3,427OoOoO Chapter 2 - The Potter Family OoOoO
Harry was warm. He was lying down on a soft mattress with a thick blanket pulled up over his chest, almost directly under his nose. It smelled of fresh lavender.
Memories of what had happened before he'd fallen unconscious crashed against him like icy water, and Harry bolted upright. His mother.
Or rather, woman?
The woman who had his mother's eyes. His eyes. And her red hair. The shape of her face. The shade of her skin. A cruel reminder really. Taken by a woman who looked so close to the witch he'd stared at for hours from within a thin scrapbook.
His eyes quickly cataloged the room, but Harry could see only the blurred outlines of furniture pieces without his glasses. Annoyed at himself, Harry squinted at the water colors around him. He was alone. He breathed out confused, but relieved.
Why leave him in a room alone? Unbound. No alarms. What kind of Death Eater theatrics was this?
He was in a guest room perhaps, from the looks of the worn edges of the wooden dresser near him, and the shaggy red rug by the single door to his left. All of it clearly used, but empty of personal objects.
Harry swung his legs over the bed and stood up slowly, cautious of additional threats. No spells tried to hold him down, no warnings went off in his room or outside. He was alone. It was quiet. Peaceful really, if you didn't think about how he'd gotten there.
Someone knocked on the closed wooden door, and Harry held back a jump of surprise. "Um… are you awake? Mr… uh, man?" it was a young man's voice. A familiar voice. Harry thought back and matched it with the boy's voice he'd heard when he'd first… landed. Wherever that was.
Jonathan. His name was Jonathan, Harry remembered. But to send him here? What kind of game were they playing at? Harry grimaced again.
"You can come in," he called out, tensed.
The door opened slowly, and a blurry, short young man pushed his head in the door hesitantly. He had black hair, that much Harry could tell, and light hazel eyes. He had an oval face, but with less baby fat than his height suggested. Maybe a fifth or sixth year then. Harry squinted, but couldn't define the rest of the boy's features. He didn't recognize him.
"S'good you're awake. Thought maybe you mighta fallen into some sort of coma," Jonathan stated evenly.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "How long have I been unconscious?" No demands, no threats. Just a child asking to see if he was awake. Where was he?
"Two days… Sir. You've been sleeping harder than an inferius."
Harry tried not to wince at the mention of the zombie-like creatures, and instead watched quietly as Jonathan opened the door wide and leaned against the door frame.
Harry's eyes narrowed. Leaving the door open as a sign to good will? But then having the young boy stand in the doorway, blocking his exit, to know that he was still their prisoner? It all seemed a little too laid back.. And why call him Sir? Why not his name? Acting like he didn't know him. Death Eaters weren't this... well they certainly wouldn't do this.
"Harry," Harry said, looking down at blinking a couple of times. If he didn't have his glasses, then he didn't have his wand either. Clever Harry.
"What?" Jonathan asked. Harry looked up and locked green eyes with hazel. "Is- is that your name? Harry?"
Those eyes, Harry thought to himself, I've seen them somewhere before. Hogwarts? No, he was familiar with all of the faces a couple years younger than him there. Although, he also didn't sound foreign.
Harry nodded at the younger man's question. "No one calls me Sir, at least, no one who's ever met me more than once." And certainly never a Death Eater, or ... pre-Death Eater?
Jonathan grinned lightly. "Yeah, I can understand that," he said looking down.
Maybe he wasn't a Death Eater, maybe he was from another magical school then? Durmstrang? The States?
Jonathan swallowed suddenly, like he was building himself to do something. Harry tensed automatically, and calculated the distance from the boy to the door. No windows, but if he pushed hard enough, the boy would be surprised enough to let him through. An escape from an unknown place however, that would be the issue.
"I don't know if you remember anything—"
"I do," Harry answered, tight lipped. Cautious anger edged his voice, and Jonathan's head snapped up, looking more curious than scared.
"Then you ...know where you are?"
Harry eyed him, circling through his gathered possibilities. "No," he answered truthfully. "But I do remember being pulled away from my morning toast." Harry leveled his eyes at the boy. "Anything you'd like to share then?"
Jonathan swallowed and shook his head. "The others should be coming back soon. They'll explain what happened, and why you… why they called you."
Harry stopped. "'Called me'?" he echoed back immediately. "What—"
The young wizard didn't seem malicious at all. He wasn't here to hurt Harry, or demand something. He was just - Harry realized quickly, checking in. Like one would with a patient. Jonathan shook his head and held up his hands in surrender. "Listen… Harry, I can't say anything until the rest of the Order gets here. They want you to know why there was no other choice to—"
"The Order?" Harry asked, frowning. His confusion was growing the more the boy in front of him spoke. Called him. "What's the Order got to do with this? No one's had a meeting since Voldemort die—"
"Don't say his name!" Jonathan yelled, stepping into the room and reaching out to Harry in horror.
Harry stepped back, surprised at Jonathan's violent reaction. "What do you—"
Jonathan looked around, fear etched deeply into his young face. "You can't say his name here. You don't understand. If you said it then—"
"What are you on about? He's dead. Voldem—mhhh." Jonathan reached out and clasped a hand over Harry's face, cutting off his voice. Harry tried to jerk his head away from his hand, but Jonathan moved with him.
Harry was too surprised at the teenager to strike back.
Jonathan stepped closer, his face tight with fear, and his breathing quicker than a flying snitch. "No he's not. Not here. Maybe where you've been… where you live, he might be... but here, he's still ruling. Still killing. Still—"
Harry slowly pulled Jonathan's hand away from his face. "Are you talking about the taboo?" Harry asked quietly.
Jonathan nodded, his eyes glancing around. "The house is protected, under a lot of wards, but you—you can never be too sure. He can be anywhere. Anyone."
Where you live... here...still killing. Harry narrowed his eyes and stepped slowly away from the young man. Small pieces, crazy pieces, started to slowly come together. And Harry's mind rejected the idea immediately.
No. No way in Merlin. That only happened in muggle movies. Not in real life, not with everything that Harry had already been through. Already seen. It was nonsense. There was no way.
But.. "Hang on," Harry said, swallowing. "Are you saying I'm.. In a different world? A different ... I don't know - dimension - place?" Was that even possible?
Jonathan's eyes widened, and his fearful face confirmed Harry's crazy idea in the next moment. Merlin's balls. He paused for a moment, seeming to gather his own courage, then nodded wordlessly.
Harry was in a different dimension. The mist thing had taken him to a different dimension.
And well, believe it or not, it made a sort of twisted sense. It would explain why the young wizard didn't immediately know his name. Why there was no recognition, no ooh-ing or awe-ing over his scar, or the immediate questions over the Battle of Hogwarts. And didn't that sound pretentious.
There was a moment of pause, and then the realization of what that meant hit Harry harder than the Hogwarts Express could ever manage. Anger suddenly rushed hot and vicious through his veins. "You - your Order - they brought me to another world with Vold—with you-know-who? Another Dark Lord?" Harry asked, his eyes looking between Jonathan's own, and his mind racing. "Another Light and Dark battle. Another Hogwarts. Another ministry. Another—" Harry cut himself off. Another everything. Another Ron and Hermione. Another Dursely's. Another—
Harry looked back at Jonathan.
The woman. The green eyes who looked so damn familiar, and all his anger seemed to freeze within him. There was no way. None. Yet. "Jonathan," Harry started, something acidic rising from the depths of his stomach, "the woman from before… She had red hair, and green eyes. She—"
Jonathan looked confused. "The woman that yelled at me? That was my mum, Lily. Dad, his name's James, actually was there too. He got there right after you passed out. Weird really, you and my dad look a lot alike. Sirius thought you could pass off as twins if dad was younger. Sirius is my dad's best mate." Jonathan looked closer at Harry, like he was trying to read something off his face. "Do you know them in your world?"
Harry's tongue must have swollen, for he couldn't speak. Merlin, he felt he could barely breathe. Lily. Her name had been Lily. And James. Lily and James. Sirius. And he was in a different world. One where Voldemort was alive. One where— Harry turned his back on Jonathan and breathed deeply.
"What is your last name?" Harry asked quietly, coming out almost as a whisper.
Jonathan was quiet for a moment. "Potter," he answered just as quietly like he knew the importance of his answer. "Jonathan Ignotus Potter." And that's why he looked familiar too.
Harry took a quiet, shaky breath, and latched his fingers together in front of him, away from the prying eyes of Jonathan. His brother. No, Harry thought immediately, not my brother. This world's Harry's brother. Not mine.
"Harry?" Jonathan asked. "Did you know me in your world? My mum?"
Harry swallowed and breathed out. He shook his head. "Not at all," he said truthfully. "Do you have an older brother Jonathan?" If this world's Harry was here, did that mean they already know who he was? Was he was still here? Harry frowned. Could they meet? Could two of the same people even live in the same dimension?
Hermione had once mentioned the ... Theory of Dimensions? Harry could have sworn she'd mentioned something like it when she had been in the middle of one of her research explosions in Hogwarts. She'd said that they were tricky business, or something of the sort. To be honest, he hadn't really been listening at that point in time, only nodding along when she emphasized a particular vocabulary word over and over. He did vaguely remember her saying that only one person of the same soul could theoretically be in the same world at the same time. Energy manipulation and time paradoxes or something like it.
So was this world's Harry sent back to his then?
He blanched. Oh Merlin, the reporters would turn him to shreds.
"What?" Jonathan asked, his voice broken, and quieter than before.
Harry turned around at the sound of Jonathan's voice in confusion. He'd only asked— oh. Of course. Harry only had to look at his face to know. "Your older brother died didn't he?"
Jonathan looked back and forth between Harry's eyes. "Harry." Harry tried not to jump at his name. "His name, it was Harry James Potter." Jonathan looked away towards the bed Harry had woke up in. "He was my mum and dads first child. He died after a… a family friend went dark."
"Peter," Harry said, mostly to himself, nodding in thought. Of course, instead of Voldemort coming, Peter could have just as easily killed him. Stolen him away as a child. He had plenty of opportunities as a close family friend. Babysat one time, and was gone forever from this world's Lilly and James. Handed over to Voldemort so Lilly couldn't sacrifice herself for him.
"Yes," Jonathan said breathlessly. Harry looked up and found Jonathan's eyes glued to his. "Peter Pettigrew."
Harry nodded, answering his unsaid question. "I know of him."
Jonathan looked closer at him. "Did you—"
"Jonathan!" a woman's voice shouted from outside the room, somewhere else in the house. "We're back. Dumbledore wants us back there soon, so get your—Jonathan?" the woman's voice got louder and the thin clicks of high heels echoed down the wooden hallway outside of Harry's room. Harry felt as though he couldn't breathe. "Jonathan, where are you?"
"Here mum. I'm… well—"
A thin red headed woman rounded the corner and stopped before the door frame, staring. From Harry's blurred point of view, he could see she was wearing dark brown robes that nearly swept the floor with muggle jeans and a dark turtleneck underneath. Her red hair was untied, and a section of it hung loose at the side of her face.
She looked at Jonathan first, and then at Harry. Her eyes pierced through his blurry world and Harry could only stare as she took him in and then surveyed the room like she expected it to be in shambles. "Jonathan…" she started quietly. "What are you doing—"
Harry was talking before he could think about moving his mouth, and his eyes stayed glued to her, drinking in her frame. "Your son, Mrs -" he stumbled and swallowed. "Mrs. Potter, was telling me about -" His own situation came crashing back down, and Harry lost a deep breath. He had no idea how to feel. What to do. "He was including the fact that I have been called from my world and ... placed into a new one."
Despite his soft tone, Lily nearly flinched. "I am sorry for your… discomfort at this Mr…"
"Harry," Harry tried to smile. "Just Harry."
"Harry," she echoed quietly, and turned to whisper, "Your name's Harry."
"Yes," he nodded, their matching eyes glued to the other. To the woman who could have been his mother. "And Jonathan was starting to tell me of your worlds… differences from mine," he said.
Lily glanced at her son before returning to Harry. "As I said, I am sorry for this, but—"
"—you have to wait for the Order," Harry nodded, smiling a little for her benefit. Why though, he had no idea.
He was the one in a different world, replaced in one completely unfamiliar. Harry had been kidnapped. He should be angry, furious even. Knocking things off shelves, yelling, demanding to be brought home. Away from these strangers. But really, all he could do was stare at Lily and watch her move.
Weird, he understood, but she was alive. Standing right in front of him. Breathing. Not just a shadow of a memory in a moving picture. Not hidden away in a scrapbook, rarely seen. She was right here.
Lily's eyes widened in surprise. "You also have the Order?"
"The Order of the Phoenix?" Harry asked, his mind coming back to him. "Yes. We also have one. Had one. No longer needed, but they're still there."
Lily smiled, and Harry didn't think he was breathing again. His mother was beautiful. It was no wonder his father had fallen so hard for—No. Not your mother. Not your father. Think. Not your world. Not your family, Harry thought viciously to himself. Better to correct it now than get ideas later. Not yours. "So the Dark Lord was vanquished in your world then?" she asked with a shine in her eyes.
The spoken words of Voldemort's title washed away any warm fuzzy feelings he'd been drowning in. Just as well.
Harry nodded. "It wasn't easy." His face turned sour with the memories that assaulted him with the lasting taste of his words. "It was horrible." His jaw clenched together and he looked away, thinking back on the day Voldemort had died. The bodies lined up, wrapped in white cloth.
Lily stared back at him with mixed emotions. Sadness. Anger. Pain. Regret. Shame. " I—"she started, opening her mouth farther before closing it with a click.
"She wants to formally apologize from the House of Potter, but that's not her responsibility to bear," someone said from the doorway. Harry turned to the new voice, and locked eyes with hazel. A different eye shape than Jonathan's, but the same golden color. An older man, with untidy black hair and circular, wire frame glasses. James Potter.
Harry felt numb. All emotions were turned down like a volume pressed on mute. He stared at the older man watching him from the doorway, and finally, he could see why people thought his father and him the same. They were nearly the same height, with James standing only an inch or two taller than him, probably from a lifetime of proper meals, but he also had Harry's eyebrows, and cheekbones. The same chin and nose. The same width of shoulders, maybe Harry's a little less wide and a little less arm muscle, but nearly the same. Almost like looking into a mirror.
"Mr. Potter," Harry said, surprised at himself at how even his voice sounded. James Potter. Wizard. Auror. Best friend. Father.
"Harry," James nodded to him, and Harry vaguely wondered how long the older wizard had been standing there. "I formally ask of you, from the House of Potter, to beg your forgiveness." His dragon hide boots clicked at the heels together and he bowed, eyes lowering. "For the trauma of your arrival, and -" he came back up, and sighed deeply. " -for the Binding of your release."
Harry frowned. He had never been bowed to before, outside of a school duel, and he couldn't understand the gravity of the words the older man was saying. The binding of your release? "There's no need," he answered back, confusion evident in his voice. "I - uh, would just ask you to return me to my home and ... you know, all would be forgiven."
So I can write this off. And try therapy. A vision of Hermione talking to Harry close after the War had ended with her admitting to trying to see someone came to mind. Something I really ought to commit to after this.
Lily's eyes watered at the corners, and Harry gaped, stunned at her. He'd made her cry. Those were tears. "I'm sorry," Lilly said, her hands on Jonathan's shoulders, "but we can't."
Harry furrowed his eyebrows together and watched silently as a tear slipped from her eyes. Tears. Tears were bad. "You can't - what?"
Jonathan also looked confused at his mother, and tried vainly to tap her forearms in comfort.
Lilly's lips thinned in a sad frown and her chin shook. "We can't send you back," she stated. "Harry, I'm so sorry, but we can't."
A heavy weight at the bottom of Harry's stomach fell. "Can't?" he asked. "Or won't?"
Lilly only shook her head. James cast his eyes to the ground. "You see-"
Numb again. Harry could already feel what James was going to say deep in his bones. Shock. Denial. No. That wasn't right. This was a misunderstanding. Wrong. This couldn't—Harry shook his head and stepped backwards. The back of his legs hit the side of the bed and he let himself fall down against it. Wrong. "Why?" Harry asked, looking up to James. "What did you do to—" Harry stopped himself and looked to Lily.
Hermione's nearly forgotten conversation about Dimensional magic and travel slipped through again. He had traveled dimensions and lived. There had to be a cost. There always was with powerful magic. Permanent costs.
"What did you do?"
"Don't talk to her like that!" Jonathan stepped forwards, protecting his mother.
Harry glanced at him and back at Lily who was wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.
"No," Lily said, walking closer until she was around Jonathan and before him, looking down. Harry realized that if he had been standing up, he'd be several inches taller than her. "He's right. We should be apologizing. Begging," she shook her mane of red hair. "When we did the Summoning Ritual, we had assumed an adult would come through. We'd expected -Not … well, not a child."
Harry's answering smile was not pleasant. "Mrs. Potter, I haven't been a child for a long time."
Lily kneeled down to his height on the bed.
Harry met her eyes with his. She looked calm. Warm. Safe. How she'd looked in Harry's imagination for all his life.
"You were supposed to be a veteran Auror. Someone wiser than what we had. More powerful perhaps. We summoned the most capable to defeat him. The best of us," she explained. "The Summoning was supposed to call for the one who had already defeated him. None of us had any idea that…"
"It would be a teenager barely out of Hogwarts?"
"That it would go so wrong," Lily explained, her eyes filling with tears again. "Your poor parents. I don't know how - I checked, double checked, triple checked the runes before we started."
Harry blinked at the tree of them in confusion. "The spell didn't go wrong."
Lily looked ashamed. "Yes it did. It was supposed to -" she swallowed and stood up. "It doesn't matter. We made a mistake, and as the ritual was performed in the basement of the Potter Mansion, it falls on the Potter House to correct this."
Understanding passed through Harry, and then he sighed, slightly annoyed. Here we go. "Your spell worked fine Mrs. Potter, the - Potter family owes me no apology." He grimaced. "Not for that bit anyways."
There was a silence for a moment, before Jonathan's eyes widened. "No way in Merlin."
Harry smiled grimly at the young man. "Trust me, killing the great snake face wasn't worth the publicity that went along with it. I barely get left alone."
Jonathan looked at him incredulously. "You defeated the Dark Lord?"
Harry didn't know if he should feel offended by the way that Jonathan was looking at him up and down. He felt the familiar slip of darkness engulf his chest at the thought of the Battle of Hogwarts that surrounded his greatest enemy's death. "Not without a great amount of help. And a lot of lost lives."
Lily stared at him, her mouth opened in quiet horror. "You killed him?"
Harry looked away from her, shame rising from his stomach from the look in her eyes. "I had no choice. He had killed so many already. So many students."
"He attacked Hogwarts?" James asked, his voice loud in the quiet room.
"In the Final Battle, yes, but he had had control of Hogwarts for a bit before that," Harry stared at James and then turned to Lily. "So really, the spell worked perfectly."
"Your parents…" Lily said turning Harry's attention back to her, looking at him with sad eyes. "They let you—"
Harry couldn't keep her eye contact, and swallowed. "My parent's died a long time ago, Mrs. Potter," he interrupted quietly. "The side effect of wars. They had no say in what I did with my life, and they had no advice to give with the defeat of Vold—you-know-who." Harry swallowed. "They just gave me silent support. And for that much I was grateful." He breathed out and stood up from the bed, feeling the small Potter family watching him with careful eyes. "I'd like to think they're proud of what I did."
"For defeating you-know-who?" Jonathan snorted, and the tension in the room vanished. "You can bloody well bet they're proud of you. I can just imagine the kind of—" Lily lightly smacked the back of Jonathan's head, cutting him off.
Harry watched Jonathan make hurt eyes at his mother and Lily brush the back of her sons head softly. An ache Harry knew all too well swelled at the center of his chest, and he purposely moved his gaze away. Hazel eyes met his, and Harry knew James had been watching him. Studying him, might have been the better word. Harry kept his locked with James, too stubborn to look away, admitting his weakness.
So it hurt. So what. Other kid's parents had been taken away in the war too.
"So then," Harry said, steadily staring at James. "The Order meeting?"
Harry couldn't read the man's facial expressions, but suddenly James seemed a little less intense. "Dumbledore asked us to arrive at Headquarters as soon as you'd awakened."
"Grimmauld Place still?" Harry asked, curious.
"Yes," he nodded. "It was recently installed as Headquarters actually, about three years ago. Was it—" James asked.
Harry nodded as well. "For us too."
James grinned. "Well, we'd best get you glasses before you squint any harder and your eyes fall out."
Harry didn't even raise an eyebrow. "Very funny."
"Sirius seems to think so."
James turned around out the door, and Harry blinked back the sour feelings left by his Godfathers name. Jonathan followed after his father's heels out the room, missing Harry's slip of the face, but Lily was standing behind for Harry and had not.
Harry followed after Jonathan without prompt, and Lily followed after him with a furrow between her brows.
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~ Missmusicluver