Chapter Text
Katherine glanced at the newspaper the owl had brought. “SPECIAL EDITION: BRITAIN CELEBRATES 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY DAY” Katherine vaguely remembered hearing about the defeat of Britain’s dark lord five years ago when she was in school. There’d been a lot going on though, it was her OWL year, and balancing that with her quiditch practice had kept her busy enough not to worry about what was going on on the other side of the globe. Even if her parents were from Britain, they were muggles, and not paying particular attention to the wizarding community where they lived, much less where they had left years before. Now that she was done with her charms mastery and had time to breathe, it seemed like a perfectly good time to find out what she hadn’t been paying attention too. So as she ate her morning cereal in her small Baltimore apartment she began to read.
The front page had an overview of who Tom Riddle was. Apparently he had threatened Britain once before, but had been stopped by a fifteen month old boy, Harry Potter. Tom Riddle had tried to kill Harry Potter, but somehow the curse had rebounded, leaving Harry Potter with a scar and the moniker “The Boy Who Lived” and Riddle without a body. Apparently Riddle regained a body 13 years later, started reorganizing his followers, and eventually it broke out into open war. Riddle even took over the British Ministry of Magic and their education system while being opposed by the general populace and two secret societies: The Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army. Eventually things came to a head and a battle took place at the premier institute of magic in Britain, Hogwarts, where Harry Potter (now 17) defeated Riddle in a one-on-one dual.
Katherine flipped through to a page further back, to read how Britain had recovered from the war, when her eye was caught by a photograph of what at first glance appeared to be her father when he was younger. Second glance revealed a number of differences, the man in the photograph carried himself differently, less proud, more wary. His eyes, were different, more like her mothers if she was honest. And between his bangs she could just make out a scar on his forehead. The caption read: “Harry James Potter, frequently called “the Chosen One” seen here at memorial services for those who died in the first and second wars against Tom Riddle.”
Katherine paused, was this man a long lost cousin. But his first name was name was Harry, that was too big a coincidence. Katherine wasn’t actually the oldest in her family, she was the oldest that had lived. She was supposed to have had a brother two years older than her, but he died in a a house-fire when her mom was pregnant with her; he’d been fifteen months old. His name had been Harry.
Had her brother somehow survived the house-fire and been placed in foster care, only for his foster parents to be killed? Were her parents lying? She didn’t think so, the grief was too strong whenever the child they lost was brought up. Could there possibly be an innocent explanation that didn’t involve either too much coincidence too be believable? Hadn’t her brother been named after a relative? Perhaps there was a distant cousin who also wanted to name a child after that same relative.
If Katherine hadn’t gotten her charms mastery, she might have let that explanation stick. But learning about memory charms, how strong they can be, how much they can rewrite, leaned her in a more paranoid direction. There was one thing she was sure of, this was going to take a lot more research before she present her suspicions to anyone, least of all her parents. Well, at least she didn’t have work today and could devote time to the research.
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Katherine stepped into Baltimore’s Library of Magic and wondered where the best place to start would be. The Library was located underneath the National Aquarium and the Inner Harbor, getting to it without using the flu network was a real pain in the neck (it involved making sure no one was watching and then walking behind the outdoor seal pond), but thankfully Katherine’s apartment was on the floo network.
There at the library she found what she was looking for, several biographies of Harry Potter. She chose one titled “The Authorized Story of the Boy Who Lived” by Luna Lovegood. It seemed the least sensationalist of the books available, and claimed that the man himself had assisted in it’s writing and publication.
Katherine was able to check it out from the library and on returning home to her apartment began to look at her find. She thought the best place to start would be the beginning, links to her parents were most likely to show up in his childhood, weren’t they?
“Harry Potter was born in Godric’s Hollow on July 31st, 1980 to James and Lily Potter (nee Evans).” Same age as her brother Harry, interesting. “His parents were both members of the Order of the Phoenix, dedicated to opposing Tom Riddle, known as Lord Voldemort or he-who-must-not-be-named.” A photograph appeared below, of a baby and a couple. If it weren’t for the fact that it was a wizarding photograph and Katherine was muggleborn she would have sworn it was of her parents.
Quickly she read on. She read how Voldemort had come for the Potters, intending to kill Harry. How the theory went that Lily Potter’s loving sacrifice had saved her son. After that Harry had been left with with muggle relatives, (“And of them, the less said the better”) because his mother’s blood had protected him. She stopped at the part of the biography when he got his Hogwarts acceptance, and skipped ahead to look at recent photos of him.
There toward the back of the book was a wedding photo. It was the same black haired look-a-like of her father, next to him stood a beautiful red-haired woman in a elegant white dress. In the color photograph his eyes looked even more like her mother’s.
Katherine closed the book and thought for a while. There definitely seemed to be some-type of massive conspiracy going on, the question was were her parents in on it or had they had their memories altered.
It didn’t seem likely that her parents had been in on it. They still grieved too much for their lost child, and if they knew they had magic they wouldn’t be living as muggles. That meant that an extremely complex memory charm had been performed on them at some point. Theoretically, there should be traces of it. Katherine wasn’t sure who to trust in this, so going to an expert was out; luckily memory charms had been covered in depth in her mastery program.
Now seemed like a good time to visit her parents.