(Rewrite) In His Father’s Footsteps Ch.1 (Harry Potter) (NSFW)

Summary: Lily was nervous about her son getting the worst habits of his father. Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened. It wasn't on purpose, but Harry found himself surrounded by witches. He was in love with Hermione, he really was, but she clearly had other plans. Not something Harry was complaining about, though.

Throughout his childhood, Harry Potter never lacked attention. The old saying was that it takes a village to raise a child, and quite frankly, that’s what the old Potter family seat had become. Lily found herself sharing parental duties, not just with James, but also with Sirius, Sirius’s long-term girlfriend Marlene, and their old school friend, Amelia Bones, who was also James and Sirius’s boss at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement – who also brought in her infant niece, Susan, to join Harry and his siblings.

There was also the frequent presence of Remus when he wasn’t touring the world trying to get a handle on his ‘Furry Little Problem’ or finding increasingly dangerous dark creatures to write about, and the frequent visits of Harry’s godmother, Alice, along with Neville and Frank, as well as the younger Longbottom offspring as they arrived.

More occasionally, there was the faintly dark presence of Sirius’s cousin, Bellatrix, who was working as an independent ICW Hit Witch when she wasn’t maiming people on the international dueling circuit.

Usually, she was there to kick one of the Marauders around the dueling hall half a dozen times before trying to teach Harry some horrendous curse or other – though more recently, she’d settled for teaching him horrendous uses of regular spells and low to mid-level curses.

All told life at Potter Manor was colorful, with Marauders, duelists, Aurors, and various other mischief-makers dropping in and out. Lily, a former Head Girl and wrangler-of-Marauders, tried to keep some degree of discipline and order in the house, but she was honest enough to admit that Harry, her beloved son, could cause her to melt with a single look.

So, though she reckoned he was fortunate enough to have her morality and studiousness, he did have his father’s mischief and ability to push boundaries. Worse, with every year, Lily was coming to realize that he also had inherited the best of his father’s good looks, but her own as well.

Harry had grown as tall as either of them, with facial features that Lily, though not vain, recognized as her own and really not bad looking at all while being as broad and strong as his father.

Perhaps it was only with his fourth year that she came to really worry, as simultaneously, Harry had matured while away at school, and with the completion of her project at the Department of Mysteries regarding magical fixing of eyesight, a lot of the Hogwarts girls seemed to have suddenly noticed him.

Fortunately, Harry seemed not to have got the ‘girl fixation’ quite yet, as she feared for when he turned those cut emerald eyes on the female population of Hogwarts.

Lily had no illusions about teenagers. After all, she’d been one not all that long ago, and she knew what James had been like before they finally stopped trying to kill each other. She’d spent enough hours in the Head Boy’s bedroom and in the Head Boy’s bed with James, and frequently, it wasn’t just the two of them.

At least she’d been the one to pin James down and get a ring off him… Still, they were packing Harry off for his sixth year at Hogwarts. He was ‘of age’ now, even if the Ministry theoretically still had the Trace on him, and she couldn’t stop him from growing up.

Thus, with some resignation, she observed her son’s interactions with the girl, already wearing her Gryffindor uniform and a prefect’s badge. With loose ringlets of glossy brown hair tumbling down her shoulders, Lily recognized her, having seen her in passing during past years at King’s Cross.

The girl greeted Harry with an enthusiastic hug, their brief conversation too low for Lily to overhear. However, she noted the blush on the girl’s cheek as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

The Lady of the House of Potter sighed, suddenly feeling rather weary, as her son turned to her.

“Mum, this is Hermione Granger. She’s in my year and has been my study partner for a while,” he announced.

The sinking feeling intensified as Lily eyed their hands, unconsciously joined.

“Hermione. Harry’s written about you often, probably twice as much as anyone else at school with him, and that’s after he’s crossed out half of what he writes.” a faint, wry smile played at Lily’s lips. “I’m sorry you’ve dealt with my spawn all these years.”

Hermione elbowed Harry as he made neck-wringing gestures at his mother in retaliation for the sudden, treacherous, and undeserved attack.

“I’ve tried to be a mature influence, Mrs. Potter, though apparently, the pranks and waging war on Professor Snape are some sort of tradition…” Hermione replied to a low sigh from Lily. However, she did note that Hermione was comfortable teasing Harry in front of his own mother.

“You can thank his father for that. And his godfather. And his honorary godfather. And Bellatrix Black, to be honest, limited as her influence seems to be, given the lack of casualties.” Lily commented. “I’m glad someone is trying to salvage this particular Potter. God alone knows I had enough trouble with the previous generation.”

Her son rolled his eyes in exasperation, though Lily did catch the fond looks shared by the two. She made a note to send her memory of this to Alice, who she was sure would be happy to pen one of her grubby romance novels around a pair of childhood sweethearts.

“Harry, I trust you’ll find time to write to me and explain why you haven’t invited Hermione over during any of the holidays, and how you intend to rectify this..?”

Harry just flushed and muttered something at his shoes, reminding Lily of trying to remonstrate with an 8-year-old who had somehow managed to get a tin bathtub and two hundred liters of treacle up three floors and then poured it out of an upstairs window all over the visiting Minister of Magic.

The Fudge Treacle incident remained a notable event in recent British magical political history. Fortunately, Lily’s gimlet eye was shifted from her son by a cry from the massing crowd of students, parents, trollies bearing trunks, and the squawking and mewing of familiars.

“Harry!”

Slim, blonde, pale-skinned, and pale-eyed, with a dress of subdued forest green that descended to a few inches above the girl’s ankles, with a conservative neckline and drew just short of her wrists, displaying a trio of bracelets, one of twisted silver, one of bronze and the third of some kind of varnished wood.

There was no mistaking the girl for anything but a member of a pureblood family, one of the ‘old sort.’ She’d more-or-less collided with Harry and seized him into the sort of hug that Lily suspected was not taught by society matrons.

“Harry! I missed you so much! You have no idea how much torture it is to socialize with the sort of people with intellect that makes a turnip look like a fascinating conversationalist.” the girl exclaimed, burying her head into Harry’s shoulder.

“There there, m’lady. You can always ask Minne McGonagall for a transfer to Gryffindor. We have cookies, a halfway competent Quidditch team, and a view that isn’t into the bottom of the Black Lake. Puts us three up on Slytherin and makes us the best house in Hogwarts, Daphne.” Harry patted her on the head, recoiling with a yelp as the Slytherin girl pulled her wand from nowhere—or was it from one of those bracelets around her wrist—and stabbed it forward with a flash of red as she got him with a silent, point-cast stinging hex.

Even with her fondness for Harry’s ‘study partner,’ a fellow first-generation witch, and a talented one at that, Lily couldn’t deny that ‘Daphne’ was a girl with the sort of looks that other witches would dive into simmering cauldrons to acquire—usually ending up with a messy explosion and a visit to St. Mungo’s.

That wasn’t to cast aspersions on Hermione, who was more than just pretty, but Daphne’s parents seemed to have rolled the dice for genetically good looks and come up with nothing but sixes.

It was a recipe for envy and conflict. Yet, when Lily looked at Hermione, all she could see was fondness and amusement as Daphne pulled away and scoffed at Harry.

“I have the top academic spot in Slytherin, so switching and losing my position on top and ending up pinned below Granger would seem like a bad deal to me. Oh, and hello by the way, Granger.”

“Miss Greengrass,” Hermione replied with a knowing look and a half-smirk.

The Potter matriarch found herself more than a little confused. Usually, girls oppose one another hanging off the object of their desire. Maybe she’d been mistaken about Harry and Hermione, which would be a shame… Lily was about to clear her throat and remind her chaos-demon offspring of her presence when James appeared from the crowd in a swirl of his crimson Auror’s greatcoat. Subtle, it was not.

“Harry… and girls…” James drew out his greeting, that particular sort of twisted amusement he specialized in already clear for Lily to see as he wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Mr—” Hermione began, only to be cut off by Daphne Greengrass curtseying to them, murmuring a formal greeting, her pale skin flushed as she realized she’d utterly failed to notice Lily’s presence.

Lily sighed again. The Potters were an old family but hadn’t been involved in pureblood society for generations. There were a few reasons that Cantankerus Nott didn’t put the Potters in his ridiculous list of the ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight.’

However, before she could think of a way to defuse the situation, the locomotive at the head of the Hogwarts Express let out a loud blast on its whistle, followed by the chest-shaking roar of the safety valve blowing off.

“Miss Granger, Miss Greengrass. Harry. I’ll see you on Halloween. You better get on the train before it leaves you behind!”

Harry waved as they dived towards the nearest carriage door, the two girls holding his hands as they pushed through the crowds of parents. Two or three minutes later, the clock rang out the hour, and amidst the slamming of carriage doors and yelling of farewells, the locomotive let out a last blast on the whistle, the shrill of the guard’s own whistle cutting across the chaos, and in a cloud of steam, the express drew out of the platform, gradually gaining speed as it did.

It was only when the platform grew quiet again that James, now with his wife tucked into his front, his arms wrapped around her and his greatcoat enclosing them both, murmured in Lily’s ear as he nuzzled her throat.

“Looks like Harry’s following in his father’s footsteps.”

“Huh?” his words shook Lily from the mixture of melancholy at the departure of her offspring and the fog that her husband’s physical affection left her in. “What do you mean?”

“Did you not see them?” James chuckled. “I’ll bet anything you want that Harry’s dating one of those two by the end of this year. In fact, I’d be surprised if that’s not the case by Christmas.”

Lily considered the matter for a few long moments, running through every interaction she’d observed, every letter she’d had from Harry, and a few from his siblings.

There was nothing in his wording that hinted at this. Still, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t, in time-honored parental fashion, interfere a little in her son’s love life. However, she suspected it needed any help at this point.

Maybe just a little advice. The House of Potter had been reduced to just James in the months after their wedding, but they’d not let it be extinguished, and their children would keep the flame burning and stoke it to an inferno if her measure of her eldest and the two girls were a judgment worth a damn.

“Deal,” Lily smirked up at her husband. “I’ll take that bet.”

***

“Merlin! How did I miss your mother?! She’ll think I completely ignored her – I’ll never be able to face her again!” Daphne bemoaned, burying her face in her hands as she sank into the bench in one of the compartments, the springs giving out an audible groan as she was sandwiched between her two best friends. “Potter! You should have introduced us like a gentleman—”

“Potter?!” Harry clasped a hand to his chest with an exaggerated gasp. “You wound me! I thought we were friends, Daffy!”

Daphne glared at him over her hands, her outrage at the nickname overcoming her embarrassment. It was a ridiculous nickname which, at first, had made her gag, and that was before Hermione had acquired a magically-animated set of Looney Tunes cartoons. Now, it just made her want to stab Harry’s smug and far-too-pretty eyes out with a spork.

Damn him.

“I doubt she’ll judge you on that, Daphne.” Hermione sighed, cutting in to deflate the other girl’s irritation. “Besides, Harry never properly introduced me to his mother, even though we’ve met in passing on the platform before. At least, he had never properly introduced me… until today...” She turned a speculative gaze on him, watching him squirm as Daphne’s eyes also fixated on him.

“Hmmmmmm… indeed.” Daphne drew out both words far further than they needed to be before eventually levering herself up. “I better go and check on my sister, I promised her I’d teach her and her friends some charms on the train, and I need to make sure that slimy bastard Nott doesn’t try picking on the first years, again. The ‘Puffs retaliated by nearly drowning him in one of the lavatories the summer before the fourth year. Last summer, the Weasley twins threw him out of a window while we were on a viaduct. They were fortunate that Nott’s a petulant toddler, with the toddler’s affinity for accidental magic.”

Two confused looks met that pronouncement.

“He bounced.” Daphne elucidated before shutting the compartment door behind her.

The two Gryffindors failed to notice both of them watching their friend’s departure very closely, but eventually, they settled for sprawling across the bench, Hermione propping her head up on Harry’s shoulder as she produced a shrunken Transfiguration textbook from her pocket, enlarging it and settling in for some light reading.

She was quite aware that if it wasn’t for Harry’s distaste for essays and the associated theoretical work, she’d be clinging onto her top spot in academia by her very fingernails. He had talent by the bucket load, the sort of power that made most people short of Dumbledore either green with envy or mildly nervous.

Then there was his family. James was a Transfiguration Master, as well as working as a Master Auror. Lily had her own Charms Mastery and was teaching an apprentice. Sirius Black should have had a mastery if not for the fact that he was Sirius Black.

Worse still was that Harry seemed to be the closest thing Bellatrix Black had to a student—a woman who’d walked out of a post-Hogwarts Dark Arts mastery at Durmstrang on the basis that the Dark Arts Master there was a moron who didn’t know what he was teaching.

The first through fourth years at Hogwarts were learning magic through theory. In contrast, the subsequent year or two increasingly depended on sheer talent. Then, as magic became more complex, it relied more heavily on an unmeasurable combination of raw power and the intellect and talent to refine it.

Unfortunately for Hermione’s lead in academics, Harry just got magic from the moment he grasped it. So, she found herself working harder and harder to keep ahead.

The duo spent the next hour in companionable silence, Harry having settled for idly brushing a hand through his friend’s curls as she read. However, as time passed, Hermione found herself unable to concentrate on her text. Eventually, she closed the book with a snap, shifting around to look him in the eyes.

“What I said earlier. You never formally introduced me to your parents before. What changed now?” She asked, feeling Harry’s shoulders shift uncomfortably underneath her head.

“Dunno, seemed like the thing to do. The right time, y’know?” Harry mumbled. “Besides, Mum might have thought I was making you up, talking about an invisible friend in my letters.”

“I’m not a Wrackspurt or a Nargle, Harry.” Hermione snorted in amusement. “But no, that’s not it. I’m your friend. We’ve kept each other’s secrets for years now. You don’t need to hide anything.”

Harry knew he’d have to confront his feelings eventually, much as he wished he could have put them off. He should have been able to do this in his—their own time. Maybe in the library, or perhaps the Library of the British Museum.

Not in a fifty-year-old railway carriage clattering over joints in the rails without any preparation.

“Well…” Harry drew it out, mind racing to try and work out how to deal with the situation. Ripping the band-aid off was probably the least-worst option. “Look. I just figured that if there was someone I liked, my mum should have a name and a face to match before I wrote anything home. It’d be a bit embarrassing if she came up to the castle to make sure I wasn’t under the influence of a love potion.”

He managed to meet Hermione’s gaze, trying to gauge her reaction. The heavy sigh and look of complete exasperation, the lack of happiness or shock, hit him like a metaphorical train.

“Oh, Harry,” she murmured. “How long have you been bottling that up? Since the beginning of the fourth year?”

“Since the end of the third year, maybe- wait, what?! You knew?” Harry’s panic hit an abrupt halt, not realizing that Hermione had, at the very least, deduced his feelings for her over more than two years in a matter of moments. If she hadn’t been aware at that time already.

“You know that half the school already thought we were an item?” Hermione asked. “You’re not subtle, Harry.”

“You didn’t answer me, Hermione.” Harry swallowed down his anxiety and nervousness for long enough to press on.

“There was a question?” She arched one eyebrow at him. “I must not have heard it.”

Harry closed his eyes and counted to five. Of course, Hermione would use her perfectionism to torment him. If only he didn’t adore this girl so much… it was at that moment that something soft, with a faint perfume, brushed across his lips.

He opened his eyes to see a pair of eyes, honey brown, gazing into his own. Without thinking, he wound a hand through her curls and kissed her, holding back nothing, his feelings laid bare before the witch he was so utterly besotted by. He hadn’t felt her shift from where her head was laid on his shoulder.

Only as she met the gaze of his emerald eyes and brought her lips to his did he realize that Hermione Granger, the most talented witch of her generation, his best friend and confidant, was kissing him.

Neither had much, if any, experience kissing, their clumsiness evident, but it didn’t matter. The world could burn for all either cared in that moment. However much of a mess their first tentative and unfamiliar kisses were, those kisses belonged to them alone and to no other.

Breath was reduced to a secondary concern, at best, until finally, they had to separate. If only for a few moments, breathing deeply, their lips swollen, and both have managed to make an utter mess of each other’s hair.

Harry couldn’t remember having seen Hermione look more beautiful.

“We have hours before we get into Hogsmeade.” Harry’s voice was a low rumble that Hermione felt as much as heard.

This time, Hermione let him tip her back gently onto the well-sprung bench seat, one hand on the small of her back and the other cupping her head as she wrapped her legs around his thighs and kissed him once more.

***

Daphne returned to their compartment a bit over an hour later, having entertained Astoria and her friends, as well as dealing with Nott. The little bastard had got halfway through sneering at them for being ‘blood traitors’ when she’d settled the matter with a snap-cast stunner, followed by binding and petrifying the git before disillusioning him and dumping him in a luggage rack. With any luck, he’d end up back in London.

How he’d been sorted into Slytherin, she didn’t know. Frankly, it was a reflection that, contrary to popular opinion, Hufflepuff wasn’t the dumping ground for anyone not suited for Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor. Because Nott was a miserable excuse for a wizard.

As she entered the compartment, it took Daphne precisely zero seconds to notice that her friends were looking rather rumpled. A keen-eyed glance added things up. Ruffled hair. One of Hermione’s hair clips on the floor. Clothes creased and ruffled. Wide smiles, needing surgery to remove.

“So, had a good time without me?”

“We were studying and—” began Hermione, only for Harry to cut her off.

“We spent about the last twenty-five minutes snogging.” He didn’t even consider not telling Daphne everything, ignoring the groan and slap of Hermione burying her head in her hands.

She really should have realized that Harry was a teenage boy with no tact whatsoever, and even if he had any, she’d snog it out of him.

“Harry admitted he liked me. ‘Liked’ me,” Hermione explained. “We got a bit carried away, but we’re now boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Harry nodded quickly, seeing the stunned look on Daphne’s face as if they had done something utterly inconceivable. The silence that followed was increasingly awkward until the Slytherin cleared her throat.

“Hermione, could we speak privately?” She asked, glancing at Harry.

“Harry, would you go and check on your siblings, make sure they haven’t tried to disconnect one of the carriages… again.” Hermione sighed, giving him a chaste kiss as he gave her a look of sorrow at being shoved out of the compartment.

She didn’t realize until a full twenty seconds later that the chaste kiss had turned into something far more passionate. And Daphne was watching.

“Off you go,” Hermione poked him in the side. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

With the compartment door sliding shut, Hermione sank back onto the bench, her cheeks pink as she tried to meet Daphne’s stare.

“So, Hermione, since when did you like boys?” Daphne asked, without any emotion.

“What?!” Hermione sat back, startled. “Since always. And I’ve liked Harry since I first knew what romantic feelings felt like, and a bit before that, too. Half the school thought we were together!”

“Half the school are morons who would manage to garrotte themselves just trying to do their shoelaces up,” Daphne waved a dismissive hand. “So, explain staring at my arse whenever you think I’m not paying attention?”

Hermione went white, looking around to make sure nobody had overheard. She stuttered as she tried to come up with a reasonable answer until she swallowed and went straight in.

“I like girls too... Bloody—I thought I was discrete! I’ve had a crush on girls, and I’ve had a crush on Harry. The rest of the boys…” Hermione let that one trail off. “But—you knew?”

“I knew. Please, I could practically feel your eyes on my arse,” Daphne huffed. “So tell me, why did you start dating Harry? I thought you knew that I liked him! This isn’t some sort of ploy to get me jealous, is it?”

“What—no!” Hermione took a moment to stop herself from snapping back at Daphne, who was a good and genuine friend for all her affiliation with the house of the serpents, her reserve, and her blatant snobbery.

Unlike Nott, she didn’t deserve to end up tied up and lobbed out of a carriage window while going over a conveniently situated viaduct. She briefly considered what the rest of the school would think if they knew that the two most capable witches, one of them Hogwarts’ infamous ‘Ice Queen,’ were close to feuding over Harry.

“No. Let’s get this straight. I’m not dating Harry to make you jealous. I like girls, and I like boys, or rather, I like one boy. The rest aren’t worth a second glance.”

“That’s a thing?” Daphne looked startled. She knew about a few matrons who were considered ‘not quite right’ as they were ‘witch’s witches,’ but to be open to both…

It was with new eyes that she examined her red-faced friend. Daphne knew she looked good. She was proud of her looks, her power, and her intellect. She flaunted them, knowing that the peons around her could do nothing but envy or covet without hope, despairing that seeing her was all they’d ever get.

However, that Hermione was not one of those peons was a fact Daphne had realized. They were roughly a match when it came to power, but Hermione was a shade more skillful. It must be admitted that the mousy bookworm who’d ever been Harry’s shadow had grown up and out of that shadow.

She had new strength about her with every day that passed, and her looks were the equal or better of ninety-nine percent of the pureblood princesses of their generation.

That last thought struck Daphne like a thunderbolt.

“Hermione… when you were pestering me about etiquette and tradition, I thought you wanted just to spend time with me…”

“Merlin, Daphne. I got to spend time with a beautiful witch, my friend, and learn something useful that would help me if Harry and I ever got over ourselves and admitted we liked each other,” Hermione groaned. “Not everything is an insidious plot or a political power game!”

“Oh.” It was almost as if that was surprising news to Daphne. “I guess… I mean, I don’t like girls, I don’t think. Not that you’re not worth liking. You’re very—I mean… ugh! Look, just don’t think I’ve given up on Harry. He’s worth fighting for.”

“I know.” Hermione agreed with a soft smile and a contemplative look beneath her blush. “He really is the center of both our universes, isn’t he? Neither of us would give him up.”

“Mhmm. So watch out. I’m coming for Harry.”

“Only if you beg very nicely,” Hermione giggled.

Daphne was still very confused. Shouldn’t Hermione be feeling threatened?

“I’ll tell Harry you’re joining us at the Gryffindor table then?” Hermione asked, smirking.

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