Content Harry Potter Miscellaneous

Author Notes:

A bit longer than the others, but it was needed to explain everything.

Harry Potter sat down on the bed across from Hermione, carefully arranging his bag of books so that none of their titles would be visible to her. This story would be hard enough to tell without his friend seeing something she couldn’t yet understand.

"So a couple weeks ago, Death Eaters went after this wizarding family," he began, casually, as though he were only telling her about another incident in a years-long war. "They had a load of scores to settle with these people, and they got lucky. Caught them at home, with lots of friends visiting. Most of them got away, but eight of them were captured. Four grown wizards, four kids our age."

Hermione swallowed. Harry had no doubt her imagination was supplying the faces of their schoolmates twisted in agony, blank in thoughtless obedience, or slack and limp in death. He nodded, acknowledging her reaction, and continued. "That was the last anyone heard of them for about ten days—and trust me, they were searching. Then, out of the blue, one of the wizards turns up."

"Alive?" Hermione blurted, looking astonished.

"Yes, alive. Not in good shape, but alive." Harry smiled, thinking of the wizard in question. "He’s an Auror, so it’s not too surprising. But what he had to say..." He shook his head. "Of all the times for Death Eaters to get creative with torture."

Hermione seemed unsure whether or not she wanted to know, but the word slipped out anyway. "Creative?"

"Yeah. See, the wizard who got away isn’t just an Auror, he’s an author. He wrote this series of alternate history books under a pen name." Harry patted his bag. "All about what would’ve happened if the war with Voldemort had gone differently than it did. And the main characters in them are modeled after his friends and their kids." He chuckled, remembering an old family story. "His wife threatened him with bloody death if he put her or any of their kids in the books, so he didn’t, but he’s there himself. Just to keep anyone from guessing who he really is, he killed off his own character in one of the later books. And that was what saved him."

Hermione frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You know those Daydream Charms Fred and George sell?" Harry asked, looking away from his friend so as not to let her see how much her answer worried him. Doesn’t she remember anything at all?

"Of course I do, what about them?"

"Some wizarding books have magic like that on them, set up as a game. You can go inside the book and become one of the characters, do what they do in the book as nearly as you can and see if you can get through it the way they did, because that’s how you win." Harry looked up and met earnest blue eyes. "This wizard’s books had that magic on them. And all the people kidnapped had a character based on them. The Death Eaters charmed them into the books—"

"Well, that’s not so bad!" Hermione laughed aloud, her face full of relief. "Honestly, Harry, you had me thinking—"

"You don’t understand, Hermione." Harry spoke flatly, holding back his anger at her flippancy. "These people didn’t know the ending, and they didn’t think it was a game. They thought it was their lives. Because the Death Eaters used Memory Charms on them first, to make them forget who they really were. None of them remembered they’d ever had any other life."

And some of them still don’t.

"Oh," Hermione said in a small voice. "I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t understand."  

"It’s okay." Harry refocused his anger towards the people who deserved it, the people who had made this conversation necessary in the first place. "The Death Eaters added some twists to the magic. The usual way things work is that you have to stay alive through the entire book. If you die, you lose. Fall out of the book, wake up in your real body, start all over again. But there are also places you can go and a spell you can use to save your place in the game and wake yourself up, because not everybody has the time to play it all the way through."

"I’d assume the Death Eaters took that away," said Hermione. "I mean, how would anyone believe the world was real if they learned a spell to ‘save their place’?"

"You’re right. But that’s not all there is to it." Harry reached into the bag and traced the raised letters on one of the books’ covers. "The Death Eaters made dying in the book the only way any of the people they were torturing could ever get back to the real world. And the people really had to believe they were dying for it to work. If someone told them, ‘This isn’t your real life, just let me use the Killing Curse on you and you’ll be back to reality,’ even if they believed that person, the Curse wouldn’t work right. It would kill their body in the book, but it wouldn’t send their mind and their soul back to their real body. They would just drift away, and their real body would die too."

Hermione’s eyes were as wide as Luna’s. "That’s horrible! How could they—no, I forgot," she corrected herself with a snort. "These are Death Eaters. They were probably picking on ‘Mudblood scum,’ weren’t they?"

"No, actually, everyone they grabbed was either half-blood or pure this time. But that’s not important now." Harry found the thickest of the books in his bag and grasped it but did not pull it out. "Remember what I was saying before, that one of the wizards they took was the bloke who wrote the books?"

"And he killed off his own character—" Hermione broke off with a squeak. "Of course, of course! When his character in the books died, that meant he woke up in real life!"

Harry nodded, grinning. "And because he’d written them, he kept half-recognizing everything that was going on, and some part of him knew he was going to die. When it came true, he realized something wasn’t right. So when he woke up, and three Death Eaters came in to try to get him under control..." He laughed aloud. "I wish I could have seen it. He grabbed the smallest one and swung him around like a Beater’s bat. Knocked the other two off their feet. Then he snatched all their wands and Apparated home."

"Good for him," Hermione said fervently. "Could they trace his Apparition? Did they find the others?"

Harry sighed. "They tried, Hermione. But they ran into a brick wall. The Death Eaters had put the place where they were doing this under Fidelius."

"Oh no!" Hermione’s hand went to her mouth. "But then how—"

"I’m trying to tell you that," Harry interrupted delicately. "If I may?"

"I’m sorry. Go on." Hermione clamped her lips shut.

"They were able to get a general area from the Apparition trace, but no more than that," Harry said, letting his fingers trail across a slimmer volume inside his bag. "But that particular wizard coming back when he did told them more than you’d think. It gave them a timeframe to work with, to judge how fast the Death Eaters were playing out the books."

Hermione forbore from asking the question, but her lifted eyebrows asked it for her.

"They knew the author’s character died at the end of the fifth book in the series," Harry elaborated. "And he was able to tell them how long it took the Death Eaters to set everything up before they started the books going, and it wasn’t more than a day. So when he came back, ten days later..."

"Two days a book," Hermione murmured, her eyes calculating. "Give or take a bit. You could probably read most books aloud in a day or so, but you’d need more time to do everything that’s depicted... but if you assume they go straight from event to event and don’t bother with the in-between bits..."

"Except when they needed to let them sleep, to keep them from running insane," Harry corrected. "And they’d just work that in as a regular night’s sleep for some random day in the story."

"It makes sense." Hermione shuddered. "Horrid sense, but sense. So they knew when this wizard got away that the Death Eaters had finished with five of the books—how many are there?"

"Seven. Just seven. But the wizard was able to tell them one more thing." Harry rubbed a bent corner on the book he knew was the last of the series. "The Death Eaters weren’t going to let the books end the way they should have."

"Because a proper ending, even in an alternate history, would have Voldemort defeated." Hermione nodded. "Were they going to change it and make Voldemort win instead?"

"Pretty much." Harry weighed how much to tell her right away and decided to steer a middle course. "The hero of the books gets killed at one point. The Death Eaters planned to have someone tell him what was going on just before that happened."

"So that he would die in both places," Hermione said, staring at a point above Harry’s head, her expression one of concentration as she traced the Death Eaters’ logic. "He’d be expecting to wake up in the real world, and instead he’d actually die... but if he was supposed to die anyway... oh!" Her gaze snapped down to Harry’s face. "He was like you, wasn’t he? He was supposed to look like he’d died but live and kill Voldemort, and instead the Death Eaters were going to make him really die so Voldemort would win!"

"That’s about it," Harry said neutrally, suppressing a snort of laughter. Yes, Hermione, he was a lot like me... "But before that could happen, another of the grownup wizards died in the book world. He’d figured out something wasn’t right just like his friend, but it was for a different reason." Pain shot through him as he thought of the man who’d taught him how to properly care for a kneazle, who’d been the willing "prey" for his first hunting lessons when he’d finished his Animagus work. "It was because, in the books, he’d changed sides. He was a Death Eater. He suggested it to the author himself, for a laugh... and then the Death Eaters made him actually do it."

Hermione blinked hard, her eyes brimming. "Did he have to hurt anyone?" she asked softly.

Harry nodded, his lips set. "He killed at least one person. Probably more. Helped bring Voldemort back to power. And when he tried doing a good thing for once, it killed him instead. But he knew, deep down, this wasn’t how his life should have gone, and he’d heard the Death Eaters talking, Hermione. He’d heard them laughing about a Fidelius Charm, and kidding the one who was the Secret-Keeper about making sure to stay healthy. So when he woke up, when he remembered what was going on and what he’d heard, he knew what he had to do." He let his lips draw back from his teeth in a grin like that of his Animagus form. "He found the Death Eaters’ Secret-Keeper. And he killed him."

"And that meant everyone who’d been inside the secret became a Secret-Keeper instead, just like us with Grimmauld Place—" Hermione drew in her breath sharply. "Including that one wizard who got away!"

"Exactly." Harry patted the book under his hand fondly, with its great winged shadow against the moon. "And he and his friends were checking obsessively to see if the Fidelius might have gone down. They knew within a couple minutes when it had, and they got themselves there, and they kicked Death Eater arse." He scowled, remembering. "But the Death Eaters had even planned for that. They had one last trick set up."

"What?" Hermione leaned forward, obviously fascinated.

Harry tried to think how to put it. "Call it a dead-man switch," he said finally. "They’d made it so if they lost control of the magic on the books, if they stopped running the show, the book-world would end when the story did, as soon as the last words were spoken. It would fall apart, and anyone still in it would die. Really die, not just come back to their bodies. And the people who came to the rescue couldn’t reverse it, and they couldn’t go in and tell the kids—the other two wizards both got out a little while after their friends turned up, so it was just the four kids left inside—they couldn’t go in and tell them that they all had to kill themselves, because would you believe that if it happened to you?"

"Not likely." Hermione shook her head. "And they couldn’t explain that the world wasn’t real, because then it wouldn’t work. It’s sickening—it’s like they planned for everything. The Death Eaters, I mean." She hugged herself, shivering, then took a closer look at him. "But you don’t look upset, and you would if they’d all died, so they must have been rescued somehow..."

"They were," Harry said, and hesitated for a second before committing himself. "Or should I say, we were."

"We?" Hermione repeated faintly.

"Yeah. We." Harry stood up, hoisting his bag. "Have a look." He crossed the room in two steps and spread the contents of the bag across Hermione’s duvet, sitting down on the other side. "These are what the Death Eaters were using."

Hermione reached for the book on the top of the pile with shaking hands. "The Philosopher’s Stone," she whispered. "Our first year." She flipped through a few pages quickly, reading bits and snatches of lines, then looked up at him, her eyes brimming over. "Is this all we are?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Are our whole lives fake? Copied from a book?"

"No." Harry put as much certainty as he could muster into his tone. "No. There’s a lot about us that isn’t fake. I’m still Harry. You’re still Hermione. We still go to Hogwarts. We’re still best friends with Ron, and he’s just figured out he wants you to be more than that." He grinned. "You don’t seem to mind it too much either. I’m still going with Ginny, we still know Luna and Neville, we’ll still have McGonagall for Transfiguration when we get back to school in September, Hagrid will still be out in his house with Fang, inviting us down for tea..."

"Back to school?" These words seemed to have penetrated Hermione’s stupor when no others had. "But we missed our seventh year." She stopped. "Or did we? You said this only took two weeks... two weeks, to live seven years..." Her voice dropped into silence. "Harry, what’s today?" she asked after a moment’s thought. "What’s the date, the whole date?"

"It’s 19 August," Harry said, holding out his wrist so that Hermione could see his watch. "19 August, 1997."

"Ninety-seven," Hermione repeated. "We haven’t missed it, then! We can still go back!"

Harry smiled at her eagerness. "Yes, we can go back. I’m planning on it, if only to get in another year of Quidditch—ow!" Hermione had smacked him on the forehead with Philosopher’s Stone. "Kidding, Hermione, I’m kidding! I need those N.E.W.T.s, if I want to get into the Auror program. Which I do. But Quidditch is good too."

"Of course it is." Hermione was clearly thinking hard. "So these books tell the story of an alternate world. A make-believe. Which explains why Fred’s alive when we thought we saw him die." She pushed aside Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban to pick up Goblet of Fire. "What really happened with Voldemort, then? And the war? Is it still going on?" Her fingertips brushed the glossy cover of the book. "And why can’t I remember it for myself?" she asked quietly. "Why do I still feel like this world is the true one?"

"They said it would take everyone a different amount of time to remember," Harry said. "You saw how it happened with Ray—as soon as he got rid of the stuff that was holding him back, it all came to him in a flash."

"Ray?" Hermione followed the lines of the book’s cover illustration with a finger. "Who’s Ray?"

Harry stifled a laugh. Tact, Potter, tact. It’s not her fault she doesn’t know. "Kid you swore an Unbreakable Vow with," he said. "Though he doesn’t usually look like that."

"Oh, him. I’d wondered what name he was going to use now." Hermione’s voice had gone dreamy. "What does he usually look like?"

"A bit like you. Brown hair, blue eyes—"

"I don’t have blue eyes."

"Yes, you do." Harry pointed at the mirror hanging on the wall. "Go have a look."

"I think you’ve mixed me up with Ron," said Hermione, but she got to her feet, cradling Order of the Phoenix in her arms. Harry unobtrusively drew his wand as his friend approached the mirror.

Hermione looked and gasped, dropping the book. Harry’s nonverbal Wingardium Leviosa! caught it before it could land on her feet, lowering it to the ground beside her instead.

"I have blue eyes." Hermione stared at her reflection, a hand coming up to touch her cheek. "How can I have blue eyes? Both my parents—my parents were—"

"There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you," Harry said quickly, Summoning the book back to him. Hermione followed it, shaking her head slowly. "About that café in Tottenham Court Road, where Dolohov and Rowle attacked us. You said you weren’t sure if the magic you did to make them forget us would take, because you’d never done a Memory Charm before, only studied the theory." He focused on keeping his voice calm and even. If he got agitated over this, so would Hermione. "But back at the Burrow, you told Ron and me that you’d changed your parents’ memories, to make them think they were named Wendell and Monica Wilkes."

"I was frightened in the café, Harry, I misspoke!" Hermione was gripping the duvet, her knuckles white. "I was trying not to think about my parents, because I knew I’d only worry!"

"Can you tell me your parents’ real names, then?"

"I’m sorry?" Hermione’s voice squeaked on the final syllable.

"Your parents’ names. The ones they had before they were Wendell and Monica." Behind his back, Harry crossed his fingers and hoped. If this doesn’t work...

Hermione hiccupped once. "I don’t know," she whispered. "I don’t know their names." Another hiccup. "I don’t know anything about them at all." Another. "The only thing I know—" Another, with a sniffle behind it. "—is that they loved me. Very much." She looked up at him, terror and grief warring for place in her expression as her eyes brimmed over. "But they aren’t real, are they? And people who aren’t real can’t love..."

"Hermione, I want you to think about something," Harry said, Summoning the tissue box on the nightstand for her. "The people who changed your memories like this, they were Death Eaters. And Death Eaters are the ones who can’t love. Death Eaters who love stop being Death Eaters. Like Master Severus." He slid a finger across the cover of Half-Blood Prince. "He was one of the wizards they kidnapped with us, did you know that? The Death Eaters hate him, because he came back to our side and helped end the war. Because he loved my mum."

Hermione nodded, blotting at her eyes.

"Or Narcissa Malfoy." Harry smiled, remembering. "She said I was dead when I wasn’t, out in the forest. She wanted to get into the castle and find her son. Because she loved him."

"But that wasn’t real," Hermione objected. "It was in the book world, it wasn’t real."

"But it was based on a real thing that happened." Harry picked up Deathly Hallows. "Years ago, before any of us were born. The Order had stumbled across one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, and found a way to use it to locate the rest of them. They left the diary for last, because they knew they couldn’t break into Malfoy Manor quietly. When they finally went for it, Mrs. Malfoy saw Aurors in her house and panicked, because it meant she’d go to Azkaban, and she was pregnant."

"And babies die if they’re around dementors," Hermione said, her voice settling back to normal. "I remember that from sixth year Defense."

"Right. So she found a couple of Order members, and they made a deal. Her baby would live—he’d look different, but he’d live—if she would tell them where to find Voldemort." The unbelievably condensed version, but it gets the point across. "And both sides followed through. The Order killed Voldemort, and the baby who would’ve been Draco Malfoy lived. Because Mrs. Malfoy, Narcissa, loved him that much."

"Well, that answers another question I had." Hermione blew her nose. "About the war, and Voldemort. But it still doesn’t tell me anything about my parents."

"Yes, it does." Harry flipped open Deathly Hallows to search for a certain place. "Hermione, you remember your parents loving you, right?"

"Right."

"And Death Eaters can’t love. They can’t even understand it." Harry looked up from the book. "How could they have given you fake memories of love when they don’t know what love is?"

The relief which filled Hermione’s face reminded Harry poignantly of his own feelings when he’d awakened from Voldemort’s Killing Curse to realize whose arms were around him, whose voice was speaking his name. "Your parents are real, Hermione," he said quietly. "And they do love you. They just aren’t Muggles."

Hermione laughed shakily. "So there’s that bit of my Vow fulfilled," she said. "I never was a Muggleborn. And my last name’s not Granger either, is it?"

"No. It’s not." Harry found the place he’d been looking for. "And because you grew up magic, you didn’t feel like you had to prove yourself by being in the ‘best’ House, so you didn’t fight the Hat and it Sorted you into Ravenclaw."

Hermione goggled at him. "How did you—"

Harry grinned at her. "You told me. And I think I’ve figured out what will trigger your memories." He handed her the book, which was open to the chapter called "The Bribe." "Look at that scene. Tell me if you think there’s anything wrong."

Hermione began to read. Barely two pages in, she lifted her head in puzzlement. "There’s something missing," she said. "Something I said. After Remus says that about the baby being a hundred times better off without him..."

"That’s because it wasn’t in the book," Harry told her. "You said it all on your own. But it will be. Padfoot really likes it, he’s going to put it in the next edition, and of course that means the Muggle editions will all have it..."

Hermione was staring at him. "Did you say Padfoot?" she asked. "As in, your godfather?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Are you telling me," Hermione said carefully, "that Sirius Black wrote these books?"

"Yep." Harry leaned on his hands. "Right proud of them, too. Don’t worry about telling anyone, Luna’s dad published it in The Quibbler a few years back so nobody’ll believe you anyway."

Hermione looked at the book between her hands and went into semi-hysterical giggles. Harry let her. She needed the release.

"But that brings up something else I wanted to ask you," she said when she was done and blotting at her eyes again. "If I’ve never been a Gryffindor, how did we meet? Why are we friends?"

"We’ve been friends our whole lives." Harry let his eyes drift shut, hearing again the stories he had always loved. "You were five days old when I was born, and your mum and dad brought you along to the hospital. You started crying, that woke me up and I started crying..." He shrugged one shoulder. "Instant bonding, baby style."

"So, our parents are friends?" Hermione asked.

"You could say that." Harry opened his eyes. "Or you could say that the reason I never had to fight Voldemort is that your dad took a curse for my dad. And then his friends were willing to take chances to try to save his life." That, of course, was yet another long story, but he thought he could see the flickers of dawning memories beginning in Hermione’s eyes...

"Was he with us?" Hermione asked, returning her gaze to the book. "Was my dad taken by the Death Eaters too?"

Harry wished he could lie, but Hermione deserved the truth. "Yes. And he may never be able to look at Charlie’s wife again. His own fault, really," he added. "If he hadn’t got her to help him prank Padfoot’s cubicle at work, I don’t think that particular pairing would ever have happened."

Hermione produced a weak giggle, but it faded. "So I have a mum I don’t know yet," she said. "And a dad I do."

"Pretty much." Harry thought it might have been his Marauder side that prompted him to add, "And a twin brother."

"A what?" Hermione’s head came up fast.

"Well, when you swear a blood-oath with somebody, that generally makes you brothers... except, in your case, that’d be brother and sister..." Harry shut up as Hermione threatened him with the book. "In any case, your mum’s with him right now. He had a really bad time of it, worse than almost anyone."

"I can’t imagine why," said Hermione dryly. "But where’s my dad, then?"

"Far’s I know, right here." Harry flicked his wand at the door. It swung open.

The man standing beyond it stepped into the room. "Harry," he said, nodding politely. Then his eyes went to Hermione. "Hello, Kitten," he said softly.

Hermione set the book aside and got to her feet. "I thought you’d know what to say," she murmured. "And I stand by what I said at Grimmauld Place." Her chin was up even as her eyes, the same blue as the man’s, filled with tears. "No child could ever be ashamed to claim you as a father."

Harry slipped from the room as Remus Lupin pulled his daughter into his arms.

So that’s Moony and Hermione sorted—I don’t think anyone else would dare call her "Kitten," which is how she knew he was the real thing. He strolled down the hall, ticking off the list of abductees as he went. Ron’s with his family, he’ll be fine. Ditto Uncle Peter—talk about poetic justice, that the Death Eater who was the Secret-Keeper, the one he killed, was the same one he rescued Aunt Evanie from all those years ago. Master Severus and Padfoot are probably off having one of their winding-each-other-up contests, with Uncle Reggie and Dad to help them out.

So that just leaves Ray.

Harry sighed. The Death Eaters’ faux world would leave its mark on them all, but perhaps on no one deeper than on Hermione’s wisecracking twin Reynard.

He hates fighting, he couldn’t care less about blood, he doesn’t have any grandiose dreams—he’s a Hufflepuff, for Merlin’s sake! Yes, his soul is the same one that could have lived in Draco Malfoy’s body, but he didn’t, because that body died from dementor exposure before it could ever be born, and Aunt Veri made him a new body as Moony and Aunt Peri’s son!

The idea was dizzying, but Harry’d had a long time to get used to his godmother Veritas Black and her half-sister Pericula Lupin, and the strange talents of Healing each had in place of the usual wanded magic he knew so well.

Aunt Veri heals the body, which is why Padfoot wrote her into that temporary world he had to pull us into when the Death Eaters’ magic tried to kill us before we could get away. Even though my body there wasn’t exactly real, she could still give me enough strength to finish what I had to do. Plus seeing her was a big relief—it meant I hadn’t muffed things up completely and actually killed us all.

But Aunt Peri heals the soul. Or at least starts it healing, and helps it along the way. If anyone can help Ray handle that he acted like a pureblood brat for what felt like seven years, she’s the one.

Besides being, you know, his mum and all.

And with order thus restored to his world, Harry Potter, age seventeen, trotted down the stairs of his parents’ cottage in Godric’s Hollow to see about helping his mother with dinner.

Author Notes:

If you're still a bit lost, pop over to this story's companion piece, The Witch of the Westmoreland, now available on a website near you!

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