Chapter 84

She trembled, still looking very unsure.

He pulled her into him and hugged the girl. "Ah, c'mon. It will be okay. I promise." Eventually Lisa returned the hug and sunk into him.

Arms still around the girl, he flicked his wrist to bring his wand to hand. He stepped back, arms still on her shoulders. "It will be okay."

The girl nodded and blew her nose.

"I'm going to cast a spell on you to clean up your face so you look fresh, then I'm going to cast a spell on you to make you look like you've been ill, okay?"

Her eyes widened again, this time in awe. "Y-you can do that?" "Yes."

He angled his holly and phoenix feather wand towards the girl and cast two spells in quick succession. Immediately the tear stains and blood shot eyes were replaced with yellowing complexion and droopy eyes.

"There we go. We can say you were being taken care of by some friends."

Lisa nodded, he took her hand, and together they made their way back to the front of the train. They reached the first compartment and she started to breathe harder. "H-Harry, I'm not sure I can do this."

He reached his magic into the temporary ward he'd set up.

"It's just too much." Lisa started to struggle in his grip. He held on.

"I…I must go!"

He switched the ward off.

Lisa stopped struggling. He enveloped her in another hug. "Its okay, Lisa. You can do this."

Lisa shook again. She blinked. "Yes. Yes, I can." She looked into his eyes. "Thank you, Harry."

He opened the door and poked his head around the door. "Heirs, heiresses, witches, and wizards — I've found our wayward guest."

Five minutes later, Harry closed the compartment to the Dark behind him and sauntered off down the corridor. Okay, so he'd lost his spot, but he'd got everything he wanted to accomplish done, and Lisa couldn't stop making doe eyes at him, which was definitely a result.

Maybe now he'd walk up the train and accidentally run into Hermione. She might still be tracking down muggleborns and it would be good to see how that was progressing.

But first…

He slipped into the now empty bathroom, pulled out his shrunk trunk, and started changing into the bog-standard Hogwarts robes.

John watched the door of his compartment slide open to reveal a much calmer Susan. "How did it go?" Susan flopped down next to him. "Greengrass said she'd accept the apology on the condition that you apologise in person."

He groaned.

"None of that. I think she's quite right. You were rude so you should apologise."

"Okay, okay. I'll go." He stood, trudged to the door, slid it open and started making his way down the train, towards the middle, and towards the Gray. He reached the open seating carriage just a few compartments from the middle of the train and reached for the door handle.

Harry waved off yet another confused Boy-Who-Lived worshipper. Damn, he'd forgotten just how extreme his peer's reactions had been on the train. The first time around, he'd been confused but hopeful. Everyone had seemed so friendly and curious. Puzzled, yes, but they'd taken the news that he was a mistaken squib twin of the Boy-Who-Lived with interest and cheer. That good will had lasted until the sorting, after which, everything went to hell.

He passed the middle compartment, which he knew held Daphne, and continued on. He arrived at the door to one of the Hogwarts Express's few open seating areas, reached for the door handle, turned it, entered the space beyond, full of relaxing and joking witches and wizards, glanced towards the carriage's far exit, and froze.

His nostrils flared, his eyes hardened, and his lip curled, a cacophony of hatred flashed across his face in a heartbeat, and left just as quickly. An annoyingly familiar back closed the far side door and started to turn towards him.

His face relaxed, his eyes warmed, and his mouth melted into a smile of summer, log fires, and good cheer. "Brother!"

All talk halted. Every student's head turned.

Deep in his stomach, unaffected by even the strongest occlumency, bile rose.

John stared. The carriage stretched on to infinity. A full half the eyes were on him. The other half fixed on the figure standing at the other end of the infinite space.

It was Harry.

His heart beat faster. He started sweating. But, it wasn't Harry. It wasn't the Harry that he remembered. The Harry he remembered was small and scrawny — timid — flinching at shadows and jumping at the smallest noises.

This Harry looked to be as tall as he was and his stance was taller still. His face was open and friendly, and he wasn't wearing glasses, taped or otherwise.

His own confusion.

face

obviously

betrayed

his

"Surprised to see me?" Harry's lip quirked into an almost cheeky grin.

"How?"

An uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu flooded him. "The normal way, I suspect. Didn't Mum and Dad tell you I'd be joining you this year?"

His eye twitched. "What do you know about Mum and Dad?"

All the assembled students watched, wide-eyed, turning back and forth with each volley in the turn-based verbal duel.

"Very little. They did after all, abandon me."

Someone gasped.

"An unusual policy, you must admit, for the supposed lightest family. But even then, you'd think when they realised their mistake that they'd at least take the effort to meet their long lost child before he left for school."

He flinched and shifted his feet on the plush carpet. That certainly didn't look good. But how did Harry know about what was normal for squibs and families of the Light? And how did Harry… he froze. Harry wasn't ignorant. His heart pounded faster. Which meant… He screamed a roar of primal rage. "You bastard!" He drew his wand and fired the dueller's hello without so much as a thought. The fucker dodged them all and flipped up a nearby table as a shield. Books and parchment went everywhere.

Shouts and screams filled the carriage.

He lunged forward. Magic poured from his wand, determined to destroy the threat to his love. "What. Did you. Do. To. GINNY?!" With each furious cry an overpowered spell dented, gouged, and smashed apart the doomed table in a righteous shower of ripped parchment and wood splinters. But when the dust and magic settled, the fucker had vanished.

He snarled.

"Potter!"

He dodged a head-bound expelliarmus on instinct and spun around, adrenaline still pumping, wand still in hand, ready to obliterate his new target.

"Potter! Put your wand down now! That is an order!"

He stared into the trembling but determined face of a younger Penelope Clearwater. Anger drained away. A lump formed in his throat. His wand arm dropped to his side. He shook. He looked around. Every face looked back at him with shock and fear. Several flinched as his gaze fell on them. Dread pooled in his stomach. Oh, that can't have looked good.

Several hours later, it was a red-faced and much scolded John Potter who stepped off the Hogwarts Express.

The crisp air of the Scottish September bit into his hands and face. The children around him chatted and laughed, leaving him alone in the crowd. He deposited himself in a boat with Susan, Ron, and Hannah; and stared at nothing while the others stared at everything. The oohs and aahs of naked awe swirled around his person like mist, while the worries and angst of hidden uncertainty caressed his skin like a cloth-made dementor aura.

He clambered out of the boat and offered Susan an unthinking hand. Together, they trudged up the embankment, to the greatest magical school in Britain, and to the Hogwarts sorting ceremony.

He listened with half an ear as McGonagall gave them the house as family speech, and he caught a glance of Harry, alone and isolated, but also strong and confident. He clenched his teeth. If things kept going as they were… he was going to have to do something.

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