“Don’t Leave Me.”

Harry knew that Sirius had been in a foul mood and he didn’t blame him. If Harry had started school and only heard negative things about his dad (or himself, in Sirius’s confusing case) then he might be on edge too. 

If there was anything guaranteed to either make Sirius furious or cheer him right up though, it was their last class of the day: Potions. 

Harry had planned on trying a bit harder, staying a bit quieter, so that he didn’t have quite so many people hating him in his second go-around. Sirius had ruined that though when Snape arrived to fetch them for Hogwarts. 

“You can’t - can’t bully him,” Harry warned Sirius on their way back down to the dungeons for their first class. Harry kept an eye out for his friends, but so far they only had the other Slytherin first years. 

Who, Harry had to begrudgingly admit, weren’t really as terrible as he thought they would be. Malfoy was Malfoy, but Theo had been nothing but polite (if curious when Harry or Sirius slipped up), and Daphne Greengrass had been heartbroken for Harry when he had tried to clear Sirius’s name. 

Not the new Sirius that was the old Sirius who was young again, but the Sirius who didn’t get a chance to grow older and escape Azkaban…

Time travel was so confusing. Harry had no idea how Hermione had managed it for her entire third year. 

“I am not a bully,” Sirius insisted when they rounded the corner to enter the dungeons. “Snivellus is a bully and a death eater.”

“Who’s Snivellus?”

Harry huffed at Sirius, who was the bloody loudest talker Harry had ever known, then looked at where Malfoy was peering at them. 

“Your dad, Malfoy,” Harry said deadpan, daring Malfoy to disagree. “He’s a death eater.”

“And apparently a bully,” Blaise Zabini added. 

Harry wanted to like Blaise, he was quick witted and had never made Harry miserable as a student. It was the way that Blaise seemed determined to make Sirius his closest friend that kept rubbing Harry badly. 

Malfoy’s cheeks turned pink and Harry felt less than a foot tall when his eyes seemed to look wet. Malfoy had never looked hurt when he and Harry argued before… but Malfoy hadn’t insulted Harry yet and it was Harry who kept rebuffing him every turn. 

Which made Harry a bully.

“My father is not a bully,” Malfoy said hotly. He sniffed and then stormed past them, knocking Harry’s shoulder as he did. 

“I noticed he didn’t say that his father wasn’t a death eater though,” Blaise whispered with a tiny grin. 

“Go away,” Harry told him flatly. When Blaise didn’t seem to understand him, Harry made a shooing motion with his hand. “I’m trying to have a private conversation, mate.” 

Blaise shrugged and then walked ahead of Harry and Sirius, leading the others to the classroom. Harry waited until they were gone before giving Sirius an unhappy look. 

“It’s hard separating them from who they were, or… who they will be?” Harry muttered to Sirius, taking a moment to shake himself and get his head right before class. 

It was true. Only a few days over a month ago, Malfoy had been turning Harry’s friends in to Umbridge for expulsion. Malfoy had called Hermione a mudblood and he had taken pleasure in making Harry miserable. It had been Malfoy’s fault that Harry had been banned from quidditch and Malfoy who had wanted to see Harry be tortured. 

It just wasn’t the Malfoy who Harry openly insulted in front of their classmates. 

“Who said they have to be little bastards?” Sirius said, picking at his nails in a way that was entirely unconcerned. 

“You must be joking,” Harry said, rolling his eyes at Sirius’s hypocrisy. “You started in on Snape the second you saw him.”

“Snape is a grown man who has been a bastard his entire life,” Sirius said. “Draco’s a dumb kid.”

Harry would have continued the argument, or asked more about Sirius and Snape because Sirius had made a strange comment about Harry’s mum and Snape before, but they were interrupted. Harry heard footsteps approaching and he turned to look when a group of students rounded the corner. 

There, right in the front with her books clutched to her chest and her backpack smartly strapped over both her shoulders, was tiny Hermione. And behind her, jostling Seamus Finnigan and snickering away, was a much shorter Ron. 

Harry’s heart began beating quickly and he wasted no time before walking up directly to Hermione. Ever since they missed the train, Harry had been practicing what he wanted to say to his friends to convince them to be friends with him again. 

“Hello.” Harry smiled at Hermione and offered her his hand. “My name’s Harry. Er…” he realized Hermione couldn’t actually shake his hand since she had her books in her arms. “Can I carry your books?” he offered politely, improvising. 

Hermione had been painfully lonely her first couple of months at Hogwarts. Her and Harry had talked about it during their second year when Harry felt isolated in the school for the first time. Harry didn’t think he would have to work hard to make friends with Hermione and he wasn’t entirely sure how to befriend Ron again since they were in different houses. 

Hermione was easy though. She positively beamed at Harry’s introduction, though she didn’t relinquish any of her treasured books. 

“Hello!” she said. Harry had gotten used to her teeth after she had them shrank in their fourth year, but the sight of her oversized front teeth made him feel nostalgic. 

They had been such children before. 

“My name’s Hermione Granger,” she said promptly. It sounded rather practiced and Harry had asked her once if she ever practiced introducing herself, as seamlessly as she always did it. 

She did, only because she said that she hoped as a child that if she introduced herself to enough children that one of them might be her friend. 

Harry crossed his fingers in his pockets and hoped that his one line, his one way he hoped to win Hermione over quickly, would work for him. 

“I like your name. Are you named from the Shakespeare book?” Harry asked, knowing she was. “A queen, right?”

Those were the only details Harry could recall, though Hermione had once told him and Ron the entire story of the book her parents chose her name from. And when Hermione lit up, Harry knew that he would get to hear all the details again. 

“You read Shakespeare?” Hermione started walking and didn’t seem to notice or mind when Sirius joined them to head to the classroom. Sirius rolled his eyes and mimed falling asleep, but since Sirius had never been Hermione’s favorite person it didn’t bother Harry to see ur feeling be returned. 

“Harry loves Shakespeare,” Sirius said before Harry could answer Hermione. Sirius was grinning in a way that Harry knew Hermione would read badly. “Can’t get enough of Shakespeare. To be or not to be and all that,”

“Oh.” Hermione’s excitement dimmed quickly. “You’re teasing me.”

“Sirius is, I’m not,” Harry assured her quickly, throwing his hand out to smack Sirius. “I’ve never read it, but I had a friend who did. I just remember they told me about it.”

Hermione seemed appeased by Harry’s answer, smiling at him once again. They had to split up when they entered the classroom though, as Harry sort of assumed that Snape’s classes were always divided by house. 

Harry tried to give Ron a friendly nod when he caught his eye, but Ron didn’t return it. Harry knew that befriending Hermione first would make it harder to befriend Ron, who hadn’t liked Hermione at all at first, but Harry also remembered what it was like to be lonely and how Hermione had always been his friend. 

When everyone took their seats and Harry saw Hermione had been the student left without a partner at her desk in front, he hesitated for a second. Harry wanted to sit with her, but he couldn’t leave Sirius alone either. 

“Can you keep from getting us in trouble for one class?” Harry whispered to Sirius when he sat down beside him. “He’s a teacher, Siri.”

“And I am a student, which means he carries the burden of professionalism, not me,” Sirius said with what he might have considered to be an innocent smile. 

A simple ‘no, Harry, I can’t keep us out of trouble for one class’ would have sufficed. 

Snape entered the room as he always did, with a dramatic fluttering of his black robes and a loud snap of the door closing behind him. 

Sirius must have been truly trying to hold his tongue, but when Snape insulted him within sixty seconds of class starting, Harry knew it would be a lost cause. 

“Sirius Black.” Snape had been taking attendance and he sneered Sirius’s name in a way that had Harry bristling. “An unfortunate name.”

Harry expected Sirius to have a smart retort, it wasn’t as if Harry wasn’t annoyed as well. What Harry didn’t expect was for Draco Malfoy to be the first of them to reply. 

“It’s a Black family tradition to name the males after stars, Professor.”

It wasn’t rude, it was perfectly polite. It was also a defense of Sirius and that was what Harry didn’t understand. 

Snape didn’t dock points or tell Malfoy to not speak out of turn as he would have if it had been Harry or one of the Gryffindors. Snape only curled his lip and continued his roll. When he reached Harry, he had the same harsh comment as he did Harry’s first-first year. 

“Harry Potter.” Snape looked at Harry and Harry could tell in the glittering malice of his eyes that Sirius had been right, Harry would never have made Snape feel so much as neutral toward him. “Our newest celebrity…”

Unlike in Harry’s first year when the Slytherin students had chortled at the jab, it was quiet. Only Sirius’s teeth grinding together was audible, and that was likely only because he and Harry were side-by-side. 

Harry blinked at Snape and tried to not think of the abuses, the insults, the constant anger that Harry had never earned on his own merits. 

It was hard, very hard. 

“Here,” Harry said evenly. 

After role call was finished, Snape jumped in his tirade about what a subtle and precise form of magic that potions would be. Harry didn’t feel any of the anticipatory excitement as he did when he had truly been eleven. Harry would never be given a fair shake in that class, but at least he had spent the last year studying it the hardest, desperate to pass the OWL for it. 

“Potter!” Snape snapped Harry’s name and Harry braced himself. He didn’t recall the precise questions he had been asked before, when Snape humiliated him in front of the class, but he was much more prepared than he had been nearly five years ago. 

“What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

Harry tried to think very quickly. Asphodel was used in most draughts, it was the wormwood that made it special. Wormwood was toxic in almost every phase, so it had to be…

“Would it be Draught of Living Death, sir?” Harry asked, only a bit of a guess. 

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Snape asked. Since Snape didn’t say no, Harry thought he might be right. 

“Telling you, sir.”

Snape sneered harder, which must mean it was correct.

“What is the difference, Black, between monkswood and wolfsbane?”

Harry tried to not smile, but really Snape had chosen the one person in the room who would know the most about wolfsbane, aside from Snape himself. 

“It’s the same thing,” Sirius drawled, challenging Snape with his eyes and smirk. “Aconite can also be another name for it. And it’s, hm, two stems in a standard batch of the Wolfsbane Potion, isn’t it?”

“Three if you want to minimize the post-change nausea,” Harry corrected Sirius. Harry had studied the potion intently when Lupin told him he couldn’t take it anymore after leaving Hogwarts as a professor. Harry had the mad idea that he might try brewing it and sending it to Lupin, but it was incredibly complicated. 

“Did I ask for comments?” Snape demanded of Harry. “One point from Slytherin.” 

Harry didn’t mind the point loss, he still wanted Gryffindor to win the Cup. 

It didn’t look good for Gryffindor though when class began. Snape gave them all instructions and then released them to begin brewing their first potion, a cure for boils. Harry and Sirius had no problems, Sirius actually seemed to be a rather competent brewer which shouldn’t have surprised Harry. Sirius seemed like the type of bloke who excelled at anything he felt like doing. 

It was poor Neville, who shared a cauldron and desk with Ron, that became the focus of Snape’s ire. Harry forgot, but was quick to remember, that Neville had melted a cauldron in their first class. By the time all the students had to climb on their chairs to keep from having their shoes melted, Harry was hushing Sirius from his loud snickers. 

Harry knew that Sirius was watching Snape, enjoying how angry he was, but Neville was insecure when he was younger. It got better, loads better in the DA they formed, but Neville looked close to tears when Snape rounded on him. 

“Idiot boy!” Snape snarled, clearing the potion with a wave of his wand. Neville was drenched in the botched potion and Harry winced when boils erupted on his face. 

“Take him to the Hospital Wing,” Snape told Dean, who had the table beside Neville, irritably. “And two points from Gryffindor for allowing your partner to make such a mistake.”

Nobody argued that they weren’t partners and Harry was impressed by Sirius’s restraint. It turned out that Sirius was simply too busy plotting ways to ruin Snape’s life. 

“Here’s what I’m thinking…” Sirius was nothing but cheerful on their walk to the dorm to drop their bags off. Harry had always known Sirius was a bit moody, it was different seeing the swing of happy-angry-sad all in one day for himself though. 

“I think I’d kill him if I had to have detention with him, so best to not push too hard in his class, right?” Sirius said, not needing to explain to Harry who ‘him’ was. “But imagine his face if every year, for the next seven years, Gryffindor won the House Cup?”

Since Harry already had the same vicious and petty thought, he nodded vigorously. Snape was a bastard and it was more obvious when Harry could see how he treated first years. Neville was eleven and it was his first day of classes. Who was Snape to call him an idiot in front of the others? Snape wasn’t a teacher, he was a git and a bully. 

“Except we’ve already won Slytherin nineteen points,” Harry said. He grimaced when he made absolutely sure that there weren’t any others standing too close to them. It was beginning to make Harry extra paranoid, never free to talk with how the others liked to flock around them. 

“And I don’t actually fancy acting stupid,” Harry told Sirius quietly. “Especially not with you showing off every chance you get.”

“Well how many chances do I have to be a magical prodigy?” Sirius grinned unrepentantly. “Don’t worry, we’ll lose points. Me and your dad used to lose hundreds of points every year. It was Remus and Peter who won them back for us.”

At the reminder of Pettigrew, Harry was quicker to dump his bag off so he and Sirius had time to walk past the Gryffindor Tower. Harry wanted to get the map, then use the map to get Pettigrew… though he didn’t know how to talk the Weasley twins out of their map two years before they had given it to him out of pity before. 

“That’s easy,” Sirius said when Harry told him how he got the map the first time and the troubles they might have that time. “I made the bloody thing, it’s mine, I want it back.”

Harry couldn’t keep shushing Sirius, even if the corridor they were in had too many portraits and other students out of class for the day who continued staring at Harry. Harry forgot how often people used to stare at him… it had gotten better over the years, though it always got worse when something mental happened and Harry was involved. 

At least if they got the map, got Pettigrew, then figured out what to do about Quirrell (it crossed Harry’s mind very briefly to mention it to Dumbledore… but even at eleven Harry had gotten the impression that Dumbledore knew and had wanted to see it play out) then they could minimize some of the problems Harry faced year after year. 

“You can’t tell the twins you made the map,” Harry reminded Sirius, starting to feel like Hermione when she had to repeat the incantation to him multiple times while he studied it. “We can tell them our dads made it, but what proof would we have?”

Sirius’s face furrowed up in thought and Harry kept glancing at him while they walked. Sirius was creative, Harry was sure he would find something. It took him nearly the entire walk to the Gryffindor Tower before his expression cleared away and he snapped his fingers. 

“Remus!” Sirius said loudly. “We tell them that Remus told one of us, fucking you probably since everyone hates Sirius Orion, about the map! Where’d the twins get it, eh? We set it up for Filch to nab it off Peter in our seventh year.”

“Filch’s office in their first year,” Harry said. He considered Sirius’s idea and thought it was their best one. “Don’t - don’t antagonize them, alright? We just want the map so we can get Pettigrew.”

“And then kill Pettigrew slowly.” Sirius nodded. “Got it.”

Yeah, they were definitely receiving too much attention. Harry didn’t want to be called crazy again, but it might be best in their case if the other students thought the two of them were lunatics. 

It didn’t help that after a moment of thought Harry had automatically given the password at the painting of the Fat Lady where they walked right in. The feeling of home was so strong and everything had been so strange that Harry thought he might weep inside the Gryffindor rooms. 

He didn’t, thankfully, because he also made himself and Sirius the center of attention the second he straightened up from crawling through the tunnel. 

“Er…” Harry looked around at his classmates, kids he had grown up with. They didn’t look hostile, necessarily, they just didn’t look friendly at all. 

Harry supposed that if he saw a pair of Slytherin students let themselves in the Gryffindor dorm that he might not have been so friendly himself. 

“Hi.” Harry grinned nervously toward Percy Weasley - Percy who hadn’t yet told Ron to make better friends, who hadn’t yet traded his family for a position in the Ministry. “Are your brothers here?” Harry looked around hopefully. “Fred, George, and Ron?” 

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Percy frowned, slowly rising to his feet. “Students aren’t allowed in house dorms that aren’t their own. Who gave you the password?”

“Probably his giiiirlfriend.” Seamus Finnigan sat on the floor near the fire and he grinned at Harry, not really in a playful way, but Harry still blushed red. 

What a thing to say in front of Sirius about Hermione. 

“She didn’t,” Harry said quickly just as Sirius said, “She isn’t his girlfriend, dumbarse.”

Percy looked apoplectic, probably because of Sirius’s cursing, so Harry was quite relieved when Ron hopped down the staircase from the dorm with the twins behind him. 

“Ron, hi.” Harry focused on Ron and pretended it wasn’t sad to see Ron seem so shocked at seeing Harry. “We didn’t get to meet earlier, I’m Harry.” 

“Uh…” Ron’s eyes kept flickering to Sirius so much that Harry looked over as well to make sure Sirius wasn’t doing anything daft. Sirius was only leaning his hip on the wall with his arms crossed. 

“Hi?” Ron said to Harry. “I’m Ron?”

“Who let snakes in the lion den?” One of the twins groaned when he pushed past Ron to get in front of Harry, the other following. “You can’t resort yourself, mates. I think you’ve got to file an official form. Right, Perce?”

“You cannot be ‘resorted’,” Percy huffed, crushing the brief hope that Harry felt. “And take this conversation to the corridor, please, before I have to report this to your Head of House.” 

“Can we talk to you two, please?” Harry asked the twins quickly. “Out in the corridor, I guess?”

Fred and George exchanged a look and Harry knew they were talking with their eyes. It was a strange and useful talent they had, one that Harry wished he had with his friends to save time and effort. 

“Sure,” they finally decided. “Lead the way, little snakes!” 

Since Ron didn’t follow them, Harry tried to give him a friendly wave goodbye. He couldn’t tell if Ron was warming up to him or not, but Ron did at least lift his hand, looking a little bewildered as he did. 

In the corridor, Harry nudged Sirius to get him to begin. What Harry wanted was for Sirius to politely explain their the map was technically their property and they would please like to have it in memory of their dads. 

What Sirius did was pull his wand and flick it at his side, silently summoning the map that whizzed from one of the twins’s shoulder bags directly to Sirius’s hands. 

“Hey!” That had to be Fred, Harry judged it from the ‘G’ he saw embroidered on the corner of his back. “That’s ours!” 

George took a step toward Sirius and Harry stepped forward hastily, pulling his own wand out. The twins were brilliant, but they were third years and Harry had just finished his OWLS. If they thought they’d jinx Sirius to take Sirius’s map back, they were wrong. 

“It’s not,” Harry said, making an effort to keep it from turning into a real fight. “My dad was Prongs, his was Padfoot.”

“And I’m the Queen of England,” George snorted, glaring hard at Harry. “Pull the other one, mate.”

Sirius unfolded the map, his eyes filled with mocking laughter, and he didn’t have to touch it with his wand, the map activated itself with a single stroke of Sirius’s finger down the center of it. 

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

The twins and Harry got to watch as the map drew itself across the parchment, line by line, until every floor and every occupant covered it. 

Harry gave the twins a wide smile, smug but not cruel. “You wouldn’t try and keep an heirloom from a couple of orphans, would you?”

As it turned out, they would try. 

It had been a short fight, not even a contest. Harry didn’t feel great about leaving the twins stuck to the wall or the blatant looks of fear that he was given when he and Sirius sauntered off afterward. 

“Let’s nick some food from the kitchen and go outside,” Sirius suggested when they brushed themselves off from the short duel. Sirius hadn’t stopped looking at the map once. It was his memorization of the castle and Harry’s hand on his wrist that probably kept him from bumping in walls. 

“Fine by me,” Harry sighed. Harry had enough of having eyes on him and it was only the first day back at Hogwarts. They weren’t all curious stares that usually centered on his forehead either, some of them seemed to genuinely not like Harry. 

Harry couldn’t imagine why, he hadn’t even been accused of being the Heir of Slytherin or being an attention-seeking liar yet. 

At least the house-elves fawned over them both equally, just as they did every student as far as Harry knew. Maybe not Hermione, but she did insult them every time she saw them, even if it was done with the best intentions. 

Sirius carried the map out of the castle, his eyes hardly ever leaving the page, while Harry lugged a basket of food. There were plenty of other students lounging on the lawn, flying on the quidditch pitch, and generally enjoying the nice weather. To try and have some privacy for their conversation, Harry took them to the very edge of the Forbidden Forest. 

It was nice, sitting in semi-silence for a while. Harry pulled his food from the basket and didn’t feel rushed to eat while he languidly looked around the lawns. He got distracted for a moment, seeing Hagrid outside his hut - didn’t he invite Harry to his hut on his first-first day? Did Harry remember wrong?

Then Harry heard something that hit him like a bucket of cold water—

“When do you think you’ll have tryouts, Cedric? I wanted to try out for Keeper?”

Harry couldn’t have stood any faster if he was cursed. It was one name carried over to him with the evening wind and Harry started jogging, desperate to see - to know…

Walking away from the quidditch field with broomsticks leaned over their shoulders were two boys. One was unfamiliar to Harry, the other painfully so. 

Tall, even at fourteen, with dark blonde curls that lightened in the sunlight… Harry knew if he looked toward him that Harry would see his kind warm eyes and a handsome face. 

Harry cupped his hands around his mouth and needed to see his face, “Oi! CEDRIC!” 

It worked. Cedric Diggory turned and immediately saw Harry standing at the top of a small hill, gawking at him. 

Cedric smiled and waved, because even if he was confused then he didn’t show it. Cedric was kind and polite and alive. 

Cedric Diggory was —

“Kill the spare.”

“Avada Kedavra!”

— alive. 

Harry almost couldn’t believe it. He felt like he was in a semi-daze when he walked back to Sirius. 

All of Harry’s inner complaints seemed so trivial when he saw Cedric, alive and well, talking about quidditch tryouts and walking across the lawns. Harry had a chance to save him - save him like he didn’t at the graveyard. 

Why should Harry care about being in Slytherin or that maybe Ron wasn’t as instantly his friend when there was a boy who had a chance to grow to adulthood because of Harry getting to redo everything with his second chance?

It was so petty that Harry was ashamed of himself. 

“We should go get Pettigrew now,” Harry said firmly when he returned to where Sirius waited. Sirius started to say something and Harry cut him off. 

“If we get Pettigrew now then we can get the stone. I can try and get Voldemort out of Quirrell’s body.”

“Harry.”

Harry continued pacing and thinking, not registering Sirius’s interruption or grim demeanor. “If we figure out what to do about Barty Crouch Junior then we can stop Voldemort from coming back, Sirius.”

“Harry… Pup…”

“That’s what we can do, we can stop him,” Harry said. “And if we do that? There are people who will live.”

Live long and happy lives, not die in a graveyard at only seventeen.

“Harry!” Sirius yelled Harry’s name and it finally broke through Harry’s thoughts. Harry paused in his pacing and blinked. 

“What?”

Sirius waved the map and his mood had taken another definite downturn as he tried to show Harry what was on the map. 

“It’s Peter. He’s not here. He’s gone.”

Or, Harry mentally corrected himself while his blood ran so cold that goosebumps erupted on his arms, while he tried to show Harry what - who - wasn’t on the map.