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Outside, the summer sun beat down hot upon Godric's Hollow. But inside the living room – it was hard to describe. Closer to Jamie, the air practically boiled. Closer to Harry, breaths all but froze out of the air. It made life immensely uncomfortable for those roughly equidistant from the two – which the twins didn't mind at all.
"Harry," James began, "we know the evidence, but you can't blame us for–"
"We bloody well can blame you," Jamie snapped, malice glinting in the hazel eyes so like his father's. "Or are we the adults here, and you the children?"
"Please, Jamie," Dumbledore said soothingly. "Your parents have made mistakes, but that is no reason to treat them with hatred. They love you."
The younger twin at last chose to speak, his chilly green eyes focusing upon each of the adults upon the couch in turn and dismissing them all as unworthy. "Indeed," he said. "They're just puppets. You were the one who led them to this."
"I'm no puppet!" Sirius bellowed, sitting up straight. Jamie outright laughed as Harry scoffed.
"Oh, really?" Jamie said, grinning without humor. "Is that why you turned your back on Harry the moment Dumbledore told you he was likely to be Dark?"
"He put you up to this," Sirius snapped. Dark brows drew down over hate-filled grey eyes as his gaze went to Harry. "I know his type. A little sneak like Regulus. You're a good kid, Jamie. You never would have thought of this on your own."
"Why? Because you think I'm a shallow prankster like you?" Jamie sneered. "Maybe under better circumstances. But I grew up with you sucking up to me because of something I couldn't even remember, while you treated the person closest to me like dirt. I got a very good view of all your natures." He dry-spat at them. "Or don't you remember how things went after second year?"
The five adults shifted uncomfortably on the couch. Of course they remembered poor Jamie in the Hospital Ward, injured from rubble collapsing atop him in the fight with the basilisk.
Under the twin accusatory gazes, they also remembered Harry fighting for his life in a private room in St. Mungo's, somehow, impossibly alive after receiving a massive injection of venom from a gargantuan, thousand-year-old basilisk. But they'd left him to the Mediwitches and covered the whole matter up, lest Harry's drama detract from Jamie's valor. He shouldn't even have been in the Chamber in the first place – Jamie was the one trained to fight Dark magic – it had probably just been Harry trying to be a glory hog again, leeching off his brother's fame.
Dumbledore, long past all shame, sat there calmly twinkling. James shook his head, the implied condemnation sliding off him like water off a duck's back – it wasn't his fault, how could they look at him as though he were to blame for Harry's misfortune? – while Sirius bristled, growling at them with a ferocity worthy of his Animagus form. Lily folded her hands in her lap and pressed her lips tightly together. She'd never liked her quieter son – he reminded her too much of a boy she once knew – and had waited for over a decade for him to lash out like the viper he was. And felt no guilt over treating him as such in the meantime.
Remus bowed his head and wept.
"Stop the crocodile tears, Lupin," Harry said in a tired voice. "You had your chance to intervene in our lives. Again and again you retreated from opportunities because Father and Sirius might get mad at you. The only difference between you and Pettigrew is that his cowardice took the form of betrayal, and yours of… loyalty." He spat the final word.
"How dare you say that about Remus?" James bellowed, rising to his feet, wand already in hand; Sirius joined him immediately, pointing his wand at his two godsons. The boys stood calmly before the men, contempt rolling off them in waves. Dumbledore motioned for them to sit down, repeating his gesture with increasing haste as James and Sirius seemed not to notice. Remus redoubled his sobs, Lily shuffling away from him as they grew louder.
"Come on, try it," Jamie said, snickering and spreading his arms. "If you think you're half the wizards we are, test your mettle."
"Jamie, honestly," Harry said with a sigh. "A little less Gryffindor, please. We're trying to have a discussion."
"Aw, Harry –"
"We can save the fight for later."
Jamie adopted a more diplomatic expression (though he couldn't hide his smirk), and Dumbledore at last succeeded in getting his two disciples to sit down once more. "Snide little shite," James snarled, ignoring his wife's sharp intake of breath. "I don't know where I went wrong raising you."
"Oh, let's see," Jamie said, ticking off the points on his fingers. "Taking advantage of your celebrity status to get drunk and mouth off to anyone who moved. That set a really fine example for me, Daddy."
"Losing interest even in Jamie if he did something inconvenient like get sick," Harry commented with amusement, though his voice was laced with bitterness. "Managing to misplace me in the middle of Diagon Alley and only realizing that you'd left me hours later, when Mother asked you where you'd put 'the other one' as she tucked Jamie into bed."
"That was only twice!" James snapped. Sirius tapped him on the shoulder and flashed four fingers. "What? I only remember twice!"
"There was once while Sirius was busy offending new and exciting people abroad," Harry said dryly. "Five times."
"It's not my fault you were always so quiet and wandered off to look at things when you should have been following me," James complained, sitting back on the couch and throwing up his hands. "Maybe I wasn't a perfect father, but you were a hard kid to raise."
"This may surprise you, Dad, but taking care of your son is your responsibility as a parent," Jamie shot back. "Harry wasn't your annoying kid brother deliberately trying to get you into trouble. Though, if you regard him that way, that explains an awful lot."
"This is all this is about?" Lily said coldly, breaking into the conversation for the first time all afternoon. "Childhood grudges?"
"It's a pattern-" Jamie began, but Harry cut him off.
"She's half-right," he said with equal coldness, meeting his mother's eyes. Viridian gazes locked. "We have much better complaints. Such as when the Dementors left me practically catatonic with shock, and you could only think to train Jamie in the Patronus Charm, piling enough chocolate upon him to make Ron sick, while you just told me to stop being such a hysteric."
"You were mugging for attention," James said, running his hands through his hair as he eyed his younger son with a mixture of boredom and contempt. "You always have, Harry, it's your great weakness."
"Or maybe he had much worse memories?" Jamie snapped, the air around him beginning to shimmer with heat. "Such as his parents neglecting him throughout his childhood? Quirrel trying to cut him open as a sacrifice? The bloody basilisk all but ripping his arm off? And –"
"He's really gotten to you," Sirius said in disgust. "Just like Regulus – always whining."
"Are you even hearing a single thing I've said?"
"The Tournament was really the breaking point," said Harry, holding up one hand. Despite his effort to act as the voice of calm, his shoulders tensed as he remembered that disaster. "Time and time again, you threatened me, abused me, and accused me of the most horrible things just for trying to keep my brother from getting killed."
"And I would have died," Jamie cut in. "Really, Dumbledore – training or not, do I seem qualified to fight a dragon?"
"Jamie," Dumbledore said, giving him a pacifying, grandfatherly smile, "it was sedated and controlled to only defend its nest –"
"Oh, yes, aside from the part where Barty Crouch had deliberately undermined all those safeguards!"
"You would have been fine," Lily insisted. "You're protected by prophecy. Besides, none of that was an excuse for the sort of magic Harry used to subdue it."
Jamie looked about to breathe fire himself, but Harry shushed him. "Krum had no inhibitions on using Dark magic to complete his Tasks, so long as his spells were aimed as nonsentient beings – it was perfectly permitted within the bounds of the Tournament," the younger twin said. "And I was unaware a fourteen-year-old needed excuses to use whatever magic necessary against a beast that ordinarily takes half a dozen grown wizards to subdue."
"It was that you knew that magic alone that condemned you!" Sirius snarled. The twins just looked at each other and shook their heads.
"Regardless of the danger, Harry, that was no excuse to interfere in the Tournament," Dumbledore said sternly. "You meddled in magic far beyond your grasp with your foolhardy actions. Only chance and your own good fortune saved you from the direst of consequences."
"Bloody hell, did you just say you'd rather have seen me dead than your prissy rituals interfered with?" Jamie demanded incredulously.
"I think he proved that abundantly with his reaction to the Third Task," Harry said dryly.
"Oh, Merlin, that's right." Jamie shut his eyes and pinched his nose. "Why did I even ask."
"You ruined the conclusion of an international tournament!" James shouted. "Of course Dumbledore was furious with you!"
"I. Was. Going to die, you know?"
"Prophecy protects you, Ja-"
"No, no, no, no, no. You stupid cow." Jamie opened his eyes and looked at his father. "And you ignorant prick." He turned to Sirius. "And you sadistic mutt." He glanced at the miserable Remus, who had now drawn his legs up to his chest and was rocking back and forth. "Coward." Finally, he turned to Dumbledore. "And you boring twit with no fashion sense."
For the first time all conversation, Dumbledore seemed truly offended.
Jamie glanced back at Harry. "What?" he asked, spreading his hands. "I didn't want to be sexist."
Harry sighed. "Now's not the time, Jamie." He crossed his arms and regarded his seething extended family. "To put what Jamie said in more polite terms, it turns out that you got the wrong one."
"What?"
The single cry went up from five throats, Remus's more croaking than the rest. Harry shrugged.
"Honestly – are you surprised? Time after time, I was the one who saved Jamie. I did magic far beyond my age, far beyond what a single wizard should have been able to do with my level of training, and none of you batted an eyelash. Jamie was trained – but I naturally had the talent. Did none of you even consider for a moment…" He scanned them with a single glance and sighed. "You didn't, did you."
"But Jamie is marked!" protested Lily, pointing at the long chain-lightning mark across Jamie's forehead. The older twin sighed.
"If any of you had bothered to study curse scars rather than simply declaring the one with the flashier mark the better, you'd recognize this as a simple blast burn from being in the vicinity of a massive magical chain-reaction," Jamie said, flicking at the mark casually. "Oh, stop gawping at me like that. I was disappointed too. But it was just confirming what had already become obvious."
"You're saying that dinky little thing on Harry's forehead is the real thing?" Sirius asked, all but laughing outright. "I've gotten more impressive cuts from quills."
"Dinky – and pure black," Harry countered. "If you'd given me a detailed scan rather than the perfunctory one you must have used, you might have noticed that the 'Dark aura' around me radiated from one point on me rather than being exuded naturally from my body." He shook his head, his fringe swaying over his lightning-bolt scar. "Not that that's the case any more. I have an affinity, and you lot certainly gave me no reason to neglect it."
"So you're naturally Dark," Lily said coldly. "Why this should mean that you're the child of prophecy, and not just the next Dark Lord –"
"Why this should mean the two things are mutually exclusive," Jamie mimicked in a high, snotty voice, "and not just one and the same–"
"We're going off track," Harry said, waving his brother down. "The point is that I got to the graveyard. Voldemort was already camping it up. Cedric Diggory lay dead. Jamie would be next. I undid my brother's bonds–"
"Jamie could have gotten out himself," James butted in. He had crossed his arms and was now outright pouting as he leaned back on the couch, sullenly determined to find some fault with his younger son's story. "You're just making things up to make yourself look good again."
"I was first stunned by Wormtail killing Cedric straight off, then outright Stunned while I was still staring in horror at the corpse," Jamie snapped. "Then I was tied up with the best rope and magical bindings Wormtail could procure, force-fed a sedative as soon as Wormtail had taken my blood, and kept minimally conscious only so I could produce the appropriate shrieks under the Cruciatus – Voldemort's a coward, if you didn't notice – What, did you sleep through the first time I told you all of this?"
The adults looked at each other uncomfortably (except for Remus, who had been reduced to low moaning). "Well – of course, you've always been modest, and Harry kept trying to butt in with his attention-grabbing –" James began.
"Good Godric."
"Anyway, they raised anti-Apparition wards as soon as they realized Jamie had been followed," Harry continued. "I would have tried to force myself through them, but I couldn't exactly do that with two dozen Death Eaters firing at me. It was all I could do to use absolutely everything in the graveyard as a shield." He grimaced. "I'm not sure how the Ministry covered up the damage. Half the gravestones must have been destroyed by the time –"
"You wouldn't have survived that onslaught for long, gravestones or no gravestones," Sirius interjected. "Stop lying."
"Will you let me finish my sentence? Thanks. As I said, by the time Voldemort called them off. He has a peculiar sense of honor, you see." Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, he wanted Jamie halfway catatonic for the actual fight, but he wanted to fight Jamie one-on-one. And when the inferior twin showed up (Voldemort buying as much into Jamie's PR as the rest of you lot), he decided that he'd show off by walloping me first. In single combat, naturally, for he is Lord Voldemort.
"Well, it turned up something quite interesting. You see, blasts from our wands came into direct contact –"
"Are you claiming Priori Incantem?" Dumbledore interrupted, his knowledge of magic immediately jumping to the likely effect. "But you would have to have been casting the same spell to activate it."
"Yes, forgive me for shooting the Killing Curse at the Dark Lord," Harry said acidly. "Surely my soul is damaged beyond repair, oh woe, oh wee.
"Regardless – Priori Incantem activated. Phoenix song filled the graveyard. I retreated with Jamie under a ceasefire, Dumbledore – and do you know what that means? For the effect of Priori Incantem to result in neither combatant being able to attack?"
As dawning horror filled Dumbledore's eyes, Sirius cut in, "Leave the camping to the Lords and tell us already, Harry."
"Right," Harry said flatly. "It means the two combatants are equal in power. Brother wands. Equal levels of magical power. A mark that ties me inseparably to Voldemort." He pointed at the lightning bolt on his head. "Success in sabotaging his plans every single year I've been involved. Born as the seventh month dies. All this adds up to…"
"Jamie sabotaged the plans!" James broke in. "It was all him!"
"I believed your liberal interpretation of what I reported when I was younger and more stuck-up," Jamie said in disgust, "but you know what? Enough of your bullshit, Dad. Enough of your prissy love for prophecy, Mum. Enough of whatever the hell is your problem, Sirius. And who even knows what goes on your head, Dumbledore. I spent the climax of every year lying around in a half-conscious heap while Harry saved my bum. And I'm not going to deny that any more."
"But –"
"Give it up, you lot," Harry said. His voice and expression were both very tired as he surveyed the people he'd called his family for the past fifteen years. "I'm the child of prophecy. Jamie just happened to be around."
Dumbledore's gaze flashed from one twin to the other, and then back again. "Harry," he began consolingly. "If you feel that you have been denied your due–"
"Oh, dear MERLIN, you shallow bastard, don’t act as though kissing up to the other brother is any better!"
Harry shook his head. "He doesn't know how to do anything else, Jamie," he said. "He never did."
"Harry, Harry, Harry," Dumbledore said, attempting to meet the boys' eyes; both avoided him instinctively. "What do you want? I understand you're a young man in deep turmoil –"
"What do I want?" Harry shrugged. "To never see any of you again. Except possibly Lupin. At least he's a coward and not an active bastard."
Remus whimpered.
"That's not likely, though. So getting out of here will be a good start.
"More importantly, though – we do want to bring down Voldemort. However, you and the Order already had your chance. We already know how that turned out." Harry gestured to himself and his twin, and the supposed Boy-Who-Lived and the real one rolled their eyes at each other. "Sheer dumb luck that Trelawney was spouting an actual prophecy, and not some drunken gibberish, and hiding behind a pair of toddlers actually worked for you.
"So we're striking out with our own group. There are more Light groups in England than your Order of the Fuckup, you know. The Hufflepuffs–"
"Well-intentioned, but terribly ineffectual, my boy," Dumbledore said, smiling genially.
"First of all, I'm not your boy. Second of all, never call me that again. Third of all, the Order is so ineffectual as to be nearly malicious, so don't preach to me about that.
"At any rate – the Smiths have already weighed the evidence and decided to throw their considerable resources in with us." Harry emphasized the word, but he didn't need to: as the last surviving line descending from the Founders, the Smiths were fabulously wealthy, famous throughout Europe, and capable of calling in connections from a thousand years of alliance and favors. All that kept them from dominating England was a distinctly Hufflepuff lack of interest in ambition, grandstanding, and meddling in others' affairs – but when they could actually be roused to movement, their enemies tended to be reduced to smears on the wallpaper. They had remained largely uninvolved in the First War, having preferred to devote their resources to temporarily relocating noncombatants while they bided their time and watched for any sign that the war would swing towards one side or the other, but if they had decided to actually take a side…
Dumbledore looked slightly ill.
"Not with you, mind," Jamie cut in, grinning. "They've disliked you from when you first rose to fame after your defeat of Grindelwald. They hoped you had genuine potential as a Light Lord, but soon found you 'dishonest, blinkered, and revoltingly prone to playing favorites'. Their words, not mine." He shrugged. "They don't know what to think of Harry yet, but they're a tolerant lot, and they respect his favoring of neutrality when unprovoked. They at least agree he's a legitimate candidate to take out Voldemort."
"And I was not?" Dumbledore demanded, looking even more ill.
Jamie coughed. "Uh, a decade of the War raging on with no end in sight sure pointed to that. And there's a reason you tried to make me your weapon instead, now isn't there?"
"This has taken too long already," Harry said shortly. "Let me sum up. The Smiths support us. Their allies do by association. We have other allies, too – ones I expect you don't know about, since I made them rather than Jamie. And I highly doubt you'd even know my eye color if I didn't share it with my mother.
"In addition, the Smiths have agreed to adopt us –"
"Adopt you?" James shrieked, suddenly standing up.
"Yes," Harry said as Jamie flipped them all off. "I said we were getting out of here. I meant it." He took his brother's hand. "Tootle-oo."
And before even Dumbledore could raise an objection, he spun on the spot, and both boys disappeared with a crack. James, Lily, and Sirius stared at the place where they had been, and then at each other, with horror. Remus let out a despairing laugh. And Dumbledore looked as though he was about to throw up.
"Oh, we are fucked," James whispered. His wife and best friend could only nod.