“Sirius, what Pettigrew said, about me not being my parent’s son…”
“You are Harry, they took you in and became your parents in every way that matters.”
Harry closed his eyes and tried to believe that with all his strength, trying to not feel an impostor, a fake, wearing those glasses, using his father’s- James’ cloak.
Having Lily’s eyes.
“Then who, who were my real parents?”
Sirius grimaced and looked at Remus for assistance, but his old friend merely nodded somberly.
“Tell him Black, tell him of your family’s madness, of how this…boy was brought to this world.” Snape spit, while holding a tied and shaking Peter Pettigrew, said man was looking at Harry with a pale face and terrified eyes.
Sirius growled at Snape in quite an animalistic manner, “Shut up! Don’t forget you are guilty too. If you hadn’t-”
“Sirius my parents, my…birth parents, who were they?Please.”
Sirius Black closed his eyes and squeezed Harry’s shoulders, and the years seemed to pass him in moments, his face, which had become livelier and happier when Harry had accepted his innocence, took a gauntier, older appearance almost instantly.
When he opened his eyes, Harry had to stop himself from flinching from the depths of despair, regret, and even fear in them.
“Your mo-” he sighed, “the woman who gave birth to you, was a cousin of mine, Pandora Black.”
Pettigrew wailed softly when he heard that name.
“Pandora…” Harry repeated that name, his birth mother’s name.
It brought a small feeling of longing to him, and a desire to know more, but that still left…
“What about my…birth father?”
Sirius flinched, and Pettigrew started wailing with vehemence, trying to shake out of his bonds.
Remus looked downright uncomfortable and Snape waved his wand, making some of the candles in the dilapidated house lit up, their fire uncommonly bright.
“Don’t say his name, please, Padfoot! Please! Even the Dark Lord was wary of-”
Snape interrupted Pettigrew’s pleas by elbowing him in the side and then silencing him with a spell.
Sirius didn’t even blink while that happened, his face fixated on Harry’s.
“Your–” he exhaled heavily, closing his eyes for a moment before looking into Harry’s eyes again.
“Pandora was involved with a…cult, something even most of Voldemort’s followers or the man himself didn’t mess with…they…worshiped a…being…a-”
“A demon.” Snape hissed, and Pettigrew wailed in silence, his face ashen.
Harry’s eyes turned to Snape, who was gazing at him with something akin to pity.
Sirius sighed and nodded, while Remus placed his face in his hands.
“And a terrible one at that, better to not say the name, but…the night you were conceived, there was a ritual, and Pandora, well, she was part of it, one of the…main parts.”
Harry almost fell back as he sat down heavily in the bed behind him, his world realigning itself.
He was glad Ron and Hermione were safe back at Hogwarts and not here, to hear this.
He looked down at his hands, such human looking hands, but they now felt wrong, in a way he couldn’t explain.
What other lies had he been telling himself?
All those times he felt weird, that he ignored the shadows whispering to him, when his reflection didn’t look right at a glance, and then righted itself when he paid attention to the mirror.
How the dementors avoided him.
How most animals were terrified of him.
And then he remembered.
Quirrel screaming in pain and terror as shadowy flames ate at him.
And then small details.
How Aragog’s children avoided him but went after Ron.
How the Basilisk was hesitant at first to attack him.
How Dumbledore sometimes looked at him, as if expecting to see something else, and then breathed in relief when he didn’t find whatever it was.
Harry had been ignoring it, as he did most things that didn’t fit into his vision of himself, into what he would like to see.
But now he couldn’t.
“My birth father is that demon, isn’t he?”
Sirius’ eyes told him everything. Snape’s nod was unnecessary, as were Pettigrew’s tears.
The Shadows danced.
The Dementors approached Sirius, Harry tried to place himself in front of him, but they just flew around or over him.
In desperation, he grabbed one by the arm, ignoring the cold sensation in his hands, as if the Dementor itself was made of ice, Harry pulled.
The Dementor screeched, pushing him to the ground and continuing on its path towards Sirius.
Towards one of the few people who accepted him, despite all, towards the one who had offered his home to an…abomination like he knew Harry was.
No.
Harry wouldn’t accept that, he refused.
“Stop!” He shouted, but the Dementors paid him no mind.
Anger he didn’t recognize suffused him, fiery, terrible anger that filled him with feelings he had been denying himself.
“I said Stop!”
As one, the Dementors froze, before, one by one, they turned to him.
Before, Harry would have been shocked and afraid, now, he just felt a cold fury at those creatures, who dared…defy him.
“Leave.” His command reverberated in the dark forest in a double voice, one his own and the other, not.
The shadows danced and roiled like fog and water, switching between the two.
Some of the Dementors turned to one another, and began emitting wispy sounds, like cold breaths that misted in air.
Something began filling Harry, a certainty, a belonging, something that was right and wrong at the same time.
The Dementors seemed to have reached a consensus, but not one that pleased Harry, because they turned their backs on him and began floating towards Sirius again.
The Anger turned into fury, and, guided by some instinct he realized he had always had, Harry raised his hands, fingers like claws.
The Shadows obeyed him, pooling around Sirius, before, as if made from water and smoke at the same time, they formed into sharp spikes and impaled the nearest Dementors.
They shrieked terribly, and Harry smiled.
The ones near Harry turned and charged at him, and a terrible laugh that was his and not came from his mouth
He slashed his arm, fist closed as if wielding a whip.
And one formed out of thin air, looking as if it was made from liquid shadows that almost completely covered a core made of a baleful red light.
A loud snap echoed in the clearing as one Dementor was hit by it, a red flash marking where it was hit in the shoulder.
And it shrieked as its thin arm was sliced off.
Harry laughed again as he sliced at the others, the ones bisected and decapitated vanishing with a wail in explosions of dark smoke, leaving behind tattered cloth.
When a group charged him, he stomped on the ground with his right foot, tendrils of shadow came from under it and formed into spikes, impaling them and dissolving their forms.
A cloak of shadows started covering his back.
When he had destroyed nearly two dozen of them, a loud, reverberating shriek came from one, and as one, they turned and left, flying away, shrieking and wailing in the night.
Harry fell to his knees in front of the lake, and looked at his reflection.
His eyes were glowing, pupils and sclera a bloody red, his skin was pale gray and there were two shadowy horns on his forehead.
His smile of satisfaction turned into a horrified gasp.
The terrible visage turned back to the one he was familiar with, sans glasses.
And Harry wept.
He covered his face with his hands and cried for his humanity that never was, for the lie he had lived, the one that had fooled others as much as himself.
“I can’t go back, I am not human…I am…” he didn’t want to say it, but as he looked at his now normal reflection, a whisper escaped his lips, one filled with despair.
“A monster.”
“Not yet, Harry Potter.” A masculine voice spoke from behind him.
Harry rose and turned abruptly towards the voice, almost calling upon his strange abilities, but his shock was too great to do more than stare.
A man, or something that looked like a man, was floating over a sleeping Sirius.
He was covered in dark green cloak that billowed in the wind, his skin was of such a pale white it glowed under the moonlight.
The man’s face was obscured by the cowl’s shadow, but Harry could see the bare chest and one of his arms.
“Who…what?”
“My identity is not important right now, Harry Potter, yours, however, is.”
Harry fell to his knees again, too overwhelmed by the events of the night, too tired.
“I don’t understand.”
“Knowing the identity of those who sired you has started you down on a dangerous path, one that can lead to either misery or happiness.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at the strange…being, trying to turn his frayed focus to his words.
“Misery or happiness…so, I will have a choice?”
Something dangerously close to hope bloomed in him.
“You always have a choice, such is the gift of Free Will.”
“So…I can choose not to be…like this.” He raised his arms, trying to signal his current situation.
“No, you are what you are, have been since when you were born, nonetheless, you are free to choose your own path, how the abilities passed down from those who sired you will be used, to do good or evil.”
Harry didn’t know how to react to that.
“No one, not even the one who sired you on the mortal Pandora Black can force you, remember that.”
Harry breathed in relief he had secretly feared...
“Then, what…,” he bit his lip, choosing to trust this stranger, whoever he was, “what must I do, go back to Hogwarts? How do I learn to…control, this?”
“You cannot learn what you need in Hogwarts, not now.”
Harry sighed, shoulders sagging, “I am alone then.”
“You are not, there is one like you that can help, guide you, one that knows what it is to have darkness inside, with her, you might learn to control your abilities, to control yourself, and turn back the tide of Darkness that is to come.”
Harry chose to ignore the last part, and focused on the first one.
He wasn’t alone, there was someone who could help him, who was like him.
Maybe they would accept him, like Sirius and Remus and…even Snape did.
“Where can I find…her?”
“In the city of San Francisco, it’s imperative you meet her at once.”
San Francisco? In the United States? How in the bloody hell was he supposed to go there? Would Dumbledore take him? Sirius?
“And how do I get there-”
And suddenly the air got warmer, the dark night was replaced by the bright light of the afternoon sun and the stones of the Lake’s edge were replaced by soft green grass.
“Bloody Hell!” Harry almost shouted when he turned to look back at the city of San Francisco, recognizable by the Golden Gate Bridge crossing the Bay, just like he had seen on the telly.
And there, a few hundred meters to the Bridge’s side, was a large tower built on top of an island, a tower in the shape of a T.
And Harry instantly knew that’s where he must go.
He turned back to the man, who even in the light of day, had his face still obscured by the emerald cowl.
“Wait, what about Sirius? And Remus? And…and…”
The man nodded, as if in approval, “They will be taken care off, no harm will come to them.”
Harry released a breath of relief, at least they wouldn’t be hurt because of him.
“I must leave now, but I do so with a warning and advice.”
Harry braced himself.
“A great many things will be revealed to you, child, some good, some bad, pay attention and consider all of them and know that your choices can either help save this world, or turn it towards the path of utter destruction. Do you understand?”
Talk about responsibility, Harry nodded gravely, saving that information for later.
“And the advice?”
The man raised his head to look at him, and for the first time, Harry saw the man’s face, a pale visage, that looked both young and old at the same time.
An equally pale hand rose to point at him, and Harry was fixed by the man’s stare.
For the first time, he had the feeling that this being was unknowable to him, of a scale of power he couldn’t even imagine.
“Forget the name Harry Potter while here, that is no longer thy name, use the name given at your birth, only then, you will be able to reconcile who you are with who you want to be.”
Harry took a deep breath, Sirius had whispered the name to him before Pettigrew somehow managed to escape and everything went to hell, but he nodded, he didn’t know why, but he felt it was the right thing to do.
“Ok, I will do it.”
“Then this is farewell, child, may your path be one of Justice.” there was a strange melancholy as the man said those words.
Harry blinked, and the man was gone. As if he had never been there.
He was alone now, on that grassy hill overlooking the city as a light breeze blew upon it and brought the smell of the saltwater that mixed with the fresh one in the bay, the faint smell of car exhaust followed it.
Harry looked upon San Francisco, with the blue sky over the skyscraper filled skyline, and multicolored cars driving through the bridge.
And Harry felt hope.
He turned towards the lone tower in the bay, spotting what looked like a barge service that went towards it.
“I will see you again.” Harry Potter promised Sirius, Ron and Hermione, and all of those he cared for back in England.
And then Hadrian Black took his first step towards an uncertain future.