Only Fate
AN: La-gasp! Another chapter!? Still waiting on those spiders and thank you few for the orcas.
Chapter 16 - Only Fate
A Segway Between Life and Death
"Do you ever wonder?" the Death with the sexy hips asked the Death who was pacing the metaphorical space between universes.
"Wonder what?" he snapped, pacing faster.
"If it were possible to destroy a timeline?"
Death with a worry of wizards halted, he turned around slowly, metaphorically speaking, "What?"
She tapped her foot against her scythe, "I just… have this feeling. I feel like, I feel like I have forgotten something, in fact, many things… I keep checking my books… and…"
"And what?" he demanded.
The Death with a titillation of mutants smiled, "The books are blank. I've seen them be rewritten, repeatedly, I've seen them change, I've changed them, but never before have they gone blank. They are slowly…" Her voice trailed off.
"Slowly what?" Death with a preoccupation with divided souls demanded.
"What?" she asked, looking up, metaphorically speaking.
He made a harsh sound, "Your books are slowly, what?"
"My books?"
"Your books," he growled."What's wrong with your books?"
"Nothing," she said, offended, "Why? What do you know?"
"You just said- You know what, never mind. How could you dump two more of your people in my world? Wasn't it bad enough you brought those two Aurors back? That pest who is so afraid of death is on the brink of finding true immortality! And it is your fault!"
"Oh please, you showed the two redheads their son's would be life. They will figure it out," she said offhandedly, then more sharply, asked, "Wait, what two?"
"The Boy Who Lived's parents!" Death with the greater sense of continuity roared.
"No, no, what two from my world? I only brought over the Lady Spider."
"Yes, you brought the little princess after she died, but now there are also the Man Spider and the little would be tigress."
Death with the overlarge slicing object stared at him blankly, "What?"
Death of the more fantastical magic waved his hand, an image appearing before them of Peter Parker and MJ asleep on the couch, "Them!"
She frowned at them, "No, no, they aren't… they are too old, they haven't died yet. He isn't even a-, they-" A book appeared in her long digited hand.
She opened to the correct chapter.
Blank.
Then flipped to the approximate age of the boy.
Blank.
She flipped to the end of Peter Parker's book.
"Fuck," said the Death who knew all too well what the Infinity Stones were capable of.
The Death whose butt cheeks had been clenched tight ever since they broke the laws of Life and Death so dramatically, leaned over her shoulder, avoiding her scythe to peer at the page, then laughed.
"This isn't funny! We were played!"
Death whose sense of rightness had corrected itself, chortled into the space between, metaphorically speaking, that is.
Saturday seemed to come quickly that week. Harry much preferred having the addition of MJ, even if she was a bit withdrawn, he felt less like a misfit with her around.
Unlike him, who played it cool and pretended to be sociable even though he didn't overly enjoy socializing, MJ was cool and didn't pretend to be anything then what she was.
If people gave her shit, she either didn't acknowledge their existence or had them tied up in their own words with the effort of someone folding a napkin.
But Saturday he didn't have the buffer of MJ to deal with his parents. People he was beginning to truly like, and yet…
And yet he found himself dragging his feet, walking back with Padma and Hermione to the dorm rather than the room Lily was waiting to start his potions lesson with.
"Are you even paying attention?" Hermione snapped.
He gave her a look.
"He's thinking about his mum and dad," Padma supplied. "How's that going by the way?"
He shrugged, "Fine."
"Fine," she mocked, "right, that sounded sooo believable."
He raised a brow, "Are you calling me a liar?"
"Ha," she said, raising her chin, "You lie like you breathe."
He put his hand to his heart, leaning back against the railing at the platform of one of the moving staircases. "Padma," he said dramatically, he placed a hand on the rail as if catching his balance against a blow, "You wound me."
Then he flipped himself backward over the railing.
Padma screamed.
Several other students screamed.
Harry stuck the landing, coming to his feet in a swirl of robes.
Padma was leaning over the railing to see him, her expression morphing from fear to rage in a heartbeat.
It had only been one flight.
She swore at him in Hindi, something that had her twin, Parvati, exclaiming, "Padma!" from an upper level.
But Harry laughed and blew her a kiss, and went to go see his birth mother wearing a self-satisfied smirk.
He was pretty sure Padma would get him back for that.
He found that he was rather looking forward to it.
Lily was pretty sure they had it.
"Happy thoughts?" Harry asked, "Like Peter Pan?"
Lily grinned at him, "Just so."
James cast the spell wordlessly, his doe prancing merrily around the hopping gracefully, then less gracelessly kicking its back feet into the air.
Lily spoke the Charm for Natasha's and Harry's sake, her stag charging down the doe that darted up, then circled around them.
"Okay," Harry said, "that's cool, not very stealthy, but very cool."
Harry raised turned his wrist, his bracelet transforming into an intricately carved staff with metal inlay, that was longer than he was tall.
It was an impressive weapon, though, she added mentally, not a stealth object.
He waited, and it took Lily a moment to realize that he was waiting for Natasha to try first. His respect for her evident in almost all that he did.
Merlin, Lily hated being jealous of the other woman. She wanted to forget she existed. But when she glanced at James who teasingly wagged his eyebrows at her, she blushed.
It took Natasha two tries, and where Lily had expected to see a spider, what appeared in silver blue was nothing so small.
A large Siberian tiger roared out of her wand, then playfully chased around the two deer patronuses.
Natasha's smile was breathtaking, "My favourite animal."
Harry huffed a laugh, "Also my favourite toy plushie when I was little."
She grinned at him, "You cried yourself to sleep that night one of the Death Eaters blasted a hole through it. I had to take you back to Russia and track down the company, which turned out to be a little shop owner in a small town, hours outside of St. Petersburg, who had a vender's cart during the holidays, to get you one that was; тот самый."
She made Russian sound sexy, damn her, Lily noted.
Harry grinned and teased back in a stream of Russian that sounded oddly beautiful, almost as beautiful of the sound of his laughter at Natasha's presumably witty comeback.
And with that laughter still on his lip, he twirled his staff like he had wielded such a thing all his life, and maybe he had.
An elegant crane spread large wings, gliding elegantly around the deer and the tiger.
"A crane," James said with a smile, because how could you not smile at a fourteen year old performing such a spell so effortlessly with a creature whose natural elegance was further enhanced with magic.
"A Siberian Crane," Harry corrected, "My favourite animal, they're endangered in Russia. Mum and I created a foundation for them and got them listed as protected animals."
"That's wonderful," Lily said, meaning it, even if her heart still hurt at yet another thing she had missed in her son's life.
"So what's next on the agenda?" he asked, not in the least fazed by learning one of the most difficult spells in there world.
James coughed, "Well, we had a request."
Natasha narrowed her eyes, "What?"
And Lily liked her a bit better for her protectiveness, or maybe that was just because she knew what they might be facing. "Natasha, you know the dream we shared?"
"Yes?" she asked, warning in her tone.
"We think we know where the snake is."
"Wait, you shared a dream, and what about a snake?" Harry asked.
Lily looked at him and wondered how he would take this, "We had a dream about you slaying a giant serpent."
Harry blinked at her and his response was not what she had expected, "But I like snakes."
Before she could respond, Natasha said in a perfectly reasonable tone without the slightest indication she would change her mind on the subject, "He won't be doing that again."
"He won't need to," James said, "I just need to transfigure some roosters and light to make them squawk, then bam, dead Basilisk."
"I'm completely lost," Harry said.
"We just need to take a tour down the second floor," James answered pleasantly.
"Why?" he asked, sounding a suspicious as Natasha.
"Why, to talk to a ghost, of course."
Harry could tell Mom was unhappy, and his parents were not doing much better.
But it appeared the three adults had at least one thing in common: curiosity.
Moaning Myrtle, as he was informed people called her, was a wailing ghost who appeared to spend a great deal of time in a toilet.
When his dad asked her how she had died, she moaned with delight which creeped Harry out more than the Bloody Baron ever had.
"I saw something come out of there," she pointed to the sinks, then said almost gleefully, "And then I diiiieed."
Harry wanted away from this strange phantom who was eyeing him up hungerly. He wondered if you could kill ghosts, maybe exorcism?
The four of them searched the sinks and he was the one to find the tiny snake image.
"Salazar Slytherin had a thing for snakes, huh?" he asked.
"He could talk to them," his dad said distastefully.
Harry looked at him, "I mean, so can I, but I don't go around marking my turf with snake insignias everywhere."
His mouth dropped open along with Lily's, they asked in unison, "You can talk to snakes?"
Mom put her hands on her hips, "Is there a problem?"
The Aurors exchanged looks, and his dad recovered first, "No, it's just extremely rare in our world."
"How rare?" he asked.
"As in, there is only one person known in our history who was born with that magical gift not connected to Salazar Slytherin's line."
Which gave Harry an idea, and he hissed at the little snake on the sink, "Open."
He stepped back as the sinks moved.
"Nifty," Mom said.
Harry chuckled, both at his mom and his parents who were slightly wide eyed at the new information revealed to them.
"How are we going to scope out what's done there?" Mom asked.
Lily stepped forward and was sliding down into the darkness before anyone could stop her.
Mom sighed, "So that's where you get it from."
A moment later, Lily called up, "Clear."
James was next, but before Harry could follow, Natasha tied a blindfold around his face.
"You think it's awake?" he asked, not protesting after what the Potters had explained to them about the 'big snake.'
"I think you can practice walking in darkness."
And they slid down the slide together.
He felt what most have been the small bones of rats crunch beneath his boots. Having practised fighting in the dark, and fighting with the blindfold before. He was able to follow his mother's footsteps, which she deliberately let fall audibly against the stone floor, scuffing her foot against any lips of elevation or loose stones.
"How are you walking without holding onto anything?" Lily asked.
Harry smiled, but didn't turn to face her, keeping his focus on Mom's movements. "Training," he answered.
"What kind of training?" James asked.
"The kind that has kept him alive," Mom said smoothly, "Harry, there's a door with stone snakes."
He walked to her side, and hissed, "Open."
He heard his dad mutter, "That's somehow less menacing."
"Less menacing than what?" Harry asked as the door creaked open.
"Our accents," Mom said in Russian.
Harry rolled his eyes under the blindfold.
"And people say Godric had an ego problem."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, fighting the impulse to rip off his blindfold.
"Giant statues of Slytherin everywhere," Mom supplied.
"No, snake?" he asked, not really liking the idea of killing it, but then he supposed anything that could be killed with a rooster squawk was not exactly a naturally born creature.
No one said anything.
"Now what?" Harry asked after a time.
"There must be another chamber," Lily said, "Or else it would have kept travelling throughout the pipes."
Harry began hissing out greetings.
And after a time, he heard something, he pointed toward the sound, "There."
"Master?" a deep, base hiss, thrummed through the walls, "Master, have you returned for me?"
"How do I free you?" Harry hissed back.
"Don't you remember?" It asked, sounding equal parts confused and suspicious.
Well, sound, wasn't the right word, it was more a sense, because this thing sounded like no serpent Harry had ever heard before.
"Remind me. I am your Master, but the years are long and my memory is not what it once was," He lied.
"Master! Master!" It cried, the earth below their feet trembled as it seemed to shift its great form and throw itself at the wall keeping it trapped. It began ranting, raving, crying words of ritualistic nature, claiming to be the Heir of Salazar.
Which is when Harry realized it was speaking the words that would release it, and he suddenly didn't feel so bad for being a part of this thing's death.
It was mad, it was starving, and it was imprisoned in a state that seemed to Harry to be far worse than death.
Harry motioned with his hand. Mom led him back against a wall, and presumably warned the Potters, his dad ready with the birds.
He hissed the magic words, the snake cried, "Master!"
Harry's heart broke as he listened to its scales and muscles slide against the stones, filling the echoing chamber, the first rooster crooked.
And the Basilisk screamed, a wail of death, its last word, "Master!"
Was a scream of betrayal.
Harry had killed people before, but this was the first time he had sought someone out to kill them, proactive or no.
He suddenly got what Mom had been attempting to explain to him.
But when he removed his blindfold and saw what had been set to hunt children in a school, he decided that he had made the right choice.
They all went out for dinner and Hogsmeade to celebrate, Natasha said she needed to stop at her apartment first.
Her apartment who's windows lit up with an explosion of light, shortly followed by one being thrown open to let out a plume of smoke.
"Right, stay here," Natasha said, disapparating with a pop.
"She has a roommate?" James asked his son, explosions not being all that uncommon in their world.
"Um, well, sort of," Harry answered as Natasha apparated back with two figures to either side of her.
Both had hair as wild as his and Harry's, though not genetically, more from having something blown up near them in a small space.
"Dad, Lily, this is Michelle Jones and Peter Parker," Harry introduced. "MJ, Peter, these are my birth parents, James and Lily Potter. They're wizard cops."
The lanky girl pulled her hair back, looking irked as Natasha passed her a hair tie.
Peter, who looked absolutely nothing like Pettigrew, with a physique under his tight muggle clothes that would have done an Olympic athlete proud, said, "Hi." Then turned to Natasha, "I'm sorry."
"It wasn't toxic gas," was all she said as if to say that the rest was fine.
"Peter," the girl said in a low voice, "If you don't warn me about future hair destroying experiments I'm going to turn you into a toad."
He blinked at her, "Can you do that?" He looked at the rest of them, "You guys can't really do that? Can you? Mr. Strange couldn't."
Natasha smiled, "Oh, our magic can definitely accomplish it, eventually."
Harry smiled at him, "Dad could probably do it now, couldn't you?"
James smiled a little uncertainly, "A toad, hmm, yes, I could, but where's the fun in that? I am partial to turning people into a platypus or even a whale, if I'm feeling particular."
Peter paled, his eyes going wide as he stared at the people around him.
Natasha patted him on the back, "I think it would be best if you treat all spells as things to be avoided."
He gulped, "Noted."
And James noted that both were Americans not Russians.
"So," Lily said, searching for a polite way to ask, then came out with it, seeing as neither child had the same surname nor seemed to be related in any outward way. Peter seemed to be a muggle if his apprehension to magic was anything to go by. "You're staying with Natasha?"
"Ms. Romanoff saved us," Peter said, "were, um…"
"Harry's step-sister and brother," Michelle said blandly.
Harry grinned at her like it was something they had recently agreed on.
Lily turned on Natasha, "How did you not mention having other children?"
"It's kind of recent," Peter supplied helpfully, "Course, I'm not magic so Ms. Romanoff is homeschooling me while MJ goes to Hogwarts."
Lily blinked at him, "How recent and what happened to you parents are?" she left it open ended.
"Dead," he said.
"Who the hell cares, Black Widow's our guardian, can we go get food now?" MJ asked, clearly not liking the way Lily was scrutinizing them.
"Black Widow?" James asked, he had known Natasha was a widow, but that sounded like a title or code name.
"Let's eat," Natasha said with a smile directing them all toward the inn.
They all troped toward the promise of food as Harry began to tell Peter about the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk, MJ listening with a disinterested expression.
But her question was pretty cutting, "So you're saying that the founder of my house didn't just not like people whose parents were non-magical but actively wanted to feed children to giant snakes? That's swell."
It was said so blandly, James couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not.
"Her parents were not magical and she was sorted into Slytherin," Natasha filled in as she, he, and Lily trailed behind the younger ones a bit.
"Are their guardians really gone or did you kidnap them too?" Lily said in a low voice, but the girl heard her.
She spun on her heel and walked backwards with a hand on Peter's shoulder to keep her balance. "Not that you deserve to know, but as your Harry's family, I'll say this, Peter is an orphan but his Aunt May isn't dead and neither is my family, but Natasha wasn't the one to kidnap us."
Lily glared at Natasha, "What, just like Death gave you Harry?"
"Actually," Peter said over his shoulder, "It wasn't Death, it was a stone, not really a stone, but a liquid, magical thingy that acted on its own and dropped us here. Now MJ's a witch and I'm, well still me, but that's not the point. Ms. Romanoff didn't do anything wrong. She took us in."
Even for magical folk, James thought, they sound nuts.
But Natasha's expression said that she thought the boy had shared too much.
"What is going on?" Lily asked.
Harry laughed, confusing James, what was funny about this?
Natasha shook her head, "I'll explain later. It's… in order for you to understand, it's a long story."
"We have time," Lily said.
She shook her head again, "You are coming with us on vacation to Russia, we will have time then. For now, let's eat"
oOo
When they were all seated in a large booth, MJ said, "I'm not sold on travelling. It didn't go so well last time."
"I wasn't with you last time," Natasha said.
Peter chimed in, "I would be cool to stay with MJ here for the holiday."
Natasha smiled at them, and it was the same expression James's mother had used on him and Sirius when they had innocently asked for something they planned to use for trouble.
And her words came out in the same tone, "I'm not leaving you two alone."
"We're old enough to watch out for ourselves," MJ said, not looking up from the menu.
James was suddenly glad Lily had decided against having more children. Harry was, well just getting through to Harry was a challenge, he couldn't imagine looking after a teenage daughter who had just been displaced from her family.
Peter nodded vigorously, "I can definitely be left alone." There was more to what he said aloud, something he knew Natasha already knew.
But her smile only brightened, "I'm sure you can be, but the problem is not leaving you alone, it is leaving you alone together. Besides, you're not ready for the magical assassins."
"I thought they wanted Harry? Not us," MJ pointed out, "And what's wrong with leaving us together?"
Yep, James was very glad he wasn't Natasha in that moment, because he, and likely everyone at this table knew why leaving two teens alone, who were obviously dating -Peter sitting shoulder to shoulder with her- was a terrible idea. Or at least not something a guardian would want if they were the guardian of them both.
"The assassins could go after anyone with any relation to Harry, and I'm not leaving you alone because in some even slightly plausible future I have to face your families like I had to meet Harry's, I will do so having raised you both to the best of my abilities."
"We're sixteen, only two years away from being adults," MJ said, setting down her menu and meeting Natasha's gaze without the slightest flinching.
"Yes, but you also had your entire world ripped out from underneath you, given magic, and dumped in a new country, along with a thousand other little things. Give yourself time to adjust before trying to be an adult."
"I'm mature."
"I know that, but until you are of legal age, I will be around to supervise your mistakes."
"Gee, thanks."
And though the girl hid it well, James could see some of the pain she was burdened with.
"What happened the last time you travelled?" Lily asked.
MJ's dark eyes slid to her, and she said, "Europe is overrated."
Peter snorted into his butterbeer the waiter had just handed him.
Great, James thought, more secrets.
"She's infuriating," Lily muttered as Kingsley, Amelia, Frank, and Alice came in, each with a stack of files in their arms.
James sighed, "She's also a good person."
"Who would choose to go by Black Widow? Isn't that a poisonous spider?" She paused, "Scratch that, it fits her perfectly."
"What precisely are we looking for, on a Saturday night for that matter?" Kingsley asked, placing his stack on the table. Not that Kingsley cared about weekends. None of them did except for the Longbottoms when Neville was home for the holidays.
Nymphadora entered the room, noticeably so as she tripped over her own feet and crashed into Sirius in front of her. They both went down in a heap, papers flying everywhere.
Sirius laugh-barked on the floor, pulling his wand, the papers flying back into order.
James pulled an old newspaper picture he had found of a little boy, "Tom M. Riddle. He received a scholarship to Hogwarts, recruited by Albus Dumbledore in 1938." He pinned it to the board behind him. "Likely a parselmouth who opened the Chamber of Secrets in 1943, causing the death by Basilisk of a young girl Myrtle Warren, age 14. A crime Rubeus Hagrid was wrongfully suspected of causing and expelled for. We need to know everything about him."
Nymphadora frowned at the board, "A parselmouth, a parselmouth, does anyone else feel like we're missing something obvious? I've been thinking about it all week and I just can't put my finger on it.
Amelia flipped open a file, knowing the organization of these files -if not their exact contents- better than anyone, to an almost unhealthy degree.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle, half-blood," she said, reading off a page she had found, pulling it from halfway through the stack, she pinned it to the board, "Lived in an orphanage, Wool's Orphanage, muggle London."
"Marvolo," Sirius repeated, then his eyes widened, "Marvolo Gaunt, the last known relative of Salazar Slytherin."
"It would explain the parselmouth," James said, not liking that there was none for Harry's ability.
"Nymphadora is right, we are missing something," Kingsley mused, his deep voice rumbling through the room.
Her hair turned red, "My name is Tonks, don't call me Nymphadora."
They all ignored her as the rest of them glared at their board.
Their board that they had basically turned around the safety and the standard of living in the Magical UK.
Amelia sighed, and began flipping through more files, "We will know after our research. I suppose the next logical question would be to ask what he did after he left Hogwarts?"
"Hagrid said he applied to the DADA position but Dumbledore turned him done."
Frank snorted, "That seems unlikely. He must have been terrible for Dumbledore to turn him down."
Alice nodded, "The positions cursed, nobody can last longer than a year, if they are lucky."
James was looking out at the stacks of papers so he saw when Kingsley's face went slack. He said slowly, "Unless it was before the position was cursed. The date…"
James looked back at the picture and thought of all the older wizards he knew who were wicked enough to actually release a Basilisk on a school of hapless children.
Lily grabbed his hand as the truth dawned at him, as he imagined the little black and white figure of a boy in the newspaper smiling at him with red eyes.
The room seemed to come to the same conclusions unanimously.
"Well, I guess we know why he changed his name, Tommy-Boy just doesn't sound Dark Lordy enough," Sirius said cheerfully.
Nymphadora sat down on the floor, missing the chair completely, but she didn't seem to mind, she looked numbly at the board as they all were, and she stated, "We found Voldemort."
They had.
And more than that, they had found the boy behind the monster.
Now it was only a matter of time before the uprooted all of his secrets.
James Potter smiled, a baring of teeth, Tom Riddle had thrown his world into war, had murdered him, his wife, and his son.
It was only fate that they were somehow still alive, it was only fate that he would ensure that every last vestige of Tom Marvolo Riddle would die.
AN: Comments, reactions, suggestions, tigers, or cranes, pretty, pretty please? Much love to the reviewers~