Title: Forget-Me-Not
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: AU (Harry is not the Boy-Who-Lived), socially awkward Harry, angst, present tense, violence
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 6700
Summary: AU. Harry isn't the Boy-Who-Lived, but his parents still died, and Albus Dumbledore, concerned that Death Eaters might seek the boy's death, cast a powerful charm on him to make wizards ignore him before Harry was left with the Dursleys. Except, with the Elder Wand in play, the charm was far too powerful, and made others essentially forget Harry existed when not directly interacting with him. Sorted into Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, Harry lives a contented life with no one either loving or hating him…until the charm breaks on his seventeenth birthday, and he's suddenly plunged directly into the middle of a living world at war.
Author's Notes: This is obviously a major AU, as you can see from the summary, and also one of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This will have seven parts, to be posted over the next seven days.
Forget-Me-Not
"Are you sure you have to leave him with these awful people, Albus?"
Albus Dumbledore sighs as he shifts the infant in his arms. Little Harry has slept since he Apparated away from the ruins of the cottage where James, Lily, and Sirius all died. Of course, Albus can't take credit for that, given the strong charm he cast on him the moment he got a chance. "These are Lily's only living relatives, Minerva."
"But you could find someone else who could—"
"There is no one else," Albus snaps, and then closes his eyes. They're all stressed, all overwhelmed. Minerva doesn't deserve the brunt of his temper. "I've looked for them," he says. "James was an only child, and so was his father. His mother's family, what was left of it, departed Britain during Grindelwald's war, and I haven't been able to find them. This isn't the best way, but it's the only one that will work."
Minerva sighs and looks at the house again. "Then why do you have your wand out? Are you going to cast protection charms on him?"
"Of a sort," Albus says softly, and kneels down to place the baby on the doorstep. "I'm going to use a charm to blur the memory of his existence in all the minds of those who know of it, except us."
Minerva catches her breath. "Doesn't that mean he won't get fed or housed?"
"Not that powerful," Albus says, smiling at her. He values her friendship because she has never once lied to cheer him up, even after a day as awful as this one. "People will still be able to see him and interact with him. They just won't see him as Harry Potter, child of two famous dead Aurors. Any Death Eaters who knew of the prophecy won't remember that there was a second candidate other than young Neville. You know that two of Lily and James's killers got away."
Minerva nods. "I know." She looks at the house. "And his relatives?"
"They shouldn't think of him as a wizard—which, knowing Petunia, should only help."
Albus holds the Elder Wand above the sleeping baby and closes his eyes. He can feel the power coursing through the wand, the way it always does when it bucks against his control, even now. It's always seeking a way to make its wielder the most powerful and admired wizard in the world. If it can't do it by pushing him into public notice, it'll make it so that at least two people know all about his finesse and skill with this charm.
"Abscondo," he whispers.
Immediately, he knows something is wrong. He opens his eyes at the same moment as the Elder Wand throws itself forwards in his grip, and a net of white light envelops the Dursley home. It shines far brighter than any Concealment Charm should have to. He opens his mouth to shout—
And blinks. He's standing in front of a Muggle house, but he doesn't know why. Frowning, he glances around and starts when he sees Minerva. "Why are you here? Were you wounded, Minerva?"
Minerva frowns and rubs behind her glasses. "No. I think I had important business here, but I don't know what it was. How strange."
Albus nods. All of them are tired and bitter, though. They can be forgiven some lapses. "Well, we'd better get back to Hogwarts. I know that young Remus Lupin wanted to see me about something urgent."
Minerva nods, and they Apparate.
Albus does glance back once to see the white light settling on what looks like a Muggle house, and frowns. Well, there must be accidental magic here because of a Muggleborn child, or perhaps because a wizard or witch who was in hiding from the war celebrated so much that they stood a chance of breaking the Statute of Secrecy. It seems odd that he and Minerva were the ones called to attend to it, and that he can't remember the incident, but powerful magic can be like that sometimes.
The Elder Wand is humming smugly in his pocket. Albus touches the stupid thing to calm it down and turns his mind to the hours ahead. Besides reassuring Remus in his grief, he has to speak with Neville Longbottom's grandmother and make sure that she's fully-prepared to safeguard the Boy-Who-Lived.
And any little chance that he might remember what happened fades away from his mind in wisps.
Harry grows up knowing that he's different from most people, but he eventually decides that's a good thing.
The Dursleys only focus on him when he actually makes a lot of noise or otherwise makes himself noticeable. That means that their punishments don't work. Harry gets told to stay in the cupboard, but they forget about telling him to stay there a few minutes later, and unless they're right there and see the cupboard door move after he lets go of it, they don't notice that, either. Harry has figured out quickly that they notice objects he handles only when they leave his hands. They don't notice when he moves into Dudley's "spare" room and gets rid of the rubbish there, either.
Then he can go and eat what he wants from the kitchen. No one ever notices, not even Aunt Petunia with her suspicious little eyes, unless they just happen to walk into the kitchen in time to see a piece of food disappearing into his mouth or his pocket. The instant he touches it, it's just—invisible.
And at school, it's the same thing. Harry's extremely grateful for it once he sees how Dudley is growing up, and the gang of friends he brings with him to bully other kids. They never bully Harry because they don't see him. Harry just sits on a swing and watches them walk past.
It is hard, sometimes, not to have the teachers or the other students ever care about him. Harry learned to read by himself, sitting with books for hours in corners. The teachers mark his homework, but only because Harry gives it to them and then takes it back. If he never turned it in, they would never notice.
Harry, though, already knows that that blindness doesn't extend to official paperwork. People can still see his name written down and think or write things about him. There was an embarrassing incident when he was eight when he was missing a whole bunch of marks, and that means that it's easier to just do the homework and let them mark it before he reclaims it.
It's unnatural, what Harry hears the Dursleys call "freakish" more than once. But—well, he doesn't care, really. It's the way things are, and maybe something cursed him (if magic existed) and maybe something tried to guard him. But Harry is happy to spend time alone, to do what he wants outside of the small amount of effort he has to spend on schoolwork, to eat whenever he likes.
To walk into a shop and take sweets or clothes or other things that people forget about existing the minute they touch Harry's hands. Harry felt bad about that the first few times he did it, and then paranoid, wondering if he would show up on cameras. But no one has ever come after him. The best Harry can reckon, since cameras still rely on someone looking at them and seeing with their eyes instead of reading them, he's protected.
And if no one cares about him, then he doesn't have to care about anyone. Lonely, yes, and painful when he was younger, but soothing, too. Harry just drifts through life, thinking sometimes about what he'll be when he grows up and wondering how he'll arrange to sit through university classes or alter his marks so that someone will let him, but most of the time just enjoying the sunshine and the solitude and the freedom.
And then one day, a letter arrives that proves other people have always been thinking about him and reading about him. Somewhere.
Only to a limited extent, though, Harry discovers when he arrives in the wizarding world. Wizards and witches sent him a letter and a lot of concentrated asking gets them to measure him for robes, but otherwise they ignore him the same way Muggles do. Harry assumes that maybe one of his dead parents, whose names he doesn't know, put a protective spell on him and it got out of control.
It turns out the one big exception is the wand shop. The wandmaker, Ollivander, stares at him with large, fascinated eyes, and then makes a chuckling sound while he roots through various boxes.
"What?" Harry asks, not looking the way Ollivander is looking at him, but also somewhat enjoying the novelty of it.
"You have powerful magic on you, Mr. Potter."
Harry nods. "But I didn't cast it."
"I know." Ollivander turns around with another three wand boxes in his hands and puts them down on the counter. Apparently he's thrilled when someone is difficult to match, which Harry thinks is weird, but what does he know? "I'd wager the one who did will find out someday, and be angry about it."
Harry pauses. He never thought to ask a witch or wizard here about the spell, because what if they took it away? But Ollivander is standing there and grinning at him oddly, and Harry doesn't think he will. "Do you know who it was?"
"No. There are several people who would have had the power, but few would have had the motivation."
Harry nods slowly. Now that he knows magic is real, he reckons he might be able to find out someday. "Are you going to look for the caster?"
Ollivander cackles so hard that he almost falls over. "That's not my job!"
Harry shrugs. "I didn't say it was," he mutters, and then goes back to trying wands.
In the end, an ebony wand with a core of dragon heartstring seems to prefer him, and Harry learns the names of his parents for the first time from what Ollivander says about their wands. He thinks about whether he might be good at Charms or Transfiguration when he goes to Hogwarts, but mostly, he just likes the look of the blue sparks that flew out of the end of his wand.
It turns out that there's a Knight Bus that he can summon by waving his wand, and even though they forget him about the minute he gets on, that's fine. It means he can ride for free, and he listens with some amusement to the muttering of the man who tried to greet him about, "Why'd we stop there if there was no one?"
Harry leans back in one of the squashy armchairs that for some reason fills the Knight Bus, and lets his hand rest on his wand and the bag of Galleons in his pocket. It took some time to get the goblins to pay attention to him, and then they were massively annoyed that he didn't have his key and didn't know anything about his vault. And they watched him suspiciously the entire time, as if they assumed he would use the magic cast on him to steal from them.
Which, Harry has to admit, is a smart thing to assume. But he won't steal from the goblins. They treated him exactly the way they treat other wizards, it seems, from the suspicious glares he saw aimed at everyone. And it might be dangerous.
Harry just wants to live and be ignored. Danger, he can do without.
The Sorting Hat is mildly interesting, although Harry is pretty sure that it doesn't matter where he's Sorted. No one is going to notice him anyway, and he won't make that much effort with his marks. From what he can tell, the only things that really matter are the big exams, and the professors will mark those but then forget them the minute the paper—parchment—passes into his hand.
Harry had little to do but read for the month before school, since he never made himself that noticeable to the Dursleys. He read about the important things.
The Hat chuckles on his head when he puts it on, seeming to relish in the confusion that passes over people's face when the stern witch with glasses reads Harry's name. "You think that you're going to get ignored?"
Harry shrugs. "Do you see any way to make them notice me?" he mutters under his breath.
"Some people would struggle against this curse. See it as a curse."
"I think I might if I wasn't so used to living with it," Harry says after a second of thought. He's wise enough to know most people would hate this. But for Harry, it's just the way he's always lived. And after hearing some of the things that people in Diagon Alley were saying, and reading about the war and how these people expect poor Neville Longbottom to save them, he thinks he might be happiest if they go on ignoring him.
"What do you desire most?"
Harry thinks it's an odd question, but he answers anyway. "To be left alone."
"And besides that?"
"To have the knowledge to protect myself, I suppose."
"RAVENCLAW!"
Harry was a little doubtful at first about the Hat placing him in Ravenclaw, but it turns out to be an excellent choice. Harry is around a bunch of people who are least a little like him, and even when a professor reads his name in class and frowns at him and everyone turns to stare, they never stare for long. Everyone is so preoccupied with books and marks and research and gaining as much knowledge as they can to impress their parents or their professors or their Housemates or their rivals that Harry thinks they might ignore him without the curse.
He's glad that he doesn't have to find out, though. The Potions professor gives him a truly fearsome scowl for the first five minutes of every class until he forgets about Harry's presence again, and never marks his essays fairly. Just the thought of what the full force of his dislike might be like bearing down on him makes Harry shudder.
But Hogwarts has a brilliant library, and Harry wanders around it and reads everything he likes. Even venturing into the Restricted Section is fine. The protective spells still shriek, but when Madam Pince or occasionally Filch comes running to investigate, their eyes always slide over him.
Harry reads about magical history, and goblin rebellions, and the best defensive wards for different buildings, and the founding of Hogwarts, and how to concentrate hard enough to get rid of just about any hex, and how to find secret doors, and the really complicated potions that Snape is always threatening them they'll never get to brew. The world is open to him, and he turns out to be a lot more interested in what's between the covers of books than he's always thought. He even uses school owls to send for Muggle history books, since the magical history part is so interesting.
Flying is fun, but Harry only astonishes people for a few minutes or so until they go back to ignoring him, and he has no desire to join the Quidditch team. By now, the thought of standing out makes him flinch. He swims through Hogwarts like a fish and puts in a burst of studying for his exams in the kitchens—which was the first secret door he found—when exams come around. It's enough for him.
And during the summer, he reckons that he doesn't really have to go back to the Dursleys', either. It's not like they'll remember him enough to miss him. He takes over a room at the Leaky Cauldron and casts the advanced locking spells that he spent far more time on than making a feather float. Tom and various other people try to force the door numerous times, but end up telling people that a poltergeist took it over. They never notice the water Harry takes for his showers and the food he removes from the breakfast trays outside other rooms in the mornings. Harry's careful to only steal one scone or egg or piece of toast per tray.
There is one part of spending the summer in Diagon Alley that is less than brilliant, though. Harry runs into Ollivander in Flourish and Blotts. Harry is quietly amassing books he intends to just leave the Galleons for—stealing from magical people feels worse than doing it from Muggles—and starts at the sight of the wandmaker. For some reason, it never occurred to him that Ollivander would leave his own shop.
Well, even spiders have to leave their burrows to hunt, Harry supposes. He gives Ollivander a nod that's as neutral as he can manage, and eases past him to reach the section on Dark creatures.
"Is your wand serving your well, Mr. Potter?"
Yes, Ollivander can still creepily see him. Harry sighs and turns around. Ollivander is watching him with gleaming eyes that really make Harry wish he hadn't thought of the spider comparison. He nods. "Yes, sir."
"And no progress in getting rid of the curse on yourself?"
Harry raises his eyebrows a little. "I never intended to." He nods to Ollivander again and firmly picks up a book on boggarts, hoping that his back will make the wandmaker go away.
Ollivander only skirts the edge of the shelf in front of him and stares at Harry again. "Why not? You could become a great wizard if you did."
"I don't want to be a great wizard, sir," Harry says. "I just want to be an ordinary one. And live through the next few years," he adds, because the troll at school in October and the whispers everyone makes about You-Know-Who possibly coming back mean that he's a little worried about that.
Ollivander pauses. "But your wand belongs to a great wizard."
"Thanks, sir."
The man gives him a stern look that says he doesn't appreciate Harry's cheek. Harry is pleased that it sounds like real cheek, given that he barely has a chance to practice it on anyone. "That is not what I meant. Your wand deserves a great wielder. What happens if you cannot give it that?"
"Then I suppose it'll abandon me?" Harry finds himself intrigued with the question. He hasn't heard anything about that, but then, he's only eleven years old and going into his second year, anyway. He looks around. "Are there books on that here?"
"Wandmakers keep our wandlore quiet, Mr. Potter."
"Then how can you expect people to know whether their wands are going to abandon them or not for not being great?"
Ollivander turns away in what looks like disgust. Harry shrugs at him and goes back to the book on boggarts. There's always the chance that Dark creatures can see through his spell protection, so he has a special interest in figuring out how to fight them.
Second year is sort of wild, what with the messages in blood on the walls and the Petrified cat hanging up on Halloween, and then the Petrified people in the hospital wing. Harry takes to always letting someone else lead the way around corners and out of rooms. No one minds that because no one notices him anyway.
Sometimes he does get a puzzled look from one of the other Ravenclaw boys at his bed and trunk, but they always glance elsewhere and forget about him again.
But sometimes Harry doesn't have a choice about being in the corridors by himself, such as when he's in the library reading an interesting book and it gets late and he has to get back to the Ravenclaw common room. He's walking along briskly one night when he sees a tiny red-haired girl by herself.
Harry pauses. It's one thing for him to be by himself, but he recognizes the girl as a Gryffindor, and they've been moving around in packs ever since that Muggleborn firstie got frozen. What's she doing?
Going to the bathroom, apparently. Harry would stop following her out of sheer embarrassment, but before she gets there, she takes a little black book out of a robe pocket and sets it against the wall so she can write in it. Harry blinks. She's taking notes here? Why? On what?
That makes him curious enough to make him stick his head through the bathroom door, with a silent promise to himself to retreat the second he sees her go towards a loo. But she goes towards the sinks instead. Harry watches as she leans towards a sink and whispers something, and the sink twists aside and leaves a black hole.
The girl jumps into the hole without a glance over her shoulder, which is probably a good thing. Harry thinks the way his jaw is opening might manage to break through his protective spell.
And she doesn't come back up, even though he watches for five minutes. And when Harry takes a step back from the bathroom door, he finds he recognizes the place. The wall right outside is where the first message was written and Mrs. Norris got Petrified.
There is definitely something suspicious going on.
Harry thinks for a while about what to do, but in the end, he decides that he's going to send an owl to Professor Dumbledore. He's the one in charge of the school, after all. And people can read Harry's words perfectly well when he writes them down and they leave his hands, even if most of his professors still give their desks puzzled looks when one marked essay seems to dissolve into thin air.
It's not that much of a struggle getting a bird to pay attention to him when he goes to the Owlery, since animals are less affected by the spell anyway, but most of them just want to sleep since it's daytime. Harry finally manages to get one's cooperation when he puts his hand right on the foot of a snowy owl. She ruffles her feathers up and glares at him in a way that makes Harry smile.
"Sorry," he says, and holds out the letter that summarizes what he saw with the red-haired girl and the bathroom. "Can you take this to Professor Dumbledore, please?"
The owl gives a low hoot, looking pleased that he has work for her, and snatches the letter as she reels out the window. Harry looks after her for a second. He suddenly remembers where he saw her before. She's the Boy-Who-Lived's owl, he thinks. Neville Longbottom.
He gnaws his lip for a second, wondering if he'll get in trouble for touching a celebrity's bird, then snorts at himself. He doubts that the owl is going to go around telling on him, and who would know otherwise?
Two days after Harry sends his owl off, Professor Dumbledore stands up at breakfast with a grave look in his eyes. People fall silent one by one around the Great Hall, all staring at him.
Harry watches Professor Dumbledore in interest. Is that what a powerful wizard can do? A great one? Calm a room full of people down just by looking around and not saying anything?
Harry shudders. If Ollivander wants him to be that kind of wizard, then Harry is glad he doesn't have a chance of it.
"I must warn you that a Dark artifact was present at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Professor Dumbledore begins. "It has been responsible for corrupting a student and causing them to write the messages about the Heir of Slytherin on the wall and—Petrify their fellow students. We have confiscated this Dark artifact, and the student will receive help. I ask that you do not speculate," he adds, raising his voice a little as people start to babble. "If you have suspicions, please bring them to your professors. If you think you might have had contact with this artifact, please do the same. Once again, do not gossip. Do not spread rumors. The student affected by this deserves your support, nor your criticism."
Too late, Harry thinks, as Lisa Turpin and Su Li start gossiping furiously next to him. He hopes that the identity of the red-haired girl remains undiscovered, for her sake, but he doubts any reprimand can stop the rumors.
"So, was it you, Longbottom?" a loud voice asks. "Get caught at last, did you?"
Harry shakes his head as he watches Malfoy swagger up to confront Longbottom. There are plenty of Slytherins he doesn't mind at all, or at least they don't seem like smug arseholes when they're answering questions in class or studying in the library. But Malfoy is just…petty.
"Neville was never the Heir of Slytherin, you git!"
Harry sighs and scoops up his scone and a dab of marmalade for it, then leaves the Great Hall. When Weasley and Malfoy start going at it, it's bound to get noisy.
It takes a bit of effort to get Professor Flitwick to concentrate on Harry enough to let him pick his extra courses for third year, so in the end Harry writes a note about wanting to be in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy and leaves it on Professor Flitwick's desk. That does the trick, or at least it does if the note he gets via school owl in return is any indication. Harry smiles and starts making a list of books he wants to take with him from the Hogwarts library for the summer.
He thought about Care of Magical Creatures, which sounds interesting, but he listened to some older Ravenclaws talking about it, and apparently it's just—loud. Harry is finding more and more that he doesn't like loud. He likes quiet.
Runes and maths sound pretty quiet.
"Do you think he really broke out to come after me?"
Harry looks up. Granger, Weasley, and Longbottom are at the table next to him. It's an unusual sight. Granger is the only one who spends all that much time in the library.
"Who else would he be after, mate?" Weasley is leaning forwards with an earnest expression, focused on Longbottom. "I mean, he was muttering about you being at Hogwarts, and you know that he was involved in the—the deaths of your parents." Weasley pauses for a second and squeezes Longbottom's shoulder in support.
Harry watches a little wistfully. There are times he thinks it might be nice to have friends, like right now. No one is ever going to comfort him that way about the deaths of his parents.
Come to think of it, Harry doesn't know any details about how his parents died. He frowns thoughtfully. He ought to look that up. He writes down a little note on the parchment next to him, and goes back to his Charms essay.
"But it just seems like he isn't doing much about hurting me." Longbottom's voice rises. Harry wonders if this is about him not being able to visit Hogsmeade, something even the Ravenclaws were gossiping about. "I mean, he hasn't come to the school at all. The Aurors last saw him trying to get to Albania."
"Trust me, Neville, Lestrange wants to hurt you." Weasley's face is grim. "Which means we should ask Professor Dumbledore to train you in even more advanced spells."
Professor Dumbledore is training Longbottom in advanced spells? Harry perks up. It ought to be easy enough to sneak up into the office, or wherever else they're practicing, and watch those.
Harry doesn't think that he'll have to defend himself against powerful enemies like the ones Longbottom has any time soon, but he's getting a bit bored with the course texts and the books that he can find in the Hogwarts library. Maybe this will teach him something new.
Unexpectedly, the lessons that Harry sneaks into with Longbottom, which are held in the Defense classroom with Professor Lupin, give Harry some insight into his own past.
Professor Lupin admits to Longbottom that he was a close friend of James and Lily Potter, and that he left Britain for years when he learned of their deaths. And Longbottom is the one who asks the question, his voice shaky. "C-can you tell me more about how they died, sir? I know they were f-fighting against You-Know-Who, but that's all I really know. I don't even know who killed them."
Harry puts down his Potions book, which he reads when Professor Lupin is giving Longbottom lectures meant to strengthen his self-confidence, and leans forwards. This is something he wants to know about.
For a second, Professor Lupin stutters as if he didn't expect the question, but then he straightens his spine and answers. "Of course, Neville. But if you could sit down while I tell you about it—I'm afraid I'll have to sit myself…"
Longbottom takes the chair that he usually sits in while having hot chocolate after practicing the Patronus Charm. His boggart is a Dementor—unsurprising, since Harry heard that they cornered him on the train.
Harry's attention, though, is on the professor who's pacing slowly back and forth in front of Longbottom instead of seating himself the way he said he would have to.
"There was a charm protecting them," Professor Lupin murmurs. "The Fidelius Charm. You know it?"
"Yes, sir," Longbottom says at once, while Harry makes a note to look it up. "My p-parents considered going under it, but they didn't think that it was a good idea to tr-trust just one person that way. They trusted the w-wards instead." He looks down, biting his lip. "Maybe if they hadn't, they would still be here. That's wh-what my Gran says."
Professor Lupin leans forwards to pat Longbottom's shoulder. "Well, my friends unfortunately didn't get much better results out of trusting the Fidelius." He swallows and looks for a second as though he wishes he'd never started this conversation. But luckily for Harry's patience, he bulls ahead after a second. "I had three friends when I was in Hogwarts: James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew. We were all in Gryffindor, and we spent a lot of time together, playing pranks mostly. After James started dating Lily, I had another friend."
"It sounds like you had a lot," Longbottom whispers, sounding envious.
Harry wants to snort, then decides he might as well. It's not like they'll notice him anyway. Honestly, Longbottom has two close friends of his own. Granger and Weasley are intensely loyal to him, and supposedly even helped him fight Voldemort during their first year. Harry thinks of how much he would give for two friends like that, if—
Well. Things are the way they are. And the curse has given him too much for Harry to ever really wish for it to be gone.
Lupin gives Longbottom a sad smile. "I felt blessed, truly. But during the war, my friends started suspecting that I was a traitor to them."
"Why?"
Lupin sighs. "It was a hard time to trust anyone. I had a few missions I couldn't discuss due to security reasons, and that contributed to their suspicion." But from the way he looks off to the side, Harry doesn't think that's the whole reason. Longbottom, of course, is too stupid to pursue that, and just nods. "So James and Lily went into hiding under the Fidelius with baby Harry, and Sirius joined them. They made Peter the Secret-Keeper."
"What happened?" Longbottom breathes, sounding caught up in the story. Harry has to admit that he'd like to hear the rest himself.
"It turned out Peter was a traitor." Lupin's voice is deep and full of hatred. "And a Death Eater. He pretended that he wanted to visit in order to pass on some vital information, but he led a contingent of Death Eaters to attack them instead. James and Sirius died fighting them. Lily managed to put Harry in a hidden room and used her own death to seal it with a sacrifice ward that killed Bellatrix Lestrange. They knew perfectly well where he was, but the only person who would have been able to get at Harry was someone who didn't intend him harm. Rabastan Lestrange was there, too, but he gave up in disgust by his own admission when he saw they couldn't reach Harry and left to—go with You-Know-Who to attack your parents."
Harry closes his eyes. The words are burning, seared in his brain, maybe because he knows a little about sacrifice wards just from his extensive reading. His mother couldn't have done that without loving him more than her own life.
Damn.
He almost wishes he hadn't heard this. He doesn't want to carry around the kind of burdens that Longbottom does.
He stands up and slips out of the classroom.
It turns out that Longbottom's confrontation with Lestrange never happens, because Harry finds him first.
Harry has been wandering the school with more restlessness than ever since he heard the story from Lupin about how his parents died. He keeps wrestling with the knowledge, turning it around, trying to decide what to do about it. What is he supposed to do with it? Someone loved him, and died for him, and—
And it shouldn't make that much difference to his day-to-day life.
But it feels like it does.
Harry wonders if someone will love him in the future like his mother did in the past. If he owes his parents' killers some vengeance. Then again, other than Pettigrew and Lestrange, he doesn't know who any of them were. Maybe they're all dead or in prison already. He'll have to look at old editions of the Daily Prophet, if he can, and see.
He rounds a corner that is the last one before the main staircase to Ravenclaw Tower, and freezes as he sees a man in long dark robes crouched in front of him. For a second, he thinks it's a Dementor, but he knows what their freezing cold feels like thanks to the ones on the train, and it's not here.
The man is glancing over his shoulder every few seconds as his hands work feverishly on something in front of him. It appears to be a jeweled golden box, and Harry shivers. It's small, and it doesn't look harmful, but he doesn't like to think of the kind of chaos that Lestrange might be able to unleash even with something that looks innocent.
Lestrange chuckles, and then steps back and admires the box. "For your return, my lord," he whispers.
If that thing can resurrect Voldemort, Harry definitely doesn't think he ought to leave it lying around. He draws his wand and casts one of the hexes that Professor Lupin taught them to burst open an obstacle they think a Dark creature might be hiding behind.
Maybe it wouldn't work most of the time, but the box is small and delicate. It bursts into shining pieces, and Lestrange darts back with a shriek, his eyes wild. He draws his wand, but of course, he has no idea of the right direction to point it in.
"Come out, enemy of pure blood," he hissed, and actually stomps a foot, as if he assumes that will produce some results.
Harry shakes his head and retreats a little way down the corridor. He doesn't know how Lestrange got in, but on the other hand, it doesn't have to be just his problem. He starts a Caterwauling Charm that he learned about from one of Lupin's lectures to Longbottom, and a sharp wail starts in the middle of the corridor.
That brings the fast footsteps of Professor Snape, who must have been patrolling nearby (sometimes Harry thinks that the professor knows someone is sneaking around and breaking the curfew, even though he can't actually catch Harry because of his magical protection). Snape halts the minute he sees Lestrange, and shows crooked yellow teeth as he sneers. "Lestrange."
"Severus! Help me, you traitor! You ought to know that I have the power to bring back our Lord if you just help me—"
That's interesting, Harry thinks, and wants to linger so he can find out what this is about (Snape was a Death Eater? He was sympathetic to Voldemort but never got arrested for it?), but Snape draws his wand and flings a serious curse at Lestrange, one that turns the rocks behind him to sand, so Harry reckons he ought to get going.
In the end, to Harry's annoyance, Lestrange somehow managed to escape. Apparently they captured him, or that's what people are saying, but then someone close to him, or a secret sympathizer among the Ministry's people, freed him. Harry doesn't understand how or why.
If the little box didn't have the chance to resurrect Voldemort and make Harry's life a whole lot more miserable, too, maybe he would just have gone on his way and let Lestrange do whatever he was going to do with it.
The last week of school after exams is marked by something unusual other than Lestrange's escape: Professor Lupin seeks out Harry to talk to him. He holds him after class, in fact, and he's squinting hard at him and sniffing every few seconds. Harry supposes that the squinting is to help him focus on Harry, looking past the protective spell, but he doesn't understand what the sniffing has to do with it. He did bathe this morning.
"I—I was a friend of your parents, Harry." Lupin's voice is strained, and he clenches his fists at his sides. "I suppose you must be wondering why I never sought you out to talk to you."
"Not really," Harry says, balancing his satchel on his shoulder and wishing the spell was working better. He hates people looking at him that way. He doesn't do anything interesting, and anyway, it was creepy when Ollivander did it and it's creepy now. "I thought you must be pretty busy."
Lupin's lip ticks for a second, and then he takes a deep breath and says, "I want you to know that I did want to take you in, but—I travel a lot, and I'm often ill, and various people thought you would be better off with your aunt and uncle." He takes another deep breath, almost huffing in a way that reminds Harry of Longbottom around Potions fumes, and then blurts out, "Are you all right with them?"
"It's all right," Harry says, because that's true, especially now that he hasn't seen the Dursleys in years. "They're not great, but they're not terrible."
"Oh, that's good." Lupin droops a bit. "After some of the things that Lily said about her sister hating magic…"
Harry blinks. That seems strange to him. Then again, the protection spell really must have blunted Aunt Petunia's attitude. He wonders, for the first time, if the protection spell is connected to the sacrifice ward that his mother put on him. But then, how did someone take him out of the corner where he was and get him to the Dursleys' house, if no one really did notice him then?
In the end, Harry is only a little curious about where his protective magic came from. The important thing is that it's here, and it doesn't hurt him, and it means he can drift through life and take food and even books when he needs them—although he does try to pay for them, especially now that he knows how many Galleons are in his vault—and no one really expects anything from him.
It's freedom.
He looks back at Lupin, and realizes the man is blinking around the classroom with a puzzled air. He mutters something that sounds like Harry's name, then shakes his head and goes back to sorting parchments.
Harry leaves with his own shake of his head. If Lupin is sick all the time and travels a lot—and apparently has already announced that he won't be teaching Defense next year, which must mean that he'll be leaving Britain again—then he wouldn't be a good guardian for Harry anyway. To Harry, it sounds like he wanted to make excuses and just not be blamed if Harry found out somehow that he was a friend of Harry's parents.
The protection spell, whoever actually cast it for him, is a much better bargain.