Something Here?

[nonasuch]

the sorting

back to the main story! remember, everything’s tagged under the dogfather. part one is here, with links to the rest at the bottom. I’m also going to round up the story-so-far and post it to my AO3 shortly. if you’re waiting for the next installment and the anticipation’s killing you, go read a zine or a comic from my Gumroad page.

while they wait to be Sorted, Ron gets more and more nervous.

Harry nudges him and asks, quietly, “all right?”

“Mm-hm,” says Ron. “just. I dunno what we’re going to have to do, for the Sorting. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking.”

“oh!” says Harry. “no, it’s fine. my godfather told me. we just have to wear a hat.”

“a hat?” says Ron, but the sudden appearance of the school ghosts– and Professor McGonagall– cut off any further conversation. they don’t make Ron any less nervous, either.

Harry’s nervous too. not about the Sorting, so much, but everything else.

[nonasuch]

the hogwarts express

remember, everything’s tagged under the dogfather. part one is here, with links to the rest at the bottom. I’m also going to round up the story-so-far and post it to my AO3 once I get Harry past the Sorting Hat. if you’re waiting for the next installment and the anticipation’s killing you, go read a zine or a comic from my Gumroad page.

• on the train, Harry is a bit relieved to have a compartment nearly to himself. he’s in with Padfoot and the youngest of that big noisy family from the platform– Ron, who also seems quite glad for a bit of quiet and space to catch his breath. two of his brothers invite them to see someone’s giant tarantula, but Ron doesn’t seem to like spiders any better than Harry does.
  
• they subside, for a bit, into the slightly awkward silence of two strangers whose parents clearly expected them to befriend one another. Padfoot flops over onto his side, puts his head on Harry’s shoes, and goes to sleep.
  
• Ron makes the first overture. “are you allowed dogs at Hogwarts? I thought it was only cats, rats and toads.”
  
• “if anyone asks, I’m going to say he’s a very large cat,” Harry says.
  

[nonasuch]

platform nine and three-quarters

I’ve got a good chunk of the train ride written, but this had a good stopping point so I figured I’d post now rather than waiting to finish the rest. so:

• on the morning of september first, Harry and his dad wake up extra early and make a huge, elaborate breakfast.
  
• Harry had hardly slept in any case: he was already awake to watch the sun come up. he doesn’t know it, but his parents and Padfoot had only gone to sleep themselves a little while before that.
  
• they’d stayed up late, working out the next day’s plan yet again, trying to think of anything they’d missed, reminiscing about Harry’s childhood and listening to Padfoot reminisce about Hogwarts.
  
• “he’ll be all right there, won’t he?” Harry’s dad asks.
  
• “he’ll love it,” Sirius promises.
  

[nonasuch]

a mini update

here’s a lil bit of dogfather to tide y’all over until tomorrow. he’s getting on the train soon, I swear.

• the next few weeks pass too quickly and too slowly, all at once.
  
• Harry knows there is a lot of frantic planning going on, all around him: Hedwig comes and goes with letters almost daily. Padfoot goes back and forth nearly as much. everyone seems to be planning his trip to Hogwarts with the sort of grim determination Harry usually associates with films about the invasion of Normandy.
  
• but there are too many pleasant distractions for him to be very worried. he makes a valiant attempt at reading his schoolbooks, and gets at least a few chapters into each before he gives them up in favor of the large stack of wizard novels his mum brought back from Diagon Alley.
  
• (“well, they’re not exactly Wodehouse,” is his mum’s considered opinion, “but they’re not bad.”)
  
• anyway, he doesn’t really think anything bad could happen. Padfoot has explained how the Fidelius Charm works, and Harry doesn’t see how there’s any way around it.
  
• (he is not exactly right. the secret Remus keeps for him is this: that the boy who lives at Harry’s address was once known as Harry Potter. it will keep Death Eaters from his door, but will not prevent the observant from drawing their own conclusions, in the world outside the safety of his home.)
  
• so Harry spends the end of his summer lying on the window seat with a book, and his mum in the armchair behind him with her own book, and the radio on. he lets his dad live his dreams of all-England cricket vicariously through Harry, and goes for long walks with Padfoot. he pages through the photo albums Moony gave him, which are full of laughing strangers with Harry’s eyes or face or smile. he learns to make crepes with his dad. he sits through yet another of Padfoot’s lengthy lists of Things He Needs To Know About Hogwarts.
  
• “let’s see, that’s all the secret corridors but one,” says Padfoot. throughout this recitation, he paces back and forth, from kitchen to living room and back again. “damn, I wish I still had the Map–”
  
• “you’re coming with me, you know,” says Harry.
  
• “yes, but I’ll have to be a dog all the time, so I’ve got to make sure I tell you everything important now,” says Padfoot, very reasonably. “I can’t turn into a wanted criminal in the middle of Gryffindor Tower just to tell you I remembered where the last secret corridor is.”
  
• “you might have to turn into a wanted criminal in the middle of Ravenclaw Tower,” points out Harry’s mum, who has been watching this from the armchair with some amusement. “Or– what’s the other one called? oh no, there’s two more, aren’t there–”
  
• “I shan’t turn into a wanted criminal anywhere, because they won’t like it any better in the Ravenclaw common room,” says Padfoot. “or in Hufflepuff. if it was Slytherin I’d probably earn you the House Cup, but if you’re sorted into Slytherin I want you to know in advance that you’re disowned.”
  
• “I don’t think you can disown godsons,” says Harry, who knows that Padfoot doesn’t really mean it.
  
• “well, there’s an easy way to find out,” says Harry’s mum.
  
• “don’t encourage him!” says Padfoot.
  

[nonasuch]

dogfather in Diagon

part six! parts one, two, three, four, five. everything’s tagged with “the dogfather.”

• Harry knows that Padfoot and his parents are worried, but very little of it trickles down to him. it can’t: he’s too excited.
  
• his letter comes in the post, in July, a little after what he has started to think of as his old birthday.
  
• (technically it is the newer of the two, but he didn’t know his original birthday until Padfoot told him, so now he has the birthday he was used to, at the beginning or July, and the one he apparently had all along but didn’t know, at the end.)
  
• the letter is just like Padfoot said it would be: his name in bright green ink, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. please find enclosed–
  
• but now he needs all sorts of things! robes, and a cauldron, and books with titles that sound a lot like some of the books he already has, except those books are just stories and these ones will be real. and, best of all: a magic wand.
  
• so he and his mum and his dad and his Padfoot are going to Diagon Alley, in London, and they are meeting Moony in person, for real. 
• Harry has been trying to act a little more grown up, now that he’s a wizard and nearly eleven, but it’s proving extremely difficult when he is this excited.
• he does his best, though.

[nonasuch]

dogfather, part five

parts one, two, three, four.

• the trouble is, there are a few too many variables. Sirius is trying, though.
  
• Moony, to start with, is conducting a stealth information-gathering campaign by way of getting his few remaining Muggle-born school friends drunk and nostalgic, so as to find out how they got their Hogwarts letters.
  
• “you mean you don’t know?” asks Harry’s mum.
  
• “it never came up,” says Sirius.
  
• what he means is, at Hogwarts in those days Muggleborns didn’t advertise the fact if they could help it. they laughed along with jokes they didn’t understand, nodded at references to Beedle the Bard and Martin Miggs. they tried not to talk about television or Muggle film. if everyone assumed they were half-bloods or just not from a very old family, so much the better.
  
• Evans was the rare exception. she was the one who never made a secret of it, who hung posters of Muggle musicians on the walls of Gryffindor Tower and dared anyone to say a word. she started defying Voldemort long before she ever knew his name.
  
• Sirius doesn’t know it, but he’s worrying for nothing. even as he and Remus and Harry’s parents fret, Minerva McGonagall is climbing the stairs of a tower in Hogwarts castle.
  

[nonasuch]

more dogfather au

part four! previous bits: one, two, three.

• for the first few months there is an uneasy sort of detente between Sirius and Harry’s parents.
  
• they’re afraid, but he expected that: all his life Sirius was told that Muggles would be afraid of wizards, if they knew about them.
  
• but he realizes, very quickly, that they are not afraid of but afraid for: afraid for Harry, for his safety, for how he will fit into a world he only knows from Sirius’ descriptions.
  
• afraid for themselves a little too, for what their warm, bright house will feel like when Harry leaves it for some impossible-seeming school that they can’t ever see for themselves. for what might happen, if he chooses to leave them behind for good.
  
• and they’re afraid for Sirius too, though that takes the longest for him to see. afraid he won’t be able to clear his name, that he’ll be sent back to Azkaban, that their son will lose his godfather so soon after finding him.
  
• (it never occurs to him that he is, to their eyes, still so very young. he isn’t even thirty, and they waited a long time before Harry came to them. they’re old enough that he could be their son, if things were otherwise.)
  
• so: things are weird.
• but there are consolations.

[nonasuch]

(link to: part one, part two)

more rambly AU, which I am just gonna go ahead and call “the dogfather AU” from now on, and tag accordingly:

• the next week of Harry’s life is very strange.
  
• up to this point, the biggest secret he’s ever kept from his parents was that his mum had bought his dad a stand mixer for Christmas last year.
  
• and that was only keeping a secret from one parent. this is at least twice as hard as that.
  

[nonasuch]

continued from here, some more of this rambly and, now, less-abbreviated AU:

• for obvious reasons, Harry does not get a lot of sleep that night.
  
• he wants the whole story, and Sirius– without quite meaning to– tells it to him.
  
• in another life, he might not have done so. in another life, there might have been things he’d been told Harry shouldn’t know, and things that he’d simply forgotten over the years, and things that still hurt too much to talk about.
  
• but in this place, and at this time, none of those things are true. Sirius spent two awful years in Azkaban, and five years free.
  
• since the day he found Harry, he has been saving up all the things he wants to tell his godson.
  
• so he starts at the beginning:
  
• “I met James and Lily on the train to Hogwarts, when we were eleven. that’s the school for witches and wizards; you’ll go there too, when you’re older.”