Chapter Text
Notes:
Female Harry (Holly) Potter
Otherwise mostly canon EXCEPT for an age bump: Hogwarts is more like high school- 1st years are 14, 2nd years are 15, so Holly is 16 when this story starts.
May need to update rating to Explicit near the end- fair warning. Will add tags as necessary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remus Lupin was having a good dream, for once. He lay on a wide, sweeping lawn and the sun was shining. Voices murmured nearby. One, rising above the rest, was somehow familiar. Even as he strained to place it, the voices faltered and a shadow fell over him, bringing dread...
He awoke in the dark- but the same voices were still nearby.
“Why have we stopped?”
“What’s happened to the lights?”
They were young voices, invisible in the dark compartment, and Lupin remembered where he was: on the train to Hogwarts.
“Quiet!” He tried to raise his voice above the students' fearful chatter, but it came out hoarse and rusty with disuse. They fell silent as a shape even blacker than the darkness around them appeared on the other side of the glass compartment door and slowly slid it open. The chill of a dementor fell over them all. One of the students whimpered as the dementor drew in a great, rattling breath, leeching away at their courage, their very will to live. Something thudded to the floor. Lupin groped for a happy memory, and his mind stuck on the voice in his dream. He pulled out his wand. “Expecto Patronum!” Silver fog shot from his wand tip, driving the dementor back. It hissed and withdrew. Immediately, the sense of cold and dread receded.
Lupin sent up a small globe of light to hover near the compartment ceiling and looked around. Four anxious faces peered back at him, but a fifth figure lay crumpled face down, long black hair fanned out over the compartment floor. Drawn by his gaze, the other students noticed this for the first time.
“Holly!” Two of the students slid to their knees beside the figure, a girl with frizzy brown curls and a red-headed boy. They began to shake and prod the fallen figure.
“Stand back!” said Lupin, his voice clearer this time. They obeyed, huddling into the far side of the compartment, where the other two students shifted over to make room on the crowded bench.
“Please, sir, can you help her?”
“Should I fetch the conductor?” asked the frizzy-haired girl.
“Let me see.” Lupin knelt and gently rolled the unconscious student over onto her back. He gasped, and her face swam before him. So like Lily’s face- but there was James’s stubborn chin, and his jet-black hair. He didn’t know how long he stared, or that tears had been gathering in his eyes, until one of them fell with a splash onto her cheek. She stirred, and her eyes opened, meeting his. They had the same wide, upturned shape as James’s, the same brilliant green color as Lily’s.
“Are you all right?” she said, looking up at him in concern.
“I- I’m supposed to ask you that,” he replied, blinking rapidly as she struggled to sit up. He placed a supporting hand on her shoulder, her silky hair sliding between his fingers.
“What happened? Who screamed?” The girl glanced quickly at her friends. “Are you all ok?” They nodded. “Who screamed?” she asked again, and shivered.
“No one screamed, Holly,” her red-haired friend answered, his face concerned.
She frowned. “But- I heard it. Right after that thing-” she broke off. Lupin stood, and pulled his battered trunk down from the overhead rack as her friends talked.
“I felt awful when it came in,” said the other boy in a small voice. “Like, like...”
“Like I’d never be happy again,” finished a girl whose hair was the same bright red as the other boy’s.
“But what did it do?” Holly asked.
“It just… looked around, and breathed,” the frizzy-haired girl shuddered. “And you, you went all rigid and just slumped down onto the floor. And then Professor Lupin did a spell that drove it away." Lupin wondered for a moment how she knew his name, then realized she must have read the lettering stamped on his trunk. He finally found what he was looking for, and broke the chocolate bar into five roughly equal pieces.
“Eat these,” he instructed, giving Holly the biggest one. “It will help, I promise.” She gazed up at him from the floor, her eyes seeming even more luminous in her too-pale face. “I have to speak with the conductor.” He stepped over her and out of the compartment, shutting the door gently behind him.
For a moment he just leaned against the wall, breathing slowly in and out. James and Lily’s daughter! He’d known she’d be at Hogwarts, of course- Dumbledore had told him of some of her exploits over the past few years: slaying a basilisk at fifteen, facing down the Dark Lord, again, at fourteen, but he hadn’t expected- he pushed his confused thoughts aside and strode purposefully down the corridor, just as the train shuddered into motion once more.
When he returned to his compartment the chocolate was still uneaten in their hands, though Holly was now up on one of the benches.
“I haven’t poisoned that chocolate, you know,” he said, smiling at them all. There was a pause, and Holly took a tentative bite. A hint of color came back into her cheeks. “We should be arriving in about ten minutes. I’ve sent word ahead that you’re unwell, Holly.”
She flushed slightly. That’s better, Lupin thought. “Thank you, sir, but that wasn’t necessary. I’m feeling much better now- thanks to you,” she said, and her tone lost the hint of rebuke with which it had begun. “What- what was that thing?” she asked, leaning toward him earnestly.
“That was a dementor; a creature who feeds on human emotion.” Lupin spoke quietly. “They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban.”
“Those are the Azkaban guards?” exclaimed the red-haired boy. “No wonder my dad never wants to talk about them- and why Hagrid was so scared last year when…” he trailed off.
“They’ll be guarding the school all year?” said Holly nervously.
“Just until Sirius Black is caught,” said Lupin. “And Dumbledore won’t allow them inside the grounds.”
“Why on earth would Sirius Black try to get into Hogwarts?” said the red-haired girl in an exasperated tone. “He’d have to be mad!”
“He is mad,” said Lupin sadly, but his eyes were on Holly, who had flushed again, and kept her gaze fixed on the ground. She obviously knew why Sirius Black would come to Hogwarts. He wondered who had told her, and exactly how much she knew.
The train slowed. “Best gather your things,” he instructed, reclosing his trunk.
The platform was even more chaotic than he remembered, as students searched for lost belongings, cats and owls shrieked, and Hagrid’s voice bellowed “Firs’ years! Firs’ years over here!” He lost track of Holly, and scanned the crowd in vain for her dark head.
“You fainted, Potter? You actually fainted? Were the scary dementors just too much for you?” A sleek blonde boy had blocked Holly’s path. Lupin swept forward.
“Is there a problem here?” he said mildly. The boy gave him a haughty glance that lingered on his frayed robes and shabby suitcase.
“No problem, Professor,” he said with just a trace of sarcasm, and moved off. Lupin delivered Holly into the hands of Professor McGonagall, whose lips were pressed into a very thin line.
“Dementors on the train! Thank goodness you were there, Remus. Potter, Granger, come with me!” She strode off with the students following in her wake, the torchlight reflecting in Holly’s dark hair.
Lupin blinked in the glare of light streaming out of the Entrance Hall after the dark ride up to the castle. It felt like an age since he had been a student here- a different person. There was gray in his hair now, though he was only thirty-four. He paused in the doorway for a moment, lost in memories.
“Welcome, Remus. It is a great pleasure to see you here again.” Dumbledore had appeared silently at his side, beaming, and ushered him between the rows of house tables and up to the dais where the head table sat facing them. It felt odd, looking down on the students, and for a moment Lupin felt that his place was among them, not here with Dumbledore and the other teachers. “I know you will be a great asset to our staff,” said Dumbledore firmly, “and I consider it a personal favor that you have agreed to join us.” Lupin could only nod and smile his thanks as he took his seat. He gazed around the hall, wondering whether Holly would be well enough to join the feast, when he spotted a familiar figure. Severus Snape, looking just as unpleasantly oily as ever, was walking up the few shallow steps to the head table, and his foot actually hovered for a moment in mid-air as their eyes met. Lupin stared blankly at his former schoolmate, caught in another rush of memories. Snape scowled and looked away, striding up to the table and drawing out his chair (luckily far down the table from Lupin) with rather more force than seemed necessary.
Everything is different now, Lupin struggled to remind himself as the students slowly settled into their seats and the sorting began. He pushed the memories firmly away, ready to start fresh, here in the only place he’d ever truly been happy.