His Twenty-Eighth life

2. Halloween, 1981

Harry knew it was getting close to Halloween. James had hung up a few pumpkins and was telling stories of ghosts and black cats—the black cats were always the heroes—to Jonathan. He told them to Harry, too, although he didn't think Harry was old enough to understand.

Harry had been that since he was born, but unfortunately, he wasn't old enough to make his tongue work the way he wanted to. He had noticed after a few months that none of the other Marauders ever visited them, and after listening to a few more conversations when he was "asleep," he'd found out why. Dumbledore was their Secret-Keeper. Even Sirius and Remus and Peter weren't trusted with that secret.

But then James, who missed his friends, had prevailed with Dumbledore to give the secret to them one at a time. Sirius had visited and tossed Harry in the air higher than James did. He got worse scoldings from Lily, too. His eyes were only a little shadowed and they shone with joy when he changed into a dog and dragged Jonathan around the drawing room in a little sleigh.

Remus didn't appear. Harry had tried to hint that Remus wasn't evil by asking about him and even saying simple, child-believable things like, "Moony good!" But Sirius had just ruffled his hair and smiled sadly, and James teased Lily about her sons growing up to be half-Ravenclaws just like her, since Harry was way too smart and speaking too clearly for thirteen months old.

"Moony can't come, pup," Sirius said, and balanced Harry on his knee and bounced him up and down under the mistaken impression that that was what he wanted. "He just—well, never mind. Maybe we'll see him someday."

You suspect Remus and you trust Peter? Harry had thought the next time Pettigrew was visiting. He cringed way too much, and never took off his long-sleeved robes even when James or Lily routinely invited him to.

But there wasn't much Harry could do about it. He did try to stumble over to Peter and "accidentally" yank his left sleeve down so that they could see the Dark Mark. But either James would swoop him up and fly him around the room when he did that, or he was so slow that Peter had plenty of time to get out of the way. He would sit Harry on his lap and talk to him, but Harry never bothered listening to a word he said. His pulse was pounding too hot with indignation.

He tried to find a scrap of parchment and a quill, too, because he would risk a suspicious note appearing before he would risk leaving his parents and his brother to Peter. But when he did find a quill, his fists were too clumsy with baby softness. The quill just broke, and James teased Lily some more about Harry's inherited Ravenclaw tendencies.

I hate being a bloody baby, Harry thought grumpily.

He tried. How he tried. He attempted to focus his magic on Peter's left sleeve and pull it up that way, but he was simply too bad at manipulating objects when he was this young. He could best strengthen his own body, like his eyesight, but he couldn't even make a toy or a piece of clothing float back to him when he had dropped it.

He decided to throw all caution to the winds and talk like an adult and not a baby, but when he did, Lily just cooed at how cute he was for repeating words she seemed to think he had got out of the adult conversations, even when he was very articulate about the dangers of the Fidelius Charm. Harry decided, miserably, that she would believe he could articulate at such a young age before she would believe that one of her husband's best friends other than Remus was evil.

His only comfort, really, was that both Sirius and Peter had the secret of the address. That might mean there wasn't immediate blame laid on Sirius.

Not that he expected to be here to see it. He had begun to sink inwards, focusing all his magic inside himself and on the protective blaze that he would have to fling in front of Jonathan when the moment of the attack came.