Is This a Joke?
AN: Thank you to the reviewers! Ha, crossovers are popular.
Chapter 2 - Is this a Joke?
Lily Potter, the Auror, slammed a stack of files done on her husband's desk. "Nothing," she growled.
James Potter, an Auror as well, held in a sigh. Sitting forward, he caught his wife's hand, "Lily-Flower, it's been thirteen years, if he-"
"Someone opened his letter!" she snapped ripping back her hand, "He's out there, he has to be."
"Lily, that was three years ago. Three years ago after nothing. No one has seen-"
"If you had just let us go to India-"
"And what could they have possibly told us?" James said slowly, "The Indian Aurors did their investigation, and they said-"
"I don't care what they said, James, they aren't us!"
"Not everyone in Indian speaks English, and not everyone would want to have helped us, besides, like the Indian Aurors said, no one could pick out Caucasian tourists from Caucasian tourists."
"Maybe there were pictures-"
"Lily!" he exclaimed, "His Hogwarts letter was addressed, Harry J. Potter, 109 Bus, Mumbai to Pune."
"Records, tickets," she argued.
He sighed, "We've been over this, over and over this. Everyone who bought tickets for that bus used cash, no one needed to show their IDs, and it was an entire bus of tourists. The driver couldn't distinguish anyone-"
"Except for one beautiful redhead," she finished for him, "but if he noticed that then maybe-"
Sirius Black, also an Auror, choose that moment to save him, opening his office door with a jubilant smile, "Hey Mr. and Mrs. we need to get going or we will be late for dinner with the Longbottoms, and they, unlike you both, are sane enough to clock out at the end of their work day."
"That's because they have someone to go home to," Lily snapped at him.
Sirius winced, his blue-grey eyes instantly shadowing with sorrow and guilt.
James hated when Lily got like this, yes, she was almost always obsessed with finding Harry, if not in the front her head, say when they were given a difficult assignment, then in the back of her head. She never forgot and never let herself give up on the chance that he might be out there in the world. But Lily didn't always let her grief and anger spill out onto other people. Not always, but today was one of the bad ones.
"We could have had more kids," James ventured softly.
She spun on him, and the look in her emerald eyes could only be described as fury, "I have a son, I just need to find him."
And with that she stormed out of the room, Sirius stepped out of her way, and she slammed the door behind her.
Sirius gave James a miserable look, "I'm so sor-"
"Don't," James said, holding up a hand, "Just don't." He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, "It doesn't even matter whose fault it is anymore, I just want… I just want to-" He couldn't complete the thought, because it was a betrayal of sorts, betrayal to his son and his wife.
But what James wanted was to move on. He wanted to live, and he wanted to see his wife happy again. Yes, of course, he wanted to find Harry, but James was almost certain he was dead. The letter from Hogwarts to India, even Dumbledore admitted, must have been a fluke.
"Come on," Sirius said, "Neville's at school, so Frank and Alice won't-"
"Won't make Lily insanely jealous and ever more determined to find Harry?" James offered. Neville and Harry had been born within a week of each other. He stood, straightening the papers he had been working on and ignoring the fruitless research Lily had put on his desk.
They must have tried every tracking spell that had ever existed, and every compass led them in every direction. The United States, Sweden, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Morocco, Tunisia, China, Greece, Brazil, and so on. Lily had even gotten Snape to use a Dark Arts tracking spell, that one had led them to Dublin then to Norway then to Japan, at which point Snivellus apologized, saying that it must not be functioning.
James was starting to believe his son's magic had taken up residence with the wind, and that's why none of their spells worked.
Because with all the magic that lit up to track him, it should have been more than hope that he was alive.
But thirteen years was a long time.
It was enough that James sometimes wished they had just stayed dead. This uncertainty… well, he couldn't really call what he, Lily, and even Sirius had was much of a life.
They were all good Aurors at least, it was the one thing they all had to fall back on, even if their personal lives were a disaster, at least they could do some good for the community.
"Hey Granger!" Draco called over the heads of students, "Do you ever brush your hair? Or are you trying to be Ravenclaws' new mascot, so you need to look the part, like some wild animal."
"Hey Malfoy!" Padma Patil, Hermione Granger's best friend, shouted back, "Does your mommy still brush yours? Or haven't you moved passed your father needing to wipe your butt?"
Draco flushed, and would have made a comeback, but the dinner crowd bottlenecked into the Great Hall.
Hermione, head of her year, and the ultimate pride of her house, laughed as she and Padma sat at the Ravenclaw table.
There was a ring of excitement in the air tonight, for tonight the Triwizard Tournament Champions would be picked.
Fleur Delacour sat down across from them, she didn't have many friends from her own school. But she liked Hermione and Padma, even if they were younger, they were mature for their age, and rather intelligent.
"So, you think it's going to be you?" Padma asked.
Fleur raised her chin, "Oui, of course, it shall be me."
Her schoolmates gave her dark looks, they would support when and if she was picked, until then, Half-Breeds weren't anyone's first pick.
Well, not for the girls anyway, the boys for her school were all rooting for her.
"How about from your school?"
Padma and Hermione exchanged a look, then Hermione shrugged.
Padma nodded her head slightly, "People have been saying Cedric Diggory."
"That would be kind of cool," Hermione said, "A Hufflepuff Champion, that would be funny watching the Slytherins cheering for Hufflepuff."
"I thought it was the Gryffindors the Slytherins didn't like?" Fleur asked.
"It is," Hermione said, "but the Slytherins think Hufflepuffs are inherently weak."
"Speaking of Slytherins," Padma said, "What do you think they're up to?"
There was a group of seventh and sixth years at the end of the table farthest from the head table, whispering to one another.
"Padma," a familiar voice called.
She turned in her seat to face her identical twin.
"Twenty on Johnson," Parvati challenged.
"Fifty on Diggory," Padma said back.
They grinned and turned back to their respective tables.
"So you're that sure of him?" Fleur asked.
Padma shrugged, "He's top of their year and the Quidditch star. No one can outfly him."
"But Viktor Krum could," Hermione said, "He does Quidditch professionally."
Padma rolled her eyes, "In Hogwarts, sometimes you take things too literally."
Fleur poked at her food, "I'm too nervous to eat, this could change everything for me and my sister. We aren't just pretty faces."
Hermione grinned at her, "If I were a betting witch, I would put all my bets on you, Delacour."
Fleur smiled, but she wouldn't be at ease until her name was called from the Goblet of fire.
oOo
The Goblet of Fire had blazed to life in blue fire twice, Victor Krum, the Durmstrang champion, and Fleur Delacour, the Beauxbatons champion.
Everyone waited with bated breath, and once more the Goblet flared blue, a scrap of paper floating to Dumbledore's hand.
"And the Hogwarts champion is H-" uncharacteristically the Headmaster seemed to stumble over his words. He coughed and all grandeur left his voice as he asked the room at large, "Harry Potter?"
There was a deathly hush that fell over the room.
And it was Fred Weasley who broke it, calling out, "Is that a joke?"
"If it is, it isn't funny," George added.
"Harry Potter's dead," Lee Jordan said to the stunned room.
At that moment, the fire from the Goblet retreated completely, all signs of light and magic going dark.
A unanimous thought went out through all of them, what now?
The professors looked at one another for a clue as to what to do next. Albus Dumbledore looked at a complete loss.
One of the Hufflepuff students who had believed absolutely that Cedric would be chosen protested loudly, "Harry Potter doesn't even go to this school. Even if he's alive, he can't represent our school."
Several other students cheered their agreement to this.
Then Karkaroff announced, "If the Potter boy doesn't show up, then Hogwarts forfeits."
The din that followed was nothing short of pandemonium.
It took McGonagall putting her wand to her throat to settle things, "We will recheck with the rules, and inform you all of our findings as soon as a decision has been made. Whoever put Mr. Potter's name in the Goblet should be deeply ashamed of their actions. Now off to bed, all of you."
Minerva watched the students depart, deeply disturbed.
"What are we going to do?" Pomona asked.
Minerva sighed, "We are going to have to contact Lily and James."
Everyone who heard this flinched.
Severus snarled, "Haven't they suffered enough?"
Minerva turned on him, lips thin, "You think they won't hear of this? We have to be the ones to tell them, I'd imagine they'll be here tomorrow morning wanting to see the Goblet."
"Perhaps we should address letters out to Harry Potter, explain things, maybe he'll show, stranger things have happened," Filius said.
"If the boy hasn't shown in thirteen years, why would he show now?" Severus asked.
"Have you ever met a wizard or witch who would want to give up their powers?"
Severus expression was hostile when he said, "Yes, I have."
Albus rejoined them, "It is worth a shot."
Late that night, each professor wrote a letter out to Mr. Harry J. Potter, making several copies of the letters, before owling them out.
It had been decided, and according to the rule book and their inability to restart the Goblet, that either Mr. Potter acted as their champion or Hogwarts forfeited.
Which was not going to sit well, and would basically destroy the point of the Triwizard Tournament bringing different schools together.
But the rules stated that if the chosen champion died before the tasks, a new one could not be chosen.
Filius decided to address his letter, not to Harry Potter, but simply Harry, and gave it to the meanest and most clever owl in the owlery.
She was a pretty thing, so white she seemed to glow in the dimness of the night. The snowy owl had been donated to them after any person the shop seller had sold her to had returned her in a week for her habit of biting and refusing to take mail.
"Come on, girl, we have need of you, you have to find Harry, you have to bring him home."
The owl looked at him narrowly, but held out her leg.
When she flew off, Filius felt the oddest feeling of hope. All the professors had loved James and Lily, watching them suffer, become closed off, and obsessed with their son's disappearance… it had been heartbreaking.
"Do you really think it's safe to go back to London?" Harry Romanoff asked his mother.
She shrugged, "At this point, son, I'm more worried about your assassins."
He grinned, because he knew she didn't mean that, well at least not completely.
His mother, Natasha Romanoff, was the most paranoid person on the planet, and despite all the travelling they did, the places they explored, and all the training she put him through, she never risked his safety unnecessarily.
She had trained him in every martial art she knew, with every weapon she had mastered, but she hadn't raised him to be an assassin like she had been brought up to be.
Sure, Harry knew how to kill someone, but he had been trained only to act in self defense or the defense of others. His mother had shared most of her own history, her alternative universe, where she was used indiscriminately as a weapon for profit and politics. Where morals, had been nothing to her until she met her family, the Avengers.
"Don't give me that face, I want to do some digging."
"I thought you said the Wizarding Worlds were too small to snoop in?"
She huffed, "Yes, but I want to find out more about your family history. It's been thirteen years, I'm sure they have forgotten about you now."
"Gee, thanks," he laughed, letting his hand play in the breeze outside the car window.
"But just to be careful, you should wear the wig," Natasha said with a straight face.
"The blonde one?" he asked.
She nodded seriously.
He stuck his tongue out at her, and her lips twitched.
Harry grinned and turned his attention back to the window. He loved watching the world whirl past. Every landscape had its own flavour, its own personality, and he had watched those landscapes move past, whether city, desert, rainforest, or ocean, through windows of cars, trains, planes, or hiked across them. They had even ridden camels a few times.
Harry loved it all, he loved his life, he loved his mother.
It was like being on vacation or on an abroad trip all the time. No one place was their home, because they were each other's home, and the world was theirs.
Did it sometimes suck that if they found a place they really liked they had to move on because magical people would hunt them down? Yeah, but Harry wouldn't trade this life for anything.
He acknowledged how privileged they were, his mother being from a pseudo-feature had been able to buy stock of companies, such as investing in the internet or computer companies, that made them absurdly rich. It helped that they didn't own anything but their backpacks and the food in their bellies.
"So do we greet people by saying, Cheery-O Governor?" Harry joked.
She rolled her eyes, "I taught you several British accents."
He nodded, "Which one are you going with?" His own accent depended on the language he speaking and sometimes the place.
Amusingly, his favourite language turned out to be magical, he could speak to snakes, which he used to freak out a lot of tourist guides. For a long time, it was the only language he knew that his mother hadn't picked up, until she did.
She couldn't speak to snakes well, but apparently, she could understand them now.
Natasha parked the rental car, then said in her chosen British accent, "Put on the wig, and let's go-"
Just then a beautiful snow owl glided down to them, landing on Harry's shoulder.
Natasha looked at the bird warily, but she nodded at Harry to take the letter addressed to him.
Harry read the letter quickly, "Whelp, looks like Hogwarts is contacting us again."
A flash of guilt shown in his mother's eyes, "Do you regret-"
"No, Mom, I don't regret choosing to stay with you."
She bit her lip, "Yes, but you love your books, I bet they have a big library, and even if it was just for a year. Maybe you could make some friends, you don't-"
"I don't have friends because I don't want them."
"You don't have friends because we are never in one place long enough for you to be comfortable opening up to people."
"No, I just don't like opening up to people."
"Repeating what I say doesn't change its meaning," she smirked.
He huffed, "I like my books, I like travelling, I can interact with people when I need to but I don't really enjoy it."
She put a hand to her heart, "And am I not a person? You wound me."
"Nope," Harry agreed, "you're not, you're my mother."
She ruffled his hair which really made no difference to his non-conforming curls, "So no school for you?"
He pushed back his bangs, "They aren't asking me to return to school, they're saying if I don't compete in this tournament, my magic is going to be stripped away."
"What?" she asked, snatching the letter from him and reading it for herself.
Harry petted the owl, who hooted pleasantly, rubbing her head against his fingers and cheek in a claiming fashion. If Mom let him keep her he was going to name her Hedwig from one of the history books he had read from the magical world.
"You think I could win a Tournament like that?" he asked.
She looked up at him, "My son? Of course he can. Put on that damn wig and let's go to-"
"The library?" Harry asked hopefully.
She shook her head, scowling at him.
He mock pouted.
"No," she said, tone dark, "the bookstore."
His smile could have shined through the cloud cover. Then he asked, "How do we get to Hogwarts?"
In answer, the snowy owl, who he was calling Hedwig, hooted, and ruffled her feathers as if to say, Naturally, humans, I shall guide you.
Natasha snorted, "Magical birds." But despite the resentment in her voice, she found herself oddly fond of their new feathery friend.
AN: Thoughts, comments, questions, or owls with pointers? Please?