Harry had never been one to stand out much in a crowd. The boy was small for his age, a curse that he had inherited from his mother rather than anything malicious. Growing up as he had, surrounded by the people that he had, the boy was more of one to weave through a crowd than to draw eyes to him on purpose (his mother like to laugh with his father at just how unlike either of them this was, but it couldn't be helped with how much the boy took after his uncles.)
He has never been one to draw much attention from others - and he wasn't now - but those around him were.
Uncle Padfoot was laughing with Mum and Dad as the trio trailed behind the boy in the crowd, hurrying to keep up with the young wizard as he moved through the rest of the gathered families as if they were water (it was easy to do so when he already had a destination in mind. When no one was paying the boy any mind). Harry ignored the way that people's gazes caught on the trio, he'd grown used to it after so many years of them doing so.
Even after eleven years the gazes still clung to the war heroes, though they weren't as heavy on the trio as they were on some of the others that had fought.
As they were on Uncle Moony.
Harry smiled as the familiar sight of flames entered his vision, the Weasley family standing outside of one of the train cars as the five children present looked around the train station as their mother spoke pleasantly with a familiar blond woman and her son. The two youngest boys returned his grin as Harry was finally sighted by the two families, Mrs. Weasley and Ms. Black nodding silently to the other three adults as the children greeted one another as if they hadn't seen each other only a few days before to buy last minute things for school.
(Harry always hated and loved shopping with the other two families. He'd known the Weasleys since he was young to remember doing so. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had fought alongside his parents and Uncles and Aunts in the war, though Mr. and the then Mrs. Malfoy had fought for the losing side. Mr. Malfoy had died in the final battle, his body bloodied and splattered as if it had fallen from a height that the auros couldn't explain. Narcissa had been left to raise her son alone in the aftermath of the war, with the rest of her family having either been killed during that last battle, or a member of the winning side.
It hadn't meant much to anyone else, but Narcissa had changed her name back to Black in the first year after the war. It hadn't meant much to anyone but only other surviving Blacks and those that called them family.
Regulus had been quick to welcome the older Black back into his family, having been close with his cousin when they were in school together and Sirius had hardly spoken to him at all. The others from their group had been quick to accept the woman and her son too after seeing how easily Remus and Pandora had.
Remus had never been close with the older Black in school, but he did remember how they had worked together to get Sirius and her our the engagement, the way that she hadn't truly looked down on him for his blood but just for being a nosy child poking his nose into things where it didn't belong.
Pandora had never spoken to the other woman in school, she hadn't needed to when they were in such different years and different houses as well. But they were technically family with Bellatrix having married Pandora's brother. They were family and Pandora thought that she was tired of seeing families hurt one another.
So, Remus, Regulus, Pandora, Evan, and Barty had welcomed the mother and her son easily into the family that they had made for themselves, though it had taken Sirius - and by extension James and Lily - longer for them to do the same. They had eventually though, Harry gaining another cousin that day when he was five and had first met the blond boy. Harry had loved Luna as fiercely as a brother in everything but blood could, and easily accepted the other boy once he saw that Draco was the same with the young witch.
The Weasleys had soon been added to the equation when Harry's sixth birthday had rolled around and he had wanted Draco, Luna, and all the Weasleys that could come there. His parents had been hesitant to invite both groups, but Remus had promised to play mediator back then, should any fights break out. The wolf loved Harry as much as he did little Luna and Draco - the troublesome trio that was always causing havoc when the three spent the night at his and Regulus's cottage on the weekends, having taken over the rooms that had once belonged to Pandora, Barty and Evan - and he knew that he would do anything to see the bright eyed boy smile.
James hadn't been the only one fighting for him that day.
So the Wesealeys had come to the party, and the children had been completely oblivious to the tensions between the former Malfoy and the red headed parents. The tension hadn't been allowed to take charge though when the three parents had looked up and seen the children flying low through the sky on childrens' brooms the only flew a few feet above the ground, playing Quddittch as Luna spoke more about the clouds and the wind spirits that shaped them than the game itself.
Remus hadn't needed to intervene as the trio had softened watching as Harry, Draco, and Ron had laughed together, their clothes dirty as the game had descended more into a game of tag as Harry had taken the muggle football that they had been using in place of a proper bludger from Ron's had and had been dribbling it down the field, something that technically wasn't against the rules that they had set.
The families that had once hated each other had learned to tolerate one another for the sake of the children that already seemed to be falling fast for one another in the way that only chilren could, the childlike innocence that died as you grew older, but tensions were still there, especially in public with the prying eyes of the world heavy in them)
The twins were quick to grab the youngest Potter's trunk, knowing that Harry couldn't lift it himself if he tried (he had, and had joined the other two in laughing while in the store once the embarrassment had worn off).
Harry wasn't the strongest of the little trio of first years, that honor fell to Ron after so many years of throwing gnomes in the garden, but he was quick. He could climb a tree faster than any of the others, even though it left him with scrapes on his knees, and sometimes scars on his arms from the boy picking at the scrapes that he had gotten from the branches (the only scars on the boy's body were from the trees). Harry could run as fast as a raging stream and as silently as a wood nymph, a skill that had come in handy when Luna and the three boys had begun to take after Harry's after and Uncles Padfoot and Moony in pranking.
(James and Sirius were already awaiting the Howler from McGonagall, regardless of the houses that the four went to)
The three boys sat together on the train, thick as thieves as the twins sat on the floor, their friend Lee Jordan with them as the three plotted, papers strewn between them. It was a familiar sight for the youngest Potter and always brought a smirk to the boy's lips. He couldn't wait to see the full force of their chaos firsthand.
"What house do you think we'll be in?" Ron asked as the train began to move, the faces of parents fading and the city coming up around them. It would be another few minutes before they were in the more rural areas.
"We?" Draco asked, his brow slightly raised and mischief in the boy's eyes that Harry knows that he learned from Uncle Barty.
Ron only nodded assuredly. "Wherever you lot go is where I want to."
"Careful there Ronnikens -" Fred chided falsely, having overheard the conversation between the three.
"- your Hufflepuff is showing," George finished.
"I don't know," Harry drawled, stretching out lazily as he rested his hands behind his head, a relaxed sort of pose that he had learned from Uncle Padfoot, "he's beat our asses enough in chess over the years to fit in well with the strategical lot."
Neither boy knew if he meant Slytherin or Ravenclaw, and neither wanted to ask.
"You got it easy," Ron whined, not preening at the compliment as he usually would, "you're the son of two of the bravest Gryffindors there are, there's no way you won't go there."
"So are you," Harry reminded the other boy with a huff as he let his arms fall to his lap, "I don't see why it matters though, I'm not exactly my parents and you aren't yours."
And didn't everyone on the car know that to be true.
Harry had always been a private person, knowing when to keep quiet and just how much to share. Even if no eyes stayed on him in a crowd, people still expected things from the young wizard, the son of two war heroes that was raised alongside of a whole slew of others. He knew what sides to show who and how to adapt. Those skills were the walls that he built growing up just within the public's eye. Though he let such walls fall around the other three in their group, sometimes the other two boys felt as if only Luna truly understood the boy.
Ron only shook his head as he looked down at the twins, his brothers that could have just as easily gone to Slytherin or Ravenclaw, but had asked for Gryffindor instead. They had wanted to make their parents proud. It was hard to explain to someone like Harry the tear in his heart when he thought of going to Gryffindors and just being the sixth Weasley son to do so, the way that he wanted desperately to prove himself as more than those that he came after, and yet didn't want to break his mother's heart.
(He didn't know that Harry understood that divide as well, but had held onto it for so long that the shape that hit held within him differed from that of the youngest Weasley boy.)
"None of us are our parents," Draco said with an easiness that almost mimicked Harry's. While the other two boys felt guilty for such a fact, Draco wasn't.
From what the boy had heard from others and from his mother herself, his father wasn't someone that he should strive to be like. That was fine by him, he wasn't someone concerned with power or status as his father had so clearly been. Draco loved running through the woods with Luna and Harry, the freedom of it all. He loved the way that the wind ripped at his hair while he, Harry and the Weasleys flew together, the tricks and dives that Bill would teach them when he was home for holidays, and the stories that Charlie brought of the dragons that matched Draco's namesake.
Power wasn't something that the boy sought. Not at all.
Fred and George glanced at one another and sighed as they looked back at their plans, they knew that they were going to have to try harder this year to prevail in their chaos with how widespread it would all be.
(Ravenclaw was safe, though only until the next year)
â€"-
Hogwarts was just as beautiful as everyone had told him that it would be.
Harry watched with bright eyes as the castel drew closer, the stars bright like some sort of painting in the sky. He'd seen them every night at the cottage back home, but they'd never looked quite as beautiful as they did now.
When they got to the hall, Harry could easily see the twins placing bets with the others in Gryffindor house on who would be sorted where. Harry pitted anyone that bet against the pair, though at the same time he couldn't help but think that whatever loss they received was well deserved if they didn't know any better by now.
Harry chose to smile up at the staff table instead, at the two professors sitting side by side that nodded back at him.
Uncle Moony and Uncle Regulus.
Professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts and the Potions Professor.
(The pair had taken the job after Dumbledore had stepped down only a year before, McGonagall taking his place as Headmistress of the school and Remus taking her place as the Head of Gryffindor house so that she could still manage to teach Transfiguration until finding someone that she wanted to for the job and passing it on. Regulus had come with him, taking over Head of Slytherin house after Slughorn had quit just after Dumbledore had. Remus had been surprised that the old potions master had been allowed to stick around for that long, but assumed that Slughorn had known that his standard of teaching would have never been allowed under her strict gaze.
It had helped that the kids were old enough now to be starting school soon, so they wouldn't be without them. Their stitched together family was a close one after all.)
The sorting was quick, as the Headmistress read out the names as she had for the past countless years, another duty that she wasn't quite ready to pass onto the next Professor. No one but the few that were paying close attention noticed the way that the woman rushed over some names, and drew others out, as if she couldn't decide if she were constantly torn between the names of the children whose parents she had once known burning her or soothing an ache that she had almost forgotten.
Harry had been paying attention though, he always was.
He noticed the way that the witch stumbled over Draco's name when he was called first out of their little - incomplete - group, as if she herself couldn't decide whether his name was sour or sweet on her tongue.
Harry watched with keen eyes helped by the glasses on his face as the Sorting Hat all but swallowed the blond boy whole, the old hat resting there upon the other wizard's head for longer than it had most of the others before him. Harry wondered if in another life time where Mr. Malfoy had lived, if the sorting would have been more instantaneous, as the hat had originally seemed to think of doing before actually looking at the other boy's mind. Either way, Harry was one of the few unsurprised when the tear in the hat opened and it screamed out a house that only one other Black had gone to before:
"Gryffindor!"
Harry clapped along with the rest of the stunned hall as he thought of the stunts that the youngest Black liked to pull on his broom. The house was a fitting choice.
(Remus and Regulus looked at one another with sharp smiles that mirrored the other's. James owed them each money now, and they were only a third of the way through)
When Harry's name was called sometime later, the hall didn't fill with more than the usual whispers that accompanied the sorting as hurried bets were placed and some of the students grumbled about how long it all took as they wished for the feast to start already.
McGonall smiled encouragingly down at the small boy as he sat down upon the stool, her heart not breaking as it had in another life when she had seen his wild hair and her unmistakable eyes for the first time in eleven years.
Instead she saw the boy that she visited at Christmas and told the stories to him that his parents wouldn't share of their exploits that had been more on the failed side than the ones that they usually shared with their son. Harry's favorites were all the times that the Professor had willingly ignored the fact that almost everyone in their mismatched family were illegal animagus and reading havoc on the poor school.
Harry hummed as the hat was placed over his eyes, a spooky sort of tune that he had learned from Luna ages ago and always sung with the girl in the dead of night when the others hated to hear it the most. The boy was calm as he already knew just where he was going and the hat all but laughed as it agreed.
"Slytherin!" It bellowed out into the hall as it filled with clapping from all four of the houses.
Remus and Regulus looked down at the boy that took a little too much after the pair of them and knew that they couldn't have been prouder.
Harry walked lazily over to the table filled with the other snakes and sat next to a boy with a sharp look in his eyes that Harry thought would be useful, though he didn't like that the other had it so soon and wondered what had caused it.
"Theodore Nott," the boy said, holding out his hand for the other, his expression bored even as his eyes were anything but.
"Harry Potter," Harry said in return, already knowing that he was going to like the other well enough and hoping that the others would too.
If they didn't then Harry wasn't above playing the long game until they did.
Harry and Ron clapped the loudest of those in the hall when Ronnwas sorted into Hufflepuff, the first in his family to do so.
Remus smiled softly at the content looks on the kids' faces even as they were sorted into different houses, and grabbed his husband's hand beneath the table. The pair had fought hard for such a peaceful ending, one where they all came out alive at the end, one where they gained more than they lost.
One that made the blood on their hands worth it, because each drop was too high a cost.
Looking down at the students then - his husband's hand in his own, and in a world where he didn't have to hide as he so often did the first time and Everytime after stepping into these halls, a world where the children from his pack that had returned from Germany after the war could come to Hogwarts and learn every sort of magic that they wanted to without having to hide what they were - Remus was more grateful than ever that he'd chosen this life, this path.
They were all made of the same stardust, constantly orbiting one another in every reality as the particles combined. The world that the wolf had once envisioned - one with a different Black brother at his side - was over then from the moment that the lion had met the snakes in the library that day, and Remus knew as he felt the cool press of metal against his palm, that he wouldn't have wished for any other constellation.