Title: Fruit of the Golden Tree
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of Fleamont/Euphemia and James/Lily, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, AU in that Fleamont Potter lives, manipulative Dumbledore, violence, mentioned past character deaths, minor character deaths, ruthless Fleamont
Wordcount: This part 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Thanks to the desperate actions of his wife, Fleamont Potter survived his dragonpox. Now he finds himself awake again in a world where all the members of his family are supposedly dead—except that the Potter family tree tells him that his grandson lives yet. Fleamont sets out on a search for his grandson, and then a quest to keep him safe once he's found him.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics being posted between Halloween and the Solstice. It's for Hot-tempered-chan, who gave me the prompt of Fleamont living, Dumbledore having told the world that Harry died with his parents, and Fleamont knowing otherwise because of an artifact similar to the Black family tapestry. This is the first of three parts to be posted over the next few days.

Fruit of the Golden Tree

"Euphemia!"

Fleamont Potter stumbled. One moment he was staring at his wife's tear-streaked face as she stepped away from him holding the empty potions vial, and the next, he was falling out of bed. He raised himself on his elbows and looked around wildly.

He was in a dark, still room that he nevertheless recognized, when he looked at the star-covered ceiling, as one of the secure bedrooms in Potter Place. This was the bedroom where Sirius had slept when James had him over. It was also one of the most-defended ones, and apparently, judging by the lack of dust, house-elves had been taking care of it.

But why would I wonder about the lack of dust? It's only been a few hours since I went to sleep...

Fleamont swallowed, and the taste on his tongue told him otherwise. Asphodel. He ought to know that taste, considering the number of experimental potions he'd brewed that used it as an ingredient.

She gave me the Draught of Living Death. She must have ordered the house-elves to take care of me and—the dragonpox!

Fleamont jerked up his shirt and stared. His skin looked perfectly normal, without even a trace of the scarring that the occasional living victim of the dragonpox had. Fleamont swallowed noisily again, tasting something that was probably the wormwood, and worked himself upright, hanging onto the bedpost for balance.

But why give me that? Why not give me some experimental cure? Why did the potion work?

Fleamont closed his eyes, striving to remember what he knew of potions theory about the Draught of Living Death. His brain churned sluggishly along, thoughts moving that hadn't moved, he knew, in what must be years. He had read something about the Draught of Living Death once, something purely theoretical that a brewer had said...

No, not a brewer, a book. A book from the second shelf of the bookcase just to the left of the door in the Potter family library. Fleamont didn't have the lightning-sharp memory for things he heard that his dear Euphemia did, but once he read something, he never forgot it. His memories turned like pages.

"Some have speculated that the Draught of Living Death, if the asphodel were increased nearly to the point of poison, would be able to enable a strong wizard to endure and outwait any threat. The potion itself, dedicated to making a complete non-threat of the imbiber, is also dedicated to preservation. The asphodel, potent factor as it is, would have to be transformed into something other than poison, and it is likely that, given the potion's other properties, it would become a great preserver..."

Fleamont felt tears form in his eyes. Euphemia didn't experiment with potions nearly as often as Fleamont did, but she had come up with a solution. The dragonpox burned through a body's defenses too fast for the wizard's magic to keep up. But if the Draught of Living Death slowed things down enough...

It wouldn't keep his body in exactly the same state it was when he went to sleep, dragonpox and all. It would slow it down greatly instead, quenching the fire of the pox until it flickered too low to light itself back again.

"Tell me you took it, too, dearest," Fleamont whispered as he opened the door and staggered through it. The house-elves must have exercised his muscles while he slept; it was the only reason that the slowness the potion induced wouldn't have atrophied them. "Let me find you."

He made his way directly to the solarium at the top of the house, a great peaked-roof room dominated by its crystal skylight. He threw open the door and stepped into the middle of it, gaze seeking and finding the Potter family tree.

It stood beneath the skylight, made of branches of thin, tensile gold braided around and into the living wood, a wonder both mechanical and organic. Every bough thinned out into shining twigs that glowed a brilliant, rich yellow for living members of that part of the family and a soft silver-grey for dead ones.

Fleamont's eyes locked on his own branch. The twig next to his was silver. The twig sprouting from their joined ones was silver, and so, too, the one coiled gently against his child's with a diamond-jeweled braid.

Fleamont dropped to his knees. Euphemia was dead. James and Lily were dead. His breathing sounded too noisy in his ears. His head spun and swirled. He knew from past experience that he was about to fall unconscious.

And then—

A flame of gold.

Fleamont lifted his head, staring. A tiny golden bauble, fruit-shaped, not yet twig-shaped, which came with adulthood, clung to the ends of James and Lily's joined twigs.

Fleamont made his trembling way to the tree and turned the fruit. On the side in glassy letters were the words Harry Potter.

His grandson was still alive.

Fleamont hesitated as he stood in front of the little, frankly shack-like house. Honestly, this was ridiculous.

But everything had seemed ridiculous since he woke from his sleep a month ago and started research into what had happened while he slept. People believing that a one-year-old had defeated a Dark Lord. Harry being given the title of the Boy-Who-Died. Harry vanishing from the wizarding world.

Sirius was in prison for betraying his boy. Remus Lupin had also vanished. Peter Pettigrew was dead. Fleamont hadn't yet dared approach someone in power, Minister Bagnold or Dumbledore or anyone else, because they would immediately try to involve him in legalities and ask him over and over again how he was alive. Potters never revealed their Potions secrets until they were ready to patent them. Fleamont would conceal how his darling had kept him alive, for now.

He hadn't even needed to visit Gringotts, thanks to his paranoid ancestors and the large amount of Galleons they'd stored in the cellars of Potter Place. No one was required to know he was alive to answer his owl-orders under a false name.

The only living person he could think of who would have a vested interest in both helping him and keeping his existence from the authorities was the childhood friend Lily had spoken of with such sadness in her last year.

Fleamont stepped forwards. The tingle of extremely paranoid wards passed over him, and he paused and let them. He knew a large number of them were based on intent. Others would be testing his blood, looking at his face for illusions, and feeling him out for Dark Arts or a prepared trap-artifact.

Whatever they found, their master was intrigued enough to let the tingle die and then step out of his house. He looked at Fleamont without apparent recognition. Fleamont wasn't surprised. His face hadn't been in the papers much for the last fifty years; his successes with potions had come when he was still young.

This man was tall, thin, clad in all black, and had a face so sour that it would be a wonder if he could drink milk without curdling it. He had his wand lightly gripped in his hand. "What do you want?"

"I am searching for my grandson," Fleamont said. Snape only sneered. Fleamont went on determinedly. "I know that you once had a special connection to Lily Evans, and that means that you might want to participate in helping rescue her child from what I assume are horrible conditions, if those tales of her family were true, and restoring him to his grandfather."

Snape froze, except for his wand hand, which started to tremble. Then he said, "This is impossible. The child and James Potter's parents are dead."

"I did have the dragonpox," Fleamont confirmed quietly. "My wife brewed a special variant of the Draught of Living Death to save me. I have evidence that Harry is alive." He took a deep breath. "I know that you hold the position of Potions master at Hogwarts. I'm prepared to give you the secret of how she kept me alive if you help me without alerting your employer."

That got him a second, detailed examination from black eyes before Snape flung open the door of his hovel. "Inside."

Fleamont could only be grateful.

"You are not the man I expected."

They had been sipping highly inferior tea for ten minutes when Snape said that. Fleamont was relieved that he had broken the silence, at least. He had thought Snape might have decided to throw him out.

He put his teacup down on the table in front of him and fixed his gaze on Snape. "I know that my son didn't treat you well. I know you had some kind of rupture in your friendship with Lily. That's why I'm prepared to offer payment. I won't depend on a long-ago connection when you have every reason to despise me."

For a moment, Snape's nostrils flared. Then he said quietly, harshly, "Your son made my life a hell."

Fleamont only nodded. "I would apologize for that, but I don't think you want apologies from any Potter. I acknowledge it, instead."

Snape was silent. Fleamont didn't know what he was thinking; he was usually good at reading people, but Snape exceeded his skill. Then he abruptly asked, "What proof do you have that Harry Potter is still alive?"

Fleamont held back his relief, and pulled the prepared Pensieve he'd carried in a magical extendable bag. "There are two memories in here. One is of my father explaining to me what the Potter family tree does—how it distinguishes between dead and living members. The second one is what I saw when I woke from my own coma."

Snape's eyes sharpened at the word "coma," and Fleamont wondered if perhaps he had figured out how part of the dragonpox cure worked. But he nodded and placed his head under the surface of the memories. Fleamont sat back and stared around the hovel while he was busy.

Dirt, dust, gloom everywhere. Fleamont thought that someone teaching at Hogwarts could afford better, but then again, this was the man's summer home, where he spent little time. And if Lily was right and she had been Snape's only friend…

Then this might be a true reflection of his soul.

Fleamont turned back as Snape lifted his head. His face was so pale that he looked as if he might faint. Fleamont watched sharply, but didn't move forwards to rescue him. He knew it wouldn't be welcomed.

Snape cleared his throat with a quiet rasp. "You—you have no reason to doubt the tree? There is no way it can be fooled?"

Fleamont shook his head. "If anyone had known what to look for, they could have told I was still alive, even. I'm sure that was what reassured Euphemia that her cure had worked before she died." The last words were difficult for him to keep steady, but he managed. He had no interest in revealing his pain to Snape. "My grandson is alive. The people who would have the best interest in helping me locate him are dead, gone, in prison, or would entangle me in legal difficulties and might oppose me. Will you help me search?"

Snape narrowed his eyes. "I want access to one of the Potters potions journals in addition to the formula for the dragonpox cure."

"Done," Fleamont said without hesitation. He would give Snape one of his own journals. His hair potion had substantially increased the Potter fortune, but it wasn't as wonderful or esoteric as some of the other discoveries that his ancestors had made.

Snape stared into his cup of tea for a moment. Then he said, "Albus told me the boy had died." His fingers curled around the cup, and a whirl of magic traveled past Fleamont, enough to ruffle the ancient curtains on the windows. "He told me that every trace of Lily was gone from the world."

He looked up, and his dark eyes were full of a fathomless rage.

"I owe him for that."

"How did you know that her sister's married name was Dursley?"

Snape glanced at Fleamont as he adjusted the hang of his cloak. They both wore an illusion that made their clothes appear to be Muggle ones of appropriate function and form to anyone non-magical who glanced at them, a complicated charm that had made a strange expression appear on Snape's face when Fleamont cast it. "I listened to what Lily said long after she told me I was no longer welcome in her life."

Fleamont nodded in silence. He might not approve of Snape doing that to his daughter-in-law, but the truth was, he was glad he had now.

He turned his attention back to the utterly plain Muggle house in front of them. It was—strange. The place was strict, regimented, utterly unmagical, but Fleamont could still feel a swirl of something traveling past him. He would have expected Dumbledore to set wards on the house, if he was really the one who had brought Harry here, but these weren't any wards he had felt before.

In a few minutes, you'll see your grandson. The grandson you never got the chance to meet.

Fleamont swallowed. He would have rubbed his hands on his robes, but he didn't want to make such a gesture in front of Snape. Instead, he walked steadily towards the house, Snape trailing after him. They had both agreed that Fleamont would have more of a chance of being welcomed by wards that might depend on family relationship.

The swirl of power concentrated in front of them as they stepped past the garden hedge in front of the house (which of course looked like all the others). Fleamont caught his breath as it suddenly focused on him, and reached out a hand before he thought about it.

"Lily?" he breathed. That was his daughter-in-law's magic. He would have known it in an undersea trench.

The power swayed back and forth as if examining him, and then vanished. Snape made a soft, hoarse noise next to him.

For the moment, Fleamont ignored his ally, speeding his steps towards the house instead. Blood wards, based on mother's love. But Fleamont had felt wards like that before, and should have recognized them at once. Something had weakened them.

Fleamont was horribly afraid that it wasn't simply being attached to a Muggle house.

He pushed open the front door of the house and stared around for a second. Then he saw the Muggle woman standing with her hands clutching her heart in the middle of what appeared to be a neat kitchen, though one crowded with unfamiliar Muggle appliances.

"Where is Harry?" Fleamont demanded.

Her mouth opened. "You're—"

"You were about to says freaks, weren't you, Tuney?" Snape shouldered his way in behind Fleamont, regarding the woman with a kind of twisted glee in his face. "Go on, say it. I did so miss giving you the chance."

"You—you nasty little boy!"

"Not so little, now, Tuney." Snape moved towards her, and Fleamont decided to stay out of it once he saw how the man was walking. Besides, he had to search for his grandson. "You're going to tell me where Lily's child is."

"That old man said we shouldn't."

"Now, Tuney."

"Shan't!"

"Legilimens!"

Fleamont felt his mouth fall open and stay like that as Snape tore through the Muggle woman's mind. He had been about to caution Snape against performing magic on a Muggle, but he saw now why the man hadn't worried. He was skilled enough in that obscure branch of mind magic to perform it without a wand, with simple eye contact.

Snape pulled back in what was seconds and felt like minutes to say, "She is going to die."

"Snape—"

"Your grandson is in the cupboard under the stairs, Potter." Snape glanced at him, and there was a beast's look. free-ranging and sadistic, gleaming in his eyes. Something broke inside him when Lily died, Fleamont thought. And now something had broken loose. "She's starved him. She's swung frying pans at his head. She's called him a freak, and kept magic from him, and encouraged her son to beat him up, and told him his parents were worthless drunks."

Fleamont drew himself up. He would commit murder himself if Snape wasn't here. He could feel the edges of the Potter rage creeping along his soul. "Don't kill her child."

"I didn't intend to."

Snape turned back to Petunia, and there were screams and thick sounds a second later. Fleamont called up a Silencing Bubble around his head and ears, and ran towards the cupboard. The Silencing Bubble traveled with him, and would prevent Harry, when he held him in his arms, from hearing what was going on, as well.

The cupboard door was locked, but opened to the touch of his wand and an, "Alohomora." In the tiny, cramped space beneath the stairs, a little boy stared at him, so frightened that Fleamont wanted to turn back and join Snape.

But he was here for his grandson, not vengeance. He held out his hand. "Harry, do you want to come with me? I'm your grandfather, Fleamont Potter." His eyes were darting over Harry in the meantime. Hair like James's, eyes like Lily's, and a terror that was all his own.

"My grandparents are dead."

Fleamont had never heard his grandson's voice in one moment, and in the next, he would have died to protect the source of it. He swallowed, shook his head, and said, "No, Harry. Your mother's parents are dead, yes. I'm sorry I only met them once. But I'm alive. Please. Come with me. I'm your father's father, and I woke up a month ago from a sleep that should have killed me, and I can do magic, like you, and—I'm very lonely."

When he got to know Harry better, Fleamont was sure it was the last plea that did it. Harry was compassionate enough not to leave anyone alone who said something like that. He crouched forwards slowly to the front of the cupboard, and held out his hand.

Fleamont scooped him up—he was so light, so desperately easy to carry—and held Harry close, held him there against his chest, within the Silencing Bubble, so that Harry couldn't hear his aunt being slaughtered. He never knew which one of them started crying first.