The Family He Should Have Had (and how it would have changed his life)

In a world where Remus Lupin goes with Sirius Black to visit the Potters on Halloween in 1981, in a world where Remus is rational, and sends a patronus to Dumbledore before they search for Peter Pettigrew, in a world where they reach Peter at the same time as three others from the Order of the Phoenix, Peter Pettigrew is arrested and taken to Azkaban, and little Harry Potter is left in the capable care of his godfather and stand-in uncle.

Ten years later, they receive the first acceptance letter that Dumbledore sends, and they go to Diagon Alley immediately. They chat to Tom for a while (he's Harry's favourite person because he can tell wonderful stories), they meet Dedalus Diggle, whom Harry has met once before, and is nearly always in the pub, and they don't meet Professor Quirrell. They also don't meet a pale, blond boy in Madam Malkin's robe shop, but they get the same slightly ominous warning from the funny old man Ollivander, who says that the only other feather this Phoenix gave was in Voldemort's wand. Harry's skin prickles a little, but he wants this wand with the rare core because he likes Phoenixes, especially the one that sometimes comes with Dumbledore when they meet.

In a world where Harry is brought up by a dog and a wolf, they both take him to Kings Cross Station on the first of September, but they exclaim with happy surprise when they bump into a clan of red hair and excitable children, two of whom are identical, and especially excited to meet Harry Potter himself. The youngest boy is Harry's age, and they share a compartment on the train because Padfoot says that the Weasley's are the best sort of wizards, and Ron seems to be an excellent example of this, because he has an hour long discussion with Harry about quidditch. The only two interruptions are the trolley-lady (Harry buys everything because Moony isn't here to remind him to be pragmatic), and a girl with big hair, who arrives just as Ron attempts some magic. She scoffs at the dud spell and cleans Harry's glasses with a flick of a wand, and when she says that he's in history books, he grins and says that they have a scrapbook with all his written appearances.

When they get to the sorting ceremony, he doesn't refuse Slytherin because Remus brought him up to be open minded, but he asks for Gryffindor because Sirius told him all about his parents and their house. He can feel his parents in the common room, in the warmth and love of his housemates. The bushy-haired and intelligent-eyed Hermione Granger has his mother's brains, and the red-head, freckled Ron Weasley has his father's loyalty. And of course, there are always some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll will always be one of them. They clump together and become a trio, just as much as the Marauders were a quartet, and Harry neglects to mention the mortal danger he was in when he writes home to Remus.

Harry gets onto the quidditch team because he hates Draco Malfoy and he loves flying, so when Malfoy flies up with Neville Longbottom's remembrall, it doesn't take a second thought before Harry is flying at him like a dart, and it's easy enough to catch a glass globe that's flying through bright daylight in a lazy, calculable arc when he's spent dim, dusky evenings peering through shadows to find a tiny glint of a golden snitch darting unpredictably. When McGonagall takes him to Wood, Harry writes home straight away, and Sirius sends Harry's Nimbus Two Thousand by owl.

He hates Snape almost as much as Sirius did, because Snape sees not only James in him, but also two more of his childhood tormentors, and when Harry writes an indignant letter home about it, he gets a month of detentions because Sirius sends Snape a howler behind Remus' back. These detentions take place in the dungeons, and are presided over by Snape for approximately ten minutes before he disappears, but not before threatening to dock five hundred points from Gryffindor if Harry's work isn't complete by the time he returns. The lack of supervision means Harry has visitors, first of all from Slytherins who are innocently trying to find a spare classroom to work in, and then from those who want to peek and sneer at the new resident celebrity. Harry ignores them until a boy with dark skin and darker hair introduces himself by his first name, and then drags along a quiet, pale girl the next week. Blaise and Daphne keep him company from exactly three minutes after Snape leaves, until one minute before he comes back, every week without fail.