Best Laid Schemes, Chapter 6
(As always, previous chapters can be found at
<http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/Fics/BLS/index.html>)
Previously, in Best Laid Schemes...
"Alexander Harris seems to be a building contractor," said Hermione,
"and Dawn Summers is a student at Cambridge. If it wasn't for those
books on Ancient Magic, I'd say that they were just a couple of fairly
normal Muggles."
"So, what's our next move?" asked Ron.
Ginny set her tea cup on the table in front of her. "This may seem like
a radical idea, but we might try talking to him."
Chapter 6
"And how do we do that?" asked Ron. "Just ring him up? We don't even
have his number."
"Yes we do." Ginny held up a business card. "I swiped this. It has his
phone number on it."
"I think that talking to them might be a good next step," said Hermione,
"but I want to learn a little more, first. We should be getting the
re****t from the Home Office on Alexander Harris and Dawn Summers soon."
---
As far as Dawn and Xander could tell, there was nothing missing from
their apartment. They thought that a couple of items might have been
moved, but they couldn't even be sure about that. Dawn's examination of
the computer activity logs didn't show any attempts to access it, only
that it had been awakened just a couple of minutes after the apartment
alarm had gone off. Willow had called while they were still searching,
to re****t the success of her shopping trip to Diagon Alley, and been
told to meet them at the flat.
When she and Kennedy arrived in the apartment, Willow took the heavy bag
that Kennedy was carrying and started pulling books from it. "We've got
this one: /The Boy Who Lived: An Unauthorized Autobiography/ by Rita
Skeeter."
Dawn took the volume, and looked at the moving picture on the cover. It
showed a spectacularly bad fa****on disaster of a woman with curly blonde
hair, in green robes and rhinestone gl*****, who kept dragging a boy, a
younger version of what Xander now looked like, back onto the cover from
which he seemed to be trying to escape. "Unauthorized Autobiography?
Isn't that an oxymoron?"
"Yeah," said Willow. "From what Neville said, we should take everything
that Skeeter writes with a very large grain of salt. I talked a bit with
the bookshop owner, and he agreed with Neville, but the book is a best
seller. He recommended this one: /The Rise and Fall of Lord V--/ by
Hermione Granger."
"Who's Neville?" asked Buffy.
"He's a guy we met; showed us around a bit. He seemed nice enough. He
said he was a friend of this Harry Potter's," said Kennedy.
"And who, or what, is a Lord V--?" asked Xander.
"Lord Voldemort," said Willow. "An evil wizard who was making a major
nuisance of himself a few years ago. From what I've read, these people
have a very hard time saying his name. It doesn't appear at all in
Skeeter's book, she calls him things like 'You-Know-Who,' and
'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,' but Granger is quite free with it, inside
her book. It's only on the cover that they put a sticker over it. The
/Flourish and Blotts/ manager told me that Granger's prose is a lot less
florid than Skeeter's, and her factual content is much higher." Willow
flipped through the pages of Granger's book. "I've skimmed both of them,
and even without knowing anything else about this, I think I have to
agree with him. Skeeter tends to rely mostly on unsubstantiated gossip,
but Granger's book is full of footnotes, and references. She might be a
bit biased though, since she was one of Potter's best friends through
school, and from what I've read, still is.
"The upshot is that Harry Potter was instrumental in bringing about
Voldemort's downfall, a few times. He knocked Voldemort's plans off the
rails the first time in 1981, and then destroyed him utterly in 98."
"81!" said Xander. "I was only a year old then."
"So was Harry Potter," said Willow. "It wasn't really public knowledge
at the time, but it was really his mother who did it. She used her own
death, protecting her son from Voldemort, to energize a very powerful
protection spell for him. As a result, when Voldemort tried to kill
Harry, his spell backfired, and nearly destroyed him."
"Why was this guy trying to kill a baby in the first place?" asked Buffy.
"A prophecy," said Willow, which got groans from everyone in the room.
"Yeah, that's pretty much the way it worked out, too. Doesn't anyone
read /Oedipus Rex/ anymore? Voldemort spent so much effort trying to
kill this one child to keep a prophecy from coming true, that he let
himself get distracted from his other evil plans. Not only that, but
the things he kept doing to try to kill the boy in the end just gave
Harry Potter more and more power over Voldemort.
"They had their final showdown when Potter was 17, and that time Potter
finished him off for good, which made him almost a super-hero, as far as
most wizards were concerned."
"Which kinda explains why those guys who spotted me, acted that way,"
said Xander.
---
There was a knock on the door. Dobby appeared in the sitting room a few
seconds later, and announced, "The Lupin family is here, Harry Potter."
He ushered Tonks, Remus, and little Teddy Lupin into the room.
Harry rose quickly to his feet. "Remus! It's good to see you! How are
you feeling?"
"The full moon is past, for another month. I would have been here
sooner, otherwise."
Harry nodded in understanding. The monthly ****fts into his werewolf form
were wearing on Remus, though Harry did think that he usually looked
better than he had when they'd first met. Married life was agreeing with
his old teacher. That wasn't true now, though. Remus was looking very
tired, and very worried.
Teddy looked at Harry, his features changing, blending into a smaller
scale mirror of Harry's new face, as they tended to do these days
whenever he met someone new. Harry was happy to see that he didn't go so
far as to lose his eye. His abilities as a Metamorphmagus didn't go that
far, yet. "Are you really my Uncle Harry?" he asked.
Harry smiled and nodded. "Yes, I am."
"You look funny. Are you becoming a 'morphmagus too?"
"Nope," said Harry. "Something happened, and now my face is stuck this
way. Does it bother you?"
Teddy's features changed again, into the younger melding of his parents'
faces that was his normal appearance. "No. Most people have boring
faces that never change. I like your new face."
"Well, I'm glad that there's someone who thinks so," said Harry.
"Can I go play with Dobby?"
"Of course you can!" said Harry. "Why don't you go out in the back
garden with him, and chase away the gnomes."
Teddy ran off, calling for Dobby to come with him. He and the house-elf
were great friends, and you really couldn't ask for a better baby sitter.
"So, Remus, no twenty questions? You're not going to ask me what
creature was in your office, the first time I saw you there?"
"I figured you must be getting tired of doing that," said Remus. "Dora
already took care of verifying who you are, and a wise husband never
contradicts his wife."
"Too bad Ron hasn't learned that," said Hermione.
"Yes I have!" said Ron, indignantly, then he looked a little sheepish.
"I was just never was the one that anybody looked to for wisdom," he
added under his breath.
"So, why are you here?" asked Harry. "Not that it isn't great to see
you, but you didn't come over so Teddy could play with Dobby, and I
don't think it was just so you could get a look at my new face. What's
up?"
Tonks waved a large envelope that she had brought in with her. "The
information we asked for from the Muggle government came into the
Aurors' Office."
"Oh, good!" said Hermione, holding out her hand. "May I see it, please?"
"That's why I brought it," said Tonks, handing the envelope over to her.
Hermione opened it, and pulled out several pages of Muggle paper. She
started reading through them quickly, and then handing them off to
Harry, who barely had time to skim over each one before getting the next
from her. They were surprisingly unsurprising. Alexander Harris was an
American, in England working for a company that was only identified as
ICSW. Dawn Summers was here on a student visa, with a scholar****p to
Cambridge, also from ICSW. They had both been in the country for nearly
two years now.
"I showed those to Remus, on the way over here," said Tonks. "He hasn't
told me why he wanted to see them, or why they've upset him so."
"Ah, well, they just corroborated an idea that I had," said Remus.
"After hearing what happened to you, and then that there was a Muggle
wandering around London with your face, I was reminded of something from
years ago. I'm afraid that things are starting to make sense."
"Really?" asked Ginny, "Because to me, things just seem to be getting
more confusing."
"Oh, if I'm right, this could be a real mess to get sorted out. Knowing
how it got started is just going to be the beginning of it."
"How did it get started?" asked Hermione.
"Well, I suppose, it all goes back to when James and Sirius first
decided to become Animagi--"
"*What?*" burst out Ron. "That was thirty years ago!"
"Yes," said Remus, "and that's why this is going to be such an awful
mess to get straightened out. Thirty years ago, when they first started
researching how to become Animagi, James and Sirius found another spell.
It seemed pretty trivial at the time. I never learned the details of how
it worked, or why it was buried in the Restricted Section of the
Hogwarts library--maybe it was in a book that had other, Darker
spells--but what it did was fairly simple: it exchanged one person's
looks for another's."
"Well, that certainly seems to be what happened to me," said Harry, "but
why? If this is someone's idea of a joke, I don't get it, and no one has
shown up to laugh about it, yet."
"I don't think it was done as a joke," said Remus.
"Why would anyone want to switch Harry with this Harris fellow, if not
for a joke?" asked Ginny. "It doesn't seem to be him who did it: aside
from the fact that he's a Muggle, he seems to have been taken as much by
surprise as Harry."
"No, if I'm right, it wasn't Harris who was responsible for this mess."
Remus rubbed his face, which was looking as haggard as Harry had ever
seen it. "Er, would you like a drink?" he asked.
"I wouldn't say 'no' to one."
Harry went to the cabinet in which he kept his bottle of Ogdens Old
Firewhiskey, and poured a generous ****tion into a glass for Remus.
"Leave the bottle out," said Remus. "I think you're going to want some
yourself when I'm done." He took a sip from the glass. "Where was I?
Oh, yes, James and Sirius had found the switching spell...
"It didn't really seem to be all that useful, to me. They mostly just
used it to fool their friends, pretending to be each other, not so
unlike Fred and George. They used it a couple of times so that Sirius
could sit a detention for James, if James had a date with Lily, or
something like that, but she really didn't like them doing that--as far
as anyone else could tell, it looked like she was going out with Sirius,
which led to some misunderstandings that he found hilarious, but no one
else was amused by them--so they didn't do it often."
"Yes," said Hermione, "But what's that all got to do with what happened
to Harry last week?"
"For that we need to jump forward a couple of decades, to a Halloween
night..." Remus held up his glass and looked at the golden liquid inside
it. "...and what started out as a full bottle of Ogdens Old."
He took another sip from his glass. "It was when Sirius was stuck in
Grimmauld Place, with Professor Dumbledore not letting him go out
anywhere. It was the fourteenth anniversary of James and Lily's deaths.
He was feeling miserable; I was feeling miserable; so we decided to get
miserably drunk together.
"By the time we got to the bottom of the bottle, we were both pretty
much snockered, and neither of us was making any sense. Sirius started
rambling on about how he'd tried to save Harry from the Dursleys, before
going after Wormtail. How he would have been better off in Sunnydale.
But it hadn't worked, and Dumbledore must have discovered the switch,
and Harry must never find out about it. I never understood what he
meant, and by the time I'd sobered up, and recovered from the hangover,
I'd pretty much forgotten all about it. It only just came back to me the
other day. Your change in appearance, and this other bloke looking like
you now ... It reminded me of James and Sirius's old switching spell,
and those things Sirius said that Halloween ... and it occurred to me
.... what if it *had* worked, and Dumbledore *hadn't* discovered the
switch?" He drained his glass, and banged it down on the table.
There was stunned silence in the room, that lasted for several seconds.
"So, you're saying that I'm not really me?" asked Harry. "That I'm
really this Harris person, and *he's* the real Harry Potter?"
"How could that be?" asked Ginny. "I mean, he's always been Harry!"
"He's the person you have always known as Harry," said Remus, "but if
I'm right, you've never met the real Harry Potter, and I haven't seen
him since he was a baby."
"But the prophecy!" said Ron. "It said that Harry would be the one to
defeat Voldemort, and he did!"
"That prophecy always had an element of self fulfillment in it," said
Remus. "From the day Voldemort learned of it, Harry became a target, and
one of them was bound to die."
"But what about the Horcrux?" asked Hermione. "When he killed Harry's
parents, he made Harry one of his Horcruxes. That's what protected Harry
from the second killing curse. If Harry wasn't really Harry..."
"I don't know," said Remus. "Maybe the spell switched more than looks.
It seems to have taken away Harry's magic. Maybe it ****fted the Horcrux
too."
"If it did something like that, wouldn't Dad and Sirius have noticed,
when they were doing it back in Hogwarts?"
"Would they?" asked Remus. "They were both powerful wizards. They'd
trade wands whenever they switched, or it would have been a dead
give-away, and their wands always worked just as well. Even their
Animagus forms switched when they did it. James would become a dog, and
Sirius would become a stag."
"But I remember it," said Harry. "I remember hearing my parents die. I
remember the sound of the Killing Curse."
"Do you?" asked Remus. "Do you *really* remember? Memory is a tricky
thing, especially of something that happened when you were very young.
Do you really remember James and Lily's deaths, or do you just remember
imagining their deaths, after you had heard about them?"
Harry reached for the Firewhiskey bottle. He refilled Remus's glass.
"You were right, I do want a drink." He poured some Firewhiskey into his
empty tea cup. After a glance at his friends, he gave some to Ron and
Hermione. Ginny looked like she wanted some too, but she shook her head,
while rubbing her pregnant belly. He looked at Tonks, and held the
bottle up in a silent offer, but she waved it away.
Harry took a swig from his cup. "And you were right about this being a
god-awful mess." Everyone else took a sip as well.
"But why now?" asked Ginny, after everyone had set their cups back down.
"Why did Harry change now?"
"I don't know," said Hermione. "Maybe the spell just wore off, after
twenty-three years. Or maybe something happened to this Harris fellow.
He does seem to be involved with magic, of some sort."
"What?" asked Tonks.
"There were books on Ancient Magic in his flat," said Hermione, "and he
is from Sunnydale. That was a major mystical convergence for Dark
forces. Why Sirius thought *that* would be a good place to send Harry!"
"At the time, the Sunnydale convergence had been quiet for decades,"
said Remus. "If it was mentioned in our DADA cl***** at the time, it
would have only been in passing. I doubt if Sirius would have
remembered. Was it mentioned at all, while you were in school?"
"I never heard of it, then," said Ron. "It was only later, after I
became a Hit Wizard, that I learned anything about it." His face
scrunched up in a frown. "It was only during our last couple of years at
Hogwarts that it started to erupt again, and by then, everyone was so
caught up with the war, that it never came to anyone's notice. We had
bigger problems, much closer to home."
"What do we do now?" asked Ginny.
"I think it's time that we followed your suggestion, and made a phone
call," said Harry.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
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