Chapter Text
i.
Harry Potter was a liar.
Harry Potter was a freak.
Harry Potter was six years old and unloved.
Nobody healed his scrapes when he tripped and fell. Nobody scared the monsters away. Nobody played pretend with him.
In fact, Harry Potter wasn’t even Harry Potter until he was prepped to start Infant School. Petunia told him his name with the same inflection she used when she told him to bring in the paper.
When he heard his name for the first time (he could remember), the name that his parents must have given him, Harry went out into the well-trimmed yard and said it to himself so many times that it devolved into elated nonsense. His parents’ last names were Potter. His mother’s last name, if his mother had had Petunia’s maiden name, Evans. Potter and Evans. He spent hours in the dark of the cupboard wondering if his mum had liked or disliked her last name or what his dad’s first name was or what they looked liked.
Their faces had always been fuzzy blobs in his head. He knew his mum was probably fair-skinned like Petunia, and liked to imagine her with freckles and lighter brown hair than Petunia. His father probably had the same messy black hair that Vernon yanked at to throw him into his cupboard. And now he knew that they had named him, maybe with love. Maybe in between the alcohol and awful mess that Petunia told him they’d been before they died they had loved him. They had given him a name, after all.
With this new, precious piece of himself, Harry Potter started Primary School.
ii.
Dudley was going to a different school than Harry, something Harry was very, very happy about. They both started on the same day, and Petunia dropped him off first. She walked him into the building among a stream of other children and parents, and then looked down at him distastefully. “Well, goodbye.”
“But I don’ know where to go!” Harry said and flinched when she looked back at him. She stalked off, and Harry found himself alone in the hallway. Petunia just… left him there.
Harry bit his lip and walked towards the closest door marked in big red letters, ‘WELCOME NEW STUDENTS!’ and peeked his head into the colorful room.
The teacher was helping another student to her desk, letting her write her name on a shiny plaque so she could display it on her desk. He had a cane in his right hand and a deep green jumper on over a button-down. He looked kind but tired, with a shadow of a beard on his chin and slightly rumpled clothes. Something was almost familiar about him, but Harry didn’t chase the thought.
Harry inched forwards and froze when the teacher looked up at him and smiled warmly. “Hullo there. What’s your name?”
“Harry,” Harry said. “Harry Potter.”
“Ah, of course. I saw you on my roster. You’re in the right place, not to worry,” he said gently, and Harry immediately felt much less nervous. “A pleasure to meet you, Harry. My name is Mr. Lupin.”
interlude i.
One day when Remus was seven, with no future and no friends and no real personality other than the way his screams sounded in the cellar under his home every full moon, his parents drove him to the supermarket. A weekly occurrence with usually little to nothing occurring during the trip, but this time a white convertible next to them was filled with screaming and laughing teens who were driving erratically.
“Bound to crash,” his father had said gruffly. “Idiots, driving pissed.”
The car soon sped past them, and it flitted away from all of their minds the way that glimpses into other people’s stories usually do.
A few minutes later, they briefly passed a wreckage— a white convertible overturned, on fire. A charred thing lay on the bloodied pavement. A bloodied arm stuck out from under the car. Glass littered the ground and glinted in the sunlight. A radio still squeaked out bright music. The crash was so recent that the authorities weren’t even there yet.
Remus could still smell it sometimes.
They kept driving, because what else were they to do? But it felt wrong to drive after that. Sick and wrong to keep existing as if nothing had happened. His mum tried to insist they turn back and call but his da pointed out how there had already been people there standing and staring, and if none of them had called then humanity was doomed anyway.
Remus felt the exact same way when James and Lily died.
They had run out of time, yet he was still there. Sirius, god, Sirius was in prison. Sirius murdered them. Sirius, who fake-proposed to James so he could claim to be James’ first at Lily and James’ wedding. Sirius, who still flinched when someone grabbed him and hoarded food in his room. Sirius, who wanted to be something, anything, but an auror. But they were all pushed into it.
Remus wondered if that’s what made him snap. They were pressured to fight a war and Sirius took the side that would end it quickest.
It still made no fucking sense, though, and hurt so much her couldn’t fucking breathe, so Remus drank for four years to forget. He fucked a few men and women to try to fill the hollow area in his chest where his capacity to love used to be. How dare he be the last one left of them? Him, the tainted thing that dared to think happy endings were possible.
Sirius left him money, the son of a bitch. Remus didn’t hesitate to spend it out of utter spite and contempt. Most of it went to either alcohol or rent.
October 1985, Minerva knocked on the door of his flat one day after he’d missed his bi-monthly check-in and, upon receiving no answer, invited herself in to find him on the floor laying in his own piss and vomit. “Get up,” she’d snapped, firm and steely but soft on the edges. When he just stared at her, she cast a rapid sobering charm that made him throw up one more time. She rolled up her sleeves and pulled him into his washroom. “You have ten minutes and then I’m coming in.”
When he emerged, cleaner and ever so slightly less disoriented, she thrust new clothes into his hands and said, “I’m worried about Harry.”
And for the first time in four years, he listened.
iii.
Harry liked Mr. Lupin. He was warm, unlike any adult he’d ever met. He never raised his voice or hit anybody. He gave out gold stars the colour of his eyes when students did well on activities and played records for them during Reading Time. Sometimes he was absent for a few days, but that was okay because their substitute, Ms. Tonks, was nice too.
Harry really, really liked school. Being away from Dudley all day was a dream come true, and he wasn’t afraid for the first time in as long as he could remember. He didn’t talk much, because he wasn’t supposed to talk, Freaks Should Be Seen And Not Heard, but he listened. Listened to Mr. Lupin’s warm voice explain multiplication and Mary talk about her new dog and his own pencil on paper, scratching away at grammar practice.
Recess was his favourite time of the day, because there he began to make real friends that didn’t call him names or steal his food or look at him like he was disgusting or weird.
Bertrude and Cicily Peterson (twins, fraternal, as they liked to tell everyone at recess,) sat on either side of Harry. Cicily was very good at drawing, and drew dogs and cats and her friends and even Mr. Lupin. Bertrude was funny and loud, and knocked down a lot of things on accident.
Harry didn’t mind them at all, except for the fact that Cicily decided she looooooved him and chased him around at recess. He didn’t much like that.
Mr. Lupin was one of their Recess Supervisors, and stood out on the front steps with Ms. Dosia as twenty-six children ran around on the playground structure. He remained in the shade, leaning on his cane and watching them all with a fond smile as Ms. Dosia blabbered on and on about her ex-husband’s new wife or cat or houseplant.
The best part was that none of them suspected that he was a freak.
“Why do you have a cane?” Cicily asked one day in early October. The entire class grew quiet, as this subject had been a popular topic at recess that day.
“Raise your hand, please,” Mr. Lupin replied lightly.
Cicily raised her hand and he called on her. “Why do you have a cane?” she asked again.
Mr. Lupin exhaled slowly and leaned against the front of his desk. “Why do you think I do?” he asked. “Open discussion, so you don’t have to raise your hands, but do be courteous if someone else is talking.”
“You got bitten by a shark!” Greg called out. (He really liked sharks.)
“You were a pirate!” Sven tried.
“It just looks cool?” said Cicily.
Mr. Lupin laughed. “While those are all much more exciting guesses, it’s actually something different. I have a chronic illness.”
“What’s that?” Gertrude asked curiously. “Is it con- con- conjitus?”
“Contagious? Well— no, no it isn’t. It developed when I was five.”
“Five? But you’re like, forty !” Evan protested amid the titter of the other children.
Mr. Lupin looked startled for a moment, then chuckled in amusement. “I am not quite forty, no, but it will still be there when I am forty. ‘Chronic’ means I have it for the rest of my life.”
“That’s pretty sad, Mr. Lupin,” Betsy said. Cicily nodded emphatically.
“I used to think so too, but I adjusted. I learned to embrace it just as I do the rest of myself.”
“Is that why you aren’t here sometimes?“
Mr. Lupin nodded. “It is.” After a beat of silence, he said, “If there aren’t any more questions, I’m afraid we’ve been distracted far too—“
“Does it hurt?”
Mr. Lupin paused and looked at Harry, who shrank down into his seat as the rest of the class turned to look at him too. “It does. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But that’s adversity. I grew stronger from it.”
“Okay,” Harry whispered.
The rest of the class passed uneventfully, except Cicily spilled some juice and Harry flinched but Mr. Lupin just cleaned it up and gave a gold star to whoever tried to help (Harry got one.) On his way out, Harry stopped by Mr. Lupin’s desk and lingered as everyone else ran out to line up for the carpool line.
“Is everything alright, Harry?” Mr. Lupin asked him, setting down his pen.
“Umm. I wanted to ask you something,” Harry said quietly.
“Ask away.”
“What do you do, when it hurts more?” Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask.
Mr. Lupin didn’t answer for a moment. “When my illness hurts more?”
“Mmhm. How do you… make it better?”
“Ah.” Mr. Lupin looked at him, and for a moment Harry could swear that his warm demeanour shifted and tensed, and his golden eyes flickered something cold. But then he smiled warmly. “I distract myself. With music, or reading.”
“I don’t have m’ny books,” Harry mumbled.
“That’s alright. Would you like to borrow a book from my library for a few nights?” Mr. Lupin offered.
Harry stared at him. “Me?” he squeaked.
Mr. Lupin stood up and limped over to his little nook filled with books they could borrow for reading time. He perused the shelves until he put a finger on the top of the spine of one and pulled it out. “I’d think… Roald Dahl. You like him, yes? I’ve seen you reading James and the Giant Peach in class.”
Harry nodded. “I thought… we could’n’ take them home overnight.”
“That’s the general rule, but I know you’ll take very good care of it, hmm?” Mr. Lupin said, handing him the book.
“I’ll take very, very good care of it, Mr. Lupin!” Harry said, taking it with awe. He felt like he was going to cry, but he wasn’t sure why.
“I don’t doubt it, Harry. Keep it as long as you’d like.”
“Oi Lupin, is Potter in here with you? Oh— hello.” Ms. Dosia said with her head poked in through the classroom door.
“Yes, we were just finishing up. Run along now, Harry.”
Harry nodded eagerly and ran out the door, stopping in the doorway. “Thanks, Mr. Lupin,” he said quietly, and waved a little.
“Have a good weekend,” Mr. Lupin said, and waved back.
Harry beamed.
That night, when he was stuffed into his cupboard with a hammering heart and tears drying on his cheeks, he gingerly pulled out the book and curled up with it on his cot.
Sophie couldn’t sleep. A brilliant moonbeam was slant through a gap in the curtains…
iv.
Parent-teacher meetings came and went in November. Petunia did not come, and nobody asked Harry why, to his great relief. Chore days were the same as always. He made breakfast every morning. He and Dudley rarely interacted, now, with the different schools.
A chilly recess in December found all of the children huddled around a dead bird.
“Somebody should tell Mr. Lupin,” Evan said.
Cicily burst into sobs.
"I'll do it," Harry offered. Nobody said anything, so he walked away from the group.
Ms. Dosia and Mr. Lupin were watching them, but Ms. Dosia had dragged him into a conversation of some sort so they were both a bit distracted. Harry walked up to them, already forming the explanation of the bird they’d found, but slowed when he, surprisingly, heard his last name.
“—aunt of Potter, and I replied, ‘oh, wow!’ Can you believe it? She lives right next door.”
“That’s quite a coincidence,” Mr. Lupin agreed amicably.
“I found he’s a tragedy, actually, once I got talking with her. His aunt, saddled with him, says that he’s not quite right in the head—”
“Ms. Dosia!” Mr. Lupin said sharply. Harry stuttered on his feet and stared at them both, his gut sinking. He knows. Mr. Lupin snapped his head towards him and widened his eyes as Dosia steamrolled on.
“His parents died, the poor dear. They were drunks, did you know? Probably didn’t even love him.”
“Dosia, my god!” Mr. Lupin growled at her, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Harry—”
Harry squeezed his eyes tight and balled his hands into fists. It’s not true, they loved me, they loved me. It’s not—
“Hey, look at Ms. Dosia’s hair!” Cicily shrieked from behind him, followed by a bunch of gasps and squeals.
Harry opened his eyes and gaped. Ms. Dosia’s hair, once dark brown and rather drab, was now a brilliant shade of blue.
Ms. Dosia blinked at the students, then turned to Mr. Lupin. “What in god’s name are they talking about?” she asked, but Mr. Lupin just stared at her.
And then, abruptly, he giggled. Giggled! “Your hair is, ah, blue,” Mr. Lupin said politely, and then another chuckle escaped. “Excuse— heh— me.”
The other students, emboldened by his reaction, started laughing as well.
Harry was not laughing. Her hair was blue. Harry turned her hair blue. He just knew it, knew that it had been him. His freakish abilities, the things that made him disgusting.
Harry couldn’t breathe.
Ms. Dosia turned to look at her reflection in the window. Then she screamed, a loud shriek that rang across the playground, attracting the attention of every child outside. “Who did this?” Ms. Dosia asked wildly. “Who—” she turned and made eye contact with a wide-eyed Harry. “You!”
The students around him giggled nervously. Harry tried not to cry.
“You cannot possibly be suggesting that he dyed your hair blue, Ms. Dosia,” Mr. Lupin said. “I think it’s time for you all to go inside. Single-file, please,” he said over Ms. Dosia’s cawing.
Mr. Lupin led the twenty or so children into the building. “Stay with me, Harry,” he said quietly as Harry entered.
Ms. Dosia shrieked something as Mr. Lupin ushered the rest of the children into the classroom. “I expect to see you all at your desks when I enter, understood?” he called out, then promptly closed the door and turned to both of them.
He pulled out a stick from his pocket and Harry began to tremble, because he had been wrong . Mr. Lupin knew he was a freak and hated him for it and he was going to hurt him.
Instead of advancing on Harry as expected, though, he pointed the stick at Ms. Dosia. “ Obliviate,” he said softly, and then Ms. Dosia ceased her screeching. One more wave of the stick, and her hair was brown again.
Harry gaped.
“Do you mind covering my class for a bit, Dosia?” he asked her pleasantly.
“Uh…” she swallowed and looked rather confused for a moment. “Y-yes, of course.”
“Thank you very much.”
She nodded slowly and then entered the room. The door closed behind her with a loud click.
Mr. Lupin then turned to Harry, who flinched.
“Come with me, please. You’re not in any trouble, I promise,” Mr. Lupin said gently.
Harry reluctantly followed him into the staffroom down the hall from Mr. Lupin’s classroom. His teacher sat in one of the chairs around the long table.
“Sit?” Mr. Lupin offered, gesturing to the chair next to him.
Harry stiffly sat in the proffered chair. It was a bit big so he had to climb onto it, and his legs swung above the ground. He trembled the whole way.
“Breathe, Harry. Breathe,” Mr. Lupin said from next to him. “Can I touch you, Harry?” he asked, and Harry startled because nobody ever asked, they just did. He gave a tentative nod, and then a warm, soothing hand was rubbing his back.
It felt so nice, like Mr. Lupin cared, and Harry took in a shuddering gasp, and then he was crying, pent up emotions from the last week and maybe the six years before that spilling out. He curled up in his chair, overwhelmed, and didn’t protest when Mr. Lupin moved and then hugged him.
Oh. Oh, this was nice.
Harry buried his face in Mr. Lupin’s jumper, probably getting tears and snot all over it, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care because he was so overwhelmed and confused and scared but this was so warm and comfortable and Mr. Lupin was holding him gently like he mattered.
“I didn’t turn her hair blue,” Harry whimpered through his sobs.
Mr. Lupin sighed through his nose. “It’s alright, I promise—”
“I don’t believe you!” Harry shot back, pulling away sharply. Then he paled. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—”
Mr. Lupin made an aborted movement toward him and Harry flinched.
He immediately pulled back and raised his hands placatingly. “I- I’m sorry for distressing you. I promise, it’s okay. I can do… Other things too. Abnormal things.”
Harry’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“I’m… I’m magical, Harry,” Mr. Lupin said softly. “And you are too.”
Magic.
“Shut up about magic! Shut. Up!” Vernon screamed, his face red, and Harry couldn’t stop sobbing as he was thrown by the collar into his cupboard.
“I’m— I’m— I didn’t mean to—”
“Shut up!”
Harry bit his lip. “But magic is bad…”
“It’s not. It can do so many beautiful things. Healing, growing…”
“But I don’t do that! I’m not a freak!” Harry shouted, and dissolved into sobs. “I’m not bad, Mr. Lupin, I promise!” he cried, even as he didn’t believe himself.
“I know, Harry. I know. I know. You’re just a child, Harry, so strong and good and kind and I’m very proud of you.” Mr. Lupin shushed, rubbing his back, and it felt so warm and loving that Harry cried even harder.
“Petunia says I am,” he explained through his tears. “She—” he gasped a little and covered his mouth with both hands.
“You can tell me anything, Harry,” Mr. Lupin said, and he sounded so warm and kind that Harry felt a little bit like maybe he didn’t think Harry was a waste of space. “But you don’t have to if you don’t feel ready to.”
Harry didn’t say anything until his crying ceased into little hiccoughs and sniffles. He looked up at Mr. Lupin crouching next to the chair. Mr. Lupin gave him a little half-smile.
“I didn’t…” he hesitated.
Mr. Lupin waited patiently.
“I didn’t know my name was Harry until pr’mary school,” Harry mumbled, toeing the ground. “Petun’a told me, ‘cuz I couldn’t be Boy here.”
Mr. Lupin was quiet for a very, very long time, long enough that Harry began to fidget. He shouldn’t have said anything. Now Mr. Lupin knew he was a freak, and would hate him like everyone else. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Sorry? I—” Mr. Lupin said, and his voice sounded weird, all thick and sad. “I’m sorry, Harry. You deserved to know your name; it’s your name. I—” He breathed in deep. “Okay. Um… Can you— can you stay here, and I’ll make some tea?”
Harry nodded.
Mr. Lupin turned away to turn on the kettle, and his shoulders were shaking, like he was crying, but he was completely silent. In fact, Harry couldn’t even hear him fill his kettle with water or set it down.
Harry tapped at the seat absently until Mr. Lupin returned and sat at his desk. Harry didn’t point out that his face was a bit puffy and red.
“Do you know how to play cards, Harry?”
Harry shrugged. “Not good.”
“Well,” Mr. Lupin corrected gently.
“Well,” Harry amended meekly.
Mr. Lupin began to teach him, and smiled proudly when he got the hang of it, and the entire time Harry began to think that maybe this was a person that liked him despite.
continuandum.