Chapter 37: Escher
The Marauders' world took a rather interesting turn Tuesday morning. Lily Evans, who for the past six years had gone out of her way to avoid all things James Potter, sat down beside him in the Great Hall without prompting, persuasion or potion to make her do it. She talked to him as if he were a regular person and not a badly behaved dog in need of scolding. She smiled at him, actually smiled.
Toward Harry James Granger, however, she was decidedly chilly. She neither looked at him nor spoke to him, leaving everyone to assume that she was still quite cross about having been tricked all those weeks ago.
"Hardly seems fair," Peter grunted as he watched the girl smiling at James. "He was the one who tricked her, not you."
Harry offered a noncommittal 'hm'.
"She'll get over it now she's so keen on Prongs," Sirius assured them quietly with a broad grin as he draped an arm around Harry's shoulder. The boy did not respond to the gesture, not that he ever did, he was too busy watching the friendly banter between Lily and James. Sirius scowled and opened his mouth to say something, though he was not sure what.
"Class," Remus said, kicking the boy before he could say something he might regret.
Defence was far more interesting now that Morven was loosening up. He still slammed the door shut in the face of any student who was so much as half-a-second late, but he smiled a bit more and made reference to his own past if it related to the subject he was lecturing on. While hardly a startling change, it was enough to make lessons a lot more fun, especially on practical demonstration days. On those days, Morven shined.
Sadly, it was not one of those days. Today it was straight lecturing on Inferi, a subject frightening enough to need no dramatics to get their attention. Even Sirius' skin crawled at the mention of those unfortunate reanimated dead, and he leapt from his seat as soon as the professor bid them good day.
"Mr Granger," Morven called. "I want a word with you."
Harry's eyes went wide, but he moved from his seat down toward the lectern. Sirius considered hiding, but now that they all knew what sort of jobs the seemingly dull Aloysius Morven has succeeded in, the boy was not so willing to become a target for the man's presumably potent hexes. He glanced over at James; his friend was half-way to the door with Lily Evans at his side. Just yesterday Sirius could easily have ducked under a desk with him and hidden beneath the invisibility cloak, now he would have to chase the boy down and drag him away from the girl to get what he wanted. Suddenly James with Lily did not seem such a wonderful thing if it would put such a damper on their spontaneous eavesdropping and pranking.
He walked as slowly as he could without making himself too suspicious, all the while his ears were straining hard to hear every inflection of the pair's voice.
"Mr Granger," Morven said with a wide smile he apparently held in reserve for Harry James Granger. "Any luck on finding a solution to that complicated problem of yours?"
"Uh, no, sir," Harry said slowly as if he were sorting out how best to phrase his response. "We're narrowing it down."
"But?"
"I think I've managed to make myself a massive new problem," the boy admitted flatly. "I mean once we find a way home, Dumbledore can fix whatever mess we've made, but until then… I'm doomed."
Morven laughed, a laugh to put Sirius's loud bark to shame, it filled the room, echoed off the stones and vibrated in their bones. It was the kind of laugh that made any problem seem insignificant, and his words only mirrored that. "If you've nothing to concern yourself with after you have 'gone home'," the man paused, giving the boy a hard look and a raised eyebrow at the phrase, "then I don't see how you could possibly be doomed."
"I am!" Harry insisted. "There's someone who fancies me who shouldn't fancy me because we're family and if there are rules about fancying your best mate's sister then there are definitely rules about this. Carved-in-stone-at-the-beginning-of-time type of rules. This is…"
What it was, Sirius would never know. He had no choice but to keep walking further out of earshot, but he had heard enough. Someone else fancied Harry James Granger. Someone in his family. He frowned at that. So far as he could tell, the Grangers had no family. They received no letters. They had no photographs and shared no stories of parents, uncles or cousins. There was always that vague reference to their 'going home', but to-date Sirius had never seen or heard evidence of their being any actual home for them to go to. No, the only family Harry James Granger had was his adopted sister.
"What's with that face?" Remus asked as Sirius threw his books down on his bed.
"She fancies him," the boy said through clenched teeth.
"Who? Lily? Yeah, that's what we've been working toward for the past three years."
"No, not that," he growled and slumped on his trunk. "Hermione. She fancies Harry."
The amused smile dropped off his face. "No, she doesn't."
"I heard him talking to Morven. He was freaking out because someone fancied him, someone who was family," Sirius informed him. "Who else around here fits that profile? If you've got another name, I'm all ears."
The boy sat himself slowly down on his bed, eyebrows draw together in serious contemplation. No one wanted to lose their girlfriend, especially not to someone she called a brother, but what other explanation was there? Neither could say just what it was about the idea of Lily and Harry going on a date that had upset Hermione so much, but she had been livid when she found out precisely how they had tricked Lily into the date. Add to that the fact that neither of them knew what had passed between them over the holidays, and Hermione fancying her brother seemed as likely as not.
"I'll ask her," Remus said quietly.
"Yeah, because we all know how forthcoming the Grangers are," scoffed Sirius, jealousy and anger cracking his generally perfect mask of indifference.
"I'll ask her," he repeated, standing and moving purposefully from the room. Sirius followed.
He cringed as his friend tried to broach the sickening subject with his girlfriend. He felt for him, since his own prospects were equally as dim if this theory turned out to hold any truth, but he could not imagine how horrible it must be to ask the girl he was dating if she secretly wanted to snog her brother. Even in his family, that was wrong. And that was saying something.
"What's with Moony?" James asked in a low whisper during Charms. "He looks like he's about to vomit."
"Might be," Sirius muttered.
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Girl troubles."
"Oh," he said with a nod and went back to the spell they were practicing. Well, he went back to waving his wand in the general direction of his desk. His thoughts and eyes were focused entirely on Lily Evans, while Sirius's were on Harry James Granger. The NEWT-level charm to reveal enchantments was considerably harder to master than the lesser version they had learned for OWLs. Even if they had not each been distracted by their own love lives the two Marauders would have found it difficult. Preoccupied as they were, it was virtually impossible.
"I'm surprised at you, boys!" Flitwick said, sounding cheerful even as he admonished them. "A foot each on the wandwork for this charm and an hour practicing it for homework. I'll be testing you two on it next time."
"Yes, sir," they replied.
"I never thought I would see the day that I was actually better at Charms than the two of you!" Lily crowed, her green eyes twinkling merrily. It was nonsense, of course; the girl was brilliant at Charms, but she loved to rub it in on the rare and unnatural occasions when they were rubbish.
"I was distracted!" James defended his poor performance.
"By what?"
"By you," he admitted.
"Aren't you sweet?" she said and sounded only slightly sarcastic. Her laughing mouth opened to say more but clamped shut the second Harry came to stand beside James. The girl made the most abrupt change of posture and colour Sirius had ever witnessed. She dropped her eyes to the floor, refusing to look at the boy, as her skin flushed instantly before it drained of its colour, leaving her both ghastly white and slightly green.
"I've got to go," she muttered and ran.
James turned and looked at the boy, "What did you do to her, Granger?"
"Nothing," Harry insisted. "She's not spoken to me since your date."
"She can't still be cross about that, can she?" Sirius wondered.
"Looked more ill to me. Like Harry did when you thought he fancied her," contradicted Remus. He studied the boy a moment, eyes narrowed in consideration before he shook his head. "I'm off to spend some time with my girlfriend."
"Behave yourself!" Harry shouted after him. Remus just sent a pair of forked fingers over his shoulder at him. Oddly, Harry laughed. If he knew that his sister fancied him and not Remus, then surely he would not be joking and laughing with his competition; it was enough to convince Sirius that he was wrong. When the boy started walking in the same direction as Remus, however, he worried that perhaps the boy might attempt to sabotage their date and win Hermione for himself.
"Where are you going?" Sirius asked.
"Meeting with Morven about our project," he shrugged. "The man's too persistent for me."
"Why'd you let him help and not us? We're clever, you know."
"Too clever," Harry agreed. "But he was a curse breaker and an Auror. If anyone has the experience to fix this mess, it might just be him."
Sirius frowned as he leaned in. "One of these days, you will stop being such a bastard and tell us the fucking truth."
"One of these days," Harry agreed quietly, sounding pained. The boy was turned away, but Sirius could tell that he had that look on his face, that look that he had seen only once. Before he got the chance to say anything more, Harry was disappearing down the corridor toward Defence.
James slapped his friend hard on the head. "Smooth."
"You're telling me it doesn't annoy you, his keeping secrets?" Sirius demanded, rubbing his head and scowling. "Six months he's been our friend, and I know more about Filch's bloody cat than I do about him."
"It's a wonder you fancy him, then, you know so little about him. Maybe you ought to make a move on Mrs Norris instead," he replied with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
"Be serious."
"Why? You're depressing enough for the pair of us lately. Cheer up, yeah?" James said. "Dad's getting better, no more worries there. I've got my girl, so first goal of the year is done. Moony's got his, there's the second goal done. Now, let's make Harry and you our third goal. With all the Marauders on the job, we'll have you two snogging in no time."
Sirius shook his head as much in amusement as in despondency. Hard as it was for him to admit, Harry James Granger did not seem the sort of problem that their particular brand of nonsense could solve. Clearly, since they had been at it for months with little to show for it. The boy was no closer to them than he had been in September. He was the first to laugh when a prank succeeded and more than happy to banter with them, but that was it. "You can try, Prongs," he sighed, "but I don't think it'll make a difference."
"Oh, quit your whinging and cast some spells for me to find," the Chaser said, shoving him away. "You were way more fun before you fell in love, you know that? I wasn't nearly as lame as you when I fell for Lily."
"Nope, you were worse," Sirius snorted. "'And her hair, Sirius, her hair is like fire, mate. I could burn myself on it. And her lips…' Hours I had to listen to that drivel!"
"Poetic description," correctly James irritably.
"A rose by any other name would still be a pain in the arse to listen to every night for a month and a half," he laughed as he sent charms around their room. "Done."
"Me, too," his friend said. "In my defence, I was thirteen, and raised by parents who spent every other minute calling each other pet names and saying how much they love each other."
Sirius had no retort to that. His parents' marriage was not a match of love but an arrangement for prestige and money, a political alliance. What time Walburga and Orion Black spent in one another's company was used to schedule upcoming engagements and events as if they had social secretaries instead of spouses. The idea of spending every moment of his childhood hearing his parents speaking words of love and devotion sounded pretty good to him. Damned if he would admit it, though.
"Ready?" Sirius asked.
"Yeah," James said. "Let's make them glow."
Swapping sides, they waved their wands, saying the spell to uncover a hidden or disguised object. It took three attempts but the air finally shimmered like heat waves off hot tarmac in the dead of summer, revealing the location of each of the items James had charmed – the clock on Moony's bedside table and the box of chocolates under his bed, the jumper he would not have noticed under his own bed, three dungbombs under Harry's table and the plaque on the boy's trunk. He thought the plaque an odd sort of thing to charm, even for Prongs.
"You charmed his trunk?" Sirius asked as he bent to inspect the plaque.
"Nope," James replied absently as he dove under Peter's bed. "Found Wormtail's secret stash. Ooh, kinky." He was too absorbed in the magazines to pay Sirius much attention as he studied the nameplate.
It was something he had looked at often during his covert attempts to pick the locks of Harry's trunk. He had all but memorised the compound-curves of the metal and pattern of the tarnish around the edges. The entire thing was in desperate need of a polish; the brass, once shining, was smudged by fingerprints, dulled with a patina only age could bring.
While it no longer shined, it still shouted. It shouted an impossible name: Harry J. Potter.