w (heir) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-22 23:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !harry potter, *log, harry potter, james potter |
log, Hogwarts: Harry P/James P
Who: Harry Potter & James Potter
What: meeting for the first time
Where: Gryffindor Tower
When: BACKDATED; right around when Harry appeared
Warnings/Rating: some feels
The Common Room was still empty. James had never seen it so barren of intelligent life—and, he asks you to consider the fact, he'd attended many a drunken party in its gold-and-red confines. Still unsure as to the absoluteness of a future that was now past, the boy spent much of his time trying to work through the abrupt placing of himself, Sirius, and Remus (and French Weasley and Mini-Moony) here, of all places, where there was no one else. No professors. No Dumbledore. Even Sir Cadogan had yet to be seen, running amok in the portraiture lining the corridors, seeking out fortune and those in need of his aid. The Fat Lady was there, but she didn't seem to have much to say and she spent much of her time visiting Violet and drinking copious amounts of painted wine, telling off the boys when they came back much too late in the evening. The password, rather confusingly, was the same it had been last James had been at school, supposedly some 20 years prior: audentes fortuna iuvat. (It was a mouthful. But, you got used to it after shouting Wingardium Leviosa at various objects for six years.) In the unusual quiet, James Potter stretched his lanky form out on the plumpest, most comfortable couch in the room—the one near the fireplace. The hearth lay cold with the press of summer against sweating glass windows, and James himself had appeared with, how gracious the gods were!—a trunk, so he'd been able to don a lighter, more weather-appropriate robe atop his t-shirt and trousers. Like most things the boy owned, his clothing was well-kept, laundered and fine. His family was well-to-do, but his parents had taught him to take great care of what he already owned, rather than ruin and buy anew (like some people). So, the robes had been lengthened as he grew, but with skill, and one could hardly tell. His hair was its usual mess of black sticking every which way, and the book he had in hand—a more recent book on Muggle Studies he'd nicked from a Madam Pinceless Library, offering him some purview of the world's changes since 1977. It was hols, so he didn't wear House colors, his Gryffindor badge, or his Head Boy badge. He had the stolen snitch, the wand in his pocket, and the book. Sirius and Remus were out to Hogsmeade, and James had told them he intended to stay behind. He wanted to pore over the Map, to attempt to identify any changes that had been made in their absence—or so he said. In reality, he needed some peace, some quiet in which he could turn over all this strangeness—he had a son! There was a prophecy about that son? Peter had sold them out. Remus had a son! They all died. But he'd gotten in with Evans—in his mind without interruption or fire burning his eyebrows off because Sirius was impatient to get to the Kitchens (no food was being served in the Great Hall, obviously). The boy sighed, idly snatching the buzzing snitch from the air every thirty seconds or so. He plopped the open book on his face. It pressed his glasses uncomfortable against the bridge of his nose, but he didn't much care. He was trying to be dramatically fed up at the moment, and one had to endure discomfort for that. The portrait opened and closed with a click, and Harry pulled off his traveling cloak, feeling as nervous as he had his first day at Hogwarts. Yet as he looked around the familiar Common Room, he had to smile with fondness at its thick red tapestries, the old scarred tables, the hearth crackling away at one end of the room, casting bright homey shadows along the walls. There was no reason for anyone to be here, and after his short conference with McGonagall upon arriving, Harry had turned down a private room in one of the other towers as the teachers preferred, and sought his old bed in Gryffindor Tower. Even the other beds empty, the blank spaces where Dean's football posters had once hung, the smooth blankets where Ron usually snored softly into the dark, the sight was still worth that sense of homecoming he looked forward to so intensely, so much so that he had given in to Kreacher's insistence that the elf do the packing and bring his trunk in the morning. Harry shifted a little on his old trainers as he folded the cloak over his arm. The intervening year had not done much to improve Harry's appearance, and even the brief ecstasy at being able to eat and bathe whenever he wished after months of camping in hiding, that had faded, leaving old trousers and a faded shirt under the plain black wizarding robes he tended to wear when he traveled. It took only a few more seconds for Harry to notice that he was not alone in the Common Room. He didn't draw his wand from its secure spot in his pocket, feeling secure in Hogwarts, and especially secure in the Common Room. He stepped around an armchair carefully so he could see the boy on the sofa where he was stretched under a book. Harry made no assumptions, but he thought with a faint nervous thrill that this might be one of the people he had been speaking to on the journals, one of those that had arrived in his time from their own, even avoiding dark fates and recorded death. Harry pushed at his glasses and squinted at the spine of the book, barely registering the topic before he sat down on the edge of another armchair, the one Hermione typically occupied when the three of them had their chats in the years previous. "Hello," he said, tentatively, watching the book to see whose face appeared out of the past. He heard the swing of the portrait and automatically, James assumed Sirius or Remus had returned to him early from their little tryst. He didn't bother getting up. They'd come over, he'd throw his book at them, they'd get a laugh, and then they could go find food somewhere. He didn't mind his quiet time being invaded as he was in the middle of his dramatic sigh and general doneness with the world, and that was as good a time as any to take a break. But then, a voice gave a hello—and James didn't recognize it. In an impressive display of agility whilst wearing a book on one's face, he sat up and straightened the collar of his shirt. The book fell away. James had to fix his glasses, as now they were dirty from being pressed against his eyelids. He didn't bother with a fix of cloth to glass, and instead, flicked his wand that had found its way into his hand the moment he realized he didn't know who was in the room with him. A Chaser's reflexes meant his brain could operate on two different planes, defense and offense, as his body adjusted. Cleared of any grease or dirt, it quickly became obvious James was dealing with some sort of ...multiplier spell or Polyjuice, as he was staring back at himself from the armchair over, just without the book and with horribly round glasses. (Nice try, whoever you are. James has more fashion sense than that!) He twitched, fingers tightening around his wand. It never occurred to him who this might be. It was more likely, in his mind as it wrested with the present, that someone was pranking him than it was he was seeing his son for the first time. The eyes, however, gave his brain something of an unholy jolt. Evans. "Evans? Is that you in there?" His heart skipped, its hands clasped to its chest in a field of ginger daisies. James' genuine smile became somewhat smug and he pocketed the nicked snitch as it flashed near his ear. He kept himself from making a rude comment about what she might be doing with his body, as Sirius wasn't nearby to snicker and that was immature. He was working on being better than that. Harry's eyes, vivid even under the hard reflection of the twisting flames on the lenses of his glasses, flicked down to the movement of his father's hand. It was an automatic reaction, and Harry would always notice if someone drew their wand on him, but he deliberately made no answering move. He didn't even reach for his pocket, keeping his hands loose in front of him. Slowly he lifted his palms and scraped the sweaty surfaces across the tops of his thighs, working off some of his nervous energy while James came up into a sitting position. Harry tilted his head, his eyes roving over his father's face. He looked so young, not like the last time, when he'd seen -- whatever the Resurrection Stone had shown him. Then his father had a few more lines, a slight angle to his shoulders, a hint of kindness and maturity in his mouth. This version of James looked quick and agile, a little smug, like a more clear image of Snape's memory, which Harry could still remember clearly. He cherished every memory of his parents, even if they weren't real memories, just pictures or wishes or ghosts. Harry smiled vaguely when he saw the way James' hair flopped over his forehead. It was nice having somebody to blame for that. The sound of his mother's name in quite that way made Harry flinch slightly, as if a Bludger had just missed him. Deliberately, Harry sat back a little in the armchair, his trainers scratching softly over the rug. "No. I'm Harry." A fissure of concern appeared between James' brows when he was stared back at, the eyes open to him too curious to be Evans' at all, despite the perfect emerald mimicry. Her gaze was not harder, but perhaps… more scrutinizing than curious, leastwise when it was forced to fall upon James Potter. The elder(?) boy blinked, once, twice, before the seed of realization burgeoned into the growth of spring and the boy on the chair moved from figment to reality. This was no prank. James' own dark eyes were wide, blinkered in surprise mingling with pride-plied confusion. His mouth closed and he sat back as well, his posture pureblood impeccable. He allowed himself a span to take in the sight of his son, at the blend of features—heavily Potter, but tapered and adjusted by Evans here and there.—Out of all of the Marauders, James was likely the best equipped to deal with a sudden son. It wasn't that he knew what to do. As he didn't, not even a little bit. But he was quick to accept, to adapt to what had before seemed impossibilities. He had been the first to tell Remus his furry little problem changed naught in their friendship, he had seen the fate of Severus Snape twist off into nothingness if Sirius went through with his plans—he was a boy of action, and action meant movement. He smiled. There was no smugness to it. It was at once ecstatic, as if he'd been gifted (another) brother. He stood to cross the short bit of space between them. He did not launch himself into Harry's lap, but instead opened his arms for an embrace. "Come on then. Let's do this right." Harry had always idealized his father, automatic, an instinctual need to make his parents the absolute best they could be in comparison to the Dursleys, or indeed any people living. He knew intellectually that nobody could live up to that kind of thing, but meeting his dad like this, the familiar feel of the textile armchairs, the warm light, the Hogwarts-home sensation, he didn't try to make his heart remember. It was amazing how much James looked like Harry; he could see why McGonagall and Snape and everyone had a tendency to say that on first meeting him. Of course, now he was a bit more famous, and nobody mistook him for anybody, but still, it was like looking in a mirror. Harry was sure that he wouldn't handle it quite so well at all if someone popped up saying they were his son, so he knew enough to be surprised and grateful when James' face lit up in a smile. The smug went away and the warm familiar sight of his father in the Mirror of Erised glowed out at him. Harry sat up automatically as James got to his feet, and a look of mingled surprise and disbelief flashed through his green eyes before he immediately did the same. Harry didn't worry about the hug being awkward at all. All the times he had seen his parents, he had never been able to hug one of them, to touch them, to think of them as alive and real and right there. He threw out his arms and caught James hard around the shoulders. They were about of a height and a fierce hug wouldn't hurt either of them. "I can't believe you're really here!" Harry said, trying mightily not to cry while he laughed with the relief of it. The force behind the embrace from Harry stuttered James back an inch or so, but he held up his end after the initial surprise abated. He met like with like. They were of a height, James perhaps taller, but only just. He smiled over Harry's shoulder, a full luminous sunrise, and laughed. He gave the boy a squeeze 'round the shoulders, the sort he might give to Sirius if they'd not seen one another for an age.—It wasn't affectionate, precisely, as James didn't know the boy well enough, but there was no rigidness to him or the approach he took toward the cropping up of a child the same age as he was, and there was the undertone of familiar warmth that James exuded naturally, the charisma that earned him the good opinions of others, even when he could, at times, be quite an ass. He patted Harry's back and pulled back some, his hands bracing the boy's arms. He was uncharacteristically sensitive to the fact that they were in two utterly different sets of shoes. He had not lost as he'd never had. His addition of a son was, yes, unexpected, but there was no replacement, no ideals brought to humanity. He understood the laugh in the abstract, and he was determined to be the best father an 18-year-old could be to a son the same age as him. Harry had suffered his entire life, likely wondering and imagining, longing, and James wasn't going to disappoint him, if he could help it. Whatever else, however else he failed at grasping maturity in its entirety and whatever else there was in him that dabbled still with some cruelty, he had heart. And unlike Sirius, he was not afraid of it. "I—" He smiled across the small bit of space now between them. James let his dark eyes drop down to himself, knowing the few years of difference between himself and the father Harry had heard about had likely created some dissonance already. Though James did not falter, his voice edged with uncertainty the way it only ever had in vulnerable moments with Sirius, or as it might, one day with Evans, when the golden boy walls came down some. "I hope you're not too disappointed." The embrace was tight. Harry was not the one that let go first, but he stood back, blinking rapidly to hold back the tears and grinning like a second Christmas had just been announced. He took a deep breath of James Potter and Gryffindor Common Room, and there was nothing like it. Harry was so delighted that James was standing there, completely real and astonishingly Harry-ish in the flickering light, that nothing could have dimmed that joy. James hadn't vanished, he didn't look sad or regretful mixed in with proud and happy, he just looked pleased, and Harry drank in his smiles like a plant in light. He tipped his head and tried to look somewhat impressive and confident through the intervening space, the length of James' arms setting them apart far enough that their respective glasses provided focus. Harry's mouth fell open when James' next words reflected his own worries. "I thought you might be disappointed! You're the best. I mean, I knew you were the best, I saw--" Harry's gaze flickered for a moment, and it was too difficult to try to fight through that mire of explanations, so he passed over it. "--Well, nevermind, you're here now and you're... you're really here." Harry put his hands up on the outside of James' elbows, squeezed for a moment experimentally, just to reassure himself, and let his hands drop again. He couldn't stop grinning. "I don't even know how." The throw of light and the tip of dark head did, in fact, lend itself to Harry, allowing him to draw himself into something that dispensed shadows, an impressive sight indeed for an 18-year-old. The rambled, heavily comma'd reassurance did its job, in spite of the strange self-interruption, and whatever fear the older Potter had had vanished then, as it never did linger much. (He worried, as any adolescent did, but he was quite easily assuaged. It took someone saying 'no, I don't think so,' and he went back about his business of being an arrogant toerag, entirely reassured of his own greatness/acceptableness.) James grinned, utterly pleased—by both the lack of disappointment and the fact that Harry was glad to have him. He clapped the boy on the arm with all the bracing, paternal pride he had (which, currently, was that he had for his Quidditch team, as he often felt as if they were his children in a semi-similar vein). "Good man, Potter," he exclaimed in the perfect parroting of a familiar tone (Sirius). He dropped his hands when Harry did, following his lead as best he could, and, honestly, could only shrug at the sudden reality of his existence, as he had no more answers than anyone else. James plopped back into the comforting arms of the sofa, a bodily fall that had him bounce at least once before coming to rest. He leaned dangerously toward the chair Harry had occupied before, putting the entirety of his weight on the red-and-gold arm of the sofa, pinned on the cage of his ribs. "Alright then. We're pleased to see each other." He kicked his feet on the cushions. "Tell me about yourself, Harry. You can skip the savior part as I've picked up on that." James' mind sped through important questions. He smiled wide. "Do you play Quidditch?" Harry could hardly believe that his father was saying "good man Potter" with that beaming grin, and Harry beamed back, until the two of them were standing there an arms length apart grinning like idiots staring into a mirror. He laughed outright, relaxed, and dropped back into the armchair, the relief making him somewhat boneless. He unfastened the neck of his robes in the heat of the fire, comfortable now and only missing the presence of his familiar friends to be ecstatically happy. "Yeah, I play. Or I did until last year. I'm a Seeker," Harry said, allowing himself to slip all the way into boasting. "They made me Seeker in my first year. We won the Cup before I had to leave." Harry rubbed his hand through his hair in an unthinking approximation of the way James did himself, just to get it out of his eyes, then pushed his glasses up before slumping in the armchair. "Blimey, I'd like a game of Quidditch. I haven't played in ages. The last time I was on a broom it was a bit like running for my life, it's not really the same." Harry's green eyes flashed with interest to his father's face. "Is McGonagall enrolling you in the school? We can't both be Captain." Harry's grin revealed that he was not overly concerned about competing with his father. James could be best, and he (Harry) would only be a little bit disappointed. You go win a war and you earn a little bit of maturity about things like Quidditch. A bit. A Seeker. James seemed impressed by that answer, in a spring of black eyebrows above thick-rimmed glasses and a lopsided grin—and exponentially more so by the addition of First Year recruitment. He perked up then, visibly, his dark eyes following the parabola of Harry's hand through his hair, in exact reenactment of James himself. "They put a babe on a broom. You must have been something, eh?" The older Potter gave a wink as some of his usual smugness returned, evident to everyone but him. He watched the boy sink into the plump armchair and thought perhaps he had a right remedy for this situation. He sat back. Seconds later, from his pocket, he produced a small bit of gold. It breathed a familiar sound as small, delicate wings unfolded from its sides and began to beat. James' smile widened, leaking the arrogance out of his face again. He widened his eyes as he turned to Harry. "I don't know about McGonagall, mate. Perhaps we can be co-captains." James thought that was a splendid idea, actually. The Potters, leading the charge in the House Cup. He beamed at the idea and released the little ball of gold to the air above their heads. It flitted away. "I was pretty good. Neville Longbottom's gran sent him a Remembrall the day of our first flying lesson, and I got into a... bit of a row with another boy about it. McGonagall saw. She is a terror, she is. She let me think she was going to kick me out right up until we found Oliver Wood. He was the Quidditch captain my first couple years," Harry added, babbling like a brook at this opportunity to talk about his favorite sport with his dad. Harry was delighted that his dad wasn't disappointed he hadn't followed in Chaser footsteps, but he had always imagined that his dad would like the Seeker thing, since he carried around that snitch in Snape's memory. When the little golden ball appeared, Harry's eyebrows made a quick jump as he looked at it in recognition. Lily's green eyes watched the golden glint as it danced away, making no immediate grab for it, letting it dance away toward the portrait hole and then back toward them again in the firelight. Abruptly he made a quick lunge for it and snatched it cleanly out of the air, fingers sliding over the metal and his mind going to the last snitch he had held in his hand. The one Dumbledore left him. He inspected the little fluttering ball and then glanced up again at James. "Do you always have one of these, or just... recently?" he asked curiously, wondering if James had been stolen from memory after Snape's memory sometime. Longbottom. James gave a laugh, delighted apparently—though he didn't interrupt his son. He just kept his lips pressed together in an insufferable grin until Harry was finished, nodding animatedly the entire time, black hair flopping as he did so. He nudged his glasses back up with pleased distraction. "Frank had a son then? Him and Alice? Good on them." The Longbottoms were a handful of years older than James and his cohort, and while they hadn't been wildly close in school, they had been friends. James' parents, as well as himself and Sirius, had attended their wedding not so many months before. Of course, he knew Frank's mum, but he didn't much want to talk about her. He'd gotten enough out of her around the hor d'oeuvres. James' grin widened in a flash. "She is a terror. Glad to know she hasn't changed a bit. But, congratulations to you, Seeker Potter. Quite an honor." The release of the nicked Snitch and Harry's subsequent, lightning fast capturing of it did not disappoint. Not entirely paternally, James gave an uproarious reception, smiling like a maniac and clapping his hands. (He had always been what his mother called expressive.) He held out his hand for the little thing as Harry inspected it, but the question caught him enough off-guard that his palm dropped to woolen trousers. James ran a hand through his hair, back to front, as he thought. Black brows drew together, then eased. "Got it two years ago or so," he said from underneath the wilderness of his hair. "Sometime at the end of Fourth Year. End of the year prank, I think. It all blurs together when you get to be my age, son." He laughed. Harry did not laugh. He knew about the end of Fourth Year, and he didn't find the memory amusing. His father had been golden and flawless in his mind back then, a perfect image of himself (of course Harry thought himself flawless at the time, and he looked back with just a hint of embarrassment at the idea). He didn't plan on explaining that to any of the Marauders, not wanting to reveal how much he knew about the people they had been. It was better to get to know James like this, as a smiling bloke, and Harry already rather liked him. He laughed a lot, and not just at other people. "Yes, Frank and Alice. Neville lived with his Gran in school." Harry tried to inform James about the Longbottoms in a somewhat roundabout, but clear way, just in case he ran into Neville. Harry didn't want Neville to have to explain about his parents to anyone if he didn't absolutely need to. "He was a big help against Voldemort, and the Death Eaters too, during his last year." Harry thought Neville's piece was constantly ignored in a lot of the recountings of the Battle, and it annoyed him. Harry glowed a little at being called "Seeker Potter." Being a Quidditch player was one of the ways that Harry defined himself, and he was most definitely not flawless, but he was very good. It was nice to be very good at something that wasn't life and death, after all. He was still thinking about pursuing a serious career catching more Dark Wizards, but he'd have to settle this business with Hogwarts, first. McGonagall seemed keen on building a strong presence here. As long as there was no need to assemble the Order again, Harry could relax. His scar wasn't hurting him. The end of Fourth Year had been much more innocent than Fifth Year, as it turned out. Fifth Year, the year Snivellus had called Lily a ...You-Know-What, had taken a harder turn than those previous—things outside of the walls of Hogwarts grew grimmer by the day, death notices commonplace in the Prophet and the tensions began to seep in in a much more insidious way, threats cropping up in corridors and meetings held under a vigil of darkness.—Of course, James didn't know about Severus' memories, but certainly, if he had, he might have asserted, though he had indeed been rather cruel (and the whole thing had culminated badly in the end of the previous year), there was more than one side to all things. But, here, now, with his son, he managed to keep his anxieties about being up to snuff at bay, and smiled brightly at the mention of Neville, Frank, and Alice.—But the mention of Frank's mum threw him off and immediately one could see his mind working behind dark eyes. The smile gave way to a more somber expression of knit brows dipping below frames, and James raked his fingers through his hair. Whatever roundabout tact Harry was trying didn't sit well with his father. James was more forward than that. He could be tactful if he needed to be, diplomatic even, but his frankness was notorious. "What happened to Frank and Alice?" The conversation could not continue on in the boy's mind until they addressed that. He could accept their boy fighting off Death Eaters, however much it broke his heart that the cancer had come back after everything, all the lives laid down for it—people he knew and loved—but he hadn't… expected… Frank and Alice… He'd only just seen them… James rubbed his palms together after stowing the stupid Snitch away, finding it much too frivolous now. Harry learned about other sides after the death of Severus Snape, a hard lesson to learn but one he had ultimately accepted. His parents had not been perfect, just like Harry was not perfect, but there was no denying that James and Lily had a glow in Harry’s mind that would be hard to dispel even in the face of reality. It was clear by the look on Harry’s face that this was not news he wanted to break. He glanced away toward the fire, remembering Sirius’ face in the flames, and sighed. “Bellatrix happened to them. She… tortured them until there wasn’t anything left. They’re in St. Mungo’s. Neville visits a lot. But it’s pretty awful. If you see him, don’t ask about them, okay?” Harry’s glasses flashed as he lifted his head, looking into his father’s face, anxiously. “I know you knew them in the Order.” Harry hesitated. “Are you in the Order yet?" The name—Bellatrix—earned the sudden, terrible gale of James' anger, condensed, cut viciously down to a point, the expression on his face at once hard, jaw clenched, chin tipped upward. He knew Bellatrix, and he knew what she could do. He'd met her a handful of times throughout his life at various functions, everything sweet and shrill in the way of pureblood events, but he knew her for what she was: a fanatic, a murderer. She wasn't notorious yet, not quite, in the year James and his mates had left behind like so much bad weather. But she was getting there, and her trajectory was clear to the boy. James had a big head and he thought much of himself, but he was also extraordinarily clear-eyed when it came to much. (Not that anyone, even bleary-eyed and poor of vision and in imagination, could have foreseen anything else from the terror of a woman. She was a purist in the (ha) purest sense of the word.) "Of course not," he replied, all but swearing to keep mum on the subject. He wouldn't make a boy resurrect the memories of his parents from their graves at St. Mungo's, even if they were ghosts he'd like to visit with. James thumbed his eyes beneath his glasses, trying to take this in, when Harry's question hit him. He let the plastic of his frames land on the bridge of his nose. The Order. He knew the name, from late night radio broadcasts, from black-and-white spreads in The Prophet. He knew members too—the Longbottoms, for instance. Was he in it? It wasn't so simple, was it? "Listen, my boy, there's time enough for that later. Tell me about this Weasley of yours." The boy grinned and gave his son a wink. |