Dora Potter made a pot roast for dinner that night, with extra carrots and seasoned potatoes. She made butterbeer cookies for desert, too. All of Sirius Black's favorites to celebrate his recovered freedoms. She kissed his cheeks and ran her hand over his hair and wrapped him in hugs and cried with joy when she saw him - even though she had been seeing him all along since he'd been perfectly capable of going to and from the Potter's and she'd been able to go to and from the flat as well. Sirius ate up every moment of the attention from her, his arms wrapped about her and his cheek snuggled against her chest as she patted his head and told him he was a good boy and her darling little dear.
When dinner was over, they were sitting and sipping tea around the table, James cleared his throat, "Mum was telling me earlier that this isn't the first time Mr. Underhill has come through for our family. Weren't you mum?"
Dora looked up and released Sirius from her embrace as he sat up with curiosity. "No, in fact, it is not the first time," she said, and he could see her countenance shift.
Lily looked between James and Dora, eyebrows raised, "Oh? It's not?"
"Harry Underhill also helped Charlus out of Azkaban once," Dora said.
The whole table fell silent.
Bradley, who was still eating butterbeer cookies, asked, "Who is that?"
"Charlus is - was - my Dad," James answered.
Bradley looked at James with sad eyes, then looked at Dora. "I'm sorry."
Dora teared up at the sheer innocence of Bradley's tone and she reached across and held his hand for a moment, thanking him without words and Bradley smiled encouragingly at her as Remus gave Bradley's shoulder a squeeze. "Hey why don't we get you to bed, champ?" he asked Bradley.
Bradley looked wistfully at Dora and the others, but they all said goodnight and Remus slipped away with Bradley by his side, disappearing into the suitcase.
The moment the suitcase was closed, the conversation continued.
"Dad nearly went to Azkaban?" Lily said, feeling as though she should have know this. "Whatever for?"
"To keep his sister out," Dora replied.
"My Auntie Ottalie," James supplied.
Sirius said, "So she could have time to get to Costa Rica. To have the cousins."
Dora nodded.
"But why?" James asked. "What did she do? How did Dad do it? What did Underhill do?"
Dora took a deep breath.
Fleamont Potter lay awake in his bed in Gryffindor tower on the night of 2 November in his sixth year. Outside, it was snowing, the sort of snow that was so heavy and thick that it was audible in a silent room. In the next bed, Hermes Filch's long limbs hung over the sides of the bed. Hermes was so tall and thin and lanky that he looked like a bowtruckle right down to the knobby knees.
Suddenly, there was a sound in the corridor and Fleamont sat up.
"Monty?"
He could barely believe his ears. "Ottalie? What the bloody hell are you doing up here?" He got up quickly, shoving his feet into slippers and tugging on a thick sleep robe, knotting it about his waist as he stowed his wand in the deep pocket. "You oughtn't be up here." He shoved his face into the narrow crack of the door she'd opened up.
Ottalie stared up at him , her eyes wide, bright with terror. "I don't know what else to do, Monty. I - I'm in such a lot of trouble."
"What's the matter?"
"They're going to find me," she shivered, the tight blonde ringlets of her hair quaked with the words. "I had to say good bye to you."
"Goodbye to me?" Fleamont said, "If you mean Pringle, then yes he probably will and -"
"I mean The Knights, Monty."
"Who?"
"The Knights of Walpurgis."
The term sounded familiar, but for the life of him Fleamont couldn't think of what she meant by it. He stared at her in confusion. "Ottalie, you've had a nightmare or - or something, clearly. You ought to go back to bed and --"
"Monty, I haven't come from my dormitory just now," she hissed, "I haven't come from my dormitory, I've come from --" Ottalie pushed the door opened and looked around at the other beds in the room, then leaned closer and whispered even lower, "I've come from another timeline."
Fleamont stared at her. "Okay, yeah, time for bed. You've been drinkin' firewhiskey again? You know Da doesn't approve, especially after what happened last time, and --"
"Monty! I'm not joking. I'm not drunk. I don't know what to do, and you're the only person that I can trust. You're the only person."
"Ottalie, love, I --"
"I used a time turner, Monty."
"A what?" he laughed.
"A time turner. It's this..." she reached and fished out the necklace from about her neck, holding it up, a shiny silver loop with knobs and tiny little hour glasses filled with the finest grey sands Fleamont had ever laid eyes upon. Words were etched into the loops, and her fingers trembled as she showed it to him. "It was Dierk's idea, and Alphard agreed it was a good one, but I got picked to actually do it because Alphard got the information from spying on his brother which was dangerous enough and we all know what a little twit Dierk is, and you know I've always been the one that up and does things on impulse. Listen, I did it. I actually did it, alright, I actually turned time and somehow I've turned it forward and backward and I've not a clue what I'm doing but I keep - I keep messing things up and I don't know what to do. I need your help."
"Dierk and Alphard are assholes," Fleamont agreed, "I don't approve of them."
"I know," Ottalie said, "I know you've never approved of them, but after tonight I - I'm afraid I've learned too late why not and I wish I'd listened to you, but Monty, I'm in serious, serious trouble. I've done something that I dunno how to undo."
Hermes wheezed and rolled over with a grunting snort and Fleamont looked over his shoulder at the other boy, eyebrow raised. He took a deep breath, "C'mon, let's at least go up to the tower so we don't wake anyone up."
They went up the tower steps to the spire, standing a few steps away from the door to the balcony. Snow crunched onto the stone portico and from the window they could see the entire castle grounds blanketed in thick white snow.
"Start at the beginning," Fleamont said.
"There's so many beginnings," Ottalie whispered. Finally, she looked up at him. "You know how Da is all for Grindelwald? Even though he's in prisoned and been defeated by Dumbledore and all of that, Da still wants him to be broken out and take over, like they're still holding out hope?"
"Yeah," Fleamont said hesitantly.
"Alright so... So Alphard, he heard a rumor - a whisper about his family's house - heard Grindelwald has - has groomed himself a successor, an heir, so to speak. Only the rumor has it that his politics are way, way worse than Grindelwald's. He wants to actually kill muggles, this gent does. He's primordially evil, Monty."
"Well he isn't very powerful is he if I haven't heard of him. This must be able to wait until morning at least, surely..."
"No, no because he is very, very powerful in a couple years. By the time your son is grown --"
"I don't have a son, Ottalie."
"You will."
"You're mental."
"He's going to kill him."
"What? Who?"
"I saw -- it messed everything up and then I tried to fix it and I made it worse and worse and -" Ottalie was sobbing. "We weren't even trying to go that far ahead. I was trying to go twenty-eight hours back and I went twenty-eight years ahead instead, I spun the wrong dial, I reckon, and..."
"You're talking riddles again."
"Dierks wanted to go back twenty-eight hours to a sort of pep rally that Voldemort held over holiday - the one that Alphard's family attended and were talking about. It's this coming holiday, mind - and he wanted to assassinate him."
"Ottalie --
"This is 1953, right?"
Fleamont laughed.
"Monty! I have to know when it is so I know if the things that happened Christmas of 1953 have taken place and --"
"Yes, yes it's 1953!"
"Thank God!"
"The holiday hasn't even happened yet, Ottalie."
"Exactly!! None of it has happened yet. And I need you to stop me... before I end up in 1981."
"Stop you?"
"Yes! Gods you're so thick, why are you so thick? Monty, that's the whole point why I'm here. I messed up. I messed up and Voldemort lived and he takes over the whole world, Monty, and it's awful, it's terrible. People dying right and left and one of the dead - one of the dead is..." Ottalie paused. "You know those shit novels you always read?"
"They aren't shit they're fascinating. Science fiction is --"
"I'm telling you I lived an experience like one of your novels, Monty! Just humor me for five seconds!"
"Okay, okay." He took a deep breath. "Humoring you. You were trying to assassinate someone?"
"Yes, a dark lord who intends to murder muggles and take over the wizarding world. He's horrid, he's worse than Grindelwald. Not only does he believe in the overthrow, Monty, but he believes in a purist society. He's like... like wizard Adolf Hitler."
Fleamont's eyes brows came together.
"Grindelwald wanted to stop Hitler, remember?" Ottalie hissed, "He wanted to stop him? Well this guy? Voldemort? He was for him. Voldemort was openly sorry that Hitler was stopped and he was rallying all the magical people who supported him - and this purist group, his so-called Knights of Walpurgis... They're a whole group - a whole group of horrible people who want to restore the world to the pure blood lines. They say that's the way it was meant to be and they want to work at repopulating it with only the pure blood. He says that it's the only way to erase the stains. He's FOR genocide, encourages it. He hates muggles, he hates half-bloods, he hates anything that's not pure, Monty. And in this rally that we were going to go to he was declaring war against the Ministry, he was gathering his followers to declare the beginning of his uprising."
Fleamont shook his head, "Ottalie --"
"I only had one shot Monty and I messed up... and the Knights - they know it was me. They know it was a Potter. And they're going to come after me."
James could feel the sweat on the back of his neck. He was sick to his stomach. Aunt Ottalie had used a time turner? Even in the way Dora told the story, James could feel the panic of Ottalie in his stomach, the uncertainty, the fear - what was real, what was not? What was still real? What had been altered? Where to go, what to do, who was safe, what now? The feelings stirred violently and he felt dizzy.
Sirius reached over and grabbed James's hand, his eyes wide, staring into James's face and James jumped as though electrocuted and pulled his arm back, staring at Sirius in surprise, then looked at Dora. "What did dad do?"
"He helped her, of course," Dora said.
"Did she actually use a time turner?" Lily whispered. She put her hand on James's knee under the table and her eyes darted to Sirius, who wore a funny expression somewhere between pain and fear.
Peter's face was pale as he sat, looking about the table with his beady eyes.
"She had, but she wouldn't tell him the details of what she saw," Dora said, "She said she could only divulge so much about the future..."
James glanced at Lily, then back to Dora. "How did this turn into time in Azkaban, mum?"
"Ottalie and her friends took the information your father gave her, trying to stop her, and they attempted the assassination she'd been trying to commit preemptively. Instead of stopping her, he'd armed her with information they needed and they were caught at it. All three of them - Dierks Rosier, and Alphard Black."
"Wait. Uncle Alphard?" Sirius looked up, whatever weird daze he'd fallen into lifting as his head turned to look at Dora with surprise.
Dora thought a moment, then, "Yes, yes this would be your Uncle Alphard - Orion's brother."
"But Alphard wasn't in prison --"
"He was released. The same as Dierks."
"What about Ottalie?" James asked.
"During the attempt, she killed no less than four elite members of the Knights of Walpurgis, trying to get to You-Know-Who, she told your father later that they knew she was coming - they knew because they'd seen future her and come back the same as she had from the future and -- oh the time thing is so confusing to me, it was always confusing to your father, too, the details are so mixed... it's part of why Harry Underhill caught on that your father wasn't the one who committed the crime. Because of the mess of the details." Dora's voice was low.
"But wouldn't the Ministry celebrate her killing these people if they were evil and --" James cut himself off as Dora shook her head no. "Why?"
"They didn't know. They didn't know because You-Know-Who didn't make his declaration against the Ministry at that time after all because of the assassination attempt. All they had to go off of was that she was the daughter of a known supporter of Gellert Grindelwald, attacking what looked like a peaceful gathering of a group of men who were known to have defected from Grindelwald's regime... People were still terrified of Grindelwald, the way they are terrified of You-Know-Who today, James."
Lily could feel the strength of the memory of the fear in Dora Potter's words.
"So they arrested Dad, thinking it was him and not Ottalie that had done it."
"That's what he told them when the aurors came for her. He told her to run - to go and never look back. So she did. She ran. She ran for Costa Rica. And your father was put in holding and transferred to Azkaban and Harry Underhill realized your father was not the killer - he didn't know the details and no connection to the other two that had been arrested... apart from me and my connection to Orion. So Underhill got your father out by advocating for him during the trial."
"Bloody hell," James murmured.
"The death eaters don't let go of grudges lightly, though, and eventually they caught her up." Dora stared at the table top. "That's why the cousins live so far out of the city... why, when we were there, they came. They came for your father... and for you." She looked up at James.
"But did whatever it was Ottalie messed up... did it get fixed?" James asked. "Did it - did whatever she messed up later end up alright?"
Dora shrugged, "We don't know... because the Ottalie of the future gave your father no clues and the Ottalie that we saw last was just as clueless about the future as we are... or else was unable to tell what she knew if she did know more."
James shook his head. He wondered whether Charlus had known more, if Charlus had known things that he never told Dora, just as he, James, knew things that he would never tell anyone...
Lily wondered the same, and she felt sick, thinking of Voldemort and Harry... thinking of the things that Regulus Black had written... thinking of the boy that You-Know-Who had grown from...
The suitcase opened then, and Remus came out, wiping grass from his chest - his hair stuck up in odd places, clearly having just been licked by mooncalves. He looked around the table, stopping several paces back. "What's going on?" he asked, looking 'round at their ashen faces. "What'd I miss?"
"A lot," James murmured.