Chapter Text
"Your Hogwarts letters just arrived," Remus announced the next morning, joining the breakfast table with a stack of green-inked envelopes in hand.
He passed them to Harry, who took his letter off the top and passed the rest along.
There was much rustling of parchment from the teenagers, then a grunt of surprise from Ron down the table.
"Hey Hermione, they've bollocksed up your letter, look. They've written Hermione Potter."
Hermione reached across and took her letter, smiling at the address. "No, they got it right," she said happily.
Ron's ears went red. "WHAT? You went and married Harry? Bloody hell, wasn't that a bit rushed? Everyone's gonna call you a golddigger! You couldn't wait until we graduated to grab that vault?"
"Watch your mouth, Ron!" Harry burst out, offended on Hermione’s behalf.
"If you'd paused to apply a single brain cell, you'd have noticed that it's addressed to Miss Hermione Potter, not Mrs," Hermione snapped. "And my parents do just fine, thank you, so money had nothing to do with it!"
"Hermione is my sister," Harry explained tersely. "She has been for years, so when I realised I was going to be the last Potter, we made it official. I couldn't let centuries of family history end with me."
"Why not me?" Ron demanded, flushing even redder. "I was your friend first!"
"Ronald Weasley!" Mrs Weasley scolded. "You already have a magical family, and besides, you can't demand to be adopted! It has to be offered."
"It doesn't work like that," Harry agreed, saddened by Ron's reaction but not surprised. They hadn't told him for exactly this reason, after all. "Hermione is a better fit for the Potter ethos."
"The what?"
"Virtute et industria," Hermione said proudly. "Courage and craft."
"I've got plenty of courage, I'm a Gryffindor!"
"So was Wormtail," Sirius put in grimly.
"Whatever potential he had at eleven, he didn't live up to it," Remus agreed, squeezing his husband's hand in comfort.
"Too true," Harry said, shaking his head in disgust. "But that's not the point, Ron. I don't doubt that you can be brave, I've seen it, but it's the other half that you don't have. Industria: craft, or industry, or hard work."
"You are a lazy bugger," George remarked, tearing open a letter addressed to 'Mr Frederick Weasley'.
Ron's ears turned almost purple. "It's alright for you two,” he snapped. “You've got a Manor and a Wizengamot seat just waiting, but what about me? Fourth in line for bugger all!"
"Not our fault you don't meet the Prewett requirements," Fred said, opening George's letter.
"What are the requirements?" Harry asked curiously.
"Magical twins," Ginny explained. "Great Aunt Muriel has been the Regent since Uncle Gideon and Fabian died."
"The Prewett words are 'duo meliora quam unum'," Hermione added.
When Harry looked nonplussed, Fred and George grinned and chorused: "Two heads are better than one!"
Harry chirped a laugh. "Well, there goes your competition," he commented to Hermione.
"You considered the twins, but not me?" Ron complained loudly.
"Yes," Harry said flatly. "They work bloody hard and make amazing things. They'd be great Potters. Not that I owe you an explanation."
“I damn near adopted them on the spot when I saw their fireworks,” Sirius put in, grinning at the twins. “It’d be a nice change to have some Blacks who’re mad geniuses instead of just plain mad.”
Fred and George gave elaborate bows over their breakfast plates, looking pleased as punch at the compliment from one of their idols.
Meanwhile, Hermione had opened her letter, and she gasped as a scarlet-enamelled badge clattered onto the table.
"Oh no," said Fred mournfully.
"Our condolences," George intoned solemnly.
"That's enough, you two!" Mrs Weasley said, flapping a dish towel at them. "Congratulations, Hermione! You'll be a wonderful prefect."
"Knew it would be you," Harry said, smiling at his sister. He shook his open letter theatrically, demonstrating that nothing fell out. "No surprise that I didn't get the boys' badge," he said, grinning.
Not that I’d have accepted it, I don’t think. I’ve more than enough to do!
"Ron, did you get it?" Ginny asked.
Ron tore his envelope wide open and scowled when only parchment fell out.
"Nothing. Well that's just great. It's shit on Ron day!"
"Ronald! Language!" Mrs Weasley scolded.
Ron scowled and went silent, cramming most of a slice of toast into his mouth and chewing resentfully.
“Harry, why would you be the last Potter?” Ginny asked, after a few seconds of awkward silence.
Harry flushed to the tips of his ears. It was bad enough spelling it out to Hermione, and she hadn’t ever had the kind of crush that Ginny harboured for The Boy Who Lived.
“I um, well, I’m not human anymore,” he said vaguely. “No blood means no bloodline. It’s just lucky that I can still pass on my family magic.”
“Oh,” Ginny said, sounding rather taken aback. “So your children won’t look like you?”
“I won’t be having any children,” Harry said.
“But you’re supposed to marry m-” she coughed, “Supposed to marry a proper witch and have lots of little green-eyed babies.”
Harry’s discomfort grew significantly, he hadn’t missed that slip of the tongue. I’ve got to shut this down right now, he thought. Whatever half-formed plans she has in the works certainly aren’t going to happen.
“I’ll never get married, Ginny,” he said firmly. “I don’t even know if this body will age. I might look exactly like this forever! No adult should want to marry a scrawny fifteen year old. Even if I only look fifteen, that’d be weird.”
Ginny opened her mouth to argue, saw how deadly serious Harry looked, and closed her mouth again. She stared awkwardly down at her boiled eggs.
Harry sighed and pushed his plate away.
“Merlin, I haven’t sat at a breakfast table this uncomfortable since my dear unlamented mother died,” Sirius said, grinning rather maniacally.
Remus gave a startled laugh. “You’re awful.”
“But I’m not wrong,” Sirius said unrepentantly. “Hey, enough family drama, we’re going to Diagon, right? It’s practically tradition to go the day the letters arrive.”
“It wouldn’t be school shopping if it wasn’t complete chaos,” Fred agreed.
“We’ve got to see a bloke about some occamy eggshells,” George put in. “Might as well get books while we’re out.”
“No sneaking off, you two,” Mrs Weasley chided. “We’ll be in and out as quick as a wink, it’s not safe.”
“It’s arguably safer than ever,” Hermione pointed out. “There are a dozen Death Eaters in Azkaban who weren't there last year.”
“And Voldemort’s been pretty quiet since he offed me,” Harry agreed. “Maybe he just hated having unfinished business.”
Mrs Weasley pursed her lips grimly. “Harry dear, I know it’s your right, of course, but I do wish you wouldn’t bring that up so casually. It was an awful night, just awful, thinking that you -”
She fell silent and Harry crooned guiltily.
“Sorry, I’ll try not to.”
I got so used to joking about dying for my Divination work, it’s weird to think that I actually died - and that people cared.
“Yes, well, I suppose it turned out alright,” Mrs Weasley said, looking a little misty-eyed. “Now, everyone finish your eggs. The earlier we go, the better!”
~
Diagon Alley was absolute bedlam, with families flooding the winding street and pouring out of shop doors in great waves.
Loud islands of talking, laughing, shouting teens formed and broke as students met with friends, swapped summer stories, and compared their purchases.
The fifth year booklist was easy, with no shocking mountain of Lockheart books to buy for defence. Instead, students from all years had been assigned the same text: Defensive Magical Theory by Wilbert Slinkhard.
Flipping idly through the pages of the thick tome as they queued at the register, Harry found himself unimpressed. The chapter headings alone were discouraging; how could ‘Basics for Beginners’ possibly be relevant for both first years and NEWT students? And what kind of lesson was ‘Non-Retaliation and Negotiation’?
“Try that against Voldemort, see how far you get,” Harry muttered to himself, dumping the book in his basket and opening The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5 instead.
After Flourish and Blotts, Harry split off from the group and went to Ollivanders to pick up his wand. He arrived just as a new student was being matched with her wand.
“Very good, very good,” Ollivander praised, as a tornado of blue smoke whirled through the shop, ruffling ancient posters and tugging at his flyaway hair.
“Red oak and dragon heartstring, eleven and a quarter inches," he announced.
"Most certainly a duellist’s wand, and a powerful one, Miss Podmore, though I do hope you’ll face no more than schoolyard tiffs for many years yet.”
The little blonde girl went pink with pleasure and accepted a hug from her beaming father.
“We’ll take a wrist holster with it then,” the equally blond man said. “Best to get into practice, eh?”
“Naturally, naturally,” Ollivander said, waving them over to a display of holsters in many shapes and shades. “I would recommend avoiding dragonhide, it can have peculiar interactions with the heartstring.”
He set the girl’s wand box aside and turned to Harry.
“Ah, Lord Potter,” he said delightedly. “I was wondering when we’d meet again.”
He reached under the narrow counter and removed two plain white boxes, laying them side by side with the lids still on.
“Now, I do hope you like at least one of these,” Ollivander said, beckoning Harry closer. “For the sake of my professional pride if nothing else. Have a listen, if you would, and see if one of them particularly calls to you.”
Harry eagerly tilted his head and let himself focus on the faint songs that thrummed through the shop.
The phoenix feathers called greetings from their cardboard nests, bright chimes of fire among the dozens of quieter wands waiting patiently for their match.
The two boxes on the counter echoed his own music, comfortable as Home, but the wand woods lent each one a slightly different tone.
The lefthand box sounded deeper, older, and Harry thought that it was a wand for calm and patient magic.
The righthand box was brighter, softer, and Harry was surprised to find that he was drawn to it.
“This one,” he said, tapping the box. “I didn’t realise how much difference the wood would make, but they’re definitely suited for different kinds of magic, aren’t they? The other one isn’t meant for me.”
Ollivander smiled proudly. “Ah, I am so pleased to hear that. It’s always pleasant to be proven right, is it not?”
He slid the lid off the box with a flourish and presented the wand to Harry.
It was a delicate thing, pale and unadorned except for a gentle indented spiral, as though a vine had constricted the twig as it grew.
“Willow and phoenix hair, twelve inches exactly. Made with wood harvested from a particularly potent tree in the Outer Hebrides,” Ollivander told him quietly. “The same willow tree, in fact, which provided the wand of Miss Lily Evans.”
“Oh,” Harry breathed, picking up the wand with reverence.
The wood hummed warmly in his hand, and he warbled a note of mingled grief and gratitude, his heart unexpectedly heavy.
Ollivander stepped away, going to ring up Miss Podmore's purchases and giving him a moment to process.
How can holding a twig feel like being hugged? Harry thought, cradling the wand close to his chest.
It was hard to put into words, but the slip of willow wood felt intensely protective, as though it recognised some echo of Lily in him and knew what he had lost.
"You're a little bit alive, aren't you? Think we can work together?" he murmured to the wand, adjusting his grip so that the slight ridges fit perfectly in his hand.
The wand hummed in satisfaction, and Harry crooned quietly back.
"I'll try to make you proud, mum," he promised the protective echo.
The Podmores had left the shop, and Ollivander was waiting patiently for Harry to finish communing with the willow twig.
"It's perfect, thank you sir," Harry told him, spinning the wand smoothly between his fingers. "I was expecting holly again, but this is better."
Ollivander smiled his eerie smile. "Holly would still suit you, certainly, but that willow all but leapt off the shelf to match with your feather."
"It knows me, and knows my mum somehow," Harry said wonderingly. "Wand trees must be much more special than I realised. I always thought the core was the important part of the wand, but it's both, isn't it? A three part harmony: the core, the wood, and the wizard."
"Very well deduced, Lord Potter," Mr Ollivander said, his silver eyes gleaming approvingly. "I can't tell you much more without taking you on as an apprentice, but you are quite right. I do hope you'll take an interest in wand making at some point in your long life."
"It sounds fascinating," Harry agreed at once. "But I feel like I have to focus on healing first. Partly because I want to, but also people expect me to, you know?"
Ollivander nodded briskly. "Of course they do. And that wand will serve you well in the healing arts. Willow is excellent for charms, as your mother once learned, and it also excels in delicate healing work. However, this is not a fighter's wand," he warned.
Harry chirped a laugh. "I think my fighting days got cut short, Mr Ollivander. I can barely cast offensive magic now. I only hope I don't fail my Defence OWL this year."
Ollivander's wrinkled face crinkled with amusement. "I wouldn't worry too much about that, Young Phoenix. I suspect that your very existence is worth rather a lot of bonus points."