Family
They traveled light and definitely did not follow regulation. It felt a bit like Harry was being set up. Like a stunt Marcus would pull. Only it was Lupin, leading Harry, and Harry’s friends Ron and Neville. That didn’t add up to a stunt. Maybe just another one of those things that seemed foreign because Harry wasn’t blue blooded. Maybe rich people concocted sleeping on the ground as a right of passage when they could have taken a road that stopped at inns with beds. At least Harry knew how to set camp. He set up his tent. Stopped Neville from permanently damaging his own tent. Followed Lupin’s direction to build a fire less likely to be seen.
The question of why they were hiding was constantly at the forefront of Harry’s mind. It kept him from sleeping easy. Was probably why he got up that night. His sword already drawn. Stepped out into the night quiet as a ghost.
The giant waiting for him may well have emerged from his nightmares. Just another beast of a man in patches of leather. Harry would have swung his sword before he realized what he was doing if Lupin hadn’t reached out to stop him. Harry realized his chest was heaving. His body shook. He didn’t put down the sword, coaxing be damned.
The giant noticed him. Despite Harry’s threatening stance, the giant only grinned. He clucked his teeth and declared, “Aren’ ye the spittin’ image of yer father.”
Words beyond comprehension.
Lupin took advantage of a temporarily stunned Harry to pull the sword from Harry’s hands. He tasked Harry with taking the tents down. Harry fell back on following orders. It kept him moving when his head buzzed and his chest was too tight. The other boys were awakened and in the dead of night they moved out. Lupin didn’t give Harry the sword back.
The giant led them to a small boat, which took them to a black vessel that had blended in with the sea and the darkness of night. It was a new moon and clouds blocked out the stars. Harry didn’t spot it until they were practically upon it, gliding past the word “Phoenix” painted across the stern. Then there was a ladder and Lupin said to climb up. Harry climbed.
It wasn’t any easier to see on deck. Just vague shapes that moved in darkness. Harry clenched his fist around empty air. Fingers twitched for a weapon. He nearly lashed out when Ron squeezed his shoulder. “Steady there,” Ron said in a forced calm that probably meant he knew Harry was close to snapping. Ron kept close to Harry all the way to their journey below deck and the first real light that evening.
The boys could hear the sailors overhead. People came and went. Lupin bid them sleep. He said they’d talk in the morning. Neville kept asking questions, confirming the obvious at increasingly higher pitch. Were they on the black ship Phoenix? Did that man have a peg leg? Harry had reverted to tense silence. None of them slept.
In the morning they learned the man did have a peg leg. And a rough face that could have been carved from wood, complete with a wooden eye in one socket. He was the captain and he bruskly told his guests they were getting good wind and would reach their destination in three days. Neville actually asked if they’d been kidnapped. The impossibly named “Mad eye” growled out a gruesome explanation of how they would know if they had been kidnapped before storming away.
Once Mad-eye was out of sight Neville leaned over to the others and hissed, “We’ve been kidnapped by Loyalists!” Ron’s strained laughter held little actual amusement. Lupin tried to sooth them all with a look as he insisted they were fine. Neville didn’t let Lupin explain before ranting about the Loyalist ship Phoenix and how he should have listened to his grandmother. Harry itched for his weapon.
Neville choked back his words when the giant appeared with food. Lupin accepted it gratefully for them all and put bread and dried meat in each of the boys hands so that they wouldn’t refuse to take it. Harry ate because he was told to. Lupin started introductions. The giant was Rubeus Hagrid. The boys were Ron, Neville, and, “Course I know ‘e’s Harry,” Hagrid interrupted. “Weren’ we a ‘appy lot to hear yer were alive.”
Harry stared at the giant, refusing to think of him as a man with a name. In the light, he could see the giant’s leather coat wasn’t like other barbarians. Underneath it he wore clothes in a style Harry might have worn himself, even if the cloth was both heartier and checkered with years’ worth of patches. The familiarity made it easy for Harry to spot all the places the giant may have stored a weapon for ease of access. Harry still had his own knife tucked into a boot. He left it there under the suspicion that if he took it out Lupin would also take it away.
Neville was willing to converse with the giant. He demanded to know if the giant was aware they were sailing on a Loyalist vessel. “I should ‘ope so,” the giant remarked to Neville’s horror. His horror expanded when the giant easily admitted he was a Loyalist. Lupin tried to step in and redirect the conversation to be continued “later” but Ron could read the tea leaves and just dived into the fray. “I’m a Loyalist, too, Neville. We all are.”
This sent Neville into a full blown panic. Harry didn’t catch all of it, but it could be summed up as outrage over breaking vows to the king and more outrage over what will happen to his grandmother when the king finds out Neville is contorting with Loyalists. There were iterations of, “She’s in the City!” over and over again, each more terrified than the last.
Lupin finally gave up on delay and just flat out said, “She’s not in the City, Neville. I told her the plan and she left the day after you did to visit a cousin.” Confusion did a good job of staving off panic, even if it didn’t stop Neville’s blubbering questions about what was going on.
Harry finally bit. “Thought being loyal was a good thing,” he deadpanned.
Neville’s blathering stopped. All eyes turned to Harry. Lupin tried his encouraging smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I suppose it depends on who you are, and who you’re loyal to,” he said softly. “In the case of King Voldermort… Loyalist means someone loyal to an old regime.”
Ah. That made sense. Loyalists would be traitors. Harry slowly turned to look at Ron. His friend had just admitted to being a traitor. They’d trained together in his majesty’s army and Harry was ice cold as he wondered how much of it had been a lie. Then he looked at Lupin, who hadn’t outright admitted it, but wasn’t tricking them onto a boat a bad sign? Harry’s chest tightened and he refused to consider why Lupin had made him work so hard to lead people if he was only going to betray them here and now. Of course, there was also the giant. No need to be a traitor when you’re already the enemy. Just another barbarian Harry needed to kill. Neville at least was an ally. He’d fight well if Harry said he needed Neville to. It was conspicuous, but Harry shifted towards Neville and reached for his knife.
“Neville, your grandmother is a Loyalist,” Lupin said. He saw what Harry was doing but chose to confront him with knowledge instead of violence. Neville almost jumped out of his skin at the words. He launched into an impassioned speech declaring his family’s fealty to King Voldermort that held enough fear in it to raise doubt in its authenticity. Lupin let Neville finish before he pointed out Neville’s parents had been Loyalists, too. That’s why King Voldermort had executed them. The detail Lupin shared about the torture the Longbottoms endured before finally dying made mad-eye’s description of kidnapping look tame. It brought Neville to tears. The ugly, loud kind. Like he was a little boy. Which Harry supposed in that moment he was. Just a boy who was terrified that what happened to his parents would happen to his grandmother, and if he didn’t prove himself to the king, maybe one day himself.
Harry didn’t end up drawing his knife. He stared dead-eyed at the wooden boards beneath them and tried not to be nauseous from the how the ocean made them sway.
Ron reached out a hand to squeeze Harry’s shoulder again. Always there to comfort and support. Harry chose to believe it sincere. Especially when Ron said Harry’s name so Harry would look at him. “You once said you would kill whatever jackass thought it better that soldiers die than have them spend half a day extra saving lives. That jackass is Voldermort.” Not King Voldermort or his majesty. Just a name as if he were any other person. The sort of person Harry could kill.
Harry wasn’t a southerner. He didn’t know who any of these people were. His family chose no side in any war. He was just a boy who needed food who joined the army and got very good at killing. He stayed quiet. He took orders. He accepted that everything bad that ever happened was his fault and it was his destiny to live with the consequences. He figured whatever decision he made here would lead to ruin and he could accept responsibility for his part in it. If he was lucky, Lupin would follow through on Harry’s request and let Harry die first so he wouldn’t have to see whatever worse might happen.
Harry stared back at the floor. He might as well stick with his friends. Die with them instead of strangers. “If you’re not loyal to the king, who do you follow?”
Silence hung for a moment. It was the giant who spoke. “Ye don’ know?” he marveled. “Yer a Potter, Harry.”
As if those words meant anything at all.
-
The ship took them to a castle. Hogwarts, they called it. A huge, rambling, quite scary-looking fortress, with a jumble of towers and battlements that loomed above ocean cliffs jutting out over the sea. A fleet of ships gathered in a port to guard the seaside. The steep approach and thick walls made difficult any attack by land. Harry would not want to be charged with overcoming their defense. He’d tell you to do it from the inside or not at all.
There were too many people lined up to watch their arrival from afar based off the slight rumor of who might have been on that ship. Harry still was skeptical of the giant, but he appreciated how the large man took point and stood between Harry and the gawkers. Ron never left Harry’s side. Neville looked queasy, either from the return to land or his uncertainty over finding himself in a Loyalist castle. In either case he flanked Harry’s other side with equal dedication. Lupin walked behind him. He was joined by a small waif of a woman with a pale heart-shaped face and short spiky hair somehow dyed violet. She nudged Lupin’s shoulder and Lupin smiled at her. Warm and sincere and nothing like the smiles he’d shared with his students.
People still hovered to catch glimpses of Harry Potter. Too many people with soaring expectations. As if Harry was another southern boy whose name meant something he had to live up to. As if the tails of his northern battles captured one tenth of the truth. As if Harry were meant to be a hero. Each step weighed heavier on Harry and crushed breath out of him. Until finally they were out of the line of sight and he could collapse. Unable to breathe. Unable to hear anyone asking him stupid questions like “what’s wrong?” No Cedric to cling to. It felt like forever but maybe it was no time at all. Gradually his surroundings returned to him. He heard Lupin’s calm voice directing him to breathe in, breathe out. Harry followed orders.
Lupin sent Harry to sleep rather than tackle whatever else lay in store for him. Harry was put in a room larger than he’d ever even seen before. He nearly fell into another panic trying to count how many staircase cupboards could fit into the space. But Ron stayed there, too and pulled Harry out of his head. The bed was big enough to split without it being weird that Harry had never thought of Ron that way and Ron being oblivious to the possibility that bunking with another bloke could have a different meaning. It was perfunctory how Ron made Harry take off his boots and outerwear. Somewhat obvious how Ron moved the boots with the knife to the far side of the room, even though Ron kept his weapon under his pillow.
They’d settled into darkness before Harry got up the nerve to ask. “How worried about me are you all?”
He heard the ruffling of sheets as Ron shrugged. “I only worry when you’re angry. You lose yourself, Harry.”
Harry didn’t want to argue. Didn’t want to think too hard and decide whether that was true. Deep down he thought Ron just didn’t know him. Didn’t know that when the anger came out it was just Harry. The truest form of exactly who he was. Didn’t have the energy to talk Ron into lowering his expectations.
-
The castle was filled with strangers to be introduced and explained. Everyone was part of a bigger picture. There was context upon context, all built on a history Harry didn’t know. Harry closed his eyes to it. Tried to center himself in cold efficiency like he used to navigate battle.
Lupin took Harry away from the people. He slipped Harry a brown morsel Harry didn’t recognize and told Harry to eat it. Creamy, bitter sugar burst over Harry’s tongue. The richness overwhelmed but Harry thought he liked it. He licked the sugar off his fingers when the rest was gone. “Better now?” Lupin asked. Harry was surprised he did feel better. As they walked through the castle Lupin shared suggestions of ways Harry could refocus when he was getting overwhelmed. Identify what he can hear. Note what he can smell. Describe what he could touch and feel. Focus on a taste. Build connections to the world instead of distancing himself from it. Lupin told him to practice. Like drills each morning. This was just another routine to follow and that made it easier for Harry to agree.
At the end of their walk Lupin told Harry there was one last person to meet that day, then Harry should go back to his room and rest. The man was tall and thin, with a beard so long it was tucked into his belt.
Harry forgot what Lupin had just told him. He lost track of the feel of his clothes against his skin. He couldn’t smell the sea air. He didn’t see the man in front of him as he was now, a noble lord wearing eccentric clothes in his high tower. He saw only the humble old man who visited the Dursleys once a year. Harry could hear the annual threats to keep his mouth shut as Aunt Petunia forced him into a new outfit, scratchy and second hand but better than the clothes he’d worn down to rags already. He remembered the taste of sweet and tart fizz. The small sweet the man would give Harry before he disappeared into the night. Vernon would always beat Harry after those visits. Harry would bleed on his new clothes and never knew what he’d done wrong.
The man looked sad now. He offered Harry a seat and a yellow sweet with that familiar burst of flavor. He said his name was Albus Dumbledore. He said he was sorry. He had thought Harry would be safest with his family. Harry was thankful Dumbledore didn’t ask any questions about the truth. The older man just offered him another sweet and let Harry eat it at his own speed.
The sweet was gone and its tartness had faded before Harry chose to respond. The Dursleys were not his family. It was all he had to say. Dumbledore nodded slow and wise. Family was more than blood. Harry would find his own, Dumbledore was sure of it.
-
Time had no meaning in that castle. Each day Harry was subjected to new people who’s role he didn’t understand. It became apparent that Ron and Neville were there as buffers. When Admiral Hooch presented an overview of her fleet, Neville floundered through the most basic questions about seafaring so Harry didn’t have to. Ron asked the admiral to walk through the maps she’d brought, and explain different trade routes and military lines of attack. Neville came back in then to ask surprisingly insightful questions about fleet capacity and logistics. The conversation devolved into math Harry couldn’t follow. Then numbers turned into bodies. Harry could only listen so long to conversations that factored death rates into planning food rations and gear.
Lupin followed Harry out of the room. That day he gave Harry a leather bound notebook with the command to write in it at least ten minutes a day. Write anything. If he didn’t want to write, then draw. That night Harry spent ten minutes carving harsh lines across a page until it was covered in black anger just like Harry.
The next day it was Lady Sprout laying out maps of the kingdom marked up by which lands were owned by Loyalists and how each family could contribute to the cause. Ron was the one out of sorts, asking the difference between barley and wheat. Neville joined in the explanation. He knew the value of each bushel and why the concentration of land to the east meant they grew less per acre than could be done in the south. He and Sprout talked about weather patterns, soil condition, crop rotation, and then it took a turn for the worse. The math came back, counting bodies fed and how to allocate resources to prioritize soldiers. How big an army could they feed? How many peasants would they starve to do it? Harry didn’t ask how many young boys would sign up to fight and die because the lure of three meals was too high to turn down.
When he stumbled from the room, Lupin went with him. Lupin helped Harry count breaths until Harry calmed. Then they went back to Harry’s room and Lupin taught Harry a breathing exercise he was to do twice a day, morning and night.
Minerva McGonagall corrected the boys when they called her Lady. Her mother was the daughter of a Marquess who gave up her rank to marry a scholar. For the first time Harry learned what that meant. He had figured there were normal people, and then those noble people. Minerva and her assistant laid out page after page of family names and histories and crests and went into way too detailed an explanation of the various fissions between the nobles. Especially between those “old families” with their “pure blood” and all the lesser nobles, some of which wouldn’t even be seen worthy of their titles. Harry couldn’t track the details, but Ron got into a bickering match with the bushy haired assistant Hermione. They almost came to a shouts over some obscure point in history that defined what made someone a loyalist generations ago. It had something to do with Hardwin Potter ending the Potter dynasty to spite his son, and the following decades of strife as other descendants fought for the throne. Now it meant something different. It was the families who committed to being loyal to the Potter line, no matter which families they married and had children with. Which, if these people were to be believed, meant that even Harry, son of a whore, would be king so long as his father was a Potter.
Harry let the scholars and his pureblood friends argue about history. He pulled out a list of family names and crests of all the people who’d pledged to believe in him. These people must be fools, one and all. Reading was still slow going, especially as he felt he owed it to commit each name to heart. He read until one name sent him tumbling back from the table. Harry ignored everyone as he fled.
Lupin found Harry in his room, clawing jagged black lines into a piece of paper. Harry was trying to count his breaths like Lupin taught him but he kept losing track. Lupin sat down on the floor next to Harry and they stayed there until day faded to night and the panic leached out of Harry, leaving him boneless and dull. Then Lupin gave him his new assignment. The hardest yet. Harry was ordered to share something. One fact that made Harry feel something. Anything. Happiness or rage. Harry just had to share. Then Lupin waited as long as it took. Until Harry said Cedric Diggory had been his captain, and died saving Harry’s life.
-
Every day Lupin told Harry to share something that he reacted emotionally to, and now Harry had to tell him the feeling that went with it.
Fact 1: Cedric Diggory had been his captain, and died saving Harry’s life. Harry felt angry.
Fact 2: He didn’t like how everyone sat around counting how many people would die. Harry felt angry.
Fact 3: He didn’t like how big his room was. Harry felt angry.
Fact 4: That girl Hermione upset Ron again. Harry felt angry.
Fact 5: He saw the grounds keeper hit one of the servants. Harry felt angry.
Fact 6: His nightmares kept Ron up all night and Ron wouldn’t go sleep somewhere else. Harry felt angry.
Fact 7: They were counting bodies again. They’re obsessed with people dying. Harry felt angry.
Fact 8: Dumbledoor said he got a letter from Snape today. Harry felt angry.
Fact 9: They won’t let Neville go see his grandmother. Harry felt angry.
Fact 10: he learned his mother’s name today. Harry felt sad.
-
That day the giant had come to Harry’s room. Ron was out. Harry twitched to grab the knife in his boot. He counted breaths instead. Shoved his hands under his armpits and focused on the feel of his wool sweater under his hands.
The giant came in with a big leather bound book of some sort that reminded Harry of the charts of family history the scholars had brought with them. He laid it out on the table where Harry kept his own book. The giant didn’t mind that Harry didn’t say much. Hagrid maintained his own rolling commentary about his search for this old thing and how excited he was to have found it. Hagrid flipped open a few pages. Sure enough it tracked genealogy. Harry saw splashes of crests as the pages flipped by. Towards the back of the book it got more interesting. The names and crests were accompanied by small paintings. Hagrid slowed down the page turning to show Harry his great, great, great grandfather Hardwin. “Terrible man,” Hagrid grunted. Hardwin had Harry’s flop of black hair and thick brows. The next page was a different paper. Hagrid explained that when Harry’s great, great grandfather Henry left the king’s household he’d had to source for different materials. Henry’s face was painted less severe. The mousy woman next to him was radiant. Harry’s heart ached at the thought he might actually be related to so beautiful and happy a woman. Next was Fleamont and Euphemia. The black hair stayed, but it was Euphemia’s sharper features Harry recognized in his own face. They only had one child. James. The page turned and there he was, painted with a wry smile and a hopeful expression. Right next to a young woman with red hair and bright green eyes. Eyes that Harry would recognize anywhere, since he saw them whenever he looked in the mirror.
Lily. Her name was Lily. So simple and perfect that Harry imagined then he’d always known it. Someone had put her in the book with one of those squiggly decorative lines connecting her to James. That over exaggerated decorative thing nobles seemed obsessed with. The sort of marking that meant spouse. Like she’d been more to James than anyone told Harry might be possible. Like they’d been married and in love. And underneath their names was that of their child: Harry James Potter.
-
Turns out Lupin had lied to the army about what they were doing. He’d told them he was escorting the new officers to their posts before immediately going off course. Traveling by sea bought them time so that Lupin could orient Harry to the truth as he saw it. Their time had run out. They had to make a choice. Did they stay there at Hogwarts and alert the king and his army that something was awry, or did they go to their posts. It would put their lives at risk, but it would buy time. Harry had been inundated with information for over two weeks about all the supplies and strategies the Loyalists had prepared. They weren’t without resources. It would just always be tight. They’d always be doing math over who they’d be most comfortable risking death on so others could live. They’d have to focus resources on protecting what they had, else risk catastrophe.
Harry asked Lupin to choose. Lupin didn’t bother to give him a denial. Just that warm smile and sincere encouragement.
Harry had low expectations. Catastrophe was inevitable. So Harry chose to leave. He hoped if someone had to die he’d go first. He’d buy time for the Loyalists’ stores to grow and all the people he left behind could fight on without him.
That night he told Lupin fact 11: Harry wasn’t a Loyalist. He was just Harry Evans. Harry felt sad.