Chapter Text
“Potters’ confirmation only mentions Adam.” Minerva McGonagall frowned at the parchments in front of her. They fluttered and rearranged themselves into a neat, alphabetised stack.
Several people paused in their conversations and turned to look at her. As always before the new school year, the teachers’ lounge bustled with noise and gossip, the staff readying themselves to wrangle the incoming hordes of students. Everybody was here, packed into mismatched but well-loved armchairs, even poor Quirinus Quirrell, who had returned from his sabbatical in Albania just a few days before, twice as twitchy and with a newly acquired stutter.
“Who else would it m-mention?” he asked.
“James and Lily have twin sons,” said Albus Dumbledore. “I believe young Harry has stayed out of the limelight.”
The Potters kept to themselves in the years following the attack on their house on that fateful Halloween night and the miraculous defeat of Voldemort by the baby Adam, only reappearing earlier this summer. There were sightings of the Boy Who Lived all over Europe, wrangling trolls in Sweden and dancing at the summer solstice ritual with Veelas in Bulgaria. Rumour had it he attended a very hush-hush martial arts school in Japan, or maybe Hong Kong. Rita Skeeter claimed to be on the Potters’ very short, very exclusive contact list, of course, and had a few scoops and candid photos here and there to prove it. But it was only a month ago that the Potters gave their first official interview in ten years, to the endless delight of the wizarding public. Lily, graceful and quick-witted as ever. James, a charming man and loving father who won the hearts of every witch from fifteen to a hundred and fifty. And Adam? Adam was every inch the Boy Who Lived the Prophet readers were hoping for, promising to take Hogwarts by storm. He neither confirmed nor denied whether the adventure books about him were biographical and gave a single cheeky wink to the camera when asked about the mysterious case of missing dragon eggs that had turned up unharmed in the Welsh Reserve just before the interview.
In all the articles, Adam talked about growing up in a cosy but heavily protected cottage by the sea, about his favourite sweets—chocolate frogs—and a secret pet he had managed to hide from his parents for half a year. But he never mentioned his brother, and nor did his parents.
“I’ll send a follow-up letter,” said Professor McGonagall. “Life must be hectic for them right now, what with moving back to Britain.”
“Not to mention that whole Azkaban mess,” added Pomona Sprout. A vine extended from a pot on her lap and tried to steal a scroll of parchment from Quirrell’s pocket. Professor Sprout absentmindedly swatted at it, and it retracted, chastised.
“The school year is yet to start, and the Potter brats are already seeking attention,” said Severus Snape. Despite his heated protests, the Potions schedule once again paired the Slytherin and Gryffindor first years, and he could feel the year-long headache coming.
“Come now, Severus,” the Headmaster chided. “You have to give the boys a chance.”
“Another set of rule-breakers in Gryffindor, as if one wasn’t enough.”
“Maybe these two won’t be wearing red and gold,” said Professor Sprout. “Can’t leave all the fun to Minerva.”
“Fun,” Professor Snape harrumphed. Privately, however, he too was curious about the Potters.
Just when Harry stopped wishing for his parents to magically come back from the dead and whisk him away from the Dursleys, they did. Sort of. If only things were as simple as in his daydreams.
It all started with a mysterious letter addressed to him that he never got to read. ‘Cupboard under the stairs,’ read emerald ink on a heavy yellowish paper, and whatever was inside sent Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon into a frenzy. After a heated argument held entirely in hisses and whispers that both Harry and Dudley tried and failed to eavesdrop on, Harry was hastily moved to his cousin’s second bedroom.
“The freaks must be spying on us,” Uncle Vernon muttered as Aunt Petunia crammed Dudley’s old jacket, a deflated football and a pile of mismatched legos into an overflowing wardrobe. Dudley himself was an hour into a mighty tantrum, but his theatrics were for once ignored.
Harry knew better than to question his good fortune, at least aloud. Sure, he’d rather have his letter and stay in the cupboard. But Aunt Petunia had torn it up and set it on fire in the backyard, so there was no getting it back, and she piled yet another chore on Harry every time he asked a question.
For a while, that seemed to be the end of it. Harry settled in his new bedroom, keeping to himself when he wasn’t cooking and cleaning and weeding and repainting the porch for the third time. Dudley’s attempt to beat him up with his new Smeltings stick remained mostly unsuccessful, which only drove his cousin to trying even harder. In the evenings, Uncle Vernon shouted at the TV, with maybe a little more vitriol than usual. The morning post consisted of bills and catalogues and, on Friday, Aunt Marge’s letter with a photo of a particularly mean-looking addition to her kennel. Aunt Petunia’s watchful eye saw nothing out of the ordinary on Privet Drive from behind the curtains she now kept firmly shut.
Despite the tension heavy in the air, nothing happened, not for another week. Harry’s world turned upside down on his eleventh birthday. Or maybe it all started the night before, when he woke up after a nightmare about green light and high-pitched laughter, dread washing over him.
It was a familiar nightmare, always leaving him unsettled but never before as visceral. Everything in him was screaming danger, some primal feeling urging him to run to his cupboard and hide under his childhood cot.
Careful not to make a noise, Harry peeked out of his room. Dudley’s door was half-ajar, and light snoring was coming from the bed where his cousin slept soundly, cradling his new GI Joe action figure he had wheedled out of Aunt Petunia as an appeasement gift. The master bedroom door was closed, and Harry wasn’t suicidal to try it as he tiptoed past.
And then, just as he reached downstairs, the feeling passed, like a switch going off. Shivering, Harry went to the kitchen and flicked the tap to get a glass of water. His throat was suddenly parched. Beyond the window, Privet Drive stood dark and still.
He adjusted his taped glasses, squinting. Was there someone across the street?
“What are you doing here?” Aunt Petunia’s harsh voice startled Harry.
He whirled around. In her long nightgown and with curlers in her hair, scowling at him, she was still scarier than any midnight stranger could ever hope to be. His aunt never approved of him wandering through the house at night.
“Just getting some water, that’s all,” he said.
“Well, did you get it?”
Harry gulped what was left in his glass. “Yes, Aunt Petunia.”
“Then go back to your cup—room and don’t just stand there like a freak,” she said, marching past him to the window to yank the curtains shut.
“Yes, Aunt Petunia.”
When he looked out of the window in his new room, the street was empty.
The next morning, there was another letter.
Harry chewed on a smelly liverwurst sandwich Dudley had deemed too disgusting to eat and contemplated the pile of dirty dishes that Aunt Petunia barked at him to wash. He could swear that sometimes, when he gave it a good staredown, the worst of the dirt cowered and disappeared, and once a particularly grimy pan had even scrubbed itself clean. Unfortunately, Aunt Petunia had noticed and reacted as she always did when something strange happened around Harry, which was to say poorly. Harry hadn’t seen the offending pan since she had swung it at his head that evening.
A shrill yelp came from the living room. Harry knew that yelp well. It was Aunt Petunia’s ‘something strange is going on, and I’m going to blame it on Harry’ yelp. Bracing himself, he went to investigate. He wasn’t so naive as to expect the Dursleys to acknowledge his birthday but hoped to at least avoid punishments on the day.
He came in just in time to see a large brown owl circling above the coffee table. In its talons, it carried a rolled piece of paper, like a medieval carrier pigeon. The owl dropped it on Aunt Petunia’s lap, and she leaped to her feet as if delivered a live viper. With a loud hoot, it left through the window, gracefully manoeuvring around Uncle Vernon as he tried to hit it with a chair.
“Did that just happen?” Dudley asked, looking up from his Game Boy, wide-eyed.
“Go to your room, Daddidums.”
“No way, Mum. I want to know what it’s all about.”
“Another one of those blasted letters?” asked Uncle Vernon.
"I’m not sure.” Aunt Petunia frowned, gingerly taking the scroll with two fingers and unfolding it.
She gasped.
“Is it about the boy?”
She scanned the letter, confusion on her face shifting to incredulity. "You can say that, Vernon. I can’t believe it. Crazy psycho bi—” She cut herself off, glancing in Dudley’s direction.
Harry’s eyes widened. He had never heard his aunt cuss before.
“Is it about me?” he asked. "Who is it? What do they want?”
Shockingly, Aunt Petunia didn’t scold him for asking questions. She looked downright hesitant when she turned to him.
“It’s from your—mother,” she said.
“I don’t understand.” He had learned precious few things about his mum, and even fewer he believed to be true and not the product of his aunt’s spitefulness. But one fact he did know for sure. Lily Potter had died a decade ago with her husband, in a car crash that had left the lightning bolt scar on Harry’s forehead.
“Neither do I.” She stared at the letter again. “Apparently, my sister and her husband have been alive and well all these years.”
Harry gaped at her.
“WHAT?” Uncle Vernon boomed.
Dudley looked between his parents and Harry with wide eyes, all out of comments for once.
Aunt Petunia laughed, an ugly sound. “I suppose it’s my fault for believing a note from someone who would drop a baby on our doorstep like a bottle of milk. Joke’s on me. After all, that Potter fellow loved his sick pranks, if their wedding was any indication.”
“A freak show, that’s what that wedding was.” Uncle Vernon took the note. An angry vein pulsed on his temple as he read it. “No explanation, nothing… Where were they all this time? Hiding from the police?”
“Lily did have a penchant for befriending the wrong sort since childhood.”
“Thinking they can saddle us with their spawn under false pretences while they are off gallivanting who knows where! Who do they think they are?”
“Always thinking herself above us normal people. I guess I knew her even less than I thought I did.”
That might have been the most the Dursleys ever said about Harry’s parents. Usually, they just referred to them as drunks and layabouts when berating Harry. It had taken him a week of pestering Aunt Petunia in his first year of primary school to even learn their names.
“Will I go live with them?” he asked, tentative hope blooming in his chest. These were his mum and dad, even if they faked their death and left him with the Dursleys for so many years. Maybe they had good reasons?
“They want you to go to that freak boarding school Lily went to,” Aunt Petunia said with a sneer.
“A boarding school?” He wished he could live with his parents and get to know them, but a boarding school was still an improvement over staying with the Dursleys until he was eighteen.
“Perhaps it’s for the best. We tried to make a normal person out of you, but it seems like it was all for nought.”
“No unnaturalness under my roof,” said Uncle Vernon.
“I just want Lily to look me in the eyes and tell me why. Then she can take the boy and her excuses and never darken our doorstep again.”
Aunt Petunia’s words stung, but it was a familiar sting Harry had long learned to ignore. Unease warred in his chest with tentative happiness. He was leaving Privet Drive, the house that had never quite become his home, for good.