Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Nightmare Before Hogwarts
Nightmare Before Hogwarts
By: USA Tiger
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. Nightmare before Christmas is the property of Touchstone/Disney and Tim Burton. Corpse Bride is also the property of Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. Beetlejuice is also property of Tim Burton.
Author note: So I hoped to have this chapter ready a couple of weeks ago when I started on it but with half the department I work in taking off for the holidays the other half have to cover for them so I’m getting at least 1 day off a week so most nights I crash as soon as I get home. This will likely continue until after the new years so I don’t know how quick the next chapter will be here.
This chapter is dedicated to reviewers drvash and Michael68 both of whom had suggested a some good ideas for this fic, one of which has already been started in this chapter. Thanks guys!
This chapter has been betaed Werejaguar of Halloween Town
Chapter 15
Remus sat gob smacked for a moment, his mouth opening and closing not unlike that of a fish, before his found his voice again.
“I’m sorry - could you repeat that? Did you just say Peter is alive?” He asked.
“That’s exactly what we said,” James said.
“But… but… how do you know for sure?” Remus asked.
“Remus, don’t you think we would know if Peter was in the land of the dead with us?” Lily said firmly, leaving no room for argument.
“Yeah, the first thing we would have done was go after that little traitor,” James added with a growl.
“The muggles that were killed that day told us what happen. Sirius found Peter and they started to argue,” Lily explained. “Peter blamed Sirius while he used a knife to cut off a finger then blew up the street.”
Remus groaned miserably as he buried his face into his hands, fingers tangling into his gray streaked hair.
“A finger is all they found of him,” he said, voice muffled. “The papers all reported that.”
“If Peter really had been blown up, they would have found much more than a finger,” Lily pointed out.
“He had to have turned into his rat form and escaped... Who knows where he is now,” James crossed his arms over his chest, brow narrowed in half thought and half anger.
Remus groaned again - why didn’t he think of that?! The only explanation he could think of was that he was in mourning and shocked over what happened. He had jumped on the bandwagon on believing Sirius had given into his dark family roots and destroyed his makeshift family. He had unthinkingly thrown his old friend under the bus!
“What did your friend say at the trial?” Sally asked. “Surely he must have tried to get the truth out.”
“Yeah, I wonder the same thing,” James said. “All we kept hearing was that Padfoot was tossed into Azkaban, nothing else.”
“I… hmm…” Remus frowned as he sat back in his seat, trying to remember. “I… don’t remember ever seeing anything about it. I remember the trials for all the other Death Eaters, Malfoy, and a bunch of others got off by claiming that they were under the Imperius curse. Plus, Crouch Jr.’s trial was big news after he was caught with the Lestranges’ after what they did to poor Frank and Alice, but I honestly can’t remember if I saw Sirius’s in the paper. I might have missed it or blocked it out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lily said with a shake of her head. “Considering how people seem to nearly worship Harry, putting the person who ‘betrayed’ the Potter family on trial would be big news for weeks if not years.”
“Do you think Sirius didn’t get a trial?” James asked, feeling like he should be shocked but honestly he wasn’t the more he heard.
“Maybe he didn’t…” Remus said feeling sick to his stomach. “As I said, I don’t remember seeing anything about one. I can go look it up in the archives, it has to be somewhere.”
“Poor Sirius… stuck in that awful place with those Dementors,” Lily lamented.
“Don’t worry, Lily, we’re getting him out,” James said as he reached over to rub Lily’s back in comfort.
“What is a Dementor?” Jack asked with clear confusion in his eye sockets. There was so much he was learning about this wizarding world, some he had already knew such as witches, ghouls, different spirits, and boggarts. Others like the Doxies he never heard of before, Dementors was one of those things.
“They’re… well physically they look a bit like the Grim Reaper - what with wearing tattered robes and how they float above the ground,” Lily explained uneasily.
“They’re a bit like a wraith, they have the ability to suck out your soul through something called the Dementor’s Kiss, and a bit like an energy vampire,” Remus took over explaining. Being and fighting against being what he was, a dark creature, Remus had excelled in Defense back at Hogwarts and had continued to study it after he left. He didn’t have his masters, he knew there would be no way anyone would allow him to take the tests, but he was very knowledgeable none the less. “They suck all the joy and happiness out of a person, leaving you with your worse memories. You feel like you’ll never get warm.”
“That’s horrible!” Sally said with a gasp, a hand pressed against her stitched mouth. It was quite obvious from her tone and expression that she wasn’t using Halloween Town’s usual lingo for the word.
“And they keep these horrible creatures in this Azkaban prison you mentioned so many times?” Jack exclaimed in disbelief, sockets wide as he gave a comforting squeeze to his beloved’s other hand.
“The way they trap a wizard or witch in their darkest moments keeps them from trying to escape,” Remus said solemnly with a shake of his head. “And if they do try, then the Dementor can just give them the Kiss. Dementors were created there by a dark wizard by the name of Ekrizdis who originally built Azkaban fortress as well. It was one of the past Ministers for Magic, Damocles Rowle, who turned Azkaban into a prison and used the Dementor as guards.”
“During the war they were on You-Know-Who’s side,” James said. “All three of us have had firsthand experience with those things... I still can’t believe the Ministry of Magic allied themselves with those things again, but the Wizarding world isn’t known for its logic or common sense in these things.”
“I blame the inbreeding,” Lily said dryly, which got snorts of agreement from both her husband and Remus.
“What else were they going to do with them?” Remus stated tiredly, shrugging as he looked down at his tea cup. “It’s not if anyone knows how to kill them.”
“Surely there’s a way,” Sally said to which Remus answered with a shake of his head.
“If there is, no one knows how. The best defense anyone has against a Dementor is the Patronus charm,” he explained. “And that’s an incredibly difficult spell to cast, very few people pull it off.”
“And what is a Patronus?” Jack asked curiously, leaning forward.
“You’ve seen one already, back at Elder Gutknecht’s tower,” Lily said.
Jack thought back to that day then smiled wildly.
“Ah! The doe made of light!” he said.
“Yes, that’s it. Think of it as something of a spirit guardian, the shape of a corporeal Patronus is unique to each witch or wizards,” Lily said with a smile. “My is, of course a, doe.”
“Mine is a stag, like my Animagus form,” James said then wondered to himself if it would still look like a normal stag or if like his deer form it would look skeletal.
“Mine is… a wolf,” Remus admitted with a bit of a wince. “I tend not to let it form fully if I can avoid it, I feel like it would clue people into what I am.”
“Hmmm, how interesting,” Jack said as he rubbed his jaw with a bony hand. “Can anyone cast it?”
“Most witches and wizards have difficulties casting it, it’s incredibly advance like Remus said,” Lily said. “You must pull on positive and happy memories to produce one, which can be difficult in a stressful situation.”
“It was originally created as a defense against Lethifolds but it was discovered to work well against Dementors as well,” Remus added. “Some dark wizards can be devoured by maggots that come from their wand if they attempt to cast the charm, but it’s pretty rare and it doesn’t mean a dark person, or creatures, can’t cast it.” He tapped his chest referring to himself.
“Fascinating,” Jack said.
“Well,” James clapped his hands together, grinning wildly. “We got Moony here and we’re nearly complete with our plans on how to get Padfoot out of Azkaban. The biggest problem is getting onto the island itself.”
“How do you leave this place?” Remus asked as the last thing he could remember was locking himself up the night before.
“Oh there are tunnels that are created through the graveyard,” Jack explained. “Some lead to a permanent tunnel in another graveyard or some are temporally created to spaces under beds, closets or under stair cases.”
“I’ve been using the last one to spook Petunia and her fat muggle husband with,” James said with a smirk. “It’s fun.”
“You’re pranking the muggles?” Remus asked with amusement. “Just how vicious are you being?”
“Not as much as you think, and I’m technically ‘haunting’ the Dursleys,” James shot back then shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not completely driving them around the bend, or killing them. I may want to go that far sometimes when I think of all they did to Harry, but I’m not going down that path.”
“Just a bit of punishment,” Lily said. “Once they learn their lesson, we’ll leave that part of our lives behind us.”
Remus was a bit surprise, James and Sirius could be downright nasty with their pranks when pushed too far, but he can’t say he blamed either Potter for wanting revenge on someone who hurt the cub.
“Well back to the original point, you do know Ekrizdis has a mausoleum on Azkaban island and there is a graveyard there right?” he said. James groaned and slapped his forehead then laughed.
“See, this is why we need Moony to make plans, he remembers all the little details,” he praised with a grin. Remus chuckled then brought a hand up to tiredly rub his face, he ached all over from the transformation, honestly he was surprised he was up and moving at all.
His whole world had been flipped in less than an hour. Lily and James were there with him, even while dead it soothed his inner wolf to have them there, and he learned that Pettigrew was the traitor - not Sirius - who had been framed by that blasted rat.
“What are we going to do about Peter?” He asked already knowing he was going to go along with whatever plans the Potter’s had. James sighed and shook his head.
“Nothing we can do. We know he’s alive but if no one has seen him since that day then he’s either fled the country or he’s hiding in his rat form,” the ghostly Potter said. “There’s no telling where that little traitor is.”
“And you won’t be able to go to the Ministry, they’ll never believe you without proof,” Lily said sadly. Remus gave a humorless chuckle.
“They’ll think I’m mad if I said my dead friends were the ones who told me,” he agreed. “Merlin, this whole day is strange.”
“It doesn’t stop here, Moony, wait until you check this town out,” James said. “It’s kooky, it’s spooky, it speaks to my inner prankster. You’ll love living here.”
“James, I’m not sure if that’s safe,” Remus said with a worried tone. “What about my furry problem? I don’t want to be a danger to Harry.”
“Why would you be a danger to Harry?” Jack asked.
“Moony doesn’t have any control over his werewolf form,” James explained. “He attacks humans when he’s like that.”
“So he doesn’t know how to be a werewolf?” Jack asked, an eyebrow ridge rising.
“I didn’t think there was anything to learn how to be a werewolf,” Remus said in confusion. “We’re uncontrollable killers during the full moon even though we’re normal the rest of the month.”
“Nonsense,” Jack said with a wave of a hand. “All the werewolves I’ve known have prefect control, they are only killers if they are evil, and they can control their transformations outside of the full moon.”
“He’s right, Moony. The werewolf that lives here in the town, he’s called Glenn, walks around transformed all the time. Nice bloke, did a lot to help us find you and bring you here,” James said.
“He also offered to help you learn how to control your werewolf half,” Lily added. “You should take those lessons from him, I think it will cut down on the misery and pain you’re in. And you’ll be safe around Harry.”
“I… don’t know,” Remus said with uncertainty.
“Oh come on, Moony, if you learn to control yourself completely, you don’t have worry about hurting anyone when you’re in your furry form,” James pointed out.
“I guess you have a point there,” Remus admitted, the idea did appeal to him. Killing someone, or accidently biting and turning them into a werewolf, was one of Remus’s biggest fears. He had got lucky 5th year when James saved Snape from Sirius’s thoughtless prank that led their rival right to Remus during the full moon. It took Remus forever to forgive the Black heir…to be honest part of him hadn’t ever fully trusted Sirius after that, that’s why it was so easy to believe he had turned his back on his friends and joined ‘He-who-must-not-be-named’. He was still in shock that it had been Peter the whole time.
“Glenn will be more than happy to help you,” Sally said patting Remus’s arm. “Everyone here is friendly.”
“Just watch out for those little brats Lock, Shock, and Barrel,” James warned. He had seen the trio a few times since that first day, but they had so far stayed away from Harry and always ran whenever they saw Jack or Sally.
Remus jumped as a wolf’s howl filled the air, looking around wide eyed while James cracked up in laughter.
“You should have seen your face, Moony!” He said pointing. Lily rolled her eyes and stood, leaving the room.
“What was that!?” Remus asked.
“Our doorbell, spooky huh?” James said.
A bark of laughter escaped Remus and he shook his head in amusement. A few seconds later he was crossing his arms over his chest to cover himself a bit as he was still shirtless while Lily reentered the kitchen with a short rounded man with a cone shaped head of reminded Remus of that muggle sweet called Candy Corn wearing a very tall and very skinny hat.
“Good morning, Jack! Sally!” the Mayor said with a very cheerful wave. He noticed Remus sitting at the table and put his best mayor-foot toward. “I see we have another new face in town. A friend of yours, Mr. Potter?”
“Sure is, Mayor,” James said grinning. “This is one of my two best mates, Remus Lupin. Wizard and werewolf extraordinaire.” Remus blushed a bit at James’s words.
“I don’t know about extraordinary, sir,” Remus said with a bit of a shrug. “Please excuse me for my lack of dress while meeting you.”
“Think nothing of it,” the Mayor said with a wave of his hand then turned to James, Remus’s eyebrows going up when he saw the second face on the back of the Mayor’s head. “Now I’ve brought over some paperwork for you and Mrs. Potter to sign, just a bit of legal work to register you as part of the town. I had to do a bit of searching in my office to find it.”
The Mayor took out a scroll out of his jacket and let it unroll across the table top, the other end stopping in front of James and Lily. James picked up the scroll and started reading it. James had been trained in politics, though he hated having to deal with them, due to having a family seat on Wizengamot and his family dealings in the business world.
Mostly the Potter wealth and fame came from the potions that his ancestors had created since the 12th century, starting with Linfred of Stinchcombe. They were related to the Peverells through Linfred’s oldest son Hardwin whom married the granddaughter of the youngest of the three Peverell brothers - Ignotus. It didn’t make the Potter’s the head of the Peverell family-line due to being descendants of the youngest brother, but it did help in some ways.
James, himself, was pretty good at potions, it had been his second best class after transfiguration, and he had been behind only Lily and Snape in class standings. His father, Fleamont, who had invented the Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion, had trained him since he was young among other duties. And one other thing Fleamont had made sure to pound into his spoiled son’s head was to never sign any paperwork without reading it first. If James had even dared to try something like that, no doubt his father would march out of the Land of the Dead to Halloween Town to give James an earful about it.
“What’s this part here about offering our property to be a part of Halloween Town?” James asked, pointing at part of the scroll.
“That’s just a little bit to help Halloween Town,” the Mayor explained. “The property will still belong to your family, this case Harry since he’s the one who’s still alive, but it will be considered a part of Halloween Town while still existing and being a part of the human world.”
“It allows my realm to have more permanent access points to the human realm,” Jack explained, stepping in where the Mayor left off. “It doesn’t have to be all properties; it can just be the one you and I visited or some other place. Or none at all, it’s not a requirement.”
“Hmmm… what do you think, Lils?” James asked.
“I don’t see where it would hurt,” Lily said after a moment. “It will give Harry a quick way back and forth as Halloween Town is, or will be, as much a home to him as the Wizarding World and Earth in general.”
“Good point,” James said then added the ancestral Potter Manor near Godric’s Hollow to the scroll, leaving the other properties as they were. If Harry decided he wanted other Potter family properties as a part of Halloween Town then he could do so when he was an adult.
Otherwise the rest of the scroll was pretty straight forward, registering the Potter family as citizens of Halloween Town. James signed his name at the bottom with a quill then handed the scroll to Lily so she could read and sign as well. Jack’s signature was added alongside their’s, sealing the scroll with the magic of Halloween.
“That should be everything,” the Mayor said in a chipper tone as he rolled the scroll back up and tucked it under an arm. “I’ll have a copy made and send it back for your records. Welcome to our town.” He grabbed Remus’s hand, properly greeting him now since Lupin would be a future voter. “Well I should head back for now. Ladies, gents!” The Mayor tipped his ridiculously tall hat to Lily and Sally then headed out the door humming under his breath.
“He is…ummm…” Remus searched for the right word for the Mayor.
“Over the top?” James supplied with a smirk.
“That’s one way to describe him. Is the second face just for show?” Remus asked.
“No, he is literally a two-faced politician,” Jack said with a bony grin. “Whenever he’s distressed or worried, his head turns around. He’s like that a lot, always worried he won’t be re-elected.”
“I don’t know why he worries so much, no one ever runs against him,” Sally commented with a good natured roll of her eyes. Remus blinked then shook his head in amusement, this was certainly the most entertaining thing to happen to him in a long time.
******
Meanwhile, as soon as James and Lily had signed the scroll…
The wards that lay across the Potter lands stirred as they felt something form on their land. The wards could sense it was some sort of… pathway… a portal to someplace else. Someplace filled with dark, yet not evil, energies.
The Potter lands were old, the generations upon generations of Potters had fed the wards and given the land a certain degree of awareness from the stone and wood the house was built upon to the forest that sat on the land. Many old magical homesteads were the same way, so much magic fed into them by the families that claimed the land. The greatest example of awareness, of being alive, was Hogwarts and the land the school sat upon though none ever reached the castle’s level of sentient it had.
But the Potter lands were aware and they knew their wards were weakening. There were so few of their Potters born the last few generations, only one magical Potter left alive, so their wards weakened and more so over time with so few of their wizards and witches to renew the wards.
The land turned its attention to the portal again with interest. It could feel its Potters, the beloved, spoiled, dead one that visited with the strangely dark yet light creature and their little master they had yet to meet, this portal was somehow connected to them. The wards stretched out, prodding and testing the strange new energy, drawing a bit on it. The land felt… stronger? Yes, it felt stronger from this new thing on its land, this pathway to someplace else. They were connected to this place, it allowed them to draw as much energy as it pleased to make the wards strong again to protect its Potters.
As the land and wards that the ancestral Potter home were located on drew on the magic of Halloween, it slowly started to… shift and change into something new and twisted. The wards buzzed happily as the land settled, waiting for their masters to return.
****
“Can I really pick any toy I want?” Harry asked looking up at Jack and Sally, holding onto Sally’s hand. After the Mayor had left, Sally had told the Potter’s about Harry tucking his little stuffed bear into the bed with Remus who chuckled and told his friends how Harry wanted to give him the bear to ‘feel better’. Lily had adored the little story, cooing at how sweet and kind Harry was. James just teased Remus about his new teddy bear.
Harry had returned not much later, Zero by his side, to give Remus the drawing he had done, beaming happily as Remus smiled and thanked him. After that, Remus said he had to return to his home, but only after he promised Harry that yes he was coming back, he just needed to get his things. After all he couldn’t just run around in a conjured pair of pajama pants all the time. Remus’s pack was here in Halloween Town, two dead but at the same time alive in a way and the pack’s pup and soon the final member in Sirius Black would be among them as well. There was no need to bring up a certain rat.
It was after this that the Skellingtons suggested that Harry should have a very special toy, one of his choosing, for his kindness to Remus when gifting the werewolf the teddy bear. Harry had many toys now, ones his Daddy brought him and ones other citizens of Halloween Town had gifted him with. But Jack had promised these toys were different, special ones made a very long time ago.
The toys the citizens of Halloween Town made almost 30 years prior for that Christmas the one year Jack had taken over had been returned to them by Santa after he had fixed Jack’s mistake. They had been stored away in one of the many abandoned houses, except for a few that had gone to a few spooky and monster families who enjoyed the toys, until Oogie had turned many of them evil during the short time he had been brought back by Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Those that hadn’t been destroyed by Jack and the others had been returned to normal and stored away again.
“Any toy at all,” Jack said as he waved his hand at the piles of toys in the room. Zombie toy ducks that had bloody looking gunshot wounds painted on them, demonic dollies, a train with tentacles tracks, vampire teddy bears, scary jack-in-the-boxes, these were just handfuls of the toys that they had made for the children of the human world. “These toys are alive, that is what makes them special.”
“They can be a little scary but they won’t hurt you, Harry,” Sally assured Harry softly. The toys that Jack had given away that Christmas Eve would have never really harmed the children (except maybe the giant snakes and killer wreaths, not their smarter ideas...), but the children had been too scared by the toys and really it had been for the best that Santa had taken them away.
Harry stepped closer to the pile of toys, one hand fisted in his shirt. By his side Zero nuzzled close, the ghostly dog that had become Harry’s best friend offering him comfort. Harry was Zero’s favorite person right beside his master and Sally. The toys didn’t really scare Harry, he had been in Halloween Town long enough that scary things didn’t really scare him anymore and some of his toys were already scary looking back home.
Harry’s green eyes were drawn to a patched worked looking teddy bear with red eyes, scary claws and big fangs. He tilted his head to the side then smiled, picking the scary bear.
“I like this one,” he said hugging it close, unknowingly picking a toy similar to the one his aunt had received that one Christmas Eve and that would be ‘returned’ to Petunia on Christmas day. But while a scary patchwork bear had scared a young Petunia Evans, Harry found comfort in the toy who in turn instantly bonded with its new owner. It wasn’t going to let anyone mess with its human.
“What are you going to call it, Harry?” Sally asked as they headed back out.
“Hmmm…. Mr. Bitey,” Harry said after a few seconds of musing, and to his delight the toy bear seem to click its jaws in approval.
“Fantastic name,” Jack said with a skeleton grin.
By: USA Tiger
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. Nightmare before Christmas is the property of Touchstone/Disney and Tim Burton. Corpse Bride is also the property of Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. Beetlejuice is also property of Tim Burton.
Author note: So I hoped to have this chapter ready a couple of weeks ago when I started on it but with half the department I work in taking off for the holidays the other half have to cover for them so I’m getting at least 1 day off a week so most nights I crash as soon as I get home. This will likely continue until after the new years so I don’t know how quick the next chapter will be here.
This chapter is dedicated to reviewers drvash and Michael68 both of whom had suggested a some good ideas for this fic, one of which has already been started in this chapter. Thanks guys!
This chapter has been betaed Werejaguar of Halloween Town
Chapter 15
Remus sat gob smacked for a moment, his mouth opening and closing not unlike that of a fish, before his found his voice again.
“I’m sorry - could you repeat that? Did you just say Peter is alive?” He asked.
“That’s exactly what we said,” James said.
“But… but… how do you know for sure?” Remus asked.
“Remus, don’t you think we would know if Peter was in the land of the dead with us?” Lily said firmly, leaving no room for argument.
“Yeah, the first thing we would have done was go after that little traitor,” James added with a growl.
“The muggles that were killed that day told us what happen. Sirius found Peter and they started to argue,” Lily explained. “Peter blamed Sirius while he used a knife to cut off a finger then blew up the street.”
Remus groaned miserably as he buried his face into his hands, fingers tangling into his gray streaked hair.
“A finger is all they found of him,” he said, voice muffled. “The papers all reported that.”
“If Peter really had been blown up, they would have found much more than a finger,” Lily pointed out.
“He had to have turned into his rat form and escaped... Who knows where he is now,” James crossed his arms over his chest, brow narrowed in half thought and half anger.
Remus groaned again - why didn’t he think of that?! The only explanation he could think of was that he was in mourning and shocked over what happened. He had jumped on the bandwagon on believing Sirius had given into his dark family roots and destroyed his makeshift family. He had unthinkingly thrown his old friend under the bus!
“What did your friend say at the trial?” Sally asked. “Surely he must have tried to get the truth out.”
“Yeah, I wonder the same thing,” James said. “All we kept hearing was that Padfoot was tossed into Azkaban, nothing else.”
“I… hmm…” Remus frowned as he sat back in his seat, trying to remember. “I… don’t remember ever seeing anything about it. I remember the trials for all the other Death Eaters, Malfoy, and a bunch of others got off by claiming that they were under the Imperius curse. Plus, Crouch Jr.’s trial was big news after he was caught with the Lestranges’ after what they did to poor Frank and Alice, but I honestly can’t remember if I saw Sirius’s in the paper. I might have missed it or blocked it out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lily said with a shake of her head. “Considering how people seem to nearly worship Harry, putting the person who ‘betrayed’ the Potter family on trial would be big news for weeks if not years.”
“Do you think Sirius didn’t get a trial?” James asked, feeling like he should be shocked but honestly he wasn’t the more he heard.
“Maybe he didn’t…” Remus said feeling sick to his stomach. “As I said, I don’t remember seeing anything about one. I can go look it up in the archives, it has to be somewhere.”
“Poor Sirius… stuck in that awful place with those Dementors,” Lily lamented.
“Don’t worry, Lily, we’re getting him out,” James said as he reached over to rub Lily’s back in comfort.
“What is a Dementor?” Jack asked with clear confusion in his eye sockets. There was so much he was learning about this wizarding world, some he had already knew such as witches, ghouls, different spirits, and boggarts. Others like the Doxies he never heard of before, Dementors was one of those things.
“They’re… well physically they look a bit like the Grim Reaper - what with wearing tattered robes and how they float above the ground,” Lily explained uneasily.
“They’re a bit like a wraith, they have the ability to suck out your soul through something called the Dementor’s Kiss, and a bit like an energy vampire,” Remus took over explaining. Being and fighting against being what he was, a dark creature, Remus had excelled in Defense back at Hogwarts and had continued to study it after he left. He didn’t have his masters, he knew there would be no way anyone would allow him to take the tests, but he was very knowledgeable none the less. “They suck all the joy and happiness out of a person, leaving you with your worse memories. You feel like you’ll never get warm.”
“That’s horrible!” Sally said with a gasp, a hand pressed against her stitched mouth. It was quite obvious from her tone and expression that she wasn’t using Halloween Town’s usual lingo for the word.
“And they keep these horrible creatures in this Azkaban prison you mentioned so many times?” Jack exclaimed in disbelief, sockets wide as he gave a comforting squeeze to his beloved’s other hand.
“The way they trap a wizard or witch in their darkest moments keeps them from trying to escape,” Remus said solemnly with a shake of his head. “And if they do try, then the Dementor can just give them the Kiss. Dementors were created there by a dark wizard by the name of Ekrizdis who originally built Azkaban fortress as well. It was one of the past Ministers for Magic, Damocles Rowle, who turned Azkaban into a prison and used the Dementor as guards.”
“During the war they were on You-Know-Who’s side,” James said. “All three of us have had firsthand experience with those things... I still can’t believe the Ministry of Magic allied themselves with those things again, but the Wizarding world isn’t known for its logic or common sense in these things.”
“I blame the inbreeding,” Lily said dryly, which got snorts of agreement from both her husband and Remus.
“What else were they going to do with them?” Remus stated tiredly, shrugging as he looked down at his tea cup. “It’s not if anyone knows how to kill them.”
“Surely there’s a way,” Sally said to which Remus answered with a shake of his head.
“If there is, no one knows how. The best defense anyone has against a Dementor is the Patronus charm,” he explained. “And that’s an incredibly difficult spell to cast, very few people pull it off.”
“And what is a Patronus?” Jack asked curiously, leaning forward.
“You’ve seen one already, back at Elder Gutknecht’s tower,” Lily said.
Jack thought back to that day then smiled wildly.
“Ah! The doe made of light!” he said.
“Yes, that’s it. Think of it as something of a spirit guardian, the shape of a corporeal Patronus is unique to each witch or wizards,” Lily said with a smile. “My is, of course a, doe.”
“Mine is a stag, like my Animagus form,” James said then wondered to himself if it would still look like a normal stag or if like his deer form it would look skeletal.
“Mine is… a wolf,” Remus admitted with a bit of a wince. “I tend not to let it form fully if I can avoid it, I feel like it would clue people into what I am.”
“Hmmm, how interesting,” Jack said as he rubbed his jaw with a bony hand. “Can anyone cast it?”
“Most witches and wizards have difficulties casting it, it’s incredibly advance like Remus said,” Lily said. “You must pull on positive and happy memories to produce one, which can be difficult in a stressful situation.”
“It was originally created as a defense against Lethifolds but it was discovered to work well against Dementors as well,” Remus added. “Some dark wizards can be devoured by maggots that come from their wand if they attempt to cast the charm, but it’s pretty rare and it doesn’t mean a dark person, or creatures, can’t cast it.” He tapped his chest referring to himself.
“Fascinating,” Jack said.
“Well,” James clapped his hands together, grinning wildly. “We got Moony here and we’re nearly complete with our plans on how to get Padfoot out of Azkaban. The biggest problem is getting onto the island itself.”
“How do you leave this place?” Remus asked as the last thing he could remember was locking himself up the night before.
“Oh there are tunnels that are created through the graveyard,” Jack explained. “Some lead to a permanent tunnel in another graveyard or some are temporally created to spaces under beds, closets or under stair cases.”
“I’ve been using the last one to spook Petunia and her fat muggle husband with,” James said with a smirk. “It’s fun.”
“You’re pranking the muggles?” Remus asked with amusement. “Just how vicious are you being?”
“Not as much as you think, and I’m technically ‘haunting’ the Dursleys,” James shot back then shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not completely driving them around the bend, or killing them. I may want to go that far sometimes when I think of all they did to Harry, but I’m not going down that path.”
“Just a bit of punishment,” Lily said. “Once they learn their lesson, we’ll leave that part of our lives behind us.”
Remus was a bit surprise, James and Sirius could be downright nasty with their pranks when pushed too far, but he can’t say he blamed either Potter for wanting revenge on someone who hurt the cub.
“Well back to the original point, you do know Ekrizdis has a mausoleum on Azkaban island and there is a graveyard there right?” he said. James groaned and slapped his forehead then laughed.
“See, this is why we need Moony to make plans, he remembers all the little details,” he praised with a grin. Remus chuckled then brought a hand up to tiredly rub his face, he ached all over from the transformation, honestly he was surprised he was up and moving at all.
His whole world had been flipped in less than an hour. Lily and James were there with him, even while dead it soothed his inner wolf to have them there, and he learned that Pettigrew was the traitor - not Sirius - who had been framed by that blasted rat.
“What are we going to do about Peter?” He asked already knowing he was going to go along with whatever plans the Potter’s had. James sighed and shook his head.
“Nothing we can do. We know he’s alive but if no one has seen him since that day then he’s either fled the country or he’s hiding in his rat form,” the ghostly Potter said. “There’s no telling where that little traitor is.”
“And you won’t be able to go to the Ministry, they’ll never believe you without proof,” Lily said sadly. Remus gave a humorless chuckle.
“They’ll think I’m mad if I said my dead friends were the ones who told me,” he agreed. “Merlin, this whole day is strange.”
“It doesn’t stop here, Moony, wait until you check this town out,” James said. “It’s kooky, it’s spooky, it speaks to my inner prankster. You’ll love living here.”
“James, I’m not sure if that’s safe,” Remus said with a worried tone. “What about my furry problem? I don’t want to be a danger to Harry.”
“Why would you be a danger to Harry?” Jack asked.
“Moony doesn’t have any control over his werewolf form,” James explained. “He attacks humans when he’s like that.”
“So he doesn’t know how to be a werewolf?” Jack asked, an eyebrow ridge rising.
“I didn’t think there was anything to learn how to be a werewolf,” Remus said in confusion. “We’re uncontrollable killers during the full moon even though we’re normal the rest of the month.”
“Nonsense,” Jack said with a wave of a hand. “All the werewolves I’ve known have prefect control, they are only killers if they are evil, and they can control their transformations outside of the full moon.”
“He’s right, Moony. The werewolf that lives here in the town, he’s called Glenn, walks around transformed all the time. Nice bloke, did a lot to help us find you and bring you here,” James said.
“He also offered to help you learn how to control your werewolf half,” Lily added. “You should take those lessons from him, I think it will cut down on the misery and pain you’re in. And you’ll be safe around Harry.”
“I… don’t know,” Remus said with uncertainty.
“Oh come on, Moony, if you learn to control yourself completely, you don’t have worry about hurting anyone when you’re in your furry form,” James pointed out.
“I guess you have a point there,” Remus admitted, the idea did appeal to him. Killing someone, or accidently biting and turning them into a werewolf, was one of Remus’s biggest fears. He had got lucky 5th year when James saved Snape from Sirius’s thoughtless prank that led their rival right to Remus during the full moon. It took Remus forever to forgive the Black heir…to be honest part of him hadn’t ever fully trusted Sirius after that, that’s why it was so easy to believe he had turned his back on his friends and joined ‘He-who-must-not-be-named’. He was still in shock that it had been Peter the whole time.
“Glenn will be more than happy to help you,” Sally said patting Remus’s arm. “Everyone here is friendly.”
“Just watch out for those little brats Lock, Shock, and Barrel,” James warned. He had seen the trio a few times since that first day, but they had so far stayed away from Harry and always ran whenever they saw Jack or Sally.
Remus jumped as a wolf’s howl filled the air, looking around wide eyed while James cracked up in laughter.
“You should have seen your face, Moony!” He said pointing. Lily rolled her eyes and stood, leaving the room.
“What was that!?” Remus asked.
“Our doorbell, spooky huh?” James said.
A bark of laughter escaped Remus and he shook his head in amusement. A few seconds later he was crossing his arms over his chest to cover himself a bit as he was still shirtless while Lily reentered the kitchen with a short rounded man with a cone shaped head of reminded Remus of that muggle sweet called Candy Corn wearing a very tall and very skinny hat.
“Good morning, Jack! Sally!” the Mayor said with a very cheerful wave. He noticed Remus sitting at the table and put his best mayor-foot toward. “I see we have another new face in town. A friend of yours, Mr. Potter?”
“Sure is, Mayor,” James said grinning. “This is one of my two best mates, Remus Lupin. Wizard and werewolf extraordinaire.” Remus blushed a bit at James’s words.
“I don’t know about extraordinary, sir,” Remus said with a bit of a shrug. “Please excuse me for my lack of dress while meeting you.”
“Think nothing of it,” the Mayor said with a wave of his hand then turned to James, Remus’s eyebrows going up when he saw the second face on the back of the Mayor’s head. “Now I’ve brought over some paperwork for you and Mrs. Potter to sign, just a bit of legal work to register you as part of the town. I had to do a bit of searching in my office to find it.”
The Mayor took out a scroll out of his jacket and let it unroll across the table top, the other end stopping in front of James and Lily. James picked up the scroll and started reading it. James had been trained in politics, though he hated having to deal with them, due to having a family seat on Wizengamot and his family dealings in the business world.
Mostly the Potter wealth and fame came from the potions that his ancestors had created since the 12th century, starting with Linfred of Stinchcombe. They were related to the Peverells through Linfred’s oldest son Hardwin whom married the granddaughter of the youngest of the three Peverell brothers - Ignotus. It didn’t make the Potter’s the head of the Peverell family-line due to being descendants of the youngest brother, but it did help in some ways.
James, himself, was pretty good at potions, it had been his second best class after transfiguration, and he had been behind only Lily and Snape in class standings. His father, Fleamont, who had invented the Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion, had trained him since he was young among other duties. And one other thing Fleamont had made sure to pound into his spoiled son’s head was to never sign any paperwork without reading it first. If James had even dared to try something like that, no doubt his father would march out of the Land of the Dead to Halloween Town to give James an earful about it.
“What’s this part here about offering our property to be a part of Halloween Town?” James asked, pointing at part of the scroll.
“That’s just a little bit to help Halloween Town,” the Mayor explained. “The property will still belong to your family, this case Harry since he’s the one who’s still alive, but it will be considered a part of Halloween Town while still existing and being a part of the human world.”
“It allows my realm to have more permanent access points to the human realm,” Jack explained, stepping in where the Mayor left off. “It doesn’t have to be all properties; it can just be the one you and I visited or some other place. Or none at all, it’s not a requirement.”
“Hmmm… what do you think, Lils?” James asked.
“I don’t see where it would hurt,” Lily said after a moment. “It will give Harry a quick way back and forth as Halloween Town is, or will be, as much a home to him as the Wizarding World and Earth in general.”
“Good point,” James said then added the ancestral Potter Manor near Godric’s Hollow to the scroll, leaving the other properties as they were. If Harry decided he wanted other Potter family properties as a part of Halloween Town then he could do so when he was an adult.
Otherwise the rest of the scroll was pretty straight forward, registering the Potter family as citizens of Halloween Town. James signed his name at the bottom with a quill then handed the scroll to Lily so she could read and sign as well. Jack’s signature was added alongside their’s, sealing the scroll with the magic of Halloween.
“That should be everything,” the Mayor said in a chipper tone as he rolled the scroll back up and tucked it under an arm. “I’ll have a copy made and send it back for your records. Welcome to our town.” He grabbed Remus’s hand, properly greeting him now since Lupin would be a future voter. “Well I should head back for now. Ladies, gents!” The Mayor tipped his ridiculously tall hat to Lily and Sally then headed out the door humming under his breath.
“He is…ummm…” Remus searched for the right word for the Mayor.
“Over the top?” James supplied with a smirk.
“That’s one way to describe him. Is the second face just for show?” Remus asked.
“No, he is literally a two-faced politician,” Jack said with a bony grin. “Whenever he’s distressed or worried, his head turns around. He’s like that a lot, always worried he won’t be re-elected.”
“I don’t know why he worries so much, no one ever runs against him,” Sally commented with a good natured roll of her eyes. Remus blinked then shook his head in amusement, this was certainly the most entertaining thing to happen to him in a long time.
******
Meanwhile, as soon as James and Lily had signed the scroll…
The wards that lay across the Potter lands stirred as they felt something form on their land. The wards could sense it was some sort of… pathway… a portal to someplace else. Someplace filled with dark, yet not evil, energies.
The Potter lands were old, the generations upon generations of Potters had fed the wards and given the land a certain degree of awareness from the stone and wood the house was built upon to the forest that sat on the land. Many old magical homesteads were the same way, so much magic fed into them by the families that claimed the land. The greatest example of awareness, of being alive, was Hogwarts and the land the school sat upon though none ever reached the castle’s level of sentient it had.
But the Potter lands were aware and they knew their wards were weakening. There were so few of their Potters born the last few generations, only one magical Potter left alive, so their wards weakened and more so over time with so few of their wizards and witches to renew the wards.
The land turned its attention to the portal again with interest. It could feel its Potters, the beloved, spoiled, dead one that visited with the strangely dark yet light creature and their little master they had yet to meet, this portal was somehow connected to them. The wards stretched out, prodding and testing the strange new energy, drawing a bit on it. The land felt… stronger? Yes, it felt stronger from this new thing on its land, this pathway to someplace else. They were connected to this place, it allowed them to draw as much energy as it pleased to make the wards strong again to protect its Potters.
As the land and wards that the ancestral Potter home were located on drew on the magic of Halloween, it slowly started to… shift and change into something new and twisted. The wards buzzed happily as the land settled, waiting for their masters to return.
****
“Can I really pick any toy I want?” Harry asked looking up at Jack and Sally, holding onto Sally’s hand. After the Mayor had left, Sally had told the Potter’s about Harry tucking his little stuffed bear into the bed with Remus who chuckled and told his friends how Harry wanted to give him the bear to ‘feel better’. Lily had adored the little story, cooing at how sweet and kind Harry was. James just teased Remus about his new teddy bear.
Harry had returned not much later, Zero by his side, to give Remus the drawing he had done, beaming happily as Remus smiled and thanked him. After that, Remus said he had to return to his home, but only after he promised Harry that yes he was coming back, he just needed to get his things. After all he couldn’t just run around in a conjured pair of pajama pants all the time. Remus’s pack was here in Halloween Town, two dead but at the same time alive in a way and the pack’s pup and soon the final member in Sirius Black would be among them as well. There was no need to bring up a certain rat.
It was after this that the Skellingtons suggested that Harry should have a very special toy, one of his choosing, for his kindness to Remus when gifting the werewolf the teddy bear. Harry had many toys now, ones his Daddy brought him and ones other citizens of Halloween Town had gifted him with. But Jack had promised these toys were different, special ones made a very long time ago.
The toys the citizens of Halloween Town made almost 30 years prior for that Christmas the one year Jack had taken over had been returned to them by Santa after he had fixed Jack’s mistake. They had been stored away in one of the many abandoned houses, except for a few that had gone to a few spooky and monster families who enjoyed the toys, until Oogie had turned many of them evil during the short time he had been brought back by Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Those that hadn’t been destroyed by Jack and the others had been returned to normal and stored away again.
“Any toy at all,” Jack said as he waved his hand at the piles of toys in the room. Zombie toy ducks that had bloody looking gunshot wounds painted on them, demonic dollies, a train with tentacles tracks, vampire teddy bears, scary jack-in-the-boxes, these were just handfuls of the toys that they had made for the children of the human world. “These toys are alive, that is what makes them special.”
“They can be a little scary but they won’t hurt you, Harry,” Sally assured Harry softly. The toys that Jack had given away that Christmas Eve would have never really harmed the children (except maybe the giant snakes and killer wreaths, not their smarter ideas...), but the children had been too scared by the toys and really it had been for the best that Santa had taken them away.
Harry stepped closer to the pile of toys, one hand fisted in his shirt. By his side Zero nuzzled close, the ghostly dog that had become Harry’s best friend offering him comfort. Harry was Zero’s favorite person right beside his master and Sally. The toys didn’t really scare Harry, he had been in Halloween Town long enough that scary things didn’t really scare him anymore and some of his toys were already scary looking back home.
Harry’s green eyes were drawn to a patched worked looking teddy bear with red eyes, scary claws and big fangs. He tilted his head to the side then smiled, picking the scary bear.
“I like this one,” he said hugging it close, unknowingly picking a toy similar to the one his aunt had received that one Christmas Eve and that would be ‘returned’ to Petunia on Christmas day. But while a scary patchwork bear had scared a young Petunia Evans, Harry found comfort in the toy who in turn instantly bonded with its new owner. It wasn’t going to let anyone mess with its human.
“What are you going to call it, Harry?” Sally asked as they headed back out.
“Hmmm…. Mr. Bitey,” Harry said after a few seconds of musing, and to his delight the toy bear seem to click its jaws in approval.
“Fantastic name,” Jack said with a skeleton grin.
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