“Defence Against the Dark Arts first today!” she pointed out brightly, as usual twice as perky as a pot of fresh coffee.
“I’m… not…” Jordan managed to say before falling asleep face-down in his Danish. He had stayed up until two in the morning putting finishing touches on an essay because he knew he’d never be able to sleep if the essay wasn’t the best it could possibly be.
The other four continued to amicably discuss what Jordan had actually planned on saying (Haley’s heart was set on “I’m not wearing any underpants”) for the rest of breakfast until Jordan woke up, wiped the raspberry jam off of his hair, and demanded to know why Ted had just used the words ‘Jordan,’ ‘salsa dance,’ and ‘Zabini’ in the same sentence.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” he grumbled as they walked toward the Defence classroom, finishing the sentence he had begun before drifting off.
“Emma, you weren’t there when he found out that his dad was teaching,” Ivy whispered. “He was really scary. I barely even recognized him.”
Emma blinked. “He was that mad?”
“He was awful,” Haley whispered. “And Jordan doesn’t normally yell like that”he just kind of…stews, usually. Yelling is more your area of expertise. But he was weird. He was like, ‘ZOHMAHGAWSH, school’s the one place I have for myself! And now you’re trying to ruin that for me, too! I DESPISE you!’ Yeah, he’s probably, like, the only kid in the world who uses words like ‘despise’ when he’s throwing a tantrum. But anyway, Dad just sat there the whole time while he screamed and chucked things across the room, just looking at him and not saying anything at all. I kept expecting him to jump up and scream, ‘GET OVER IT ALREADY!’ I mean, that’s what I would have done.”
Ted looked over his shoulder. “I like to whisper, too,” he whispered, and smiled sheepishly at the group. “So, what’s so whisper-y? Is my fly open or something?”
The girls exchanged glances. “Haley was just declaring her undying love for Professor Zabini,” suggested Emma as they reached the door to the Defence classroom, ducking as Haley attempted to bop her in the eye. (Professor Zabini, the subject of many jokes-- including one that had managed to stick with him for several years involving a potato--was the much-hated Potions master, and Haley’s arch-nemesis in particular.)
Several eager students were already occupying the front row of the classroom, so the five of them sat down in the third. Harry sat casually behind the teacher’s desk, writing something on a piece of parchment so that his face wasn’t directly visible. Ted couldn’t help but wonder if that was because, experienced and well-known though he may have been, Harry Potter didn’t want to sense the many stares that he was attracting.
The bell rang, and two things happened simultaneously. Professor Potter looked up, and a ripple of silence fell across the classroom.
“Good morning,” he said. “I know you’re all used to Professor Lupin, so it might be a bit tricky to get used to this class at first. I’ve got a tough act to follow; I had Professor Lupin myself when I was at Hogwarts, and he’s an excellent teacher.”
He walked out from behind his desk and leaned back against the front edge of it as he continued. “I’d tell you a little bit about myself, but I really don’t want to bore you. And I don’t even know what you want to know…so I thought I’d give you a chance to ask any questions you might have for me. It’s my initiation, I guess.”
He straightened his glasses. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t defeat the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her… Godric knows how that rumour started. So, does anyone want to ask anything?”
A giggly Hufflepuff girl named Isadora Dalton (the Hufflepuffs shared the class with the Gryffindors) raised her hand timidly. “Is it true that you were raised by Muggles?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yes, it is,” replied Harry. “I grew up not knowing the first thing about magic until I got my Hogwarts letter. Naturally, I was very surprised when I found out that I was a wizard.”
“So you didn’t know that you got rid of Voldemort when you were a baby?” called out Andy Yang, one of Tyrone Thomas’s close friends.
“No, I didn’t. But I had a memory of a lot of green light-- that was the killing curse,” Harry answered, not sounding quite as brisk and casual as he’d probably intended.
Another girl’s hand shot up. “Me dad says you ran into Voldemort six times,” she stated, as if expecting to be proven wrong. “That’s not true, is it?”
“Actually, it is, though ‘ran into’ probably isn’t the best way to describe what happened,” Harry informed her. “And one of the times was just a memory of him preserved in a diary, not exactly Voldemort himself. Not to mention that in every single one of those instances, I survived by sheer dumb luck and a little help from my friends.”
A Hufflepuff boy raised his hand as well. “Erm, what can you tell us about Severus Snape, sir?” he wanted to know.
Harry’s face took on an oddly blank look. “He taught Potions when I was at school, and he was a double agent. That is, he was both in the Order and a Death Eater. I never knew which side he was really loyal to, but my friend Ron Weasley--”
Two random girls in the back screamed, “RONALD WEASLEY!” until they were shushed by their eager classmates. Upon hearing them, Emma looked as though she were about to vomit.
“--Ron Weasley killed him in the final battle against Voldemort. I’ve always wondered whether Ron did the right thing or not ever since.” The class looked slightly unsettled at this display of insecurity, but Tyrone Thomas raised his hand as confidently as ever.
“Hey, Professor, you went to school with Draco Malfoy, right? Well, what was he like when he was a kid?”
Harry considered the question, a smile flitting across his face. “A slimy git,” he answered simply. The class laughed, and after that, the mood became considerably lighter, as did the questions. (The next few questions ranged from least favorite vegetable to glasses prescription and shoe size to favorite band to most embarrassing moment, and Harry answered them all with dignity and a good sense of humor.)
Several farcical moments later, the class was nearly over, as was the steady deluge of questions.
“What did you dream last night?” asked Isadora Dalton, who had already asked several questions.
Harry smiled. “Well, in the dream, I was chasing my cousin Dudley-- and I haven’t even seen him in about twenty years-- around Zonko’s joke shop, brandishing a wand that turned into a rubber chicken. And then I got arrested and thrown into Azkaban for wearing black shoes after Easter. I usually have very weird dreams.” He didn’t mention, of course, that there had been a time in his life when Voldemort had actually tampered with his dreams, as this was not something he liked to share with the general public.
Tyrone raised his hand again, a look of cunning crawling across his handsome face. “I have a question that I bet everybody else wanted to ask, but nobody had the guts. Professor, how exactly did you kill Voldemort? What happened?”
Even Haley, Emma, Ivy, and Ted sat up a bit straighter at this, though Jordan remained slouched over in the same way as usual. Haley and Jordan’s dad had told them a lot about his past, but he’d never said anything about the final battle, not even once.
Harry’s expression grew serious, and there was a strange, closed look about it. “That, I’m afraid, I can’t tell you. It’s not that I’m afraid you’ll judge me by it or that I don’t think you’re ready to hear it; it’s because I’m still not yet ready to tell people what happened that day. I hope you’ll understand. Only seven other people in the world know the truth.”
“Eight,” muttered Jordan, but nobody heard him except for Ted, whose senses always seemed sharper than everyone else’s. He didn’t know why Jordan had said what he had, but he put it out of his mind for the time being; Jordan was an odd person, and he was always saying things that absolutely no one else understood.
The class grew silent, and Haley looked up at her father. One thing about him was that he’d always looked quite young for a man in his late thirties, always energetic and full of life. But right now, he looked older than usual, and tired. She then realized something she’d never seen before”the look in his eyes, the bright green eyes that people always said were exactly like hers and Jordan’s.
She hadn’t really noticed it before, but his eyes were different from hers, slightly hardened somehow, the eyes of someone who’s been through more than he ought to have. There was sadness in his eyes that never fully went away, a sadness that she’d also seen in Ted’s father’s eyes and in photos of Sirius Black. She couldn’t help but wonder what those eyes had seen.
Haley shook herself. It wasn’t like her to think this way… what had gotten into her?
The silence that had settled over the room for what seemed like an eternity was broken when Isadora asked the last question: “Professor, one more question for you… briefs or boxers?”
Harry grinned, looking more like his old self again. “Boxers,” he replied simply.
At that moment the bell rang, and the class got up to leave. As Ivy gathered her books and pushed in her chair, Harry motioned for her to stay behind.
“Go on without me,” she mouthed to her four friends. Emma nodded and led the others out of the classroom, leaving Ivy with the teacher.
Ivy sat back down. “Er, does this have anything to do with my… my father?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yes,” answered Harry. “Well… no. Well… in a way, yes.” You’re certainly articulate today, Professor, he thought sarcastically. He folded his hands together, unfolded them again, stretched out his fingers, and tried another tactic. “Ivy, you know, with your father on the loose and your mother in Azkaban, you don’t really have a place to call your home now-- unless you live with your brother, which I frankly can’t imagine.”
“I thought about that,” Ivy said, running her fingers absentmindedly through her fringe.
Harry swallowed and cracked his knuckles, the resulting popping sounding repulsively loud as it echoed through the silent classroom. The proposition he was about to make had seemed quite logical at the time, but now he thought Ivy might get offended. “Well,” he began at last. “Ginny and I were talking about that…” Get to the point, he urged himself silently, “…and we were thinking that we could… adopt you.”
Ivy’s pale, pinched-looking face stretched into a broad smile, and before Harry knew what had happened, she had thrown her arms around him in a tight hug. She didn’t say anything at all, just hugged him, then scooped her things into her arms, and ran toward the door (Harry felt sure that she would inform Haley and Emma of the news within the next two minutes), her face shining with happiness as it hadn’t for far too long.
“Ivy?” called Harry. She turned around, looking slightly startled. “I know that since your father’s escape--”
“Malfoy.”
“Pardon?”
“Since Malfoy’s escape.”
Harry was both unsettled and touched by this simple statement, but his expression didn’t change. “Since Malfoy’s escape, you haven’t really been yourself. It’s all right to admit that you’re afraid.”
The girl hugged her books to her chest, reminding Harry irresistibly of Jordan and of Hermione as a girl. “I… I am afraid,” she admitted softly.
“But am I right in thinking that you’re not afraid for your own safety?” asked Harry. “You’re scared for Haley and Emma and Ted and Jordan, and you feel responsible for the damage that Malfoy did.” Ivy looked completely stunned, her light grey eyes wide.
“Y-yes,” she managed.
Harry looked her in the eye. “They’re safe,” he told her. “You don’t need to worry about them. Worry about yourself.” Ivy nodded, wearing a strange expression that was a mixture of shock and delight.
“Thanks you,” she whispered. “For… for everything.”
She left the room in a flustered whirl, looking briefly back over at Harry over her shoulder, but he pretended not to notice. He was worried about his daughter-to-be. She was far too serious sometimes, he thought, and she worried too much about others and blamed herself for deeds she hadn’t done.
“Does she remind you of anyone?” asked a voice from the doorway. Harry looked up suddenly to see Hermione standing there, a slight smile playing across her lips.
“Who do you mean?” Harry asked, confused.
Hermione’s smile widened. “You.”
“Ivy’s really taking a long time in Dad’s classroom,” Haley commented as she and her friends sat in the Common Room. She and Emma were playing wizards’ chess, but with the added twist that you had to forfeit a sugar quill every time one of your pieces got captured.
“She has been awhile,” Ted replied with a slight look of concern, looking up from the rather badly-drawn comic strip he was creating. “Your dad’s Head Auror, after all. Maybe Malfoy did something really bad, and he has inside information that he wanted to tell her.”
Jordan mumbled something under his breath about questions and eight being more accurate than seven and boxer shorts, before slamming his book shut and stalking off to his dormitory.
“Well, that was weird,” Emma mentioned brightly.
Just then, Ivy entered the room, but she was Ivy as they hadn’t seen her in over a week. Her face, which had been pale and anxious-looking since she’d learned about her father’s escape, glowed with excitement. She raced into the Common Room, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, and braid flying behind her. “Guess what?” she exclaimed, her voice almost a whisper from excitement.
“Your dad’s been caught!” shouted Emma.
“Ophidias has been expelled!” Ted guessed.
“McGonagall sacked Zabini!” Haley squealed.
Ivy grinned. “Better-- I’m going to be adopted!” Emma, Ted, and Haley all cheered at this, knowing how much she’d always hated staying with her own family.
Suddenly, Haley frowned. “Oh, I hope whoever adopts you still lets you come over to our place every summer. We’d all miss you, and I’m pretty sure Mum and Dad think of you as their fifth kid by now.”
Ivy’s grin grew even more. “Don’t worry, I’ll definitely be spending plenty of time in Godric’s Hollow…since your parents are adopting me!”
Haley and Emma converged on Ivy in a massive hug and screamed ear-burstingly in her ear, dancing and jumping around in circles. “YOU’RE GOING TO BE MY SISTER!” hollered Haley.
“IVY POTTER IS THE COOLEST NAME EVER!” bellowed Emma. “It sounds like a potted plant or something!”
Ted hung back, looking confused and feeling left out, until the two other girls stepped back a few feet. He didn’t say anything but just stood there, letting Ivy wrap her arms around him in a hug that he returned warmly. She stepped back, beaming at him, her face radiant.
He loved it when Ivy was happy. It didn’t happen enough.
Their next period class was Herbology, but they couldn’t concentrate as they dissected their screaming biffleroot. That is, Ivy, Emma, Ted, and Haley couldn’t concentrate. Jordan seemed to be concentrating on his plant even harder than usual, not even looking over at his friends once.
“I don’t think Jordan is too happy about me being part of the family,” Ivy whispered to Emma.
“What? Oh, well, he’s just being brotherly toward you,” Emma whispered back. “That’s how he is to Haley all the time.”
They had marched straight into the boys’ dormitory and informed Jordan of the news right after their little hugging session, and he had behaved oddly, even for Jordan. He’d muttered, “Oh, fantastic,” in a sarcastic sort of way, and then promptly hid behind a book, not moving or saying a word until the other four got bored and left.
And now he was employing a similar tactic, focusing on his screaming biffleroot with intense concentration. Haley tapped him on the shoulder, but he didn’t turn around. Emma lobbed a particularly raucous chunk of biffleroot at him, lodging it in the hair over his left ear so that it hollered directly into his ear canal, but he still didn’t turn. They finally figured he just was not in a chatty mood.
Ted wore a thoughtful expression as he emptied the seeds from his plant into a dish. “Ivy, do you remember your father at all?” he asked. “I mean, before he went to Azkaban?”
Ivy’s face, bent over her biffleroot, darkened. Some of the pinched look she’d had for the last few days returned, and her jaw tightened. “Yes,” she said softly, “but I try not to think about it.”
“Why, was he awful?” asked Haley.
Ivy shook her head. “No, he was… he was wonderful,” she admitted, all too aware of the stunned looks on her friends’ faces. “I remember he used to come home from work every day and give my mother a kiss, and then, no matter how tired or frustrated he was, he’d always pick me up and swing me around. Then he’d sit me down on his lap and say, ‘You’re getting big. Springing up like a regular Ivy plant.’”
She smiled sadly. “And he used to tell me bedtime stories about me riding flying horses, and when my mother had a fancy dinner party and I was bored out of my skull, he would sit across from me and make funny faces when the ladies were talking. And I remember sometimes, he would get mad at my mother and Ophidias, but he never yelled at me, not even once.”
Emma peeled the sticky violet skin off her biffleroot and sliced it into little chunks. “Maybe he didn’t blow up St. Mungo’s at all?” she suggested. “Maybe he was framed, like Sirius.”
Ivy shook her head. “No, he wasn’t. I remember one day, my father didn’t come home from work, so I asked my mother, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ And she said he… he wouldn’t come back for awhile. So I asked her if he was okay, if he was in the hospital, and… and she got this look in her eye. He didn’t come home, and I kept having nightmares where he was disappearing off on a flying horse, and when I tried to follow him, I fell.”
She swept back her fringe. “When I was older, I started reading, and I learned the truth about what happened.”
She looked miserable, and Haley patted her arm comfortingly. “And then,” Ivy continued, “When I was eight, my mother took us to London, I forget why, and I was playing with this other girl. Well, my mother just came hurtling out of this shop, and she yanked me in by the ear and snapped, ‘what do you think you’re doing? She’s a Muggle!’
“See, I’d heard my mother talking about Muggles all the time, but I’d always imagined them to be these giant green monsters. But this girl, she was really nice, and just a normal person, like me. And after that, I started reading up on Muggles and I read what the Death Eaters had done, and that was when I decided that I… I didn’t want to be part of that family anymore.”
“But how could he have been so nice to you and be such a terrible person?” Haley asked after an uncomfortable pause. “I still think he’s innocent.”
Jordan, who had been pretending that he wasn’t listening, looked up from his biffleroot. “No,” he said quietly. “He just loved you.”