Chapter Text
The Great Hall was silent as Harry Travers stormed from the room. It was what Remus imagined it would be like if Dumbledore was furious about something—even from across the hall, he could taste the ozone of angry magic on his lips. Sirius immediately sprang to his feet and hurried after the older boy. Aggravatedly, reluctantly, Remus ran after him.
Sirius had been so strange since this summer. Remus could feel something different; something had changed in Sirius, that shifted how their soulmate bond was settling into the back of both their minds. And Sirius was so preoccupied with Travers, all the time! Remus could admit he had been jealous of how much attention Sirius was giving this random long-lost cousin. It felt like Sirius had barely any time for Remus himself, this year. It was either all the Marauders together (and Sirius kept giving Peter strange looks whenever they were all four together, too) or Sirius and James were tagging along after Travers like a pair of puppies.
And Sirius couldn’t seem to find the right time or place to just tell his soulmate what was going on! Since coming back to school Sirius had tried more than once to explain, but he always cut himself off when James or Peter was around, or when there were portraits, or whatever. It was like he was afraid of being overheard.
Remus desperately wished their bond was developed enough for telepathy so he could interrogate his soulmate. As it was, he could only sense Sirius’ emotions and guess at their meanings. It wasn’t like you got a translation booklet with your soulmate bond.
He caught up to Sirius standing lost in the corridor, frowning. He had a look, like he was peering inwards. It was the same look they both shared when tapping into their soul bond, but Remus couldn’t feel the slightest tug on their bond. Another flare of frustration sprang up in him, and Sirius’ eyes opened, looking apologetically at him.
“Remus, is something wrong?” he asked.
Remus avoided the confrontation by answering with another question. “What were you doing just now?”
Sirius worried his lip between his teeth. “I’m trying to find Harry,” he admitted.
“How?” Remus demanded.
Sirius looked around and then pulled Remus into a hidden corridor just off the Great Hall. He’d had no idea this was here, and looked around the darkened, dusty passageway in bewilderment.
“When did you find this?” he asked.
Sirius shrugged. “Harry showed it to me,” he said, walking rapidly down the corridor. Remus had to jog to keep up.
“Why are you so obsessed with him!?” burst out of the twelve-year-old werewolf. “What’s so special about Travers, anyway?”
Sirius paused, looking back at Remus. He glanced around, and apparently deciding they were alone enough for once, he said, “He’s my godson.”
Remus became aware his mouth was hanging open. “What?”
Sirius shrugged. “Apparently we’ve got some weird time turner cupboard in the basement of my house,” he said plainly. “When Harry was pulled back in time by accident all his bonds came with him. Including his bond to me.”
Remus felt like he was about to explode with questions, and Sirius’ lips quirked, clearly sensing his turmoil.
“I meant to tell you earlier, but Harry only said I could tell you, not James or Peter. Jamie’s mum and dad don’t think James is old enough to know. Honestly, I don’t think they feel like I’m old enough to know, but I had no choice. My older self swore the traditional godfather oath, so if I’d broken it by accident it would have been…” Sirius grimaced, trailing off.
“Really bad,” Remus said numbly. “It could have killed you.”
It had been Remus’ godfather who revealed to Greyback the location of the Lupin household. His godfather had thought Greyback was a muggle about to be obliviated, not knowing that as a werewolf he was immune to obliviation, so he hadn’t meant to get his godson bitten, but it didn’t matter. He had still died painfully from being the direct cause of Remus’ near-death experience.
Sirius just nodded, visibly unconcerned. “Yeah. But it’s not that bad. Harry’s awesome. He’s a great godson.”
Remus sighed explosively. “No wonder you’ve been so clingy with him. If the bond only just formed on your end, you’ve got parent fever. I was starting to wonder if you had a three-way soul bond.”
Parent fever was a joking term for how soulmate parents reacted to having biological children together. Because of their own strong magical and mental bond, most parental worries and focuses were magnified, making soulmate parents kind of obsessive helicopter parents for the first year or two until the kid started to develop enough magic of their own to interact with their parents’ soul bond in that way unique to soulmate children. Since the godparent magical oath was designed to imitate a soulmate parent’s relationship with their child, a new godparent got a lesser version of parent fever just like a biological parent would.
Three-way soul bonds, on the other hand, were much rarer. When a group of people all shared soulmarks, they usually had one for each of the other members of the group, meaning such people had multiple soulmarks. Even more rarely, one person could have two soulmarks to different people, but those two people would not have marks with each other. That sort of lopsided bond was almost mythical, it was so unlikely, but it hadn’t stopped Remus from catastrophizing in his mounting anxiety over Sirius’ odd bond with Harry Travers.
Sirius’ eyes went wide. “Oh, no, Remus, no! I would have told you upfront if I had another soul bond. The only reason I didn’t tell you this from the start was because I wasn’t allowed. Harry gave me permission, but he said James and Peter couldn’t know yet, so I had to figure out a way to tell you without them overhearing. I’m so sorry!”
Remus slipped his hand into his soulmates and smiled. “You’re forgiven,” he said, unable to stay mad in the face of Sirius’ big grey eyes. “Now let’s find your godson.”
Sirius wove through dark, dusty passageways unerringly until they were in a large, empty chamber. A tall figure in Slytherin robes was crumpled in the corner, and it looked like he’d rendered a collection of old school desks down to kindling before collapsing.
Sirius hurried over to climb into the older boy’s lap, Remus hovering behind him. Harry was staring dull-faced at the floor, his eyes a teary red like he’d been crying. He blinked and looked up.
“Si’rus?” he asked faintly. “Prof’ss’r Lupin?”
Remus blinked. “Professor?” he asked, startled. Sirius grinned up at him.
“You taught Harry the Patronus charm, right?” He looked to Harry for confirmation.
Harry nodded, running his sleeve across his eyes. “Y-yeah.” He quirked a shallow smile. “Best defence professor I’ve ever had,” he said.
Remus gaped. “What? Me? Even with—even though—?”
Harry shrugged. “Damocles Belby’s going to publish a potion in 1987 that helps a werewolf keep their mind while transformed. Part of your teaching contract was having to take it every month and being locked in your office. Your status was still a secret until some jerk outed you at the end of the school year, but as long as we get that stupid curse on the Defence post taken care of first, you could still do that. Or maybe you could be the Care of Magical Creatures professor. You were always more interested in those parts of Defence, and that position doesn’t come with a curse that’s guaranteed to ruin your life sometime in the school year.”
The two boys were open-mouthed. Remus was delighted. “Me, a professor,” he whispered.
Sirius, though, was more interested in the Defence curse. “So the Curse is real?” he asked. “You told me people were talking about it at the Slug Club dinner back at the beginning of the month.”
Harry snorted. “By the time I started Hogwarts in 1991, the school had consistently had at least one professor in Defence a year for the past nineteen years. By the time I was sent back here, we’d had one professor possessed by V-a Dark wizard, one managed to wipe his own mind trying to obliviate a pair of twelve-year-olds to take credit for rescuing a kidnapped girl, Remus got outed for being a werewolf after somehow forgetting his potion after a whole year of taking it, and then there was the one who was a terrorist under polyjuice potion to look like an auror. And this last year we had this sadistic cow from the Ministry who was running a smear campaign and torturing students who didn’t support the current Minister’s regime. We hadn’t gotten rid of her yet, but I honestly wouldn’t have put it past some of the students to accidently on purpose murder her. Somebody did let nifflers loose in her office.”
Both boys winced, clearly aware of how vicious nifflers could be when on the hunt for gold, but also visibly shell-shocked by Harry’s rant.
“That sounds like a curse, alright,” Sirius said. Remus just nodded.
Sirius hugged Harry carefully. “What made you so upset?” he asked.
Harry scowled at the ground. “The war,” he mumbled. “I know I couldn’t have changed enough to make it never happen, yet, but I just—I want—” He struggled to get any words out.
Remus sank down next to his soulmate and his godson—because even if Sirius was the one with the bond with Harry, Remus would of course have been his secondary godparent in the future if Sirius was his bonded godfather. You could only have one bond, but even if his and Sirius’ bond wasn’t romantic—his cheeks pinked at the thought—there’s no way he would leave Sirius to godparent a kid alone. That’s what being good soulmates was all about.
“There’s going to be a war?” Remus asked.
Harry’s eyes squeezed shut and tears trickled out. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I just—I might be able to stop it. I could. Maybe. If—if I weren’t such a coward. Or if he cared.”
Remus was confused by that, and Sirius was as well, he could sense. “You can still give it your best shot,” Remus suggested. “And if you can’t stop it completely, we can still keep our families safe. If you know what’s coming, we can try and stay safe. Like when a seer gives warnings.”
Harry gave him a watery smile. “Sorry, but I’ve always thought Divination was kind of bunk.”
Remus laughed. “Me too.”
“But you’re a time traveller,” Sirius protested. “That’s different.”
A fire began to kindle in Harry’s green eyes. Odd. They looked a lot like Evans’. Remus suddenly put together that Sirius was Harry’s godfather, James wasn’t allowed to know about Harry yet, and Lily Evans was James Potter’s soulmate. Oh. They weren’t only like Evans’ eyes, were they?
Remus thought of how Harry had taken Evans under his wing, something that he had found strange before but now made perfect sense. Of course he wanted a relationship with his mother, even if she was a child.
“You’re right, Sirius,” Harry murmured. “I’m a time traveller. If I want things to change, I have to make it happen.”
Remus was pretty sure Harry had gotten that ability to be ominous and inspiring at the same time from Evans, too.
* * *
The whispers were endless, and it made Harry want to scream. It was starting again. It was like the aftermath of Voldemort’s resurrection, only instead of disbelieving the Dark Lord was really back, it was just that nobody seemed to think it would actually come to war.
The Slytherins were smug and confident, sure their parents had secured the political leverage they needed, sure the Ministry would bend to the demands of the Walpurgis Party. Those on the opposite side of the argument continued to whisper about Lord Voldemort’s audacity, but none of them were truly concerned. Nobody thought it was serious.
The teachers had better instincts, but of them only Dumbledore and Slughorn looked truly worried. Dumbledore was absent from the high table constantly, probably at the Ministry trying to do damage control. The Order of the Phoenix probably didn’t exist yet, Harry had realized at some point.
Had Gus already taken the Dark Mark?
To avoid having to think about the havoc his soulmate was about to unleash, Harry had thrown himself into the Quidditch season. He attended practices religiously and went flying at every spare moment, doing dangerous stunts that cleared his mind of anything but his flying.
It was actually helping his Occlumency, the flying. It was a much easier method to clearing his mind than the meditation Rowena had taught him. And working on his Occlumency was giving Harry clarity of thought as his emotions were worked through and dismissed, giving him the chance to think about his options.
He couldn’t just write to Voldemort and claim to be his soulmate. Voldemort might believe him, or he might not. Even if he did believe, he would want tons of explanations Harry didn’t dare put in a letter. No, if Harry wanted to try to end the war by igniting his soul bond, he would have to wait until they met next and just…speak to him properly that time.
Harry hated the idea of it. He didn’t want to.
It was awful all around, how conflicted he was. He actually kind of liked this sane version of his soulmate. Even if they disagreed on several political points, they also agreed on a surprising number. And Tom Riddle was funny and witty, gave excellent advice, and was a good letter correspondent. But—but this was also the man who would one day tell him to “bow to death”, who would murder his family and torment him endlessly.
Harry didn’t want to have a soul bond to the man willing to start a war for his political ideals. But he did want a soul bond with the man he exchanged weekly letters with.
There were many instances of wars being ended because key members of opposing sides ended up being soulmates. But there were also plenty of instances of soul bonded pairs dying in wars due to being trapped on opposite sides. Maybe Voldemort would even reject the bond if Harry tried to manipulate it that way. If he used some forbidden magic to break apart their bond the way Grindelwald had broken his bond to Dumbledore, it might explain why he was so insane in the future.
So maybe using his own soul bond as leverage wasn’t the best idea after all.
Was there anything Harry Travers could do, even without using the leverage of being the man’s soulmate?
Well, the only thing Harry Travers might have the ability to do was write a strongly worded letter. It didn’t seem enough, but it was better than nothing and channelling his energy into letter drafts meant he wasn’t using it to perform dangerous stunts on his broomstick, so was probably a better idea anyway.
Two weeks and nearly a hundred drafts later, it was time for the first Quidditch game of the season: Slytherin versus Gryffindor.
The Slytherins and Gryffindors marched onto the field. Harry couldn’t help but grin at his dad and Sirius, who were both new chasers on the team. The team captain for Gryffindor, unfortunately, was seventh year Tiberius McLaggen. He was also one of the team beaters, and Harry had a sudden foreboding this wouldn’t be the fun low-stakes game he had been anticipating.
As soon as Madame Hooch blew the whistle Harry had taken off like a proper Seeker. All the practice he had done in Godric’s Hollow over the past summer had improved his strategy by leaps and bounds, and the other Seeker, a blonde girl he didn’t know, took only moments to decide to tail him instead of doing her own search pattern.
The Slytherins were operating like a well-oiled team due to Vanity’s obsessive teamwork exercises for the members of the team that actually had to work together. As Seeker, Vanity had often used Harry to be the disruptor messing up their team plays, to help them practice under difficult conditions. It was impressive to see that all coming together.
It made Harry kind of sad there was no way he would be captain. Maybe in his own time, after Angelina had graduated…if Katie hadn’t wanted it…but in this time Vanity was only a fourth year and was a brilliant captain, while Harry was only the transfer student with excellent Seeking skills. He wouldn’t have a chance to be captain while Vanity held the badge, even if he had wanted it badly.
As it was, the thought was only a wistful passing fancy he shook off in favour of doing a disruptive play weaving in and out of the Gryffindor Chaser formation. The Chasers scattered and Harry heard the whistling of a Bludger. He dove out of the way and began to make evasive manoeuvres when another Bludger went flying right by his ear.
A chanced glance back showed McLaggen smirking, Beater bat still aloft.
Harry rolled his eyes and flew high above the crowd, spiralling erratically so he would be more difficult to hit. The Gryffindor seeker girl circled in less complex patterns just below him, neatly blocking McLaggen from sending any more Bludgers his way, but unfortunately also preventing him from having an easy route down if he saw the Snitch. He would have to do something about that, Harry decided. A Wronski Feint or some other ploughing manoeuvre?
…well, the Wronski Feint was easiest—for him at least.
Harry dropped unexpectedly like a stone, plummeting past the circling girl below him and past the Chasers fighting over the Quaffle. Gryffindor’s Seeker came plunging after him. He pulled out of the dive at the last second and was impressed when the girl did the same. She was actually pretty good.
And now that he’d done an obvious feint, she wasn’t following him as closely, too afraid of being caught out again.
As Harry pulled back up he was forced to dodge another Bludger, and then it was batted back at him again. Now that Harry was back in the formation range McLaggen didn’t seem to want him to escape again, dogging his tail with repeated Bludger strikes.
Boos began to surface from the stands as it became obvious McLaggen was targeting him.
Slytherin scored and the Slytherin chasers took possession of the Quaffle again before the second Gryffindor Beater seemed to abandon his captain’s strategy and go back to hitting Bludgers towards the chasers. McLaggen backed off slightly, but Harry was still forced to dodge the occasional Bludger sent his way.
Harry sighed in exasperation. Couldn’t he go just once without a drastic injury on the Quidditch pitch? It was as much to prove he could get out of this injured as it was a taunt to McLaggen that Harry decided to begin harrying the Gryffindor Beaters.
He would drop in front of them, swooping in from odd angles to throw them off their strike, before vanishing again either above or below the rest of the players. McLaggen grew redder and redder in the face as Harry continued to evade him.
Then—a glint of gold.
Harry was off like a shot, zooming across the field so fast the world around him was a blur. Everything narrowed down to that tiny golden ball. He reached his arm out and plucked it out of the air.
He gasped and nearly fell off his broom as a Bludger was caught by his blood protection just before it ploughed into his back. It rebounded the opposite direction.
Madam Hooch blew her whistle and Harry frantically held up the Snitch, waving it around. The whistle blew again, ending the game.
Cheers rang out from the Slytherin side of the stands, and disappointed groans from the Gryffindors. Sirius and James flew frantically over to Harry, Narcissa and Andromeda close behind.
“Harry! Are you alright?” Sirius gasped out, pale and frightened looking. “You got hit by that Bludger pretty hard!”
Harry coughed. “Oh, um, it didn’t actually hit me. It hit my blood protection. I’m fine.”
“I didn’t see the red light or stuff that showed up when it was acting up on Halloween,” James said suspiciously.
Harry shrugged. “It just all happened really fast, was all. But I’m fine. I swear.”
They landed on the pitch and Vanity came down next to the group of Blacks and Potters. “Do I need to call a healer, Travers?” she asked with a gimlet eye.
“No, I’m good!” Harry said. “I doubt I’ll even have bruises.”
The young captain grinned. “Good show, then. I’ll see you in the common room for the party!” and she hurried off, chattering to friends coming onto the field to congratulate her plays. The students were pouring out of the stands and onto the pitch now, either congratulating the players or commiserating them depending on the team.
The Gryffindor Seeker ran over. “Hey, good game, Travers!” she shouted out in a thick Scottish accent.
Harry grinned back, good-naturedly. “You’re pretty good yourself,” he said.
“You’ve got that right,” a tall Gryffindor said in an equally thick Scottish accent, slinging an arm around the girl. “I’m Lorcan Wood, Cassie’s boyfriend.”
Harry blinked, suddenly seeing the resemblance between this couple and his former Quidditch captain. “Good to meet you,” he said. “And I meant it. Cassie’s good enough to go pro, if she keeps practicing for another year or so.”
Cassie beamed at him. “That’s the hope,” she admitted. “I want to play for either the Montrose Magpies or the Pride of Portree when I graduate.”
“I hope you get the position,” Harry said.
Cassie laughed. “Me too. And you know, you could go pro yourself if you tried out. Any team would be lucky to have you.”
A scoff came from off to one side, and Harry looked over to see McLaggen, looking spitting mad.
“Problem?” Harry asked.
“You really think you would make pro?” Mc:aggen asked scathingly.
Harry’s eyebrows went up. “I’m sorry, which of us won the game for our team? Oh, sorry, you must have been so distracted by your own stupid grudge you didn’t notice. Next time try actually playing with your team and you might make a better showing.”
McLaggen snarled in disgust. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you Travers?” he demanded, pointing a finger at Harry’s chest.
Harry rolled his eyes. “I really don’t know what your problem with me is, McLaggen,” he sighed. “And honestly, I don’t care. Go cool your head. I’ve got a party to get to.”
“I want a proper duel!” McLaggen burst out. “Not one of those stupid classroom displays with Professor Wolper standing over us.”
Harry couldn’t help but laugh in his face. “McLaggen,” he said patiently. “You’ve never won in a duel with me. Why do you think trying outside the classroom would make any difference?”
McLaggen just growled. Harry rolled his eyes again and turned to walk away. He had bigger problems than a sore loser. McLaggen shouted some spell, but Harry didn’t even bother turning around. He knew his parents’ blood protection would catch it.
He had a party to go to and a letter to work on. He didn’t have time for some idiot teenage rivalry anymore.
* * *
They learned the next morning that there had been another attack the day of their Quidditch game, on the house of one of the biggest political opponents to the Walpurgis Party. They only hadn’t attacked the biggest political opponent because that was Dumbledore, and he had been at the Quidditch game with all of Hogwarts.
The Daily Prophet headlines screamed about how Lord Voldemort had now been officially declared a Dark Lord by the Ministry. The Walpurgis Party had been declared an illegal organization enacting rebellion. Harry had thrown up half the morning, skipping all his classes in favour of begging a nausea potion from the hospital wing and going back to bed.
A brief, scathing letter went winging its way from the Owlry late that night and Harry let out a sigh of relief at having actually done something.
He had no idea how effective his withering criticisms of Voldemort’s tactics would be, nor his insistence he would not correspond with the man any longer so long as he was inciting war. It was all he could do, though…or, Harry realized suddenly, not all.
He hastily scribbled out another three letters—one to Arcturus and Orion, one to the Potters, and one to the Department of Mysteries. He could at least try to keep the people he cared about out of the fight, if they would listen to him.
Harry hoped they would listen to him.
Merlin knew his soulmate likely wouldn’t.