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lomonaaerenTitle: Sleeping Dogs Lie
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Draco, past Sirius/Lily and James/Lily, background Ron/Hermione
Content Notes: AU, canonical child abuse, canonical character deaths, canon-typical violence, angst, drama, cousincest, canon pureblood bigotry
Wordcount: This part 5000
Summary: Harry has received comment after comment on his mother’s eyes during his first year at Hogwarts, but almost no one tells him he looks like his dad. When he opens the photo album Hagrid gives him at the end of the year and sees a man who looks like him standing with his parents in one picture—a man named Sirius Black—he begins to understand why.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, short chaptered stories being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. Tarragon_Leigh requested a fic where Harry is Lily and Sirius’s son and finds out by looking at Hagrid’s photo album, along with its being Harry/Draco. This will have three to four parts.
Sleeping Dogs Lie
“Mate? You all right?”
Harry looked up, blinking, from the photo album clutched between his hands. Ron was standing in the door of the train compartment, looking at him worriedly. Harry nodded and swallowed and jerkily motioned him inside.
Ron sat down beside him and slid the door shut with a push of his foot. Harry knew Hermione would probably find them later; she’d got distracted talking to some older Ravenclaw students about a charm she’d heard them casting. “Mate?” Ron repeated.
Harry turned the photo album around and pointed to the picture of his parents’ wedding that he’d found. They were both grinning at the camera, their heads leaning towards each other, and right next to them was a young man in formal clothes, alternately laughing and sticking his tongue out. “Does he look familiar to you?” Harry asked, his voice only shaking a little.
Ron stared, and then whistled. “Blimey, mate.” He glanced at Harry. “So you think this bloke and your mum—”
“It would explain some things,” Harry whispered. He had wondered why he didn’t look much like the Potter ancestors in the Mirror of Erised, except for his mum, but he had thought the mirror might be making up what they looked like just based on Harry’s intense longing for a family. It wasn’t like Harry had known what they’d looked like. And he’d wondered why no one seemed to compare him to his dad, except Hagrid, and Professor McGonagall when she was talking about Quidditch.
“Yeah.” Ron reached out and squeezed Harry’s hand. “But it might just mean that he’s a relative of some sort, right? And you inherited his looks. It happens like that, sometimes.”
“Not in your family,” Harry muttered.
“Oi, shut up.” Ron swatted Harry on the shoulder. “Listen, do you mind…”
“Yeah?”
“If I take that picture with me over the summer,” Ron said carefully, “I could show it to my mum and dad and ask if they know who he is. They knew your parents. They might be able to say. I mean, you could owl Hagrid, too, of course, but I know you said your relatives don’t like owls.”
Harry nodded. He was reluctant to give up the picture, especially because this man was the first person he’d ever seen with Harry’s slightly bumpy nose and slightly wavy black hair, but it made sense. He pried it carefully out of the album and handed it over to Ron with trembling fingers.
“I’ll take good care of it,” Ron promised, and tucked the photo away just as Hermione came tumbling in.
“Goodness, Ravenclaws know a lot about Charms! I’m sure it helps that the Charms professor is their Head of House. Did you know that he spends private tutoring sessions with them several times a week? I wish Professor McGonagall would do that with Transfiguration, but of course, she’s ever so busy...”
Ron and Harry exchanged a glance and made a decision without a word being said. They’d keep this secret from Hermione for right now. Harry was sure she would want him to tell someone, and he didn’t want to.
Not until he was sure. Not until he knew what was going on.
*
“Did you find out anything about, you know? The man in the picture?”
Ron rolled over in his bed and grinned at Harry. Harry couldn’t help grinning back. Escaping from the Dursleys’ house in a flying car was pretty brilliant.
Then Ron’s grin faded, and he sighed. “I did, mate. It’s pretty awful. You sure you want to know?”
“Yeah.” Harry sat up. If something awful had happened, it was all the more important that he hear about it, so he’d know before other people found out and started teasing him about it later.
Ron nodded and took the photo out of a Quidditch book on his table, handing it back to Harry. Harry put it on the table next to the bed and stared at it. He’d put it back in his photo album in the morning.
“His name is Sirius Black,” Ron said. He was looking down at his blanket, picking at a thread on it. “He was your dad’s—I mean, your maybe-dad’s best friend. Always played pranks with him in school. They were in Gryffindor together. And he’s your godfather.
“He’s in prison right now.” Ron gulped and looked up. “Azkaban. The wizarding prison. Horrible place. He betrayed your parents to You-Know-Who. They were in hiding, and he was their—I think Mum said ‘Secret-Keeper.’ He led You-Know-Who right to them. And he killed one of your maybe-dad’s other best friends, Peter Pettigrew, and a bunch of Muggles before they locked him up. He’s right mental, mate.”
Harry shivered, and spared a bitter thought for what the Dursleys would say if they knew they’d been half-right and his real dad was a criminal. Not that he ever intended to tell them.
“Your Mum told you all that?”
“Some from Mum, some from Dad, and I wrote to Bill, my oldest brother, and got a bit of it.” Ron’s eyes were wide in the moonlight coming through the window. “I kept bothering Mum until she told me the godfather bit and the Secret-Keeper bit. She made me promise not to tell you. She thinks that you’ll be really upset about it.”
“I am really upset about it,” Harry said flatly, staring out the window.
“Um. Sorry.”
Harry shook his head, and then surprised himself by leaning over and hugging Ron. Ron took in a startled breath and then grabbed Harry in return, pounding on his back.
“Thank you,” Harry whispered to him fiercely. “I still don’t know if he’s really my dad, but I want to know. It’s always better to know.”
“You’re welcome,” Ron said, and hugged him extra hard before he slipped away and lay down again.
Long after Ron was snoring, Harry lay there with his hands folded behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He’d wanted to know more about his dad, and now he knew.
And a strong resolve curled in the middle of his stomach. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know how or why Sirius Black had betrayed Harry’s parents—his real parents, because a real dad would die for you like James Potter had done and not try to get you killed. He didn’t know whether his dad had ever known, or why his mum might have had a baby with Black.
It didn’t matter. He was going to be different from Sirius Black. Better. Stronger.
The kind of person who never betrayed his friends.
*
“All I’m saying, Harry, is that you should be looking up the Black family tree, too. Just because no one was a Parselmouth in the Potter family—”
“Why would you be looking up the Black family tree, Potty?”
Bugger, Harry thought crossly. He and Hermione and Ron had been in the library trying to find anything about the Chamber of Secrets or the Heir of Slytherin that wouldn’t be in an ordinary book. (They’d told Hermione about Sirius Black over the summer, and persuaded her that even the adults wouldn’t want to talk about it). He should have asked Hermione to keep her voice down a little, but most people were staying away from them because they were afraid of Harry.
Harry should have known Malfoy wouldn’t be.
“None of your business,” Harry hissed at him, glaring. That kind of thing made Hufflepuffs and even some of the first-year Gryffindors squeak and run away. It should work on a cowardly Slytherin.
Malfoy’s eyes widened. “Hissing at a fellow student,” he said, looking delighted. “I’m sure Professor Snape would like to hear that.”
“Go ahead and tell him.” Harry rolled his eyes and turned back to the book in front of him, which did say something about the Black family, hence why he and Hermione had been arguing about it. Hermione was gripping her wand and watching Malfoy warily.
If he starts saying “Mudblood,” I’m going to hex him. And I don’t care if it gets me thrown out of the library.
“Why do you want to look up the Black family tree, Potty?”
“You have a limited vocabulary, did you know that?” Hermione snapped.
To Harry’s surprise, Malfoy ignored her completely, still focusing on Harry. “My mother is from the Black family,” he announced, as though this was a matter of the utmost importance. “If you’re looking into it, I might be able to tell you something. If I thought it worth my while.” He examined his fingernails.
“Bugger off, Malfoy,” Ron said, coming around a shelf with more books in his arms, and ignored Hermione’s hiss of, “Language!”
“No, I don’t think I will.” Malfoy’s smile deepened a bit. “Unless you’d like me to tell Professor Snape that you’re looking up the Black family as well as hissing at fellow students.”
“I’d like to see you try—”
Harry put a hand on Ron’s arm. He would actually have liked to let Ron hex Malfoy, but with Ron’s broken wand, there was no telling what would happen. “Fine,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “Hermione, can you look up anti-eavesdropping spells?”
Hermione nodded, her eyes fiery, and she and Ron watched as Harry led Malfoy back into the shelves. Harry positioned himself where he would be able to see if someone started walking down this aisle or the one next to it and turned to Malfoy with his arms folded.
Malfoy was staring at him with his mouth open. Harry narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“You look…” Malfoy stared up him and down. “You look like a photograph we have at home of one of Mother’s cousins,” he whispered. “Except for your eyes. Who are you?”
Harry scowled and dropped his arms. “Someone told me that my dad was related to a Black,” he said shortly. “Cousins, or he had a grandmother who was one. So I thought maybe Blacks had been Parselmouths, instead of Potters.” There. That ought to throw Malfoy off the scent.
“Of course he had Black cousins,” Malfoy said. “The pureblood families are all interrelated.” He seemed to be thinking deeply. “But none close enough to account for your looks. And I’ve never heard of someone from the Black family being a Parselmouth. Mother would have told me.” He sneered at Harry. “Proper wizards would show off such a gift, Potter, not be so ignorant about it that they thought they were speaking English to a snake.”
“I don’t know why I thought you could go five minutes without being a git, Malfoy. Hopefully I won’t see you around.”
Harry turned, and Malfoy touched his shoulder. Harry jumped and whirled around, hand on his wand. Malfoy raised his hands in front of him, giving Harry a half-smile.
“The Parselmouth thing isn’t the most important,” Malfoy said softly. “The important part is that you look almost exactly like a Black. I suppose more people would have thought of it before now, but your eyes distracted them. And of course people want to see the father in the son. So. Who are you, Potter? Tell me that.”
“Exactly who I’ve always been,” Harry said, staring at him unflinchingly. He wasn’t about to back down and admit this, even if Malfoy spread it all over the school tomorrow. “James Potter was my dad. Lily Potter was my mum.”
“I don’t think so,” Malfoy whispered.
Harry shrugged. “You claim that I look exactly like a photograph in your parents’ house but it took you until now to notice, Malfoy? I don’t think much of your observation skills.”
And while Malfoy spluttered, Harry slipped away, back to Ron and Hermione. He was braced for Malfoy to spread the news, he told himself. It wasn’t his fault what his parents might have got up to before he was born. It wasn’t his fault that maybe the man who’d slept with his mum had gone to prison.
It couldn’t be worse than the Heir of Slytherin thing, anyway.
*
To Harry’s shock, Malfoy didn’t spread the news all over the school. He caught Harry’s eye now and then at meals and did a lot of smirking, and a few times he contrived to whisper something to him in Potions about “Harry Black.” But he didn’t speak further than that.
It made Harry more cautious. He didn’t trust Malfoy at all. If he was keeping gossip to himself, there was a reason, and it was probably going to be a bad reason.
*
The bad reason showed up at the end of the school year.
Lucius Malfoy was sneering at Professor Dumbledore about the diary and denying he had anything to do with it, but Harry could barely listen to him. Standing next to him was a tall woman with long blonde hair and blue-grey eyes.
She barely looked away from Harry, and her eyes had widened a little after they landed on him.
That has to be Malfoy’s mum, Harry thought, and glared at her once before he turned his head away. He could still see her watching him from the corner of his eye. It didn’t matter, though. He wasn’t going to acknowledge her. And what was she going to do? Spread the news all over school? Harry was still braced for that to happen, and still intent on not betraying his friends. And Ron and Hermione wouldn’t betray him.
When they were in the corridor afterwards and Mr. Malfoy started to berate Harry for freeing Dobby with the sock, Mrs. Malfoy put a hand on his arm. Her eyes were bright and fixed on Harry now the same way they had been in Professor Dumbledore’s office. She had a little smile.
Harry didn’t like it.
“Dear,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered, “you remember the news that Draco owled us about in November? I’m going to ask you to let me handle this.”
Mr. Malfoy bristled all over and glared at Harry, but he nodded shortly. He walked to the end of the corridor and down the stairs with his cane clicking on the stone all the while. Harry folded his hands behind his back—he didn’t want to cross his arms because apparently that made him look like a Black—and glared at Mrs. Malfoy.
He was hurt. He was tired. Even though Fawkes had healed him, he still ached all over from the basilisk venom. He wanted to go to the hospital wing and lie down.
But he also wasn’t going to show Mrs. Malfoy that he was afraid of her.
“Mr. Potter,” Mrs. Malfoy said, with a smile that made Harry wonder if she wanted to call him “Harry Black” like Malfoy did, “let me tell you how remarkably you look like a cousin of mine. Sirius Black.”
Harry was afraid he blushed or turned pale or something, but he kept his mouth stubbornly shut. She could think it all she liked. As long as he said nothing, then she couldn’t get him in trouble.
“Did you know that I am Sirius’s first cousin?” Mrs. Malfoy whispered, and took a step forwards. “For various reasons, I have almost no family left. Many of them are dead, in prison, or disowned. Blacks value family. We are loyal to each other. I would be happy to make arrangements for you to visit us, so that you can get to know us.”
Malfoy’s my second cousin? Ew.
But then again, Harry had never had much luck with cousins. And it still wasn’t his fault who he was related to. It wasn’t his fault that he was related to the Dursleys, either. He kept silent and stared at her.
Mrs. Malfoy shook her head and sighed. “Draco described how stubborn you were, but that was Sirius all over,” she said softly. “He was the first Black in Gryffindor, ever, when all our family had Sorted Slytherin for generations. Are you not the least bit curious to know your father’s family, Mr. Potter? There is no doubt in my mind that Sirius is your father. I am astonished no one else has seen it, but perhaps they have merely kept quiet about it, owing to the circumstances surrounding his imprisonment.”
Harry couldn’t stand it. He said, “Oh, yeah, he went to prison for serving Voldemort like your husband did, right? Only Mr. Malfoy claimed he was enchanted or something. Sure, I should come visit the house of someone who wants to kill me. That sounds like a great idea.”
Mrs. Malfoy had flinched at Voldemort’s name, but now, she looked at him with hard, bright eyes. “We cannot choose our family, Mr. Black.”
“I know that.”
“You sounded as if you did not.”
“I can sure choose which family to visit, and it’s not the family who wants to kill me,” Harry snapped. Well, maybe the Dursleys did count under that, but at least they couldn’t actually use magic to torture him or the like.
Mrs. Malfoy opened her mouth again, but Dobby, who Harry had almost forgotten about, piped up. “Old Bad Mistress is not bothering Harry Potter!” he said, and disappeared to reappear between them, his arms folded and a scowl on his face.
Harry straightened up. Whether or not Mrs. Malfoy was a bad person herself, she had helped hurt Dobby. She hadn’t cared when he’d shut his ears in the oven or ironed his hands. That definitely made her someone he didn’t want to visit. “Go away, Mrs. Malfoy.”
She didn’t move. “Family finds you in the end,” she murmured. “Blood will out.”
“Yeah, well, my murderer father is in prison,” Harry said harshly. He was kind of telling himself as well as her, he thought. Sometimes he wanted his dad and mum, and it was hard to know that someone was alive who was blood-related to him and wouldn’t come save him from the Dursleys. But Harry had had to remind himself that just because he was alive didn’t make Sirius Black a good person. “And my mother was the sort of person your son would call a Mudblood. So she doesn’t matter to you. I don’t matter to you. Go away.”
Mrs. Malfoy blinked several times. Then she turned and walked down the stairs after her husband.
Harry relaxed with a sigh, and then turned and listened to Dobby’s thanks with a small smile. At least he’d saved Dobby and Ginny. At least that had gone right today.
And I’m still alive. That’s pretty good, too.
*
“Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.”
Hermione whispered the words tearfully into Harry’s ear as she hugged him. Harry sighed and hugged her back. “It’s okay,” he said.
And it sort of was. Harry had been in Diagon Alley a few weeks and had had time to get used to the idea of his murderer father having broken out of prison and wanting to kill him. In a way, it was nothing new, Harry thought. After all, Black had wanted to kill him when Harry was a baby, too, and he’d betrayed his bloody best friend.
The quotes in some of the newspaper articles had said Black was like a brother to James Potter. So he didn’t give a fuck for family, either.
Thinking the word “fuck” was very satisfying. Harry had done it a lot in the past few weeks, and it had helped.
“Just be careful,” Hermione whispered as she let him go. “Don’t—go after him or anything, okay, Harry?”
“Don’t worry, Hermione,” Harry said. As much as he might have liked to hear what his traitor of a father had to say for himself, it wasn’t worth it. Black had made his choices twelve years ago. He should have made better ones if he’d wanted to be welcomed back.
*
“Are you okay?”
Harry turned around and stared. Draco Malfoy was standing behind him, leaning on a tree. Harry had come to wander along the edge of the Forbidden Forest and think about Black’s attempts to break into Gryffindor Tower. He had no idea why Malfoy would be here, and asking something that sounded like a sincere question.
Then Harry sighed at himself. It’s not a sincere question, Harry, get over it. He just wants to taunt you.
“Yes, just fine,” Harry said. “Affected by Dementors, someone who might be my father is trying to kill me, people are starting to gossip about how I might look like him, and my Defense professor is jumpy around him half the time, why do you ask?”
He savagely kicked a stone. Now that the paper had printed so many pictures of Black, people were starting to see the resemblance between him and Harry that had always been there. And they stared and whispered, of course. Professor Snape glared harder than ever at Harry during Potions class. Since Black had been his dad’s best friend, and Professor Dumbledore had told Harry that Dad had saved Snape’s life, Harry wondered if Snape had a reason to hate Black, too.
And Remus Lupin…
Harry knew who he was. Ron had found that out, too, asking his parents and owling Bill this past summer when there had been a brief mention of an R. J. Lupin in one of the Prophet articles. But Professor Lupin watched Harry with sad eyes and avoided being alone with him and looked at him as little as possible.
If he was going to blame Harry for being Sirius Black’s son and never tell Harry he had been Dad’s friend, fine. Harry didn’t need him. The only thing he would have liked to learn from Professor Lupin was the Patronus Charm, and Harry and Ron and Hermione were practicing that on their own.
“I have this for you.”
Harry blinked and glanced up. Malfoy was holding out a small square of parchment. Harry folded his arms, remembered it made him look like a Black, and dropped them again. “Yeah, what’s that, Malfoy? Full of itching powder?”
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “You’re my cousin, Black,” he said, and emphasized the last name obnoxiously. “No, this isn’t a trick or a prank. It’s a letter from my mother.”
Harry eyed him some more, but Malfoy just shook the letter at him. Harry sighed and finally took it and tucked it into his pocket.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Malfoy demanded, hopping in place a little.
“No.”
“But she said for you to open it and me to tell her what you said!”
“Playing owl now, Malfoy?”
Harry hoped that would get him irritated enough to go away, but although Malfoy’s face flushed bright pink, he only took a deep breath. “She wants me to tell her what you said because none of her other letters are getting through. She thinks you might have an owl ward on you that’s turning her letters away.”
“I’ve got them. I just burn them without opening them.”
Malfoy stared at him in such horror, his mouth falling open a little, that Harry snickered. Malfoy promptly flushed red and took a step forwards. Harry raised an eyebrow at him and let his hand rest on his wand.
Malfoy jerked to a stop and said in the deepest and most serious voice Harry had ever heard from him, “That is unspeakably rude, Black.”
Harry shrugged. “Your dad tried to kill my best friend’s little sister last year. He fought for Voldemort during the war, too. You called one of my best friends a Mudblood. You abuse your house-elves. Why would I be interested in what your mum was writing to me?”
“My father was under the Imperius Curse!” Malfoy said, flinching at “Voldemort.”
So that’s what it’s called. “Sure, Malfoy, whatever you say. But the question stands.”
Malfoy looked very much as if he would like to storm away, but he scowled at Harry and managed to say in a snappish tone, “Family is important, Black. If you want to know what the letter says without opening it, fine. My mother is offering you sanctuary. You may come to Malfoy Manor if Hogwarts becomes too dangerous for you. The letters have my father’s signature on them, too. In blood. He’s bound not to hurt you for as long as you’re visiting. If you’re worried about him, it would be best to escape the invitation so he can’t hurt you.”
“But he could still hurt me at school and anywhere else he wanted, right?”
“You are impossible.”
Harry shrugged, pulled Mrs. Malfoy’s letter out of his pocket, and set fire to it with a flick of his wand and a calm, “Incendio.”
“Impossibly rude,” Malfoy said, and this time he did storm away.
Harry went back to brooding.
*
Harry didn’t say a thing about it during their confrontation in the Shrieking Shack. He watched Peter Pettigrew become a man again and confess what he had done with a sort of numb helplessness.
All that time spent hating Sirius Black, and then he’d turned out to not even be the real traitor.
Professor Lupin had avoided looking at Harry the entire time. Harry was starting to dislike the man. Now it seemed as though Lupin didn’t hate Harry because he was Sirius Black’s son, but because he wasn’t James Potter’s.
Harry wanted to yell at him, “I can’t help who I was born to,” but that didn’t seem like it would help.
It was only luck—luck and practice, Hermione would have said—that allowed Harry to cast the stag Patronus and drive off a hundred Dementors trying to eat his father’s soul. Harry stared at the stag as it cantered across the lake and wished that he had been right about it being a time-traveling James Potter. There were so many things that Harry would have liked to ask him.
For all that Sirius kept sneaking glances at Harry, he didn’t say anything about it, either. Harry thought they just weren’t going to discuss it. But when Sirius was about to fly off on Buckbeak, Hermione said, “Honestly. Mr. Black, aren’t you going to say something to Harry about him being your son? Don’t you think you owe him an explanation?”
“Hermione,” Harry hissed, feeling his cheeks flush.
“What?” Sirius croaked.
“It’s obvious,” Hermione said, and folded her arms. Her skin was too dark for Harry to see if she was blushing at speaking to an adult like this, but she probably was. “Seeing the two of you together, it’s even more obvious! Come on. Look, I won’t listen.” She turned around and marched to the other side of the room.
Harry and Sirius stared at each other for a moment. Harry’s heart was pounding crazily hard. He was still trying to come to terms with the idea that he had a father, a living father, who wasn’t a traitor and who had offered to let Harry live with him, even if he was also a fugitive and had to leave now and had done something horrible to Snape.
“Did you sleep with my mum?” Harry blurted out. He was sure that Hermione would have slapped her hand across her face if she was listening, but she had promised she wasn’t.
Sirius swallowed and nodded. Then he smiled. It transformed his face. It was the first real smile Harry had seen him give, without a mad edge to it.
“I did. It was—I’ll have to tell you later in more detail. I’ll send you letters. But Harry, I don’t regret it and I’d love to tell the world that you’re my son and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
His words rushed out, and something that had been dangling like an iron chain around Harry’s neck for the past two years crumbled and fell off. He smiled himself, and couldn’t stop smiling. “We can’t tell people,” he whispered. “Not yet. They would think I was in contact with you and helping you or something. It’s creepy enough that Malfoy keeps asking me how I am and his mum keeps sending me letters.” Malfoy had had a foot-stomping tantrum in public when Harry had burned the last one in public at the Gryffindor table.
“Cissa’s sending you letters?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. Cissa? What the hell. “She figured out from the way I looked last year that I was related to you. Something about a photograph she has of you or something.”
Sirius closed his eyes and shook his head a little. “I bet I know which one, too,” he whispered. He opened his eyes again. “Look, don’t trust her slimy snake of a husband as far as you can throw him, but you can trust Cissa. Family is the most important thing in the world to her. If you can get her to meet with you somewhere outside the Malfoy home, then it’ll be better. And maybe give her kid a chance. He must really want to know you if he keeps trying to talk to you.”
“He called Hermione a Mudblood last year.”
“Never mind, he’s a git,” Sirius said promptly, making Harry laugh. “But just try writing back to Cissa once. I know—I know that you probably don’t like it, living with Muggles. I’d hate it. Try, okay? Unless I write to you and say it’s not a good idea.”
Harry nodded, his heart full. He had no idea if things would actually work out with Mrs. Malfoy, but maybe he could have a cousin.
And a father. And maybe a dad.
Sirius leaned off Buckbeak’s back long enough to hug him, making the hippogriff start and flap. Then he turned and scrambled aboard again, and they flew away.
Harry felt the warmth and weight of that hug long after they had disappeared into the sky.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Draco, past Sirius/Lily and James/Lily, background Ron/Hermione
Content Notes: AU, canonical child abuse, canonical character deaths, canon-typical violence, angst, drama, cousincest, canon pureblood bigotry
Wordcount: This part 5000
Summary: Harry has received comment after comment on his mother’s eyes during his first year at Hogwarts, but almost no one tells him he looks like his dad. When he opens the photo album Hagrid gives him at the end of the year and sees a man who looks like him standing with his parents in one picture—a man named Sirius Black—he begins to understand why.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, short chaptered stories being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. Tarragon_Leigh requested a fic where Harry is Lily and Sirius’s son and finds out by looking at Hagrid’s photo album, along with its being Harry/Draco. This will have three to four parts.
Sleeping Dogs Lie
“Mate? You all right?”
Harry looked up, blinking, from the photo album clutched between his hands. Ron was standing in the door of the train compartment, looking at him worriedly. Harry nodded and swallowed and jerkily motioned him inside.
Ron sat down beside him and slid the door shut with a push of his foot. Harry knew Hermione would probably find them later; she’d got distracted talking to some older Ravenclaw students about a charm she’d heard them casting. “Mate?” Ron repeated.
Harry turned the photo album around and pointed to the picture of his parents’ wedding that he’d found. They were both grinning at the camera, their heads leaning towards each other, and right next to them was a young man in formal clothes, alternately laughing and sticking his tongue out. “Does he look familiar to you?” Harry asked, his voice only shaking a little.
Ron stared, and then whistled. “Blimey, mate.” He glanced at Harry. “So you think this bloke and your mum—”
“It would explain some things,” Harry whispered. He had wondered why he didn’t look much like the Potter ancestors in the Mirror of Erised, except for his mum, but he had thought the mirror might be making up what they looked like just based on Harry’s intense longing for a family. It wasn’t like Harry had known what they’d looked like. And he’d wondered why no one seemed to compare him to his dad, except Hagrid, and Professor McGonagall when she was talking about Quidditch.
“Yeah.” Ron reached out and squeezed Harry’s hand. “But it might just mean that he’s a relative of some sort, right? And you inherited his looks. It happens like that, sometimes.”
“Not in your family,” Harry muttered.
“Oi, shut up.” Ron swatted Harry on the shoulder. “Listen, do you mind…”
“Yeah?”
“If I take that picture with me over the summer,” Ron said carefully, “I could show it to my mum and dad and ask if they know who he is. They knew your parents. They might be able to say. I mean, you could owl Hagrid, too, of course, but I know you said your relatives don’t like owls.”
Harry nodded. He was reluctant to give up the picture, especially because this man was the first person he’d ever seen with Harry’s slightly bumpy nose and slightly wavy black hair, but it made sense. He pried it carefully out of the album and handed it over to Ron with trembling fingers.
“I’ll take good care of it,” Ron promised, and tucked the photo away just as Hermione came tumbling in.
“Goodness, Ravenclaws know a lot about Charms! I’m sure it helps that the Charms professor is their Head of House. Did you know that he spends private tutoring sessions with them several times a week? I wish Professor McGonagall would do that with Transfiguration, but of course, she’s ever so busy...”
Ron and Harry exchanged a glance and made a decision without a word being said. They’d keep this secret from Hermione for right now. Harry was sure she would want him to tell someone, and he didn’t want to.
Not until he was sure. Not until he knew what was going on.
*
“Did you find out anything about, you know? The man in the picture?”
Ron rolled over in his bed and grinned at Harry. Harry couldn’t help grinning back. Escaping from the Dursleys’ house in a flying car was pretty brilliant.
Then Ron’s grin faded, and he sighed. “I did, mate. It’s pretty awful. You sure you want to know?”
“Yeah.” Harry sat up. If something awful had happened, it was all the more important that he hear about it, so he’d know before other people found out and started teasing him about it later.
Ron nodded and took the photo out of a Quidditch book on his table, handing it back to Harry. Harry put it on the table next to the bed and stared at it. He’d put it back in his photo album in the morning.
“His name is Sirius Black,” Ron said. He was looking down at his blanket, picking at a thread on it. “He was your dad’s—I mean, your maybe-dad’s best friend. Always played pranks with him in school. They were in Gryffindor together. And he’s your godfather.
“He’s in prison right now.” Ron gulped and looked up. “Azkaban. The wizarding prison. Horrible place. He betrayed your parents to You-Know-Who. They were in hiding, and he was their—I think Mum said ‘Secret-Keeper.’ He led You-Know-Who right to them. And he killed one of your maybe-dad’s other best friends, Peter Pettigrew, and a bunch of Muggles before they locked him up. He’s right mental, mate.”
Harry shivered, and spared a bitter thought for what the Dursleys would say if they knew they’d been half-right and his real dad was a criminal. Not that he ever intended to tell them.
“Your Mum told you all that?”
“Some from Mum, some from Dad, and I wrote to Bill, my oldest brother, and got a bit of it.” Ron’s eyes were wide in the moonlight coming through the window. “I kept bothering Mum until she told me the godfather bit and the Secret-Keeper bit. She made me promise not to tell you. She thinks that you’ll be really upset about it.”
“I am really upset about it,” Harry said flatly, staring out the window.
“Um. Sorry.”
Harry shook his head, and then surprised himself by leaning over and hugging Ron. Ron took in a startled breath and then grabbed Harry in return, pounding on his back.
“Thank you,” Harry whispered to him fiercely. “I still don’t know if he’s really my dad, but I want to know. It’s always better to know.”
“You’re welcome,” Ron said, and hugged him extra hard before he slipped away and lay down again.
Long after Ron was snoring, Harry lay there with his hands folded behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He’d wanted to know more about his dad, and now he knew.
And a strong resolve curled in the middle of his stomach. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know how or why Sirius Black had betrayed Harry’s parents—his real parents, because a real dad would die for you like James Potter had done and not try to get you killed. He didn’t know whether his dad had ever known, or why his mum might have had a baby with Black.
It didn’t matter. He was going to be different from Sirius Black. Better. Stronger.
The kind of person who never betrayed his friends.
*
“All I’m saying, Harry, is that you should be looking up the Black family tree, too. Just because no one was a Parselmouth in the Potter family—”
“Why would you be looking up the Black family tree, Potty?”
Bugger, Harry thought crossly. He and Hermione and Ron had been in the library trying to find anything about the Chamber of Secrets or the Heir of Slytherin that wouldn’t be in an ordinary book. (They’d told Hermione about Sirius Black over the summer, and persuaded her that even the adults wouldn’t want to talk about it). He should have asked Hermione to keep her voice down a little, but most people were staying away from them because they were afraid of Harry.
Harry should have known Malfoy wouldn’t be.
“None of your business,” Harry hissed at him, glaring. That kind of thing made Hufflepuffs and even some of the first-year Gryffindors squeak and run away. It should work on a cowardly Slytherin.
Malfoy’s eyes widened. “Hissing at a fellow student,” he said, looking delighted. “I’m sure Professor Snape would like to hear that.”
“Go ahead and tell him.” Harry rolled his eyes and turned back to the book in front of him, which did say something about the Black family, hence why he and Hermione had been arguing about it. Hermione was gripping her wand and watching Malfoy warily.
If he starts saying “Mudblood,” I’m going to hex him. And I don’t care if it gets me thrown out of the library.
“Why do you want to look up the Black family tree, Potty?”
“You have a limited vocabulary, did you know that?” Hermione snapped.
To Harry’s surprise, Malfoy ignored her completely, still focusing on Harry. “My mother is from the Black family,” he announced, as though this was a matter of the utmost importance. “If you’re looking into it, I might be able to tell you something. If I thought it worth my while.” He examined his fingernails.
“Bugger off, Malfoy,” Ron said, coming around a shelf with more books in his arms, and ignored Hermione’s hiss of, “Language!”
“No, I don’t think I will.” Malfoy’s smile deepened a bit. “Unless you’d like me to tell Professor Snape that you’re looking up the Black family as well as hissing at fellow students.”
“I’d like to see you try—”
Harry put a hand on Ron’s arm. He would actually have liked to let Ron hex Malfoy, but with Ron’s broken wand, there was no telling what would happen. “Fine,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “Hermione, can you look up anti-eavesdropping spells?”
Hermione nodded, her eyes fiery, and she and Ron watched as Harry led Malfoy back into the shelves. Harry positioned himself where he would be able to see if someone started walking down this aisle or the one next to it and turned to Malfoy with his arms folded.
Malfoy was staring at him with his mouth open. Harry narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“You look…” Malfoy stared up him and down. “You look like a photograph we have at home of one of Mother’s cousins,” he whispered. “Except for your eyes. Who are you?”
Harry scowled and dropped his arms. “Someone told me that my dad was related to a Black,” he said shortly. “Cousins, or he had a grandmother who was one. So I thought maybe Blacks had been Parselmouths, instead of Potters.” There. That ought to throw Malfoy off the scent.
“Of course he had Black cousins,” Malfoy said. “The pureblood families are all interrelated.” He seemed to be thinking deeply. “But none close enough to account for your looks. And I’ve never heard of someone from the Black family being a Parselmouth. Mother would have told me.” He sneered at Harry. “Proper wizards would show off such a gift, Potter, not be so ignorant about it that they thought they were speaking English to a snake.”
“I don’t know why I thought you could go five minutes without being a git, Malfoy. Hopefully I won’t see you around.”
Harry turned, and Malfoy touched his shoulder. Harry jumped and whirled around, hand on his wand. Malfoy raised his hands in front of him, giving Harry a half-smile.
“The Parselmouth thing isn’t the most important,” Malfoy said softly. “The important part is that you look almost exactly like a Black. I suppose more people would have thought of it before now, but your eyes distracted them. And of course people want to see the father in the son. So. Who are you, Potter? Tell me that.”
“Exactly who I’ve always been,” Harry said, staring at him unflinchingly. He wasn’t about to back down and admit this, even if Malfoy spread it all over the school tomorrow. “James Potter was my dad. Lily Potter was my mum.”
“I don’t think so,” Malfoy whispered.
Harry shrugged. “You claim that I look exactly like a photograph in your parents’ house but it took you until now to notice, Malfoy? I don’t think much of your observation skills.”
And while Malfoy spluttered, Harry slipped away, back to Ron and Hermione. He was braced for Malfoy to spread the news, he told himself. It wasn’t his fault what his parents might have got up to before he was born. It wasn’t his fault that maybe the man who’d slept with his mum had gone to prison.
It couldn’t be worse than the Heir of Slytherin thing, anyway.
*
To Harry’s shock, Malfoy didn’t spread the news all over the school. He caught Harry’s eye now and then at meals and did a lot of smirking, and a few times he contrived to whisper something to him in Potions about “Harry Black.” But he didn’t speak further than that.
It made Harry more cautious. He didn’t trust Malfoy at all. If he was keeping gossip to himself, there was a reason, and it was probably going to be a bad reason.
*
The bad reason showed up at the end of the school year.
Lucius Malfoy was sneering at Professor Dumbledore about the diary and denying he had anything to do with it, but Harry could barely listen to him. Standing next to him was a tall woman with long blonde hair and blue-grey eyes.
She barely looked away from Harry, and her eyes had widened a little after they landed on him.
That has to be Malfoy’s mum, Harry thought, and glared at her once before he turned his head away. He could still see her watching him from the corner of his eye. It didn’t matter, though. He wasn’t going to acknowledge her. And what was she going to do? Spread the news all over school? Harry was still braced for that to happen, and still intent on not betraying his friends. And Ron and Hermione wouldn’t betray him.
When they were in the corridor afterwards and Mr. Malfoy started to berate Harry for freeing Dobby with the sock, Mrs. Malfoy put a hand on his arm. Her eyes were bright and fixed on Harry now the same way they had been in Professor Dumbledore’s office. She had a little smile.
Harry didn’t like it.
“Dear,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered, “you remember the news that Draco owled us about in November? I’m going to ask you to let me handle this.”
Mr. Malfoy bristled all over and glared at Harry, but he nodded shortly. He walked to the end of the corridor and down the stairs with his cane clicking on the stone all the while. Harry folded his hands behind his back—he didn’t want to cross his arms because apparently that made him look like a Black—and glared at Mrs. Malfoy.
He was hurt. He was tired. Even though Fawkes had healed him, he still ached all over from the basilisk venom. He wanted to go to the hospital wing and lie down.
But he also wasn’t going to show Mrs. Malfoy that he was afraid of her.
“Mr. Potter,” Mrs. Malfoy said, with a smile that made Harry wonder if she wanted to call him “Harry Black” like Malfoy did, “let me tell you how remarkably you look like a cousin of mine. Sirius Black.”
Harry was afraid he blushed or turned pale or something, but he kept his mouth stubbornly shut. She could think it all she liked. As long as he said nothing, then she couldn’t get him in trouble.
“Did you know that I am Sirius’s first cousin?” Mrs. Malfoy whispered, and took a step forwards. “For various reasons, I have almost no family left. Many of them are dead, in prison, or disowned. Blacks value family. We are loyal to each other. I would be happy to make arrangements for you to visit us, so that you can get to know us.”
Malfoy’s my second cousin? Ew.
But then again, Harry had never had much luck with cousins. And it still wasn’t his fault who he was related to. It wasn’t his fault that he was related to the Dursleys, either. He kept silent and stared at her.
Mrs. Malfoy shook her head and sighed. “Draco described how stubborn you were, but that was Sirius all over,” she said softly. “He was the first Black in Gryffindor, ever, when all our family had Sorted Slytherin for generations. Are you not the least bit curious to know your father’s family, Mr. Potter? There is no doubt in my mind that Sirius is your father. I am astonished no one else has seen it, but perhaps they have merely kept quiet about it, owing to the circumstances surrounding his imprisonment.”
Harry couldn’t stand it. He said, “Oh, yeah, he went to prison for serving Voldemort like your husband did, right? Only Mr. Malfoy claimed he was enchanted or something. Sure, I should come visit the house of someone who wants to kill me. That sounds like a great idea.”
Mrs. Malfoy had flinched at Voldemort’s name, but now, she looked at him with hard, bright eyes. “We cannot choose our family, Mr. Black.”
“I know that.”
“You sounded as if you did not.”
“I can sure choose which family to visit, and it’s not the family who wants to kill me,” Harry snapped. Well, maybe the Dursleys did count under that, but at least they couldn’t actually use magic to torture him or the like.
Mrs. Malfoy opened her mouth again, but Dobby, who Harry had almost forgotten about, piped up. “Old Bad Mistress is not bothering Harry Potter!” he said, and disappeared to reappear between them, his arms folded and a scowl on his face.
Harry straightened up. Whether or not Mrs. Malfoy was a bad person herself, she had helped hurt Dobby. She hadn’t cared when he’d shut his ears in the oven or ironed his hands. That definitely made her someone he didn’t want to visit. “Go away, Mrs. Malfoy.”
She didn’t move. “Family finds you in the end,” she murmured. “Blood will out.”
“Yeah, well, my murderer father is in prison,” Harry said harshly. He was kind of telling himself as well as her, he thought. Sometimes he wanted his dad and mum, and it was hard to know that someone was alive who was blood-related to him and wouldn’t come save him from the Dursleys. But Harry had had to remind himself that just because he was alive didn’t make Sirius Black a good person. “And my mother was the sort of person your son would call a Mudblood. So she doesn’t matter to you. I don’t matter to you. Go away.”
Mrs. Malfoy blinked several times. Then she turned and walked down the stairs after her husband.
Harry relaxed with a sigh, and then turned and listened to Dobby’s thanks with a small smile. At least he’d saved Dobby and Ginny. At least that had gone right today.
And I’m still alive. That’s pretty good, too.
*
“Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.”
Hermione whispered the words tearfully into Harry’s ear as she hugged him. Harry sighed and hugged her back. “It’s okay,” he said.
And it sort of was. Harry had been in Diagon Alley a few weeks and had had time to get used to the idea of his murderer father having broken out of prison and wanting to kill him. In a way, it was nothing new, Harry thought. After all, Black had wanted to kill him when Harry was a baby, too, and he’d betrayed his bloody best friend.
The quotes in some of the newspaper articles had said Black was like a brother to James Potter. So he didn’t give a fuck for family, either.
Thinking the word “fuck” was very satisfying. Harry had done it a lot in the past few weeks, and it had helped.
“Just be careful,” Hermione whispered as she let him go. “Don’t—go after him or anything, okay, Harry?”
“Don’t worry, Hermione,” Harry said. As much as he might have liked to hear what his traitor of a father had to say for himself, it wasn’t worth it. Black had made his choices twelve years ago. He should have made better ones if he’d wanted to be welcomed back.
*
“Are you okay?”
Harry turned around and stared. Draco Malfoy was standing behind him, leaning on a tree. Harry had come to wander along the edge of the Forbidden Forest and think about Black’s attempts to break into Gryffindor Tower. He had no idea why Malfoy would be here, and asking something that sounded like a sincere question.
Then Harry sighed at himself. It’s not a sincere question, Harry, get over it. He just wants to taunt you.
“Yes, just fine,” Harry said. “Affected by Dementors, someone who might be my father is trying to kill me, people are starting to gossip about how I might look like him, and my Defense professor is jumpy around him half the time, why do you ask?”
He savagely kicked a stone. Now that the paper had printed so many pictures of Black, people were starting to see the resemblance between him and Harry that had always been there. And they stared and whispered, of course. Professor Snape glared harder than ever at Harry during Potions class. Since Black had been his dad’s best friend, and Professor Dumbledore had told Harry that Dad had saved Snape’s life, Harry wondered if Snape had a reason to hate Black, too.
And Remus Lupin…
Harry knew who he was. Ron had found that out, too, asking his parents and owling Bill this past summer when there had been a brief mention of an R. J. Lupin in one of the Prophet articles. But Professor Lupin watched Harry with sad eyes and avoided being alone with him and looked at him as little as possible.
If he was going to blame Harry for being Sirius Black’s son and never tell Harry he had been Dad’s friend, fine. Harry didn’t need him. The only thing he would have liked to learn from Professor Lupin was the Patronus Charm, and Harry and Ron and Hermione were practicing that on their own.
“I have this for you.”
Harry blinked and glanced up. Malfoy was holding out a small square of parchment. Harry folded his arms, remembered it made him look like a Black, and dropped them again. “Yeah, what’s that, Malfoy? Full of itching powder?”
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “You’re my cousin, Black,” he said, and emphasized the last name obnoxiously. “No, this isn’t a trick or a prank. It’s a letter from my mother.”
Harry eyed him some more, but Malfoy just shook the letter at him. Harry sighed and finally took it and tucked it into his pocket.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Malfoy demanded, hopping in place a little.
“No.”
“But she said for you to open it and me to tell her what you said!”
“Playing owl now, Malfoy?”
Harry hoped that would get him irritated enough to go away, but although Malfoy’s face flushed bright pink, he only took a deep breath. “She wants me to tell her what you said because none of her other letters are getting through. She thinks you might have an owl ward on you that’s turning her letters away.”
“I’ve got them. I just burn them without opening them.”
Malfoy stared at him in such horror, his mouth falling open a little, that Harry snickered. Malfoy promptly flushed red and took a step forwards. Harry raised an eyebrow at him and let his hand rest on his wand.
Malfoy jerked to a stop and said in the deepest and most serious voice Harry had ever heard from him, “That is unspeakably rude, Black.”
Harry shrugged. “Your dad tried to kill my best friend’s little sister last year. He fought for Voldemort during the war, too. You called one of my best friends a Mudblood. You abuse your house-elves. Why would I be interested in what your mum was writing to me?”
“My father was under the Imperius Curse!” Malfoy said, flinching at “Voldemort.”
So that’s what it’s called. “Sure, Malfoy, whatever you say. But the question stands.”
Malfoy looked very much as if he would like to storm away, but he scowled at Harry and managed to say in a snappish tone, “Family is important, Black. If you want to know what the letter says without opening it, fine. My mother is offering you sanctuary. You may come to Malfoy Manor if Hogwarts becomes too dangerous for you. The letters have my father’s signature on them, too. In blood. He’s bound not to hurt you for as long as you’re visiting. If you’re worried about him, it would be best to escape the invitation so he can’t hurt you.”
“But he could still hurt me at school and anywhere else he wanted, right?”
“You are impossible.”
Harry shrugged, pulled Mrs. Malfoy’s letter out of his pocket, and set fire to it with a flick of his wand and a calm, “Incendio.”
“Impossibly rude,” Malfoy said, and this time he did storm away.
Harry went back to brooding.
*
Harry didn’t say a thing about it during their confrontation in the Shrieking Shack. He watched Peter Pettigrew become a man again and confess what he had done with a sort of numb helplessness.
All that time spent hating Sirius Black, and then he’d turned out to not even be the real traitor.
Professor Lupin had avoided looking at Harry the entire time. Harry was starting to dislike the man. Now it seemed as though Lupin didn’t hate Harry because he was Sirius Black’s son, but because he wasn’t James Potter’s.
Harry wanted to yell at him, “I can’t help who I was born to,” but that didn’t seem like it would help.
It was only luck—luck and practice, Hermione would have said—that allowed Harry to cast the stag Patronus and drive off a hundred Dementors trying to eat his father’s soul. Harry stared at the stag as it cantered across the lake and wished that he had been right about it being a time-traveling James Potter. There were so many things that Harry would have liked to ask him.
For all that Sirius kept sneaking glances at Harry, he didn’t say anything about it, either. Harry thought they just weren’t going to discuss it. But when Sirius was about to fly off on Buckbeak, Hermione said, “Honestly. Mr. Black, aren’t you going to say something to Harry about him being your son? Don’t you think you owe him an explanation?”
“Hermione,” Harry hissed, feeling his cheeks flush.
“What?” Sirius croaked.
“It’s obvious,” Hermione said, and folded her arms. Her skin was too dark for Harry to see if she was blushing at speaking to an adult like this, but she probably was. “Seeing the two of you together, it’s even more obvious! Come on. Look, I won’t listen.” She turned around and marched to the other side of the room.
Harry and Sirius stared at each other for a moment. Harry’s heart was pounding crazily hard. He was still trying to come to terms with the idea that he had a father, a living father, who wasn’t a traitor and who had offered to let Harry live with him, even if he was also a fugitive and had to leave now and had done something horrible to Snape.
“Did you sleep with my mum?” Harry blurted out. He was sure that Hermione would have slapped her hand across her face if she was listening, but she had promised she wasn’t.
Sirius swallowed and nodded. Then he smiled. It transformed his face. It was the first real smile Harry had seen him give, without a mad edge to it.
“I did. It was—I’ll have to tell you later in more detail. I’ll send you letters. But Harry, I don’t regret it and I’d love to tell the world that you’re my son and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
His words rushed out, and something that had been dangling like an iron chain around Harry’s neck for the past two years crumbled and fell off. He smiled himself, and couldn’t stop smiling. “We can’t tell people,” he whispered. “Not yet. They would think I was in contact with you and helping you or something. It’s creepy enough that Malfoy keeps asking me how I am and his mum keeps sending me letters.” Malfoy had had a foot-stomping tantrum in public when Harry had burned the last one in public at the Gryffindor table.
“Cissa’s sending you letters?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. Cissa? What the hell. “She figured out from the way I looked last year that I was related to you. Something about a photograph she has of you or something.”
Sirius closed his eyes and shook his head a little. “I bet I know which one, too,” he whispered. He opened his eyes again. “Look, don’t trust her slimy snake of a husband as far as you can throw him, but you can trust Cissa. Family is the most important thing in the world to her. If you can get her to meet with you somewhere outside the Malfoy home, then it’ll be better. And maybe give her kid a chance. He must really want to know you if he keeps trying to talk to you.”
“He called Hermione a Mudblood last year.”
“Never mind, he’s a git,” Sirius said promptly, making Harry laugh. “But just try writing back to Cissa once. I know—I know that you probably don’t like it, living with Muggles. I’d hate it. Try, okay? Unless I write to you and say it’s not a good idea.”
Harry nodded, his heart full. He had no idea if things would actually work out with Mrs. Malfoy, but maybe he could have a cousin.
And a father. And maybe a dad.
Sirius leaned off Buckbeak’s back long enough to hug him, making the hippogriff start and flap. Then he turned and scrambled aboard again, and they flew away.
Harry felt the warmth and weight of that hug long after they had disappeared into the sky.
