True Colors
Chapter 13: Homecoming
By Anne B. Walsh
Quiet reigned once more in the back garden of what had been Malfoy Manor. The Longbottoms had taken Malfoy, still unconscious, to London for booking, leaving Neville in Sirius and Aletha’s charge until they returned. At the moment, he was sitting with Meghan and Aletha, alongside the Weasleys and the Lovegoods, listening to Narcissa explain the truth behind her story and why she had told it the way she had.
The truth is simple enough. Remus tilted his head back to the sun, reveling in its play on his skin. Ray is ours and always was. We wanted him hidden, Narcissa needed a living child to show Lucius, we made a deal. She disguised him with a strong glamour charm, and Danger "encouraged" Lucius to think of the name Draco, so that we could keep calling our boy by his own nickname. Dobby would take us to and from his nursery during the day so that we could tend him without being caught, and Narcissa kept Lucius away at night so he wouldn’t see his son turning into a wolf. Ray takes the same potion we do, except he uses it to stay human, and—until today—spiked it with a second potion to keep himself looking like Lucius.
Sirius claimed he had grasped the truth in the moment he’d seen Ray’s face and had no need to listen. Remus suspected his friend’s disinclination to move was more closely related to Harry being asleep on his lap and Danger against his shoulder.
With my Kitten on her lap, sucking her thumb as usual.
Remus knew he should do something about his little girl’s bad habit, but at this precise moment, with his son sleeping beside him, making sun-warmed brown hair available for stroking, he couldn’t muster enough strength to care.
Besides, her having a thumb to suck at all is a victory. We’ve won—more than won, we’ve triumphed—we’re free, we’re together, we’re all of us alive, and our enemy destroyed himself...
"Why so pensive?" asked Dumbledore, sitting down beside him. "If I may ask."
"I had no idea he’d do that." Remus twined his fingers through Ray’s soft brunet waves. "I have no idea what he did, for that matter. He snapped, that much is obvious. Ray said he wasn’t seeing reality properly anymore..."
"He could not accept what his senses were telling him," said Dumbledore, gazing up at the morning sky, blue with a few wisps of white cloud. "Thus, he denied it, with all his heart and soul, and with all his magic, which was and is considerable. He sought another truth, and found it—not a truth as we would understand it, but the truth of himself."
Well, at least I know Dumbledore hasn’t changed any since we’ve been away. "I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand."
"Lucius Malfoy believed that only he could see the truth," Dumbledore explained. "Thus, the ‘truth’ that he saw was a truth not about you, or about me, or about Frank and Alice, but about himself. Because he found reality frightening, his new world was colored with that fear. He projected onto us what he fears most, both in us and in his own mind."
"And what he saw when he looked at me was a beast." Remus gently pulled one of Ray’s waves straight, then released it to watch it spring back. "A monster, preying on the innocent."
"Indeed. Consider also that he saw this, or thought he saw it, while you performed a father’s rightful duty to the child he has always considered his." Dumbledore smiled at Ray as the boy rearranged himself closer to Remus without waking. "He is envious of you, Remus, and angry at having been tricked, and he cannot bring himself to believe that his period of supremacy is over. So he has retreated into a world in which he will forever be supreme, since there is no one else there to challenge him."
"I could almost pity him," Remus said, tracing the curve of a delicate ear with his fingertip. "He’s as much a slave now as we ever were—more, since our collars were put on us from the outside. We could always fight against them, and hope one day to win free of them. His chains come from within, and considering where he’s headed, it doesn’t seem likely he’ll ever have a chance to be free." He sighed. "It’s a shame, really."
"You are a better man than I am, Remus Lupin," Dumbledore said softly.
"Am I hearing this right?" Arthur asked. "No one who was not here tonight will ever know there truly was a child who called himself Draco Malfoy?"
"A few people will be told of it," said Narcissa. "But the rest have already been affected by a very subtle magic." She nodded towards Danger and Hermione, asleep against Sirius on their bench. "Tell the truth—did not all of you, when you met or heard about my son, feel somewhat disconcerted? Did it not startle you that there should be a polite Malfoy, or one who cared about others? And most of all, that one should be Sorted into Gryffindor?" Which terrified me, no matter how good a face I put on for Lucius—I had known it was likely to happen, but at that moment we were in more danger of being discovered than we had been for years…
"That did surprise me rather," Molly admitted. "Doubly so when Ron wrote about becoming friends with him. From what I knew of the Malfoys, it seemed..." Her cheeks pinked, but she finished the sentence. "...impossible."
"The magic relies on that," said Severus. "In much the way a Memory Charm on a Muggle, to make him forget he has seen magic, works with his necessity for continuity in his world. In many cases, Obliviators have only light work, because Muggles who witness magic usually want to forget that they saw these strange things, to allow their lives to continue uninterrupted."
"So this magic works like a Wrackspurt does," said Gerald, nodding. "Muddles the brain and allows the person to make up his own mind, or hers, about what was really there—and when everyone around him is insisting that this particular boy has always had brown hair and blue eyes and the name of Reynard Lupin, and was raised by a Muggle foster family..."
"Precisely." Narcissa nodded, smiling slightly. "Special attention was, of course, given to those associates of Lucius’ who had encountered Draco here at home, but most of them dislike Lucius already, and seized gladly on an excuse to believe him mad and his precious son a delusion. They now believe that the child they saw was an illusion-figure, cast subconsciously by Lucius to keep his story believable."
"This is going to be really weird," Ron said. "I was just getting used to having Ray and Zelda around, and now Ray’ll still be there but he’ll look different, and Zelda’s named Hermione and she’ll be over in the girls’ dorm..." He frowned. "What’s going to happen about her? I don’t think you can make people forget a wolf running around Hogwarts."
"Which is why they do not plan to try," said Severus, giving Ron his usual look of bare tolerance for idiocy. "Her story will be told almost as it happened, save for the detail of the name of her ‘master’. You may decide for yourself if you wish it known that you were cognizant of her humanity before this general revelation."
"Why wouldn’t we want people to know that, sir?" Neville asked, as Ron seemed to still be lost somewhere in Severus’ third sentence.
"Your peers may be offended if they discover that you knew something they did not, especially something of this magnitude, and for such a length of time."
"I think maybe they’ll understand when they find out she would have died if we’d told," Ron said testily.
"Or perhaps they will argue that you learned of it without killing her, so why could they not have learned in the same way?" Severus shot back. "I think you had best be prepared, Weasley—"
Narcissa folded her arms, concealing her wand’s aim, and fired a wordless Impediment Jinx. Severus froze for an instant, then turned to glare at her. She shook her head minutely. "You will, of course, know how to handle your Housemates better than we," she said to the boys, taking over the conversation. "There is no great rush, but a decision sooner rather than later would be best."
"I’m no good at lying," said Neville with the directness he’d inherited from his father. "I’d rather tell the truth. Besides, if I tried to say I didn’t know Zelda was human, someone would catch me out with how good of friends we are already. And they’re never going to believe Ray and Harry and I knew and Ron didn’t, not with how much we all go around together, so it’s not really your decision anyway, Ron," he said to his friend. "Sound good?"
"Sure." Ron looked past Narcissa and Severus. "And I think she’s waking up. Excuse me, please."
He was on his feet and halfway across the garden before anyone could muster a protest. His parents looked at each other. Molly had a small, smug smile on her lips. Arthur seemed reminiscent. "There’s nothing wrong with starting young," he said. "Though I tend to think he gets it more from your side of the family, dear."
"I’d say you might well be right," said Molly, surveying Neville and Meghan, both watching Ron advancing towards a yawning Hermione with the complacency of those who had never felt a moment’s anxiety about this particular subject. Narcissa noted the attitude, along with the tiny brown hand twined comfortably with the broader, paler one, and mentally added a branch to her family tree.
Mine once more, now that I have some chance of being acknowledged by those of its members who are neither dead nor incarcerated…
"May we speak?" Severus said quietly behind her. "Alone?"
"Of course." Narcissa nodded politely to the adults of the group she’d been speaking with, then started for a small bower near the back of the garden. Her own white narcissus grew there in abundance around a small flat stone with a simple carving on it, half-hidden behind a backless bench. She had long ago enchanted the nook for privacy.
Considering my usual pastime when I come here, it was necessary.
Severus stepped within the spells, tilted his head as if listening to some sound or the absence of one, and nodded, recognizing the magic, as Narcissa had thought he would. "Your own work?" he asked.
"I would trust no other with this spot."
"Why—ah." His keen eyes had noticed the stone, with the uneven W-shaped arrangement of five stars etched into its top. "Your daughter."
"Yes." She only trusted her voice for the one word, and even that hurt to say.
I had not realized how much that story would pain me to tell over. And how much I will miss visiting her, telling her of my life, of her father’s, of that of the boy who was freed by her death… how strange, to think that if she had lived, she might even now wear a bracelet and he a collar…
She shook her head, dismissing the thoughts. "What did you wish to say, Severus? Or ask?"
"Ask is perhaps the better term." Severus seemed to find the tiny gravestone fascinating, as he had not taken his eyes from it since he had first seen it. "I wondered why you felt it necessary to lie about Draco’s existence, to goad Lucius into madness. If there was any reason, beyond a desire for revenge."
"There was." Narcissa reached up to an overhanging tree and plucked a leaf bud, twirling it between her fingers. "The contract by which I was married made specific provisions for the dissolution of the marriage. As long as Lucius still wished me to be his wife, I was obliged to remain so—and though learning how I have tricked him for all these years might have caused him to repudiate me, it might also have caused him to cling more tightly, to try to ruin my life even as I had ruined his. However, now that he has lost his sanity…"
"The contract no longer applies." Severus sat down on the bench. "Clever of you."
"Thank you."
They sat in silence for a long moment, silence and understanding.
"Your hair is really very red," Hermione said, touching the side of Ron’s head shyly.
"Thought you knew that."
"I did—I do—but this is the first time I’ve seen you like this. Outside, in the sunlight."
"We’ve been outside together loads of times."
Hermione looked away. "Never when I could see colors."
Ron felt his ears heating up. Muffed it again. Can’t I do anything right?
"It’s so strange to be outdoors as a human," Hermione went on, walking in a small circle around the bit of garden they’d migrated to, touching trees, bushes, hedges as she passed them. "I never had, did you know? Only in dreams, and it isn’t the same. It was a lot better than not having anything, but I don’t even know if I get sunburned."
Ron pulled back a sleeve and held out his arm. "Check against me," he said. "I burn easy as anything, soon as it gets hot out, but once I’ve got over my first one and I remember to use Mum’s potion, my freckles all just run together for the rest of the summer."
Hermione laughed, rolled up her own sleeve, and laid her arm against his. "I’m not nearly so fair as you," she said, looking critically at the skin thus exposed. "And Mum—Danger, I suppose I should be calling her, but I never could safely and I didn’t want to say Calpurnia, that’s not a name she liked, and she’s the only mum I’ve ever known—she says she did used to get sunburned, but not too badly. So I should probably be careful, but I don’t have to stay all the way out of the sun." She looked up at the sky. "And I’m glad. I like sun. I always did, and now I like it even better."
"I bet." Ron watched her twirl in the center of their clearing for a moment. "Zel—I mean, Hermione?"
"Either’s fine, Ron." She tilted her head back over her shoulder to smile at him. "I know you mean me."
Ron nodded. "I’m going to miss having you around," he said. "I mean, not that you won’t be around—you’re still a Gryffindor and we’ll still have classes together and eat together and things—but I’m…" He broke off in frustration. "I don’t even know what I was trying to say."
"I think I do." Hermione spun around one final time and came over to him. "And I did want to ask you a favor. We’ll likely be going back to Hogwarts soon—Mum and Dad are going to stay there for a while, Professor Dumbledore says they may, and of course Ray and I have classes, we’ve got to finish our first year…" She beamed for a moment. "I can’t wait to write my first essay. But that’s not what I wanted to ask you."
"I’m listening," Ron said when Hermione seemed more inclined to scuff her bare toes in the gravel of the path than to speak.
She looked up. "Would you take me flying?"
"Flying?" Ron stared at her in surprise. "Sure—but why?"
"I’ve never been." Hermione laughed a little. "A wolf body doesn’t fit very well on a broomstick. And I’m a little bit afraid of it, actually. Because I’ve never done it, because Ray fell his first time in lessons, because I’ve spent so much time with four legs and close to the ground, I don’t know. But I don’t want to be afraid of it. It’s important for me to learn. So would you help me? Please?"
"That sounds great." Ron found himself grinning and didn’t know why, but he didn’t care either. "I’ll have to borrow Harry’s broom, though—you know I don’t have one of my own—and why not ask Harry for this?" His good mood soured as the thought came to him. "Or Ray? They both fly better than I do."
"Which means they’ll try tricks and scare me," Hermione retorted. "You fly just fine, but you won’t think it’s funny to take me way up high and then do a freefall dive, or shoot through the goal hoops going so fast I can’t see anything clearly. I trust you, Ron. Please, will you do this for me?"
Ron felt a great bubble of happiness swelling in his chest. She trusts me. And she wants me to do this. Me, nobody else.
"’Course I will," he said, holding out his hand. "Weasley honor on it."
"Nothing better." Hermione met his hand with her own. "I’m glad I know you, Ron."
They stood smiling at each other, holding hands, for one instant before—
"Hermione!" Meghan launched herself into their clearing, charging at the older girl. "Hermione, Dobby just showed up, Ray’s mum, or no, not his mum, but Mrs. Malfoy, or maybe Miss Black now, anyway she freed him last night but she asked him for a favor and he said yes, so she sent him to Diagon Alley and he went in and out of all the stores and left the money behind and he’s brought you back the things you need, except a wand because you have to be there yourself for that, but he brought your Hogwarts robes and your uniform and Ron and Ginny’s mum and mine and yours say they can fit them for you, and they’re coming with them right now!"
"Did she breathe at all there?" Ron inquired.
Hermione laughed and hugged Meghan. "I don’t think so," she said to Ron. "Thank you, Pearl."
"Hermione?" Meghan looked up at her. "I used to have these dreams… I still have them, really, I never stopped… but they had a family in them, with a mum and a dad and a boy and girl Harry’s age… the girl’s like a big sister to me, and she likes to read, and she’s very smart, and she calls me Pearl just like Harry and Mum and Dadfoot do…"
Ron edged away as his own mum, Harry’s ungodmother, Hermione’s sister-mum, and Luna and Ginny came into the clearing, the three older witches with their arms full of fabric and all five of them talking at once.
I really don’t think I’m wanted here just now.
But later on, if Harry’ll let me use the Nimbus… which is a school broom, really, but no one else uses it… still polite to ask, but I can’t see how he’d say no…
He went on his way whistling cheerily, lost in daydreams of flying with Hermione.
"Minerva, do you have a moment?"
"Of course, Albus, do come in." Minerva waved the Headmaster into her office. "Please tell me you have some idea where Harry Potter and his friends have gone—not to mention Quirrell and Severus? No one seems to know where they are, the house-elves tell me their beds were never slept in, and the boys were trying to tell me some ridiculous story about the Philosopher’s Stone last night—"
"Calm yourself, Minerva, your students are well. Severus also, and I know what has happened to Quirinus." Albus beckoned to someone else in the hall. "But I believe this takes precedence. A young lady to whom you must be introduced, or perhaps I should say reintroduced."
"Reintroduced?"
An eleven-year-old girl stepped hesitantly through Minerva’s office door. Large quantities of curly brown hair and robes already bearing the red and gold Gryffindor crest framed an earnest, hopeful, familiar face—
"Merlin’s wand," Minerva breathed, coming around her desk. "You’re Danger’s sister, you must be—oh, good heavens, what was your name, I can’t recall..."
"Hermione, Professor." The girl held out a hand, a bit awkwardly, as though she were unused to the gesture. "Hermione Granger. And I just have to say that your lectures are wonderful. Ray’s always whining about them, he doesn’t like Transfiguration, but I think it’s my favorite subject of all!"
This little peroration produced several conundrums. Minerva chose to address first the one closest to the subject she’d been on before Hermione had arrived. "Ray? Do you mean Draco Malfoy?"
"I would have, yesterday," Hermione said, a smile beginning to light her face that heightened her resemblance to her sister even more. "But now I don’t anymore."
Minerva shook her head. "Now you don’t anymore? What might that mean?"
"May I show you, Professor? Please?" Hermione gestured to the door. "It isn’t far, and I think it will make you very happy."
"Well, all right." Minerva glanced at Albus. He seemed perfectly calm, until one looked into his eyes and noticed their brighter than usual sparkle, and the tiny smile that kept slipping onto his face. Clearly, whatever Hermione wanted to show her, he already knew about it.
So Hermione Granger never died after all. But where can she have been all this time? Minerva followed the girl out of her office and up the nearest flight of stairs. And how does she know what my lectures are like? I’ve never had her in class, until a moment ago I thought she was dead—
And she wears the Gryffindor crest. But Albus would never have Sorted a student without my presence, especially not one he suspected might become a member of my House. She also mentioned, as if she knows him well, Draco Malfoy, my most unexpected charge of this year—well, perhaps second most unexpected, his pet wolf Zelda seems likely to take the prize from him—
Hermione knocked at the door of the Defense professor’s office. Minerva sighed inwardly, readying herself to deal with Quirinus Quirrell’s nattering timidities.
But it was Harry Potter who answered the door, his bright grin very like his father’s, reinforcing Minerva’s feeling that she had accidentally dropped a Time-Turner and thrown herself twenty years into the past. At least he is well, and I assume his friends also, or he would not look so happy. But that does not answer the question of what is going on here.
"Good morning, Professor," Harry said politely, stepping aside to allow Hermione and Minerva entrance. The walls of the office were bare, the desk likewise, and Sirius, Aletha, and Meghan Black sat in the guests’ chairs, Meghan bouncing up and down on her mother’s lap.
"The people I think you want to see are in the back," said Sirius, hooking a thumb at the door. "They said don’t bother to knock, just go right in."
"People—" Minerva broke off short as her earlier thoughts rushed together in her mind, along with something Augusta Longbottom had once told her that Frank had passed along about the security on a certain wizarding manor, and her sense, heightened yet again by Meghan’s presence, that time had reversed itself, that she was seeing once again the students she had taught as the war with Voldemort worsened, the students by whose side she had fought as a member of the Order of the Phoenix...
She was across the room, at the door to the private quarters, the knob was turning under her hand, she was inside the dim and quiet bedroom beyond—
Remus Lupin turned around at her entrance, and Danger rose from her seat on the bed, the bed on which lay a sleeping boy, about Harry and Hermione’s age and wearing the Gryffindor crest as they did but no student of hers that she recognized, but clearly, clearly the son of the two people in front of her, impossible as that was, impossible as their very existence was—
"You’ve come back," she said.
It was only after the fact that she heard how hoarse her voice was, as though she were crying. But that was ridiculous. She was Minerva McGonagall, Professor of Transfiguration, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts. She had no need to cry.
"I’m only sorry it took us so long," Remus answered, coming forward and holding out his hand.
"Oh—" Minerva caught him by the shoulders, shook him once, then embraced him, letting go only to do the same to Danger as she came near enough. "What does that matter now? You’re here, you’re alive, and with a child of your own—he is yours?"
"Yes, this is our Ray," Danger said, smiling through tears of her own as Minerva released her. "You’d have known him as Draco until today, but his true name is Reynard Lupin."
"I don’t envy you in two years when Meghan arrives," Remus added. "Not that Harry isn’t as much Sirius’ as James’ after so long, and he seems to have found worthy companions in Ron and Neville. And, of course, Ray."
"Yes, I must say I’d wondered at how very much that foursome reminded me of another set of young Gryffindors I knew once," Minerva said, trying to regain her usual acerbic tones. "Though I suppose I should call it a fivesome—I never had understood until just now why the Hat chose to Sort young Malfoy’s wolf..."
"So tell me again about your young man," said Gerald Lovegood to his daughter as they knelt by the bridge across the stream near their home, Gerald with his Plimpy net, Luna with a bag to hold the catch. "What sorts of wandless magic can he do?"
"Oh, Ray can do lots of things." Luna shook her bag sharply as a small squabble erupted inside it. "He can control fire like his dad—it was Mr. Lupin who really shielded Harry from the Fiendfyre and made sure the bit of You-Know-Who’s soul inside Harry burned up in it, Professor Snape was just there so You-Know-Who would think he was doing it instead—and dreams like his mum—Ray was the one who did the illusion on Harry to make him look dead, since Mr. Lupin was still wearing his collar then so Mrs. Lupin could only do enough magic to make everyone not see the house starting to burn—and he turns into a wolf when the sun goes down, and human again when it comes up. Unless he takes his potion, of course."
"Intriguing." Gerald swooped the net down and pulled up a Plimpy, knotting its legs together expertly and tossing it into Luna’s bag. "So it breeds true, then. And you mentioned he could speak silently in the wolf form?"
"That’s part of the dream power. He can give people a moment’s daydream of hearing him speak. But he and Hermione will both pass that on to their children as well, so they should all be able to speak even when they’re wolves." Luna smiled, swishing her fingers through the water. "Maybe my children will be natural wolf Animagi. Or change only one night in two, or even have their wolf shape during the day."
Gerald netted another Plimpy. "I look forward to finding out."
Harry ran across the lawns towards Hagrid’s house, glancing over his shoulder every so often to see Hermione and Ron behind him, Ron making sure Hermione didn’t fall while she got used to running on two legs instead of four. Neville and Meghan followed behind them, spinning around each other every so often for sheer joy. Ahead of him, Ginny was just slowing to a halt at Hagrid’s steps, hand pressed to her chest.
Looks like next year we’ll have a new contender for fastest person who isn’t actually part wolf.
Hagrid came out his door as Neville and Meghan stopped at the steps, Fang charging past him to bestow his usual raptures of introduction on Ginny, then to sniff around the hems of Hermione’s robes with a puzzled whine. Hermione laughed. "I don’t think he knows quite what to make of me," she said, stroking Fang’s head.
"Not sure I know what ter make of yeh," said Hagrid, frowning at her. "This’s Ginny, that’s easy enough, an’ Meghan I know already—an’ while I’m on th’ subject, where’s Ray an’ Zelda?"
Ginny and Meghan went into fits of giggles, and Ron and Neville stifled snorts of laughter. Harry grinned. "One of them’s here," he said. "You just aren’t looking right."
Hagrid gave him a hard stare. "Some people are gonna get themselves in trouble one o’ these days with their jokes," he said, then turned back to Hermione, who had reduced Fang to a puddle of boarhound bliss. "Pardon me fer bein’ rude, but I can’ help feelin’ I’ve seen yeh somewhere before, Miss..."
"Granger. Hermione Granger." Hermione looked up with a shy smile. "Thank you for worrying about me yesterday, Hagrid, but chocolate doesn’t hurt me, no matter what shape I’m in. And Dad said to tell you he and Mum will be down a bit later to say hello, and that he’s glad Ray reminds you of Mum and not him, because that might mean you’d forgot which of them actually broke part of your tea service while they were here, even if it was an accident and he did get rid of the erkling that had been trying to lure off the first years."
Harry’s ears were ten minutes recovering from Hagrid’s bellow of disbelieving joy.
"Real subtle of Dumbledore, giving you this place," Sirius commented, looking around the Defense professor’s office. "You always did say you thought you’d like teaching."
"And I will. Next year." Remus was leaning back in the desk chair, his feet up on the desk, his eyes closed. "Voldemort being dead, there’s a bit less need for Defense lessons at the moment. Dumbledore plans to let the subject go, except for O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. students, until I’m ready to take it up in the fall."
"Will you be?" The question had been on Sirius’ mind for hours, but they’d been constantly with other people until just now. Even Aletha and Danger were absent at this moment, off inducting Hermione and Meghan into some feminine club to which mere males need not apply, and Sirius intended to get an answer. "I’ll be honest, Moony—if I’d heard of someone in a situation like yours, had it described to me, I’d be skeptical they could readjust to normal life after even one year of that kind of treatment. You went through twelve. Don’t try and pretend it didn’t affect you."
"I’m not." Remus hadn’t opened his eyes, and his voice was a monotone, but Sirius didn’t doubt him. "But do remember, Padfoot, we had some advantages. Most important, I think, is that we could always talk to one another. Danger and I were able to speak mind-to-mind from the moment the spell hit us, and we could speak to Ray once he was born—we actually heard him first just before he came out. He didn’t like it much, and I don’t blame him, but with our contact we were able to persuade him not to cry about it, at least not aloud."
Sirius’ mind provided a vivid picture of the tiny cellar room Harry had described, lit by flickering firelight. Danger’s face was sweat-streaked and twisted in pain, blood trickling down her chin from where she’d bitten her lip to keep herself from screaming. Remus knelt between her legs to catch the emerging infant, his own face bearing the expression of quiet calm that the Marauders had known as Moony in the grip of some powerful emotion he didn’t dare show.
Because with every breath they took, they were reminded of what they were. Slaves. Property. Malfoy would have been overjoyed to find out they could breed—probably would have auctioned off their kids to anyone who wanted a guardian for his own brat or his house...
"Ray was our second advantage," Remus went on, switching the way his feet were stacked on the desk. "Simply knowing he was safe, knowing he would grow up free, made our burden lighter. And once he got enough motor control to hold a quill..." He opened his eyes and grinned at Sirius. "Did I mention he’ll sometimes let us use his body as though it were ours?"
"Those anonymous letters Dumbledore used to get," Sirius said, nodding. "Zelda—Hermione—she said you’d been the ones to tip him off about Frank and Alice..."
"That was the first one we ever sent. Dobby could take it from Ray where he couldn’t from us, and he was more than happy to work against Lucius in secret, even with having to punish himself afterwards." Remus shut his eyes again. "It got easier and easier from there, until by the time Ray was four or so we were able to write entire letters. That was when we started sending Dumbledore details about the Horcruxes, and he started going after them. We wrote in code, of course—just in case Lucius happened to come in while Ray was working, he’d dismiss it as childish nonsense." He chuckled deep in his throat. "We always signed ourselves ‘Your friends in low places.’"
Sirius snorted. "Classy. What was Dumbledore’s code name, then?"
"Mithrandir. Which is another name for Gandalf..."
"Who’s an old wizard with a long beard, I get it," Sirius interrupted.
Remus sat up straight. "Are you telling me Letha’s finally got you to read The Lord of the Rings?"
"Call it self-defense. So I’d understand what she was always on about. But go on."
"Voldemort was ‘the chicken-toed’—a pun on his being Heir of Slytherin and how you get a basilisk—and Harry was ‘Arthur,’ the little king being raised in hiding."
Sirius drew himself up in mock indignation. "Oy! That’s no king, that’s my godson!"
Remus laughed. "Save it for someone who doesn’t know you like I do. The Philosopher’s Stone, when it came up, was ‘the apple,’ because it’s red and tempting, and Ray was ‘Ralph,’ for Ralph Rackstraw, the switched baby from HMS Pinafore—Danger picked that one out after Hermione came to us, because she considers herself as Ray’s sister or his cousin but in actuality she’s his aunt."
"Some aunt. Younger than him, isn’t she?"
Remus nodded. "Three months. We’d never have known about her until she arrived if it weren’t for your letters."
"Speaking of letters, I’m finding it just a little creepy how easy this is." Sirius shook his head. "We’ve been apart longer than we were ever friends to begin with. I thought you were dead and I was making those letters up until this morning. But now you’re here, you’re alive, and I feel like we can just pick up—not where we left off, we’ve both moved on from there, but where we are now, and go from there. Does that make sense?"
"We’ll have to work at it, but yes, it does—" Remus broke off, his head turned as though he were listening to something. "That’s odd... it almost sounds as if..."
The monster had him, and he couldn’t break free.
He twisted against its hold, gasping for breath as fear drove the air from his lungs, wishing desperately that he dared to scream, but screaming would only bring more monsters to help this one. It laughed now at his efforts, pulling him closer to its face, frozen in a rictus of mad glee. "I will have you," it breathed. "You will never escape from me, never, never, never..."
Its free hand came up, displaying the long strip of green leather, the rune symbols for control and compulsion cut deeply into it. He leaned away, keeping his neck as far from the collar as he could, and the monster laughed again. "There is nowhere to run," it murmured, shaking back its long white hair, "nowhere to hide, for you are mine, as these are mine..."
It put its hand on his head and turned him so that he had to see what lay around him in the wreckage of the garden—his dad, all his limbs twisted in the fatal agony of the collar’s poison; his mum, her mouth gaping as though she were still trying to pull air through her pinched-off throat; lying at his feet, whimpering and shivering, his sister, his best friend, her eyes without sense or intelligence, her mind driven from her by pain—
His control flew to pieces, and he screamed, begging without words that someone, anyone, would come to him, save him, tell him it wasn’t true—the monster grasped him by the shoulders and shook him violently—
Ray’s eyes shot open. It was nighttime, the room almost totally dark. There was just enough light for him to make out the shape of a man sitting on his bed, hands still resting gently on his upper arms.
I’m not sure what was real and what was the dream... better stay safe...
"Father?" he said uncertainly.
"Yes," came the whispered reply.
Ray forced himself to nod, swallowing his bitter disappointment. He’d been so sure, so sure that freedom was reality at last, that the monster and the collars and the burden of being two people at once were finally only dreams—
The man snapped his fingers. A fireball burst into life above them, illuminating his face.
"I am your father," Remus Lupin finished, smiling at his son.
Ray punched his dad as hard as he could in the arm, then flung himself against the man, sobbing with relief.
It’s true. It’s all true. I never have to be Draco, not ever again...
Images slid into his mind as he started to calm down: Hermione’s face alight as a length of vine wood in her hand sketched a curlicue of blue and red sparks through the air; Mum wringing out her hair after Hagrid had cried happy tears over her; Dad leafing through old issues of The Best Defense Quarterly and burning notes into the scroll sitting beside him on the desk; Harry and Ginny arguing fiercely over the fairness of the all-witch hiring policy of the Holyhead Harpies; Luna bending over a sleeping boy and touching his cheek with two fingers she’d kissed—
Ray felt a stab of jealousy. Fine, then, be that way...
Look again, Dad’s voice murmured to him. Look carefully.
Ray looked. Oh, he said, feeling rather silly.
The boy had Dad’s oval-triangular face, Mum’s middling-small nose, and sandy brown wavy hair which was a mix between the two of them. Though his eyes were closed, Ray was certain they would be bright blue and lively when they were opened.
They are, Dad assured him.
Ray watched Luna bend down to kiss him once more, then let the montage continue. Ron and Hermione soared through the air above the Quidditch pitch on Harry’s Nimbus, Ron grinning as he usually did when he flew, Hermione’s face a mix of terrified and ecstatic; Padfoot and Letha took turns telling Mum something that made her grin in satisfaction when it was finished; Mother—Narcissa—and Professor Snape sat together on a bench in the depths of the garden at Malfoy Manor, talking in quiet voices...
One final image swam into focus. Professor McGonagall was hugging his mum and dad in turn, her eyes brighter than he’d thought they could get. "Welcome back," she said, her voice a bit wobbly, though she was getting it under better control by the second. "Welcome home."
"Home," Dad said aloud, musingly. "Hogwarts doesn’t seem like too bad a place to make a home. And there’ll be an opening at Potions next year, as well as Defense... wonder if we know anyone who might be tempted?"
"You stay away from my wife," said Padfoot’s voice from somewhere nearby. "She doesn’t need to play with her cauldrons any more than she already does."
Ray smiled and let himself drift away again in his dad’s arms.
He was safe now. He’d come home.
And I think that should be it for this story. I may do an Epilogue, or I may not. Encouragement either way is welcome.