Chapter Text
***
It started with the book.
Miss Granger said, ‘Oooh! Clever!’ Her gloved fingers heedless of the dust, as they were of any dust that graced a thing of Learning.
The man who called himself Voldemort had been an Alchemist.
‘Aren’t those extinct?’ asked Ronald, who’d been absorbed in South American maps and shadow boxes full of moths’ wings.
Miss Granger shook her head and caressed the binding, and that was the last she would acknowledge them until she’d sucked dry the juices from the hand-written, leather-bound journal.
The next day, she was smiling. She’d caught the secret; her eyes gleamed.
***
It started with the letter.
To Mister Harold James Potter
Regrets and condolences and inheritance, and Harry was sick of this already, gifts from the dead, and Ron was green with envy, and Miss Granger said, ‘I didn’t know you had an uncle.’
‘Second cousin,’ Harry said. ‘Lives – lived – in Africa. He’s the one who sent the cycle.’ The one who never rescued me.
Ron gasped in remembered admiration, and Hermione snorted her disapproval.
But, ‘Doesn’t sound like a solicitor, this R. J. Lupin,’ Ron pointed out. ‘Doesn’t write in mechanisms, like my brother Percy.’
The letter said: Grimmauld Place.
***
It started with the house.
‘Lupin bloke said your uncle never even visited it after his parents died.’
It was grandeur soured by neglect.
Harry wanted to turn around when he saw it (weak, nervous, feminine constitution). But Hermione found the library, and Ron literally stumbled into the Study, and his friends were so caught up in the excitement that they wouldn’t have understood Harry’s apprehension, had he dared to voice it, had he himself not denied his fear.
It was easy to pretend, until darkness and solitude, until Harry drew the last dustsheet to uncover his twin, painted grin.
***
It started with the portrait.
Not like himself at all, really, once Harry’s heartbeat regained its rhythm, once Harry recollected – bloodless, unkempt, gasping – he was nothing like the serene, composed, confident man in the painting. Not at all.
Only sharing dark hair, verdant eyes.
But the painting seemed to watch him, seemed to know his secrets.
But because Harry was not mad (not anymore; listen to me; I’m well; I’m well), he would not surrender to the fear of a painting.
And so the smirk remained uncovered, triumphant as Harry bustled about his own house, averting his eyes.
I’m well.
***