Chapter 9
It took Harry three days to gather up the courage to visit Andromeda - not because she potentially held the key to the puzzles that remained unsolved, but because he was truly aware of how much she had lost, and he felt acutely to blame. She had lost her husband, her daughter, her son-in-law, and her sister - although the latter had arguably been lost to her for many years, for Bellatrix Black was certainly not remorseful.
And Sirius, of course. She had been his favourite cousin.
Harry finally knocked on the unfamiliar door of the unfamiliar house three days after Tom Riddle’s demise. He didn’t remember the house; of course, they had crash-landed in the garden in the dark, and Ted, anxious, kind, fair-haired Ted had carried him inside and fixed his ribs and his tooth and his arm. They had taken a Portkey from there to the Burrow.
It took Andromeda a long time to get to the door, and when she did, she opened it only a crack.
“You!” Harry shouted, and he thrust his hand into his pocket, but it was empty.
“Your wand’s here, son,” said Ted, tapping it on Harry’s arm. “It fell right beside you, I picked it up. And that’s my wife you’re shouting at.”
“Oh, I’m - I’m sorry.”
As she moved forwards into the room, Mrs Tonks’s resemblance to her sister Bellatrix became much less pronounced: her hair was a light, soft brown and her eyes were wider and kinder.
“Harry?” Andromeda opened the door a little wider, revealing a sleeping Teddy clutched in her other arm, his head on her chest and his fist in his mouth. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
Harry felt tears burning behind his eyes as he took in the tiny form, whose hair appeared a sandy brown reminiscent of Ted Tonks’s. The four weeks or so since his birth seemed to have filled a whole year, but here, tiny, helpless, and too young to grieve the parents he would never know, was proof that it had only been a month since Harry had seen Lupin alive, had accepted the request that he be Teddy’s godfather.
His face crumpled. “Of course I came,” he croaked. “I’m - so sorry -”
“Come in, come in,” she said, suddenly business-like. “Come on. You can hold him while I make us a drink.”
Harry followed her in, and found himself sitting on the sofa he had woken on after the attack, after Hedwig had been killed. “I’ve never - apart from in the street, I’ve never seen a baby,” he said, suddenly terrified.
“There’s nothing to it. Here.” Andromeda repositioned Teddy and held him out. “Just cradle his head, it’s far too heavy for him to hold up on his own yet, although he keeps trying,” she said fondly. She laid the baby on Harry’s legs and smiled lovingly down at him. “The full moon has passed,” she said. “Not so much as a wobbly howl from him, and all the research I have done suggests even newborns can transform if they are bitten, they just transform into cubs. There’s no record of a werewolf ever procreating, though, so I suppose we can’t be sure yet.”
Harry couldn’t take his eyes off the baby. He took in the tiny button nose, the long eyelashes, and the minute fingernails as four tiny fingers surrounded one of his own, gripping with surprising strength.
“He’s mesmerising, isn’t he?” Andromeda asked softly, taking a seat in a perpendicular armchair. Harry looked up, startled to realise that she had placed two cups of tea on the table which he had a sneaking suspicion was one of the two Hagrid had broken.
“Completely,” Harry said, returning his gaze to the sleeping baby.
“I - I’m going to bring him up,” Andromeda said. “I want to. But… if you could help. Give him something other than his old grandma.”
Harry thought of Neville, and nodded with feeling. Then he realised that Andromeda was asking for permission; pleading. “I agreed to become his godfather; I was honoured to be asked,” Harry said. “But there’s no way I’m ready to bring up a child. It’s right that he should stay with you.”
Andromeda visibly relaxed. “The last time I did this, I had my Ted,” she murmured. “I’m not pushing you out, Harry, I’m going to need help. But he’s all I have left.”
“I’ll be here,” Harry promised. “As often as you want, and if I’m here too much, tell me to give it a rest.” They smiled at each other. Harry wondered how he could ever have mixed her up with her sister. He swallowed. “I’m sorry. About Ted, and Remus and Tonks, and Sirius, and - and Bellatrix.”
Andromeda looked curiously at him. “No-one has offered their condolences for Bellatrix’s death before,” she said finally.
“She was still your sister,” Harry replied. “That means something.”
“You’re a very odd wizard.”
The words went through Harry like ice water. “A goblin told me that around the time Teddy was born,” he managed to say.
“Yes, well.” Andromeda studied him and Harry looked away, abashed. “You grew up with your aunt and uncle, Harry, and they gave you no evidence at all that blood meant anything.”
“How -?”
“Sirius.”
“You knew he- ?”
“Was alive? Yes. Remus couldn’t keep it from me once he accepted that he loved my Dora as much as she loved him. Getting to see him one last time was… it meant the world to me.”
Harry swallowed hard. Teddy squirmed in his lap and opened bright green eyes - not dissimilar to Harry’s own. He opened his mouth in amazement as the baby studied him, unconcerned by the stranger on whose lap he now lay.
The matching eyes and the talk of Griphook had Harry reaching blindly for answers.
“Are… are the Blacks related to the Potters?” He asked. “I keep trying to remember - the tapestry at Grimmauld Place - but I can’t picture…” he trailed off.
“Loosely,” Andromeda confirmed, watching him guardedly. “My great aunt Dorea married Charlus Potter, who I believe was Fleamont’s cousin. Fleamont was James’s father,” she added at Harry’s frown. “I believe Charlus’s son died in infancy.”
“So… so by marriage, not blood?”
“If we assume an absence of family secrets, which, in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, remains risky,” Andromeda confirmed wryly.
Harry absent-mindedly ran a finger over Teddy’s baby-smooth cheek, gently bouncing him on both knees. “You… called him James,” he said slowly.
“And you have an agenda for asking whether the Potters have Black blood.”
Harry sagged at her perceptiveness, and with exhaustion at the whole situation. He recounted the tale of their Gringotts exploits.
“So I just thought, if I was somehow related to - what about the Lestranges?” Harry cut himself off. “Bellatrix called it her vault, but she was a Lestrange. Are the Potters related to the Lestranges? That would explain why the door opened for me, wouldn’t it?”
“Distantly,” Andromeda said, somewhat impatiently. “Just like all families considered pure-blood - the Potters might not have been in the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but that is a comparatively new concept. There will have been a relation, so distant that the goblins would have secured the vault against you, Harry. You are asking the wrong questions.”
Harry stared down at baby Teddy. “What colour are his eyes naturally?” He finally asked, as neutrally as he could. The baby’s eyes now were hazel.
“Green. Piercing. Like my father’s.” Andromeda sighed. “He was kind, you know. My father. My mother was… well. Her and Walburga were more like blood than anyone.”
Harry tried to picture the tapestry. He couldn’t.
“Green…”
“Green,” Andromeda confirmed. “Bella’s eyes darkened with her mind. Mine and Narcissa’s are brown, like our mother’s. But my father’s were the most breathtaking green… Teddy’s were blue when he was born, but they started to change quite quickly, when he’s not changing them himself.”
“Sirius had brown eyes.”
“He did. His mother did, too. But his father had green eyes like mine did. His parents were second cousins, or something - both Blacks.”
Harry looked up at her. “Remus,” he said slowly, “knew who I am.” Andromeda sat statue-still, and he swallowed. “I’m not Harry Potter. And I’m a blood relation of Teddy’s. A relation that would be called ‘uncle’, even if it isn’t quite that.”
Andromeda nodded. And Harry’s world fell apart.
“Who am I?” He asked brokenly. The baby’s weight on his knees was the only thing that kept him grounded. “What have I been fighting for this whole time?”
Suddenly, Andromeda was kneeling beside him on the floor, one of her tiny hands gripping his wrist. “Light, and good,” she urged. “You fought to rid the world of Tom Riddle, and bring peace. And you succeeded.”
“But I did what was foretold,” Harry said. “It was prophesied and Voldemort chose me - of the two babies born in July - he chose me. Because Neville was pure-blood, maybe, because the Longbottoms are one of the Sacred -”
Andromeda sat back on her heels. “Three,” she interrupted. “There were three. Voldemort chose you because it was designed that way.”
“Three,” Harry repeated faintly.
“Harry James Potter was named Henry, after his grandfather, who wished to support the Muggles in the First World War and who probably caused the exclusion of his family from the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Baby Henry was never known as Harry - but it is passable as a nickname.”
Harry could hardly breathe. “Where is Henry now?”
“Abroad. With his parents.”
“Lily and James. They’re alive.”
“They’re alive. They appeared to you as they are today, not as their twenty-year-old selves.”
Harry recognised the truth of this statement with no small amount of surprise that he had not noticed before. “How-?”
Andromeda shrugged impatiently. “I don’t know how, some advanced magic that was put in place shortly after Henry’s birth in anticipation of such a requirement. I was not privy to the details.”
“I was swapped,” Harry said slowly. “I was swapped for Henry James Potter, and Voldemort was encouraged to target him - target me. But who - oh. Snape.”
“I believe Severus was heavily involved,” Andromeda acknowledged sniffily. “In order to protect Lily, of course.”
Harry tickled Teddy absent-mindedly. The baby gurgled contentedly. “But… someone died for me,” he said. “Dumbledore -”
“He didn’t know.”
“I know,” Harry said. “But… the blood ward. The protection. He was right about that. Whoever died for me looked like Lily Potter, but that’s simple with Polyjuice - but whoever they were… they were a blood relative. A parent. Who am I?”
Andromeda returned to her seat. “My nephew,” she said finally. “Regulus’s son. He died for you.”
Harry breathed out and let the truth settle into his bones. “Why let me believe I was a Potter all this time?”
“I found out comparatively recently,” Andromeda said carefully. “Shortly before Sirius died.”
“Sirius knew?”
“Barely, the same as me. We worked it out. The point is that you needed to believe you were Harry Potter. The world needed to continue to believe in Harry Potter, and everything you stood for. Giving you earth-shattering information like that… you might have gone to him, Harry. You might have become the worst kind of Black.”
“But Regulus wasn’t. Sirius wasn’t. You’re not,” Harry argued pointlessly, because he understood exactly why Andromeda hadn’t told him, hadn’t made Sirius tell him. “What is my name?” He asked belatedly.
“Harry,” Andromeda reassured him. “It’s Harry. Regulus…” she paused and chuckled. “Regulus’s middle name was after a great great uncle whose daughter married a Longbottom, years before they joined the Order the first time around. Harfang, his name was. Regulus loved that the Blacks and the Longbottoms were related, and he chose ‘Harry’ as a nod to Harfang, instead of saddling you with the same name.”
“I’m glad of that,” Harry muttered, grinning despite himself. He hesitated. “So I’m - I’m Harry Black?”
“Harry Ignatius Black,” Andromeda confirmed. “After Regulus’s favourite uncle, Ignatius Prewett. He married our aunt Lucretia. No children.”
“Prewett - Fabian and Gideon Prewett?”
“Yes. Molly Weasley’s uncle by blood.”
Harry sat, stunned. “Oh no,” he groaned after a moment. “I think I have the same middle name as Percy.”
Andromeda laughed. “Indeed. He came around, though, did he not?”
Harry grudgingly agreed.