Death Eaters, he wants Voldemort dead as much as we do."

"Wait," she said as a terrifying thought occurred to her, "is this, are we, part of this?"

"NO! Hermione, I care about you! You must know that! I actually tried not to fall for you, because I have already failed my mission."

"How?"

"Prophesy be damned, if it's between me, you, or Harry, it will always be you."

"Oh," what could she say to that?

There was a silence between them, as Tom tried to put himself back together, and Hermione tried to cope with what she had heard tonight. Hermione broke it.

"In your own weird way, I can see why you took the knife, but why did you go looking for that one picture, and how come I have never seen the picture of the knife before?"

"I keep them hidden over my heart, but here," he said as he showed her the picture he had just pulled from his robes, "that's my mom, before she became a workaholic. I like to think of her that way. When I was little, and my Muggle grandmother would baby-sit me, I liked to think of the younger, more fun version of her."

Hermione looked at the picture, and thought that she was pretty. He takes after his mother she thought as she smiled to herself. Then she noticed the men to her right and left, and she was shocked.

"Tom," she inquired tentatively, "why do you have a picture of your mother with Remus and Sirius Black?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Harry and Ron were in the common room, having finally, and mercifully, finished shopping. But the preparations for Harry's Day of Torment, also known as the day he would receive the Order of Merlin, were not quite over, as there was one more thing to be done. He had to write his speech.

Anyone who had ever met Harry could agree on three things: 1) he looked like a clone of his father, 2) he had his mother's eyes, and 3) he hated attention. Harry was incredibly private for a public figure, and his pet peeve was when people would judge him based solely on his public persona, whether it was the Prophet slamming him or some fangirl looking for an autograph. Now, he had to make a huge public address. Just bloody perfect! What in the name of Merlin am I supposed to say? 'Thanks a lot for no longer hating me and sending Dementors to my door to suck out my soul.' Needless to say, he was not a very happy camper.

"Hey, Ron, what should I say tomorrow?" he asked his best friend, who was reading a letter he had received earlier, for the umpteenth time in the last hour.

"Harry, I haven't got the faintest fucking clue. Just tell them some bullocks about 'We have to fight Voldemort,' and shit like that for about ten minutes and call it a bloody day."

"You're fucking useless sometimes, you know that right?"

"Sod off."

"Sodding," Harry answered as he got up and started pacing the common room again.

"You're gonna wear that carpet down to the stone before you finish, mate," Ron supplied unhelpfully as he made his fourth pass by the fireplace. "Maybe you should go ask Hermione for help, I'm sure she will have some ideas, though she will make you make at least one pitch for spew."

"No, I don't think so," he answered, and then in a whisper, "I checked the Map earlier, so I could ask her for help, and she was with Tom, so I doubt that she will be very happy with me when they get back."

"That guy has to be the only bloke in the world who suffers from PMS."

While Ron could dismiss the events of earlier in the day so easily, Harry could not. In fact, he had been thinking of what he said all day. Harry was not much of a philosopher, but he could not help but dwell on whether he or Tom had it worse. Harry had grown up unloved, he now realized, but that meant that he did not know what a normal childhood was like. Having never experienced it, he was not one to judge. Tom had watched his mother die, so if he remembered that, it would be reasonable to assume that he remembered what it was like to have a mother, and hence a normal childhood. Did, Harry, the one who could not know just what he was missing, have a worse draw in life? Or was it Tom, the one who had it and lost it, who suffered more from the hand that fate had dealt? Harry looked into the fire and pondered this, until he belatedly realized that he still had a speech to write. He was getting a little edgy about it, too.

"What the Hell am I going to do Ron? I have tried to write this fucking speech all week and I haven't gotten a single fucking WORD!" Harry yelled the last word so loud that he made several Second Years jump nearby.

"Why don't you just ask Dumbledore to help you? He's probably had loads of experience in public speaking," he answered, not looking up from the letter.

Fucking duh! thought Harry as he promptly made his way to Dumbledore's office. Harry was making a habit of going straight to Dumbledore, as opposed to the animosity of the year before. He had always felt a connection to his Headmaster, and even when he wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, he still respected his intellect.

Thusly, Harry made his way to Dumbledore's office, though it was an eventful trip. When the gargoyle that protected the Head's office was in sight, Tom O'Malley burst by him in a blaze of fury. Tom didn't even notice that he had bumped Harry, and he appeared to have eyes only the entrance to Dumbledore's office. What really surprised Harry was that Tom didn't even use a password to get in, as the gargoyle jumped aside for him and then sealed itself shut behind him.

As Harry reached the statue, he heard a familiar voice call his name.

"Harry!" called out Hermione, who must have been chasing Tom as he stormed through the halls of the castle.

"Hermione, what is going on, and how did Tom get through to Dumbledore without a password?"

"I don't know about the password, but look at this!" she answered as she thrust what appeared to be a picture into his chest. He looked at it and only got more confused as he saw younger versions of Sirius and Remus with a young woman he didn't know.

"That's Sirius and Remus, but who is that?"

"That is Tom's mother, Harry! That's why he is in such a fury! I told him I recognized Sirius and Remus, and he tore off!"

"Well," said Harry, "lets find out what in Creation is going on."

Then he promptly walked into the gargoyle as he tried to replicate Tom's trick from earlier.

"Oi! You let him through, what was that for?" he said as he held his stinging nose.

"The Keeper has free reign of the castle. You do not. So password or leave, sunny."

"The what?" Harry and Hermione asked in unison, but the gargoyle had evidently had enough, as he did not respond.

"FINE! Be difficult! Mars Bar," he said as the gargoyle cleared the way for Harry and Hermione.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"DUMBLEDORE!!!!!!!!!!"

Tom was beyond angry. He was even beyond enraged. He was actually bordering on psychotic as he stormed into the office of one of the most powerful wizards in the world. In his typical way, Dumbledore did not seem to mind the rudeness.

"Good evening, Mr. O'Malley, what brings you here?" he asked, but he seemed to have a general idea, as he was already making his way to the fireplace.

"You sick bastard! You knew! YOU FUCKING KNEW! You knew the whole fucking time and you said nothing! You had to have known my father! I'll bet even odds that he was in the fucking Order to boot! But you never said a damn thing! I had to figure it out because the one fucking picture I have of my mother has Remus Lupin in it, and Hermione recognized him!"

"All you say is true, and I am sorry. But you left out a detail, my dear boy, Sirius Black is also in that picture, am I correct Miss Granger?"

Tom turned around to see Harry and Hermione behind him, with shocked expressions on their faces, but to be truthful, Harry was a lot more shocked than Hermione. Dumbledore, for his part, took the opportunity to fetch Remus from his office. When Tom turned back around, Remus was standing next to Dumbledore, looking as confused as Harry and Hermione.

"What does Sirius Black have to do with anything? It's Remus who I want to talk to!"

"I don't know anymore than you do, Tom. Albus?" Remus answered, turning to the Headmaster.

"Look closely at that picture, again, and tell me you don't see something."

Tom, though thoroughly frustrated, decided to humor the old man who was about to become his sixth murder victim. He looked at the picture that Hermione handed him, and this time he did see something there. If you darkened his hair a little bit, and changed his eyes from blue to gray, he looked the spitting image of...Sirius Black?

"Oh my God..." he said as he fell to his knees, the realization sinking into him. How could he have not known this already? For Christ's sake! I have to be a moron! All the times I saw her look at this picture and smile, all the times I felt a little warmer inside when I looked at this picture, not once does it register that this is a picture of my parents? All the anger that coursed though him moments ago was gone, replaced by a strange feeling. It wasn't joy, or happiness, or anything like that. If Tom had to give it a name, he would call it completion. This is where I come from.

Then a sinking feeling struck him. Sirius Black? The mass-murdering Sirius Black? That's my father?

"He was a good man, you know. He never killed those people. It was Peter Pettigrew, and your father tried to bring him in. Pettigrew betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort, and Sirius was their best friend. He was even Harry's godfather. It was a rash thing to do, and it landed him in Azkaban for twelve years. He died a hero's death too," Remus supplied, somehow recognizing the anguish that appeared on the boy's face.

The emotional Tom had discovered his father, so the Tom that first appeared the night his mother was killed decided it was time to take over.

"Who?"

Hermione, knowing what Harry was about to say, decided to beat him to it.

"Bellatrix Lestrange, his cousin, and I guess your cousin, too."

Right then and there, Tom locked that name away in his memory forever. The Flanagans had stolen his present and past, but Bellatrix Lestrange had stolen his future, and she would pay. Dearly.

"Can I see that picture, Tom?" Remus asked, as Tom handed it to him.

"Lisa," he murmured, as he recognized the woman.

"You remember her?" Tom demanded.

"Way back in 1979, God has it been that long, Sirius and I went on a very dangerous mission for the first Order of the Phoenix. So much so, that when we were done, we had to go into hiding until things cooled down, and we decided to hide in the Irish immigrant community in Boston. There were plenty of wizards that had just arrived, so it would not be too noticeable. So we assumed names, Sirius becoming John Godric, a combination of mine and James' middle names, I became Robert Orion, a combination of Sirius' and Wormtail's middle names."

"Wormtail?" Tom asked, confused.

"Oh right, you wouldn't know. When we were at Hogwarts, Sirius, James, Peter, and myself referred to ourselves as the Marauders. I was Mooney, Sirius was Padfoot, James was Prongs, and Peter was Wormtail. Anyways, we were supposed to be dockworkers, and then two months into our stay, we went to a Muggle pub called the Eire Pub. We went in, had a few drinks, and we met Lisa. I don't know why I didn't see it before, must have been the years apart, but you look a lot like her, with Sirius thrown in. The three of us became friends, though Sirius and Lisa more so, quite obviously, but when we left back for England, I never saw her again, and we didn't reveal our real names, but we did tell her that those names were aliases, we owed her that much."

"Bet she loved that," Tom said with a small smile, remembering his fiery mother.
"You can say that again," Remus chuckled back.

Much to Tom's delight, and the entertainment of Dumbledore and Hermione, Remus regaled them with tales of their travels in America. He told of Sirius getting a concussion at Fenway Park from a foul ball, several bar fights, and other such misadventures, with gusto. So much so, that no one noticed Harry sneak out.

Unlike everyone else, Harry was not too happy to hear Tom learn of his father. Harry had not only killed his godfather, but he was as guilty as Bellatrix when it came to further ruining Tom's life. He knew what it was like to not have parents, and he had done that not only to someone else, but also to someone he called a friend. It was the ultimate betrayal, killing someone's family, and he had done it to Tom. He went straight back to Gryffindor Tower, with a completed speech in his head, quickly wrote it down, and went to bed, though he didn't sleep until Ron decided to take matter into his own hands with a Sleeping Charm when he noticed his best friend was awake, but unresponsive.

Meanwhile, back in Dumbledore's office, the group was dispersing.

"We all have a busy day tomorrow, I suggest we get some sleep," Dumbledore decided, as he saw that it was approaching midnight.

"One more thing professor, sir," Hermione replied, "when Tom burst in without a password, the gargoyle said something about the Keeper having free reign of the castle. Do you know what this means?"

For the first time in a long time, Dumbledore looked rattled.

"I think we shall discuss this tomorrow," and with that, they were dismissed.