Minerva sighed deeply as the door closed behind Hermione Granger. The last day of teaching was over - finally, a Christmas break, albeit a break interspersed with marking. She held out her hands and the fifth years’ essays soared towards her, stacking themselves in alphabetical order.
Even with the stack of work she had to complete, it would be restful. Most of the students would be getting on the Hogwarts Express in the morning and she’d have a little bit of peace. Somehow, since Harry Potter had set foot in the castle, peace had been hard to come by. But this year, for the first time, Harry Potter had somewhere to go for the holidays: Grimmauld Place.
So really, there was nothing at all that could ruin Minerva’s Christmas. Was there?
Harry chewed nervously on his lip. It was the last night at Hogwarts, and he was excited to see Sirius for the holiday, but he had some big news for his godfather - and he didn’t know how Sirius would take it.
“It’s weird, having this almost-parent figure that you’re really close to but hardly know,” he murmured. “I just… I feel like sometimes, I remind him of my dad, and that’s why he likes me. But this isn’t something else that makes me more like dad. In fact, it’s about as far from dad as it can be.”
“I dunno,” Fred said comfortingly, slinging his arm around Harry’s shoulders and pressing a kiss into his hair. “I’m a redhead. Clearly you and your dad had some aspects of taste in common.”
Harry grinned despite himself and shoved Fred in the ribs. “Yeah, but you’re a gangly, freckly git, and I don’t remember Lily Evans ever being described in those words.”
“Oi. Don’t you be insulting my twin, or I’ll have to gallantly rescue him,” George called from the other side of the Room of Requirement, where some of the DA had taken to spending their free time.
“Hey, your twin is the one that always starts it,” Susan countered, standing up and putting herself between Harry and George.
“Erm, I was joking,” George said. He eyed Susan with a healthy amount of respect. “Are you, erm, heading home for Christmas?” He added, scratching at something invisible on his robes.
“I’m meeting my aunt,” Susan replied coolly. “Why?”
“Well, I thought maybe we could sit together on the train.”
Fred chortled quietly. “He’s always liked the spitfires,” he whispered. “Redhead and a little feral, right up his street.”
Harry laughed. “I can see it working,” he said. His smile faded as he wondered how his Christmas was going to work out.
“Mister Bailey, now, please!” Minerva called exasperatedly. The last student to board hurried onto the train, apologising profusely and sporting the widest of smiles.
“Merry Christmas, Professor!” He called.
It occurred to Minerva that Trent Bailey had no family. She wondered where he was going, and eyed him as he fell into a seat next to Luna Lovegood and opposite Ginny Weasley.
Curious. There were a lot of inter-house and inter-year friendships developing this year, it seemed. She had seen a lot of muttering and high-fiving in the corridors, when Umbridge and her spies were absent; but with the various clubs all cancelled, she could only imagine where such friendships were managing to form.
She would not imagine. It was Christmas, and the whole Weasley Clan, Potter and Granger were all on the Hogwarts Express to King’s Cross. She didn’t need to imagine. It was time for some peace.
She stretched herself out and took a deep, rejuvenating breath of the crisp Scottish winter air, and transformed smoothly into her Animagus form. The silver tabby trotted off the platform and back towards the castle, and if there was a slight spring in its step, well, there was no-one around to notice.
Well, except one.
“She makes that look so easy,” Hermione sighed.
“Yeah, well, you’ll be able to do that in a few months,” Ron said confidently. “It’s not meant to be an easy process, is it?”
Hermione shushed him. “It’s also illegal,” she muttered. “But it could be vital, with the war. You should be learning too.”
“Brewing Polyjuice in our second year was illegal,” he pointed out. “I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about getting stuck as some sort of hybrid animal-human thing and not being able to get back.”
“Which is why we don’t practise alone,” Hermione lectured. “You know someone else can reverse it.”
“I know,” Ron sighed. “I dunno, it feels easier with the DA. Everyone is there and supporting us, and it feels like even Hogwarts is rooting for us, you know?”
“She is,” Luna told him seriously as she sat down opposite. Ginny, Susan and Trent followed, cramming into the compartment.
“Harry is having his fourth meltdown of the journey,” Ginny informed them. “Honestly, I don’t know what he thinks Sirius is going to do. I’m certain that Sirius is gay, just like I knew Harry and Fred were. Apparently my gaydar is pretty good.”
“Since when?” Ron asked, gaping at her.
“Since forever,” she said, tossing her fiery red hair over her shoulders. “And Charlie isn’t, by the way, before you ask.”
Ron closed his mouth.
“Who’s Charlie?” Trent asked eagerly.
“Ron and Ginny’s older brother,” Hermione told him. “He works in Romania with dragons.”
“Dragons? Wow!”
Hermione reflected that Trent, despite being only a year younger than Luna, seemed very young. He was always smiling, always looking on the bright side - he was sunshine and innocence incarnate. And yet he was vicious at the DA meetings, matched in the ferocity and speed of his spell-casting only by Susan, who, it seemed, would burn down the world before the world hurt Harry.
How strange, that two teenagers who owed nothing to Harry himself, but hated everything that Voldemort stood for, could be so passionately driven to follow The Boy Who Lived. The Boy who was currently in full panic mode about coming out to his convicted murderer and escaped prisoner godfather.
Hermione sighed. Boys.
By the time Minerva arrived at Number 12 Grimmauld Place on Christmas Eve in the late evening, everyone had settled in. She had not been forewarned of the chaos inside the house, though, and - expecting only the usual suspects - she swept in with her stern bun loosened and her teaching robes absent.
Only to be met by Trent Bailey, frozen halfway down the stairs, his mouth open in comical surprise. Well, at least she hadn’t been the only one uninformed, she supposed.
“Mister Bailey,” she whispered, in deference to the portraits behind the curtains to her left. “I did wonder where you were spending your Christmas break.”
“Hi, Professor.” He stood awkwardly on the stairs. “Erm, are you staying? Shall I make tea?”
Minerva barely suppressed a smile at this. Hufflepuffs, she thought. She hung up her cloak. “That would be lovely,” she agreed crisply.
As if summoned by the very thought of her house, Susan Bones appeared at the top of the stairs, wand drawn.
“I hope you’re not intending to use that, Miss Bones,” Minerva said, arching an eyebrow.
“Only if the need arises, Professor. What human transfigurations did you threaten during my first ever lesson with you?”
Minerva was taken aback by the challenge, especially given the protections on the house, but she approved. “I threatened to turn Misters Potter and Weasley into either a map or a pocket watch,” she replied. “What is your earliest memory of me?”
“You came to see me and my aunt Amelia every year after my parents were killed,” Susan said quietly. “I remember your… third visit, it must have been. I was only just five, and only just understanding what I’d lost. You curled up next to me as a cat for hours…” she trailed off. Trent was staring at her.
“Well done for remaining vigilant, Susan,” Minerva said. “Mister Bailey, you could learn something from your friend.” Trent blushed scarlet. “Now, about that tea.”
“She called you Susan!” Trent hissed as Susan bypassed him on the stairs, tucking her wand back up her sleeve.
“She has done since I was a child,” Susan told him. “She was a great comfort to us both, during the Quiet Years. I’m not glad of the war returning, but I am glad to have somewhere to channel my anger.”
They arrived in the kitchen behind Professor McGonagall, who was greeting Mrs Weasley and Bill and Fleur like old friends. Most of the rest of the DA who didn’t have families to visit over Christmas had been adopted into the fold, and Susan could read, in the slight climb of her eyebrows towards her softer-than-usual hairline, the unspoken surprise in Minerva’s face.
“Goodness, Molly, it’s going to be quite a feat feeding all these mouths tomorrow,” she exclaimed.
“Yes, well, if you could hurry up and find a work-around for Gant’s elementals, dear, it would help,” Molly said cheekily. Hermione laughed, but no-one else caught on, and Minerva quietly despaired.
But it is Christmas, she reminded herself. They’re not in study mode.
She took a seat beside Hermione and began to discuss whether there could be an exception, despite knowing from her own extensive research that there was not; it was, if nothing else, a pleasure to see the girl use that impressive brain of hers.
“Harry, get out here,” Susan called, banging on the twins’ door. “You three are the only ones not downstairs, and Professor McGonagall has just arrived. It’s rude.”
The door opened a crack. Harry, hair even less neat than usual and eyes tired, blinked blearily at her. “I was napping,” he said.
“And now you’re not,” Susan said tartly. “Come on. Where are our boys?”
Susan, after a train ride with George, had latched as fiercely to him as she had to Harry, although in an entirely different way. George seemed somewhat dazed by it, and yet Harry had never seen him happier.
“They’re planning something,” Harry groaned, heaving the door open to let her in and folding his arms over his bare chest.
“Your downfall, probably, if you haven’t talked to Sirius yet,” Susan said.
“I will, I just -”
“I know,” she said softly. “Aunt Amelia is all I have, too. I wouldn’t want to tell her anything that might change that.”
She gripped his hand and squeezed it, hard. Harry squeezed back gratefully.
“Right, you two,” she said, and made a beeline for the desk, where the twins were mirroring each other’s hunched positions as they pored over equations on parchment. “Up, up, up.” She chivvied them both out of their seats and towards the door, a bewildered George still holding his quill. Fred, grinning, stopped and stooped to place a hurried kiss on Harry’s lips, before the door banged shut behind them.
Harry checked the time. It was only a few minutes until midnight. He pulled on a t-shirt and his glasses and watched the minutes trickle past on the digital clock the twins had formed from some kind of permanent tempus charm.
It reminded him of his eleventh birthday.
Good things happened then, he thought. So why not.
He waited until the screen showed four zeros, then closed his eyes and wished, hard, for a family Christmas, and for Sirius to accept his relationship with Fred, and for everything to be alright.
Then, feeling slightly foolish, he strode out of the twins’ room and headed down the stairs to the hubbub of voices he could hear below.
Stepping through the kitchen door was like stepping into an alternative universe.
Sirius, looking a healthy weight and sporting considerably less ink, was sitting on Remus Lupin’s lap. He was roaring with laughter and raising a glass of what looked like firewhiskey in toast to -
To him. Harry. But older, and -
Oh. That was James Potter. His dad. And his mum was there, smiling, radiant, shaking her head at their antics.
He stared around at the scene. Everyone else that he’d expected was there. But so were these impossibilities.
“Here he is!” Sirius said, standing up and holding out his hand. “Our godson!” His other hand squeezed Remus's.
Harry blinked. “I, er, Merry Christmas,” he said blankly. He looked over at his mother, and she smiled and raised her own glass in toast.
The merry gathering continued around them, looking magical with multi-coloured candles flickering overhead like muggle Christmas lights. Harry stared at group after group, trying to understand what was going on - and why he was the only one who seemed to have noticed.
Neville was sitting on a settee, sandwiched between his parents and giving earnest advice to an enraptured Trent, who appeared to be attempting to beat Ron at chess. Neville’s dad made a few suggestions too.
Hermione was chatting to Professor McGonagall, like nothing was amiss. Luna sat beside them, following the conversation with a serious look on her face, nodding along. Beside them, Ginny and the twins were playing exploding snap; Tonks, hair bubblegum pink, was entertaining Fleur with her metamorphmagus skills. Bill and Charlie and Arthur were having some sort of serious discussion in the corner, and Remus kept throwing them suspicious glances.
Susan was sitting with her family, who, like his own, seemed to be miraculously not dead. Harry wondered why Trent’s family weren’t here. They were all talking to Molly Weasley, who was knitting. Fabian and Gideon Prewitt - for there was no one else that those two could possibly be - were bowed over a table in the corner, just as their nephews and namesakes had been two floors up not twenty minutes ago.
“It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?” Lily asked him gently. He whipped his head back to her.
“You… know?”
“That this isn’t real? Yes, my darling.” Lily took his hands and held them gently in her own. “You made a wish, at the right time, in the right place. This is what could have been, and you will experience it until you fall asleep. Magic has its own way of giving you what you need.”
Harry’s eyes burned. “This is what I need!” He whispered frantically. “You, and dad, and Sirius, and - and for us all to have families!”
“But you would not be who you are without your losses.” Lily gave him the sad smile he remembered from the Mirror of Erised. “Susan Bones would have been your best friend,” she said. “She lived in the same village, and you were born less than a year apart. She was a bossy little thing, but oh, how she adored you. Did you know that Susanna means Lily?”
Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. “No,” he said hoarsely.
“And Minerva bought you your first broom,” Lily told him. “When you were barely a year old.”
“She bought me my first real one too,” Harry said, words sticking in his throat. “She knew -?”
“She knew us well,” Lily whispered, opening her arms to him. He fell into them. He’d never felt an embrace like it.
“Are Remus and Sirius -?”
“Oh, yes. They’d been together since third year, but insisted on keeping it a ‘secret’. It might have been the worst kept secret in Hogwarts,” Lily said, chuckling. “On the plus side, it threw everyone off the scent in terms of Remus’s furry little problem.”
Harry laughed, and then sighed, burrowing closer into his mother’s embrace. How comforting it was, to have arms so securely wrapped around him; how protected he felt.
Did people feel this a lot, when they had parents? Was this a normal thing he’d missed out on?
He supposed it must be.
They stayed up for hours, just talking. Harry learned more about himself, and about who he might have been, than he could ever have dreamed.
The Remus in this - what? timeline? reality? Harry wasn’t sure - seemed harder and less trusting than the Remus Harry knew, which surprised him. Surely, this Remus had his friends, his partner? And yet this Remus, while still warm, reminded Harry of the quieter members of Dudley’s groups; not cruel alone, but part of the pack.
But, of course, he was part of a pack. Harry supposed that to survive as a werewolf, Remus had to fit in or be torn apart. So he seemed more feral than Professor Lupin; he also seemed like a good person to have in your corner.
Harry asked, tentatively, how they’d gotten together. Remus gave a wolfish smile and Sirius laughed his way through the story of the first Hogsmeade weekend, during which they’d become lost and then been put in detention together for returning to the school late. Harry laughed with them, wiping tears from his eyes as James joined in, re-enacting Professor McGonagall’s stern words. Minerva herself, recognising the story, joined in at this point, leaving Hermione and Luna to continue their debate; Harry saw a streak of mischief, an air of careless freedom in Minerva that he’d never seen before. Her eyes shone and her hair was in a loose ponytail, curling to her waist. She gesticulated and laughed openly, and she seemed so fond of the Marauders.
“I wished for everything to be alright,” Harry whispered. “But it never will be. Nothing will ever make all this real.”
James pulled him to his feet and slung his arm around Harry’s shoulders. There was a good eight inches difference in their height. They walked to the window. “Everything will be alright,” James said, once they were out of earshot of the others. “That doesn’t mean the journey to get there will be easy, or without pain. It doesn’t mean that the hard times stop here, or that we can turn back the clock and change what came before. But it will be alright, in the end.”
“Because you know it, or because I wished it?”
“Both,” James said, and smiled down at him. “We’re so proud of you, Harry. And look at the family you’ve created.”
Harry glanced around, caught Fred’s eye, and blushed deeply. “It’s a good one,” he said finally. “I know it is. I just miss you two.”
James was silent for a long time, and Harry supposed there was no appropriate response to that, really. Just when he thought he wasn’t going to get a reply, James spoke again.
“A white Christmas. Now there’s a rare thing - and in London.”
Harry tore his eyes from the festivities behind him, and watched as huge snowflakes fell, silent and ghostly, past the windows. The dark panes of glass reflected the flickering candles, the crackling fire, and the Christmas tree they’d all decorated together a few days before.
“It’s beautiful,” Harry said.
“It is,” Fred’s voice agreed from somewhere to his right. James clapped him on the shoulder and slid his arm free, returning to his wife and his school friends by the fire. A roar of satisfaction told Harry that he’d taken the bottle of firewhiskey with him. “Are you okay, Harry?”
Glancing around one last time, Harry smiled over his shoulder at Fred. “You know what, I think I am,” he said, feeling, for the first time in as long as he could remember, content. It was a little like spending a lifetime hungry and finally being sated. “Nothing’s perfect, but… it’ll be alright.”
“Well, look at you, mister Christmas spirit,” Fred said, wrapping his arms around Harry’s waist from behind and resting his chin on his shoulder. “It’s nice to see you smiling.”
They stood like that for a while, watching the snow, and Harry forgot to be embarrassed or nervous that Sirius or Minerva were there - his dead parents were there, for Merlin’s sake - and simply enjoyed it.
Hugs, he decided, were one of his favourite things.
“Bed time,” Mrs Weasley finally announced, and Harry was amazed to find that it was barely two in the morning. He would have sworn an oath that it must be at least seven.
Knowing that bed time meant the end of this wonderful time, Harry took his time saying his goodnights, making sure to hold everyone a bit longer and a bit tighter. Some of them found this odd, but Harry reasoned that since it couldn’t be real, no one else would remember it in the morning. He hoped that he would, though.
Charlie, usually not fond of physical contact, gripped Harry just as desperately, and Harry made a mental note that perhaps, even if one usually prefers the company of animals, sometimes a simple hug is still needed.
Minerva accepted his embrace without hesitation, and he wondered when he’d ever get that opportunity again. When Molly pulled him in, Harry wondered how he’d spent so many years standing stiffly in her arms. Luna squeezed the air out of him and Hermione’s hug was gentle, like he might break; in fairness, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t. He felt wrung out with emotion.
Ron, as awkward as ever, patted Harry on the back and mumbled something unintelligible. Trent, on the other hand, knocked the chess board flying in his eagerness, and Harry remembered that Trent grew up in an orphanage. Hugs were probably as hard to come by there as at the Dursleys’.
When he finally got back to where he’d started, Harry couldn’t help the tears welling in his eyes, even with the pleasant background ruckus of everyone else’s goodnights. Remus and Sirius engulfed him in a joint hug and he’d never felt so loved.
And then he stepped towards his parents, looking from his father’s familiar features to his mother’s green eyes. Hers were brighter than his, and there was a scattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose.
He collapsed into them both, and for a few long moments simply stood, cocooned in their warmth.
“We will see you again,” Lily told him with a certainty that he didn’t question. “And don’t forget, Harry, what you’ve learned and felt tonight - nobody can take that away from you. It might help.”
“We’re proud of you, son,” James said, and Harry smiled through a sob. After another few moments, his parents pulled away from him and Lily wiped the tears from his face. The room had almost completely emptied in the time they’d been standing, silent and unmoving.
“Go on, now. Santa doesn’t come if you’re awake when he’s passing,” James teased. Sirius barked a laugh, Remus flashed a smile, and Lily placed Harry’s hand in Fred’s.
“You look after him,” she told Fred seriously.
“Always,” Fred promised solemnly. Harry wondered why, when he didn’t know that Lily would be gone in the morning; when he had no context at all for the conversation.
Despite an aching grief, Harry slept well. The grief was somehow squashed in beside a fizzing contentment at what he’d had the chance to experience.
He woke in the muddy light of pre-dawn, feeling refreshed. He couldn’t have had more than five or six hours’ sleep, but he felt like he’d had ten.
He climbed out of bed and padded softly over to the window, and his mouth fell open. It had snowed, and thickly. The world was clean and glittering white.
And there were footprints leading away from Grimmauld Place’s door.
EPILOGUE
“You knew, didn’t you?” Harry asked Susan quietly as they sat down for Christmas dinner later that day.
“Knew what?” She asked, bemused. She offered him a platter of sprouts; he declined.
“That we were neighbours. That you’re named after my mum.”
Susan concentrated on her sprouts for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally. “Minerva told me, when I was old enough to hear the full story of what happened to my parents - and yours.”
Harry glanced over at their Professor. The brightness in her eyes that he’d noticed last night was absent, but she flashed him a smile and a wink when she caught his gaze - a hint of the mischief he’d seen.
“That’s why you -”
“No, it’s not,” Susan interrupted. “Remember how I was the first few years at Hogwarts? I was curious about you, but so was the rest of the world. Now, I fight with you because you are a truly good person. You want this war over, not so you can take his place, or lead, but so that it will be over. That’s why I’m with you.”
Her voice was fierce. Her wand, inexplicably, was in her hand. She was breathing heavily.
“Thank you,” he told her quietly. “Thank you.”
Harry cornered Sirius after lunch and told him, quietly but confidently, that he was dating Fred. Sirius grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.
“You have to teach me how to tell them apart, before we have any awkward conversations with the wrong twin,” he said. “Just like their uncles, those two.” And he went back to drying up, entirely unphased.
“Are you and Remus -?” Harry asked without thinking.
Sirius glanced at him and sighed. “It’s complicated,” he said. “Twelve years is a long time.”
“You should uncomplicate it,” Harry said. “You… you both deserve to be happy.”
Sirius smiled. “You’re an intuitive one, aren’t you?”