Chapter 8: Pity Party
Sirius grinned as Hermione left their dorm. It wasn't often that a girl was daring enough to come up the steps to the boys' dorms. It was normal for first years since, for the most part, they were oblivious to the sex of their friends. But a brand new sixteen-year-old girl boldly coming up the stairs, even in the company of her brother, was something special.
"I like her," Sirius declared loudly. "She has spunk!"
"She's got the best command of hexes in the country, too," Harry informed him, trying very hard to keep the laughter from his voice. The Sirius he had known wasn't always so polite about Hermione's 'spunk' even after it saved him from Azkaban and the Dementor's kiss. "Don't annoy her. You will regret it."
Sirius considered his chances silently for a moment before coming to the conclusion: "Might be worth it. She's got nice legs."
Indignation overrode the shock that his Godfather was talking in such a way about his friend and Harry found himself shouting at the boy. "Oi! That is my sister, you git!" Harry threw a tee-shirt at him.
Sirius caught the garment without any effort and stretched it out to read the front. "Sex Pistols? Harry James Granger, you are officially my new best friend. I'm borrowing this next Hogsmeade weekend."
"What do I get in return?" Harry asked, his mouth turned up in a satisfied and rather mischievous grin.
"He learns quickly," James commented.
"He does, indeed," Sirius nodded approvingly. "Well on our way to expanding our ranks and we've only known him six hours." Remus shook his head at their idiocy and Peter frowned disapprovingly.
"The sister might not approve," James countered, eyeing Harry with concern, and continuing to discuss the boy as if he were not directly in front of them. "Might be wrapped around the girl's little finger…"
"Like you want to be wrapped around Evans's?" Sirius asked innocently.
"I was thinking more like how you're wrapped around my mum's actually," James grinned and leapt clear of the taller boy's reach, running around the room and hiding every time Sirius managed to find something to throw at him.
"Cheeky bugger!" Sirius called after him, but never managed to catch him even in the confined and circular space. James was simply too fast.
Harry was amazed at how like his own friends they were and how quickly they made him smile. He remembered the sickening display of bullying from Snape's Pensieve. Since viewing that painful memory and realising that his father really was as cocky and cruel as Snape had always claimed, he had expected James to behave the same way toward everyone outside his small group of friends. But he was nothing like the boy in that memory.
James was welcoming and funny. Yes, he made fun of Sirius, but it was not done with malice. Harry would have said something similar to his own friends and they to him. If anything, James reminded him of Fred or George Weasley, whom Harry would never call cruel or bullies.
Sirius, meanwhile, was jovial beyond any sense; Harry knew his history – or at least part of it – and had not expected him to be so loud or so quick to grin.
He turned his eyes on Remus, a man he knew well, and saw his eyes bright with laughter in a way he had never seen in his own time. He sobered with the realisation of why he saw that light so rarely in the man's tired blue eyes. As an adult, he had very little to make him so happy.
As if sensing the turn in Harry's mood, Sirius pulled him close. "Are we prone to melancholy, Harry James Granger?" His face was smiling and his voice was light, but there was no spark in his eye.
"Aren't we all given the right thoughts?" reasoned Remus, ever the practical Marauder. "His first day at a new school, sees you lot acting… well, like gits, to be honest. He's bound to miss his own git friends."
"Is that true, Harry James Granger?" Sirius tightened his hold. "Are your friends gits?"
Harry laughed despite the dark mood he felt. "All but Hermione."
"Ah, but she's not your friend, she's your sister," he waved a finger. "One must never insult one's sister if one intends to live a long and happy life. Mind you, I haven't got a sister, so I wouldn't really know."
"Same here," James chimed in. "And for them…" he pointed at the other two boys in the room.
"So, I'm the only expert on having a sister, then," Harry concluded. "And therefore, I claim her as both family and friend."
"Cheeky," Sirius grumbled and pinched his gaunt face until it hurt.
"Oi! Arithmancy," Remus called and smacked Sirius on the head. "Let him be."
"You're taking Arithmancy?" Harry asked, watching three of the Gryffindors gather their books for class, his heart sinking that his father and mentors were far cleverer than he was.
"Yeah," Sirius shrugged. "The birds dig it when you deconstruct their personality based on their name. Works a treat at parties."
Harry nodded doubtfully. "I'm sure it does."
"Ignore him," Remus instructed. "He likes people thinking he's stupider than he is, but he's smarter than anybody else in our year."
"Oh, Moony, you say such sweet things about me!" the boy cooed and kissed him on the cheek. "You wanna go out sometime?"
"Yeah, next full moon," Remus muttered with wry smile. "Call it a date."
"Quit your flirting before we put the new kid off," James ordered. "You two, behave yourselves while we're gone. No blowing the place up while we're in class." He pointed a warning finger at Harry and Peter.
"Yeah, no dungbombs in the stairwell," Sirius said.
"Or firebombs in the toilets," Remus added.
"Ooh, we've never tried that," the tall black-haired boy realised. "Wonder what that would do…"
"Aside from make a mess?" the young werewolf considered it a moment and shrugged. "I don't know, but there's only one way to find out." He grinned so impishly that Harry barely recognised him as the same Remus Lupin he knew in 1996. Of all the people he would meet, Harry somehow expected Remus to be something of a constant, but when he was alone with these two the boy changed completely. Gone was the reserved young prefect. Instead there was a devious and glinting Marauder.
Harry wondered how Lupin ever managed to keep a straight face while reprimanding Fred and George at Hogwarts when some cheeky part of him wanted to congratulate them and make suggestions on their next plot.
"Peter can keep you out of trouble while we're away," James suggested.
"Uh…" Harry's smile fell and he glanced over at Peter with his ratty little face and watery eyes. "No, I've got to write to Flourish and Blotts before dinner. I promised."
"Wrapped around her little finger," the bespectacled boy shook his head sadly. "What did I tell you?" He sighed heavily as if he were the one burdened by an overbearing sister and trudged from the room followed by a snickering Sirius and Remus.
"Gits," Peter said with an equally sad shake of his head, but his voice was filled with laughter and reverence.
Harry gave a brief "Hmm" in reply as he pulled out some parchment and his list of required books. He took an unnecessarily long time writing out the letter, making sure his spelling was correct, his margins were even and his lines parallel. His brief, one paragraph letter ended up taking an hour to write. He rolled it up, counted out the coins from his moneybag and locked the rest back in his trunk.
"You don't have to lock it," Peter said quickly. "No one locks their things here."
Harry just hummed a noncommittal reply and left the boy alone in the dorm.
'Not lock my trunk with you around? Dream on, you bastard,' Harry spat, gripping the coins so tight in his fist that they bit into the flesh of his palm. 'Why can't I do something to stop him? Why can't I warn them?'
'Because,' a very sensible voice replied in his head, 'things have to stay the way they are. Everything would change if you tried to warn them.'
Harry didn't care for that voice even if it did sound rather like Lupin. 'Who's to say things wouldn't change for the better?' he demanded of the voice. 'What if changing things means that we kill Voldemort quicker? What if changing things means Sirius doesn't have to die?'
'Even if you did manage to make things better,' the sensible voice replied, 'you wouldn't change. You are protected from the timeline, and would always be who you are now – The Time Traveller's Burden is to remember. Don't you recall what Hermione told you third year?'
'I remember it bored me to sleep,' Harry retorted petulantly.
'Liar,' the Lupin-like voice chided. 'You were riveted, imagining all that you might do to make your life different.'
Harry ignored the voice, hoping it would go away.
'What?' he could hear the cheeky grin. 'No smart reply?' Harry wished the voice had a body so that he could glare at it with all the anger he possessed. It had not been part of his conscious brain for more than ten minutes and it was already shifting from being down-to-earth Lupin to cheeky Remus.
"No. Now go away," Harry told it, too annoyed to realise he was speaking his words rather than thinking them.
'You started it with all your pointless questions,' it sniffed, but thankfully it was silent for the rest of the walk to the Owlery.
"Thank you," Harry said aloud. "You were starting to drive me mad."
Scurrying along behind him in the shadows, Peter Pettigrew would have scratched his chin in contemplation if his paw reached quite that far. He had seen Harry's face as he stopped to argue with himself, and worried about the boy's sanity. He worried more about the new boy replacing him. Harry already fit in better with the others than he ever did, and they had only met him that morning.
Peter was covetous by nature. And he coveted his friends as much as anything. No James Potter look-a-like with questionable sanity, a mysterious background and a really, really pretty sister was going to step over him to take away his best mates.
He was Wormtail. And who was Harry James Granger? Nobody.
He repeated this to himself as he stalked the shadows, following Harry down corridors and round bends. The boy really was going to the Owlery like he claimed. Peter had been certain Harry had been lying just to avoid having to speak to him. It was obvious the boy didn't like him. The way Harry had ground his teeth and gripped the knife at breakfast that morning was frightening. He had never seen such hatred, not even in the faces and eyes of the Slytherins they pranked on a weekly basis. Snivellus Snape had never looked at them with that much naked animosity and they had pulled some pretty dirty pranks on him.
The rat kept to the shadows outside the Owlery. As well-trained as they were, the owls did not know an Animagus from the average garden rodent and any one of them would be happy to make a feast of the fat little rat Peter was currently disguised as. He shivered at the idea and wished once again that he had a bigger and stronger animal to transfigure himself into, but they didn't choose their animal forms any more than they chose their wands.
"Take this to Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley," Harry told the owl as he tied the letter to one of its legs. He took a small moneybag from a hook on the wall and filled it with Galleons. "I don't know if they'll try to send you back with my order, but you might want to wait a bit."
The owl hooted a reply and took off as soon as it felt the bag was secure.
Harry watched the tawny owl disappear into the afternoon sky before he turned to a white owl that was sleeping on a perch nearby. He stroked its feathers gently. "I miss Hedwig," he mumbled.
Peter frowned, wondering who Hedwig was. More importantly, he wondered where Harry got so much money and why he had books and his sister didn't. Thinking about it, there were quite a few off things about the Grangers. He hoped the others would not notice. They loved a mystery almost as much as they loved a prank. If they realised how many question marks were hovering around the pair, Peter would be as good as forgotten.