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Chapter Text

              The letter comes while Harry is asleep.

It isn’t that the letter comes early. No, it sits buried between bills and adverts and postcards just like any other letter would, waiting patiently on the front step for someone to scoop it up. But Aunt Petunia wakes in a good mood, and dresses in a good mood, and comes downstairs in a good mood. She does not think to wake the vile little thing she has locked up in the boot cupboard beneath her stairs, because thinking of the freak is unpleasant, and she is in a good mood.

She puts the kettle on and peers judgmentally through her kitchen window at the neighbors’ inferior garden, stares in satisfaction at her own gorgeous blooms, and then goes to get the newspaper.

It is, perhaps, entirely unimportant to note that she had intended to keep the child. She had intended to love the child, and she had intended to raise the child just as she raised her own boy, given him her own name to start – because they were the same, weren’t they, and he’d do nothing but thank her if Lily Potter ever returned, shower her with gratitude for teaching him how absolutely vile his mother is –

But then the toys had begun floating.

Petunia’s motives do not matter. Her intentions do not matter. All that really matters is that when she feels that envelope, the press of a wax seal and high-end parchment, the glint of shiny ink – she can no longer deny what she has spent so long in willful ignorance of.

The freak becomes a freak, and Petunia goes white, lips pressed thin and pale with fury. She sets the mail down in a jumbled pile on her kitchen table, snatches the abominable letter up, and stalks towards the boot cupboard.

She drags the boy out by his arm, nails piercing flesh and so furious she cannot spit the vitriol boiling on her tongue at him. She thinks of the boy as it rather than he, but he lingers in her thoughts only long enough for her to wrench open the front door and hurtle him down the cement steps with all the force she can muster. It isn’t a lot, but the boy weighs hardly anything, and so Petunia’s strength does not really matter either.

“I’ll not have a freak in my house!” She hisses; hisses, because Petunia can be shrill and obnoxious but her rage has always been quiet, seething, lest it draw the attention of the neighborhood’s other housewives. She hurtles the letter at the freak, slams her front door shut, locks it, and breathes.

She smooths her hands down the front of her robe, and tucks a stray curl behind her ear, and then closes the door to the boot cupboard. The kettle begins to whistle.

She goes to make tea.

X

Harry, bruised and aching and bleeding from the puncture wounds in his arm, sits in his aunt’s yard for a heartbeat, and then two, and then three, before he sees the letter. The letter with his name on it, curled in beautiful calligraphy; Harry James Evans.

There are other words beneath it. No wonder, he thinks, he’s been thrown out. Someone taunting his aunt like that – she’d fear for the whole family’s reputation.

Harry takes the letter because he has nothing else to do, stuffs it into the waistband of his cousin’s ratty old sweatpants, and then sets out for the nearby park.

He hasn’t kept his bookbag in the Dursley’s home in years. He has his own locker at school, and Harry keeps his precious things inside it – nicer pencils and notebooks and the last little scrap of cloth he has from his baby blanket. His things aren’t safe there, not really – he knows the teachers routinely search his locker – but they don’t break things or take things when they look. And they don’t talk to him about it. So, it’s better than Dudley getting ahold of it.

Summers are harder, but there’s a nice little hollow at the top of one of the trees in the wooded part of the park he can fit it into, and so far, no one else has found it.

He doesn’t open the letter until he’s tucked away high in the tree’s branches, his backpack on his lap. He reads it through three times before putting it down, and Harry stares blankly out at the park, and frowns.

He doesn’t like this, he decides. But there’s an address, and a ticket, and a date – two dates. There’s enough to see, to verify. The letter isn’t very informative on its own – a materials list, a brief introduction, a ticket and a single sentence dedicated to one of two faculty-guided shopping days he’s been assigned. He and his guardians are expected to show up, if he wishes to attend.

Well. He doesn’t have guardians anymore. But if they think students will believe this, that magic exists, and that they’ll come, and that these magic people won’t even send someone with the letters –

Well.

He’d best get there early, he thinks.

X

The thing of it is – Harry James Evans is only partially correct in his assessment of Hogwarts’ attitudes towards those of its students not born to magical families.

Traditionally, only muggleborn students get a visit from a faculty member, to provide proof and an ease of transition. Muggleborn students are marked as such not by a faculty member, not by the Headmaster, not by a fallible living entity with bias and prejudice and faulty memory – but by the magic of Hogwarts itself.

Magical children with non-magical parents get a visit; and Harry James Evans is not a magical child with non-magical parents.

In a time of peace, wherein no family fractured beneath warfare or strife – that would be enough. But the Wizarding World is hot off not one but two recent Dark Lords, and while Grindelwald’s war did not touch Britain quite as severely as the rest of Europe, Voldemort’s left more children orphaned than most realized.

A magical child with magical family, upon the death of her parents, is ordinarily sent to another magical relative. But the Death Eaters were thorough in their hunts; when they began to slaughter a family they did not stop until there was no one left. As interrelated and vast as the branches of wizarding families are, few were brave enough to take in the last of another line and risk the target that would put on their backs. Even after Charles Fleamont Potter defeated Lord Voldemort himself, the Death Eaters did not go quietly and it was simply easier to allow the child to…disappear.

After all – the muggle world, though mundane and inferior, was filled with families that wanted for children. Perhaps a non-magical relative, or a squib thrown out for the sin of existing – perhaps the child had family, still. And if not, well surely a muggle family would be eager to take in a child so vastly superior than a muggle baby.

And so – magical orphans were abandoned to the whims of the mundane world. All of them born to magical parents, all raised in non-magical households, all raised in a non-magical world.

Some, like Harry, will persevere and make their way to the Leaky Cauldron and Platform 9 ¾ anyway. Some will simply throw the letter away as a poor joke or incoherent nonsense, and move on with their lives. Some will see the letter as a threat.

Britain will lose nearly half a generation of magical blood to its carelessness.

It is an invisible oversight. It will not be corrected.

X

Surviving without the Dursleys is frighteningly easy in some ways, and infinitely harder in others. It always is.

Much of what Harry has grown up fearing is no longer a threat, and what new fears he faces are almost insignificant in the face of what he has left behind. He’s used to not having food, to scrounging and stealing just enough to keep himself alive. He’s used to tucking himself into small, uncomfortable places where no man nor animal can reach him.

But he’s never had to avoid quite so many people before.

He stays out of people’s way for the most part, tucks himself unseen between adults when sneaking onto buses and into stores. He’s got deft fingers, and he’s pickpocketed before, and Harry is discomforted to realize he’s better fed on the streets than he was with his Aunt and Uncle.

He spends the two weeks leading up to the date on his letter making his way into London proper, sleeping where he can, eating when he can, and washing when he can in whatever public restroom he can find.

The morning of, he puts on his only spare set of Dudley’s cast-offs, and breathes.

If this is fake, that’s okay too, he decides. It’ll be a little bit of a disappointment, but he knows how to live on the streets, and he’s quick, and he’s smart. He considers not going at all, considers what else he could do with his newfound freedom, considers where he could go and what he could do but –

But, but, but –

It explains too much about his aunt. Too much about himself, about the Dursley’s freak, about all those nonsensical punishments –

But he hungers.

He’d wanted to graduate with good grades and get his degree and do anything to get away from the Dursleys, because that had been the only realistic choice he’d had. He could go to the nearest police station and turn himself in, but they’d just take him right back to the Dursleys – they had before, they would again, and no matter what he does that path has been closed to him. He can’t enroll in a school on his own, without a place to live or money to buy materials.

And that will be a problem for this magical school, but there’s no mention of tuition on his letter and that might…indicate something.

He doesn’t know.

That’s the crux of it. There’s too much he doesn’t know.

So Harry goes.

X

The Leaky Cauldron could be a warm, welcoming place, worn and used in the way only something with great love can be, but it is not that. It is dark and dirty, dingy and crammed with so many people in such strange outfits that the knot of adults and wide-eyed children in regular clothing stands out like a beacon. There is a tall, stern woman in long black robes and a crooked, pointed witches hat checking off names on a roll of thick yellowed paper with a feather the size of her own arm. Harry approaches her first.

She frowns when she looks at him.

“Where are your parents, dear?”

“My guardians couldn’t make it.” Harry says quietly, and that is enough. She dismisses him with a disapproving frown, after checking his name off on her paper, and he scurries into the back of the group, ducks into the darker shadows in the bar, and waits.

It’s no different than any other event at school, at his old school. Parents side-eye him or sneer or both and children give him weird looks and shuffle away. That doesn’t bother Harry too much, though he is unimpressed with it. Figures he’d be freaky even among the other freaks.

The tall woman introduces herself in clipped tones as Professor McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress, Head of Gryffindor House, and Professor of Transfiguration. She tells them that while they are free to do their own shopping, certain school-approved stores have prepared for their arrival, and it would be best to visit each during their allotted time. She shows them how to get into Diagon Alley – Harry thinks it’s brilliant, a whole shopping district hidden behind an otherwise-solid brick wall, wonders if he could hide himself like that.

Non-magical folk, muggles, cannot open Diagon on their own. Wizards do not need a wand to open the entryway, but most prefer to use one instead of tapping the admittedly slimy bricks with their own hands. Harry likes this; it means he can come back.

Professor McGonagall leads them at a quick, brisk pace straight down a cobblestone street lined with brilliantly strange shops towards what she says is a bank, Gringotts, run by goblins. They will need to obtain an account manager to set up a vault and streamline currency exchange; wizards do not use pounds. They cannot move on to the shops until they’ve completed their business here.

She takes them straight to a clump of small, sneering figures at the far end of the bank’s lobby – unnaturally large compared to its outside – from the tellers and their wobbly lines of wizards and witches. The goblins make quick work of separating out the families, assigning them a goblin, and vanishing into an ominously dark hall behind the nearest teller’s counter. Harry watches this process curiously for a few moments, before stepping up to the first goblin to meet his gaze.

“With me.” The goblin barks, and immediately sets out. He – Harry thinks the goblin is male – is surprisingly quick given his short stature, and Harry jogs to keep up. They rush down a twisting maze of passages and halls and the goblin turns so abruptly into a seemingly random room that Harry nearly trips over his feet in his haste to get inside.

He’s waved towards a stool on the close side of a heavy, ornate stone desk. When he sits, and the goblin sits in a high-backed chair on the other side, Harry is just below eye-level, and he can’t help but giggle a little. The goblin’s lips twitch up, baring his teeth.

“I am Griphook. I doubt the witch bothered to explain our procedures properly, wizardkind never does. Where are your guardians?”

Guardians, this one says, Harry notes. He considers his words carefully, and then smiles back, with teeth.

“They got rid of me when I got my letter.”

The goblin doesn’t look surprised.

“You’ll find, child, that wizards are more useless than even muggles.”

But the goblin doesn’t move to kick him out, and – Harry tilts his head curiously.

“I obviously don’t have any money. Or anyone who could give me any. Why keep talking to me?”

Griphook smirks, and produces a stiff, shiny square of thick paper like that his letter his written on.

“Wizardkind manages themselves through family magics. There is, technically, a process for releasing a family’s magic and bestowing it upon a worthy recipient, but it must be completed by the family’s Lord or Lady – an adult witch or wizard in charge of the rest of their kin – prior to death. Very, very few risk such a ritual. Most deceased families’ magics go dormant until a child with a similar magical signature is born, or until some cast-out descendant of a squib child is born to magic. Both categories are referred to as muggleborn by wizardkind.”

“So I might…inherit something.”

“Most muggleborn children do. The British wizarding world has just recently survived two great wars in rapid succession, and has been on the decline for centuries prior. The number of otherwise-extinct lines is numerous, and Gringotts profits substantially by reviving them. It helps, perhaps, that it infuriates wizardkind.”

“Because they don’t like you.”

“Mm. We assist in raising political figures that owe us – or perhaps simply bear us some goodwill. Goblinkind is willing and able to bleed and make bleed for our fights, but wizards prefer politics and beating them at their own game is always delicious.”

Griphook is – open. Harry thinks it’s calculated. He knows what he looks like, what the goblin has likely – correctly – assumed about his past. He has heard enough whispers and read enough pamphlets while locked in the nurse’s office to know that this is an appeasement, an olive branch, as much as it is a tactic.

But the offer is nonsense. Nothing Harry thinks he wouldn’t do on his own. If the goblins prove trustworthy…

“There’s a test?”

Griphook produces a dagger, crafted in smooth lines out of a solid piece of metal, and hands it over.

“Three drops on the parchment. It has already been treated. Your injury will heal promptly after; take care not to lose any of your blood carelessly. It can be used against you.”

Harry repeats the warning in his thoughts while he cuts himself, examines the blade to be sure there is no blood on it, and hands it back. Three drops hit the paper, the parchment, and sink into it without a trace.

The ink that darkens the parchment is dark, but in the office’s light it is also red, and Harry is so entranced by the color that he almost misses the startled noise that escapes Griphook. His gaze flicks to the goblin, and then back to the paper, and Harry feels himself freeze.

“’S not normal.”

“…Lost heirs are not quite so uncommon as you think, child. It is you yourself that makes these results…interesting.”

He’s got a living mother listed, and a living father. And a living brother. Lily and James and Charles Potter. But Harry’s name is still as it ever was, Harry James Evans.

Below that is listed Heir Potter and Heir Black. He’s got a godfather listed by that last one, a living Sirius Black, and –

The goblin cackles, slaps the corner of his desk with an open palm and leans back in his chair. He looks gleeful, and Harry’s chest hurts and his hands are shaking where he has his fingers curled hard enough to ache around the edge of his stool, but he focuses in on the goblin’s glee and steels himself anyway.

“They’re alive?”

“They are the most famous wizarding family in the country, child.”

“Why’d they get rid of – or why am I still heir if they got rid of me?” His change in question is sloppy and crackly around the edges, but the goblin does not remark on it.

He’s not sure what heir means in the magical context, but he knows what it means in the regular, in the muggle, and Griphook has already mentioned inheritance, and –

He does not find it hard to believe that Petunia’s sister is so similar to her. He does find it hard to believe that anyone related to Petunia would have allowed him a title, let alone whatever else comes with it.

“I will answer to the best of my abilities. Firstborn children tend to inherit the regard of their family’s magic, although it is not always a given; I know of at least two other children who have stronger claim to House Black by blood and age, but it is you the family magic has chosen as heir. You are a twin; the elder, in fact. Your family may be able to…materially disinherit you – toss you aside, refuse to provide for you – but they cannot magically disinherit you any longer. The practice was abused so thoroughly that, centuries ago, wizardkind worked a great geas to prevent family magics themselves from unravelling. Modern wizardkind solves the problem by killing the offending child – your parents were apparently too weak-willed to see that through.”

“Maybe they thought Aunt Petunia would do it for them.” Harry murmurs without thinking, but the goblin does not make a production of the admission.

“You are Heir Potter through your biological…parents. And you are Heir Black through your godfather.”

“What does that mean for me?”

“Ah, this is the fun part, child. Your name was changed. You are now an Evans, not a Potter, nor a Black – but for the magical world, a name change is retroactive too. Accounts and permissions granted to you before the name change were not invalidated by it. That means the Hogwarts tuition paid at your birth for Harry James Potter is now marked for Harry James Evans. The Potters will not be alerted to your existence if you do not wish it.”

“That doesn’t sound exciting enough to call fun.” Harry points out, but it is exciting enough that he cannot properly wrestle down the panicked joyhopeohgod rising in his chest, searing in his veins.

His tuition is already paid. And he won’t have to talk to these people, those that have thrown him away.

Griphook’s smile is rabid.

“I do not know the details. I do not know why you are a lost heir. I do know that you will have unfettered access to the Potter family vaults, and the Black family vaults. I do know that Lord Potter does not monitor his vaults as closely as he should, and that while Lord Black does, he will not receive notice of his heir accessing those vaults until the evening post, if we are efficient.”

“Why would I want to access those vaults?” Harry asks. Money, of course, but this is something else, he thinks.

“You are in need of galleons and school supplies, child, appropriate for your needs. Family vaults are hoards, and magical goods grow stronger with age.”

“High-quality stuff. Instead of buying it I can just take it.”

“As you are entitled.”

Harry looks back down at the parchment, hesitates, and then taps the final line.

“And Slytherin?”

“You are not heir of House Slytherin. You carry enough of the blood that the family magics has, however, accepted you as a member. That may pose a problem for you.”

“How so?”

Griphook’s face scrunches up. Not a scowl, but something like it. His eyes are too amused for that.

“The only other known, living member of House Slytherin is the same man that attempted to slaughter the Potters – the same man your younger brother allegedly defeated while an infant. The same man that nearly brought the wizarding world to its knees.”

X

              Griphook takes him to the Black vaults first. Harry is, technically, a lost heir, and Griphook has earned the right – by goblin standards – to be Harry’s sole point of contact even though both the families that have apparently claimed him have their own account managers. Griphook looks delighted at the prospect of hiding their activities from other goblins.

Hiding, in this case, just means burying the truth in so much red tape and paperwork no one finds out until Harry’s seventeen and no one will have claim to him. He’ll be a legal adult a whole year earlier in the wizarding world than the muggle, and they can’t kick him out of the magical world as long as he passes some sort of test at the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts.

He’s been giddy since he found out. They are goalposts, things to work for. Because magic is real, and he wants it like he’s never wanted anything before; not even food, a family, safety.

“What should I look for?” He asks Griphook, legs a little wobbly after the cart ride. Griphook seems darkly amused that Harry doesn’t really mind the transport – it isn’t very fun, but it isn’t unbearable either.

“You have your supplies list. I would recommend searching for all you will need for your safety, comfort, and education. The family magics will be eager to feel you – let it lead you.”

The advice seems vague and stupid right up until the vault is open and Harry sees the absolute mess inside.

There is furniture and knickknacks and books and money and clothes and art and rugs and a hundred other things he cannot even comprehend. None of it is organized. Most of it sits in literal piles, like a dragon’s horde, towering high above his head. There are narrow paths leading deep into the mess, dark and ominous – Harry cannot see the back wall of the vault peeking over the piles.

Wandering until some sort of magic tells him stop seems like the safest approach.

“I will accompany you. You will need assistance in identifying things.” Griphook declares. Harry does not argue with him, not when the entrance to the vault shudders shut behind them and silver flames burst into existence in the air above their head. Harry doesn’t think they should produce as much light as they do, but he’s grateful for it all the same.

So – he wanders. He’s not really sure he feels anything, not something tugging at him or pulling at him or directing him. Griphook snorts and says of course not; mage-sense does not run in his family tree. Harry doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean until something catches his eye, though, and he finds himself crouched in front of a half-buried trunk. The trunk trembles.

A trunk had been on his list. Something to live out of while he’s at Hogwarts, to carry all his things. Now that he isn’t with the Dursleys, it is perhaps even more necessary than before. He moves the antiques pinning the poor thing in place, and it shoots out so quickly it nearly bowls over Griphook. The pile it had been in creaks ominously, but settles. The trunk hadn’t been load-bearing, luckily.

The trunk has mashed itself against Harry’s legs, vibrating, clattering side-to-side in place. Griphook looks bewildered, but shrugs when Harry looks at him, so Harry kneels down at the trunk’s side. It is made of wood, dark like a thunderstorm, grey like fog. Silver metal gleams at its corners, its clasp, lines its lips. There is no crest engraved on it or initials carved into it, nothing to set it apart from naught but a handsome, but otherwise unremarkable trunk.

Harry flips the clasps. The round knob between them spins wildly, nearly-invisible engravings flashing by too quickly to see. The round nub of metal protruding from the center of the knob sharpens to a point. Blood, Harry assumes. Something for security.

Harry pricks his finger, and the trunk’s lid flies open, and the trunk itself explodes.

Whomever had last used it had not cleaned it out. Harry can’t imagine how much time has passed; the smell of rot is faint, vials filled with desiccated and dried-out matter cracking to dust on the floor. Potions ingredients, he thinks, his supply list folded tightly in one hand. Ancient.

And then come the corpses.

“Gringotts does not suffer these vermin.” Griphook says tightly as a flood of rat carcasses and tiny, sharp-toothed humanoid skeletons spill over their feet.

“Maybe it hunts? Or hunted. Before it was put in here.” Harry points out.

“That would not be surprising, give the Black family’s…reputation.”

“What reputation is that?”

“House Black treasures the darker side of magic, and shows no mercy to its enemies. You should be able to extrapolate the rest, child.”

One last flood of dead things, and the trunk’s lid snaps shut. It whirls to face them, no less excited, and Harry can’t help but smile.

“Do you want to come with me?” He asks, and the trunk surges through its former contents towards him. Its lid rises and snaps shut in rapid succession, and then it angles itself so that its dial faces him.

There is a hanger, a book, a cauldron, a feather, a briefcase, an unadorned circle. When he sets the dial to the hanger and pricks his finger again, the trunk flings its lid open and Harry finds himself staring into a very peculiar silver contraption.

Griphook reaches past him, grabs one of the metal bars, and pulls.

A pull-out closet, he realizes, as it all unfolds. There are metal hangers rattling emptily on the bar, small drawers lined with black velvet for jewelry and cubbies for shoes, drawers for folded clothes and even a skeletal mannequin. For armor, Griphook tells him. Each part rotates with the spin of a dial on the nearest metal bar. And each dial, small and subtle and almost unnoticeable, has a nub just like the dial on the outside of the trunk too. When Harry’s fingers drift too close, the nub sharpens to a wicked point.

“For added security, I would imagine. Clothing items you wish to hide, or may be deemed inappropriate by others – I would assume the other compartments will have a similar feature.”

“But how much will it hold?”

“Magic grows in power as it ages, child. This trunk will have more room than you could ever hope to fill even if you took everything in your families’ vaults with you.”

Harry gently pushes the closet’s extensions back down, and takes a moment to stare.

“Is he right?” He asks softly, and the trunk wobbles in something approximating a nod.

The cauldron leads to a potions compartment, which comes equipped with vial slots for potions and vial slots for ingredients, each separate. There are specialized cupboards for tools, and two large compartments – one cold, one heated – that Griphook tells him are layered in so much preservation magic that whatever goes inside will take decades to rot.

Food, Harry thinks, and his hands tremble.

The book opens to a library compartment. It does not extend out of the trunk, but instead Harry finds himself looking at two shelves, each with those dials hidden below them, half of the first taken up with a honeycomb of hollow tubes meant for scrolls. Griphook tells him this will be especially useful, given that the British magical government is apparently very big on censorship; the most interest bits of magic are illegal, and he should take care if he finds himself in possession of any unknown tome to keep it hidden.

The feather opens a writing compartment, for writing supplies and other paraphernalia. It includes a flat surface large enough to write on, if he were alright sitting on the floor. There are fewer of the dials in this compartment – just on strangely-shaped drawers Griphook tells him will be for letters and scrolls used in correspondence.

The briefcase symbol opens to a completely empty too-large-on-the-inside compartment; for whatever else he happens to want, Harry thinks.

The unadorned circle opens to a regular-sized trunk’s innards, lined with black velvet. For travel, to hide amongst muggles, he’s told.

Harry’s got worn notebooks missing their covers, a handful of broken pencils, a soft, tattered square of burgundy cloth, a water bottle, and a filthy change of his cousin’s clothes in the ratty backpack on his back. It’s stuffed to the brim, but only because it is small.

“What now?”

“We fill it.” Griphook says blandly, and bullies Harry to his feet. The trunk snaps closed of its own volition, and excitedly begins leading the way deeper into the vault. He feels a little floaty, a little odd, a lot overwhelmed, but Harry follows.

X

              He finds clothes. They are old-fashioned, Griphook tells him, but not so much as to make him stick out. Griphook and the trunk make him try on every piece before it goes in. Harry’s ecstatic to have nearly-new clothing in such good condition; and the magic besides – boots charmed to be silent, trousers charmed to grow with him, cuffs that resize themselves automatically, cloaks that will keep him warm or cool or dry no matter the weather. Griphook hunts down some belts, and some jewelry, and a mound of wizard robes for everyday wear to match – cufflinks and necklaces and earrings and rings. Harry realizes he can get his ears pierced, and as tedious as the clothes are, he still beams as he scribbles down a new list on a mostly untouched page of one of his notebooks; he’ll need to buy his school uniforms, and socks, and underwear on his own.

The trunk hoards books, too – swallows them whole before Harry can stop it, digs them up like a bloodhound. Harry has no idea what he should be looking for when it comes to texts, so he isn’t too concerned, but he does take note of how many the trunk devours. It’s intimidating, but reassuring in the same vein – he’s a lot to learn, but he’ll have a lot to learn from.

“There are kits, in most bookstores. I would recommend used sets. Wizardkind does not formally educate children before the age of eleven, but it does have a very large market for child-appropriate texts on the academic subjects you will be learning at Hogwarts and beyond.” Griphook tells him. Apparently there is no market for children’s fiction – or fiction of most any kind in the Wizarding World – and age-appropriate textbooks have always filled that niche. Languages, he’s told, are another area of pre-Hogwarts study.

Harry scoops piles of gold into the trunk, and a handful of quills after Griphook makes sure they won’t kill him – that that is even a legitimate concern is hard to wrap his head around – and he carefully tucks a beautiful telescope and an astroglobe and a tarot deck and other things that catch his attention inside.

And then they come to a chest filled with sticks. Wands.

“The wand, as they say, chooses the wizard. See if any feel right to you, child. It will not be a great loss if none do – wands tend to be loyal things and rarely choose another – but it will not hurt to look.”

“What if more than one chooses me?”

“Ah. Some wizards will keep spare wands – doing so will be a mistake. You are entering a partnership with your wand, child. To take another while the first still serves is to disrespect it, and to disrespect magic.”

The advice ends up being unneeded; some of the sticks hum but none of them feel right, and so they leave wandless.

The Potter vaults are next.

Unlike the Black vaults, the Potters have organized theirs. This makes Harry nervous, but Griphook seems dismissive.

“An attentive Lord would notice, but Lord Potter is anything but, and neither was his father or his father before him. The women on the other hand…”

The things here are homier, Harry thinks. He finds blankets, hand-sewn by his ancestors. Cushions, embroidered with moving creatures made of thread and the name of the Potter who had done the work. He finds a great deal of potions tools – cauldrons and stirrers, knives and cutting boards, and he listens to Griphook’s recommendations on what to take carefully. He finds more quills, and more cloaks and robes and jewelry – he notes with some amusement that the trunk takes far fewer Potter baubles. Harry finds a satchel, plain and unadorned in a rich oak-brown, charmed to be larger on the inside and light as a feather. He takes it to carry with him during the school day, and, finally, tucks the only thing of value in his muggle backpack – the remains of his baby blanket – into his trunk.

He's not supposed to bring a broom his first year, but the trunk takes one anyway, and then they come to the wands, and Harry’s reaching into the display cabinet before he knows what he is doing.

Iolanthe Peverell, the tag reads. He mouths the name as the world lights up around him, as something cool settles in his palm.

Mine, he might think, or he might hear.

When he comes back to himself, Griphook is watching with some amusement, and the trunk is settled at Harry’s side, purring.

“Take a holster with you, child. Add polish to your list. That is an old wand, and will need more care than most.”

X

Griphook recommends a place to stay just off Diagon’s main drag, and sends him on his way with a promise to be in contact.

Harry’s trunk doesn’t like having to play at being inanimate, but it behaves as he ducks into Madame Malkins’ and the apothecary and the bookstore and the writing instruments’ shop. He avoids the crowd of muggleborns further down the way, entering only after they have moved on. He’s wearing his new clothes now. They’ll ask questions, and he does not intend to answer them.

He finds a grocer on the way to the inn Griphook had told him about, and, finally finished, Harry retires. He’s given a room with hardly a look despite his age, and the woman in charge does not even bat an eyelash when he tells her the duration of his stay. He’s relieved, and exhausted, and he closes and locks the door to his room behind him, sets down his trunk and lets it scuttle about and investigate, and then drops onto a soft, plush bed just his size, and sobs.

X

This is what he learns, over the coming weeks.

His mother is muggleborn. His father is what they call a pureblood, born to a family so magical it merits special distinction. So, to, is his godfather. Harry by definition would then be a halfblood, but he cannot claim that privilege if he wishes the Potters to remain unaware of his presence. And he does, desperately, because nothing he reads about his family’s successes or renown spell good things for him.

They are war heroes. Charles is hailed as the Boy-Who-Lived and celebrated as a saint. The Potters are public figures just like the celebrity families Aunt Petunia had tracked so carefully in her magazines and on the news; adoring parents and successful political figures. His father’s speeches at the wizarding Ministry draw crowds. His mother’s robes set new fashion trends. His brother does sponsored advertisements for toys and brooms and stores. They are charitable and progressive and beloved.

What would they do, how desperate would they be, to keep the child they abandoned secret? Griphook had said wizarding families typically killed unwanted heirs; the Potters had not killed him, but he’d also been tucked away in the nonmagical world where he could never be a threat to them. They had put him with Aunt Petunia, when a stranger would have been more secure for their reputation.

It doesn’t make sense, and the story of his family’s fame makes his reality all the more confusing.

The Potters had been on the front lines of the war against the Dark Lord, some of the few capable of holding their own against Voldemort directly. They’d gone into hiding when he and his brother were born – Charles, the books say, but they are twins and Harry is intelligent – and only resurfaced after the attack, miracle baby in tow and Voldemort’s spy caught.

Days later, Aunt Petunia found him on her doorstep.

There is a picture in one of the books of a worn young man, heavily scarred with gentle eyes. Remus Lupin, he is identified as. The man who was watching Charles, and presumably Harry. The man who died defending them. Harry traces his fingertips over the man’s face and wonders.

And then he stops, and reels all those thoughts into a tangled knot and tucks it away.

They didn’t want him; that’s fine. He doesn’t want them either.

And anyway. He’s got textbooks to read.

X

              He asks his trunk what it thinks Harry should study, and he has to spend an afternoon sorting all of the books the trunk promptly regurgitates on him.

The books gathered from Gringotts are too dense, too involved, and too technical for him to really understand. The older and more powerful they are, the more incomprehensible. Harry turns to the children’s texts he’d purchased, and finds them strangely stunted.

The children’s book sets, he comes to find, are all Ministry-approved. They take into account the wand ban on minors, and as such focus almost exclusively on theory. They reference, but do not do a good job at explaining, the magical laws and theorems filling the Gringotts books. Too dangerous, children shouldn’t ask questions, a hundred other paltry justifications Harry is familiar with from Petunia’s rants and also the Ministry printed justifications in the foreword to the textbooks.

But – combined, Harry finds himself making solid progress. Slow progress, slow enough to make him nervous, but steady, and that’s – worth it.

He spends his mornings chatting with his trunk and going over the children’s texts, progressing through each difficulty set gradually. After three days spent eating the meals the innkeeper provides, he risks a trip to the muggle world and purchases himself cookware, and come night asks his trunk and scrambles through back alleys after it until he finds a small, dingy shop that sells novelty camping gear – including portable stoves and ovens and sinks and…

Harry cries that night, but come morning he gets to make himself his own bacon and eggs and toast and he even gets to eat it all, and the world seems large and terrifying and strange in that moment, but his trunk presses itself as close as it physically can against him and he breathes through the feeling.

He names it – her – Hedwig.

X

“I’ve never made lists before.” Harry says conversationally. His trunk clatters excitedly, and spits up a silky black ribbon to tie his parchment with.

“Thanks. I’ll get a notebook and use that once I know what I’m going to do. When I have a plan. Dudley used to burn my stuff so I usually keep it all in my head but there’s too much here.”

Hedwig shifts a little closer, and the front edge of a book slips out of her opening. Harry recognizes it as a foreign book, something he can’t read yet, and he sighs.

“Yeah. Languages will be…important. But there’s potions! And the recipes look easy. I’ll try brewing them when we get to Hogwarts. Then I can figure out how to smuggle books through owl order or something.”

He’ll need a leg up. Every leg up he can get, if he wants to stay in this world. There’s a soft purr.

“Uh – no. I’m not going to do good in classes. Just – average. I’ll look at the school records and figure out what I should be getting. Except for the tests! I’m going to blow everything away on the tests. But that’s not until fifth year. And seventh.” He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, he doesn’t say. But there’s a rumbling brush against his knee, and he knows she understands.

He unrolls his list one more time, stares at how long it is, and how messy it is, and then hesitantly picks up his quill and adds penmanship in shaky letters at the bottom.

X

              He gets new glasses the day before he leaves for the Hogwarts Express. He waits so long in case the optometrist asks questions he cannot answer, in case she asks about guardians and why he is alone and why his current pair are in such bad shape, in case she looks at his thick, round frames so like those Lord Potter wears and thinks. His worry is for naught; she flicks her wand a few times at him, takes his coin, and gives him a pair of rectangular wire frames in silver. He buys a matching spare, just in case, and retreats to his room.

Griphook doesn’t contact him, and he doesn’t dare return to Gringotts yet, but Harry isn’t lonely. It’s probably strange, to cuddle with a trunk, but Hedwig is eager for attention and perfectly willing to bully Harry to get what she wants; he buys some mice for her if she agrees not to get viscera all over Harry’s things. And she definitely hunts; Harry cannot help but wonder with a kind of morbid fascination what she would do to a potential thief.

“I don’t know that they’d let me keep you if they knew how special you are. So – be sneaky, okay?” He whispers to her. Hedwig bobs in agreement under his palms, and Harry takes a breath.

He closes his fingers around her silver handle, and tugs her after him.

The Hogwarts Express awaits.

X

Better be…Slytherin!

Chapter Text

              Shortly after – after. After everything had settled. Shortly after everything had settled, Severus had gone to Grimmauld Place, and found the place scattered across the sky.

Most old wizarding families had potion recipes, spells, artifacts and rune configurations to base their family magic on. House Black had those things – but they also had buildings, too.

Rumor had it the first Lord Black had bent a city to his whims with his will alone. Succeeding Lords, if properly chosen and ascended according to the family magic’s preferences, whispers said, could do the same to any Black property out there.

Practically, that meant rooms rearranging, closing off and opening, furniture shuffling and walls changing. Practically, it meant parlor tricks and convenience.

House Black had not had a proper Lord in three generations. Sirius had pulled his house of torment apart brick by brick, and rebuilt it in his image, scouring the taint of his parents from every floorboard with his rage alone. Walburga and Orion had been in residence when Sirius had taken his power. Severus remembers their broken, shattered bodies in the hole of Grimmauld’s foundations vividly.

This is not quite so bad. But it is close.

The house has built him a nursery. Sirius is crumpled in the middle of it, clutching an old, worn stuffed dog to his chest.

Severus drops cross-legged beside him, and waits. He does his best to ignore Narcissa, standing anxiously off-center in the doorway, and Bellatrix, peeking over her sister’s shoulder, and Regulus, head buried in his hands, slumped against the far side of the corridor.

“He’s alive.” Sirius finally rasps. Severus catches a flash of Bellatrix’ wand out of the corner of his eye, and Sirius lights up in a red-and-grey overlay, phantom lights dancing across his bones.

His godparent bond is as swollen and bruised and aching as it ever is. But – whole. Unblemished. Not poisoned, or defiled – just hurting.

House Black is so far beyond lucky, that godparent magic factors in circumstance and intent, not mere action. Sirius Black would’ve been slaughtered ten times over for a failure not his own otherwise.

“Yesterday was the first of two assigned muggleborn shopping days.” Severus says quietly. Sirius’ eyes snap into focus, and he looks at Severus hungrily, desperately.

“Asking to check Minerva’s record would be suspicious. But Gringotts’ letter indicates that come September, he will be setting foot in Hogwarts.”

“You’ll help me find him?” Sirius’ voice wavers. Severus has never been privy to Sirius Black’s weaknesses, has never wanted to, hates having to comfort the man.

“He hasn’t gone to the Potters. I suspect earning his trust will be a battle. He will assume the worst of you.”

That won’t matter to Sirius; Severus knew it before he warned Lord Black and he knows it know, as Sirius breathes his devotion. If Harry James Potter wants to kill Sirius, Sirius will lay down at his feet and press the knife into his own throat. Will slit his own wrists without hesitation. If Harry James Potter wants the wizarding world brought to its knees, Sirius will oblige.

It’s not Sirius’ devotion that is at issue.

“You’ll scare him.” Severus murmurs.

“’S what Bella said.” Sirius whispers, pained.

“You need not ask for my help. I will aide the boy. And I will prepare him for your…attention. But I will not force him to come here, Sirius.”

“Skittish. Like a cat.” Sirius agrees, squeezing the plush in his arms tighter. His eyes are going unfocused.

Some of the intense nursery-ness of the room around them fades.

“Sirius.”

“Mm.”

“If you can earn his trust by years’ end, he may allow you to adopt him. The Potters will not hold any power over you then.”

Grey eyes sharpen to blade-point. Cutting. Severus doesn’t flinch, but it is a near thing.

He’s not really friends with Sirius. The man’s too unnerving, wild, powerful, too reminiscent of the Dark Lord for Severus’ comfort. Bella might be too, but – Bella’s softer. Sirius is all edges.

“Family Black senses an offer, Lord Prince.” Sirius’ voice echoes. Faintly, he hears Narcissa’s exasperated Morgana’s sake.

“It is not one I can make on the boy’s behalf. But it is a circumstance I think likely to come to pass.” Severus says slowly, picking his wording carefully.

Family Black hums. It is a deep, hungry sound.

Sirius Black has been holding a blood feud at bay through sheer force of will for the last decade for one reason and one reason alone –

Legally, the Potters control their presumed-dead heir. If Sirius were to declare a blood feud, any hope of keeping the boy once found would be extinguished; Sirius would be an enemy of House Potter.

But if the boy were no longer a Potter…

“Would you swear on your lifesblood too, Lord Prince?” Family Black asks. Severus’ smile is thin.

“I’d not do my enemies the courtesy of announcing myself as such.” He says flatly.

He’d not been raised Prince. Intentional, on his grandparents’ part. Family Prince had grown desperate in recent years for a capable heir, as desperate as Family Black. Severus had been left to claw for every advantage, for every opportunity, until his nails tore free and his fingers bled and his bone burst forth – and Family Prince finally had a worthy Lord. Not one caught up in tradition and social expectations – one pragmatic and ruthless and sharp.

And – just like that. Family Black blinks out of control, and Sirius Black is looking at him with such grief in his eyes that Severus shoots up to his feet.

He had been to Lily what Sirius had been to James, once upon a time. Sirius held tighter to those bygone days than Severus did. Severus has no interest in indulging that grief.

“If the boy were using his own name, the Potters would be involved by now. That bodes well for your chances, Lord Black. Now if you are done moping…”

“For the love of Merlin, Sirius, be done moping.” Regulus moans, and Sirius’ expression goes stricken for a moment before he – carefully – sets the worn plush aside and scrambles for his brother.

“You’re still sharing the family magics?” Severus asks, frowning. Both men ignore him; it’s Bellatrix who answers, stepping over them and shaking her head as she approaches.

“I thought he was going to go mad when he found out. It was a precaution.”

Necessary, as much as Severus would like it not to be. As much as the Cousins Black would like it not to be, judging by their expressions. Between the fabled Black family madness and Sirius’ strained magical core –

“Drug them both next time and be done with it.” Severus mutters. Narcissa huffs out a laugh, and follows her sister; she draws Severus into a brief embrace, while Bellatrix simply hovers as close as physically possible.

“Do you need any further assistance?”

“If you’d like to assist in researching adoption, I suppose. I know there’s precedent for reclaiming a presumed squib child of another House, but it’ll take me some time to find the original documentation, and that may not be the most ironclad route to take.”

“The Potters are gonna throw a tantrum, and then roll over and ignore him. They won’t be a challenge.” Bellatrix snorts. Narcissa scowls.

“Bowing to our demands would be the smart choice, given their position, but James Potter will see this as a slight against his lineage and react accordingly.”

“Gryffindors.”

Severus rolls his eyes. Pretends his heart does not twinge at the situation.

“I will make the appropriate inquiries come the start of the year.” Severus promises. If the boy’s this capable, he’ll Sort Slytherin or Ravenclaw. Perhaps Hufflepuff – abused children know the value of loyalty more than any other. Either way, Severus will be able to track the child down. Gryffindor would pose problems, of course – he cannot make inquiries there quite so smoothly, and Minerva guards her lions as fiercely as she refuses to guide them. But the boy was Sirius’ godchild. Heir Black, chosen by magic. And Family Black has always been particular.

“Thank you, Severus.” Narcissa says, and squeezes his hand gently. Bellatrix finally leans close enough to brush his shoulder, and she all but collapses her weight into him.

“We’ve got to get the brat over the summer. I have so much to teach him.”

That’s…horrifying. Draco is already…far too Black for comfort. Severus does not shudder through sheer force of will; Bellatrix picks up on it anyway and grins.

“Come. Kreacher will send tea up to the library; we can begin our search here. I’ll only check the Ministry Archives after we’ve exhausted our private resources.” Narcissa says with a soft clap of her hands and a very pointed eye.

“Yes, Narcissa, you are more than welcome to peruse House Prince’s library. How sweet of you to ask.” He says dryly, feels the soft twing of power that accompanies his words as Narcissa is granted access. She beams.

“Thank you, Severus.” Regulus’ voice is rough, grateful, and muffled by his elder brother’s clinging. Severus takes that as his cue, and flees for the library.

He does not look back.

X

Severus expects it to be a challenge. A problem. A puzzle.

Sirius knew a babe with dark curls and emerald eyes, a babe that watched everything intently and seriously and who lit up when he chose to award someone with a smile. Sirius knew a babe that was quiet and solemn and good-natured and happy.

And then he hadn’t known a child at all.

Muggle-raised, certainly. The kind of child that would trust the goblins long enough to take an Inheritance test. Sirius had no clue what had been taken from the Black Vault, but the boy’s account manager had apparently not written a single word of the notification without a flourish, which means the boy gets on well with the goblin. Either not prejudiced, or smart enough to hide it.

The information is scant, and mostly useless. He has no idea what Lily and James did to the boy before getting rid of him, what spells they could have worked over him. Glamours used on children can be extremely harmful if left on for prolonged periods, grafting onto the body even as the child’s magical core fights back, rendering Polyjuice lethal in the worst cases –

And Severus cannot rule that out as a possibility.

Severus expects it to be hard.

Minerva calls Harry Evans, near inaudible beneath Hagrid’s sudden booming laugh, and Severus occludes so hard he nearly gives himself whiplash.

It prevents him from giving a physical reaction to the name.

He knows where the boy has been.

Evans.

Harry James Evans with bright green eyes steps right up to the stool, too small and too thin for his age, eyes too dark and too wary as Minerva sets the Hat on his head, and if Severus were not sitting his knees would go weak.

Better be…Slytherin!

The first muggleborn, supposed muggleborn, to be sorted into Slytherin since the war. Albus does not notice, has stopped paying attention the moment the first sibilant syllable left the Hat’s mouth, had been talking with a boisterous Hagrid for the duration of Harry’s sorting.

Aurora looks to him sharply; Quirinus’ eyes go big and round. A few badgers and ravens clap, the sound faint and discordant.

The problem, Severus thinks as the boy sets the Hat on the stool and walks steadily and unbothered to the table in green and silver, is that he cannot abscond with the child.

The woman he once called sister is and always has been ruthless. The Potters have too much to lose if Harry’s existence spills out. For the moment, Charles Potter has only sneered at Harry and nudged the red head at his side. He does not recognize his elder brother. They do not look enough alike to warrant an immediate recognition.

But to draw attention to him, for Severus, noted child-hater, to take the boy in…

Sirius, he realizes, is going to be insufferable.

“I need a drink.” He says, as Charles Potter goes to Gryffindor, and Quirinus chokes on his pumpkin juice he laughs so hard.

X

              Bellatrix steps through the floo into Severus’ office with the ease of long practice, swaying her skirts out of the ash and into an artful spray as she kneels and takes his head in her hands and growls.

“Breathe, you fucking fool – “

She adores him, her twisted little halfblood. He’d – helped. As best he could. When she’d been a student, and after. She likes that she can repay that favor now.

Severus breathes, shaking and juddering as he falls in time with her sharp count, one-and-two-and-three-and-

And he lifts his head, and Bellatrix tumbles out of her mind and into his.

Ah, she thinks, and his entire psyche quails at her presence. The chaos and the ripping and the tearing still, malformed instincts frozen.

Occlumency is useful. Dead useful. It is also so horrifically dangerous for children to learn that doing so counts as an Azkaban-worthy child endangerment charge the world-over. Severus had had to teach himself as a student, between the Dark Lord’s interest in him and his own allegiances. He’d had to craft the kind of thought patterns and instincts a proper Death Eater would have, wear them into grooves into his mind so that they became the core of him, and all the detritus of his truth could be safely left to rot beneath them.

It had saved lives. So many lives. And it had damaged him irreparably in turn.

Bellatrix had found ways to ease the hurts; foremost among them is just not occluding you absolute cabbage, but having her step in and reorder his selves is just as effective. And she enjoys it. Likes digging around in people’s minds. Severus’ is always so much fun, too.

Part of what had made his constructed self so believable to the Dark Lord was his motivation for joining; to never allow another magical child to grow up as he had. Lucius had been silver-tongued and careful to coach the Dark Lord’s intentions in terms of protecting the children, ambiguous and open enough to reasonably embrace all magical children. Another part had been Severus’ deep, soul-deep, bone-deep hatred of James Potter and his ilk. That hadn’t been faked, though. That had always been real.

And here – a Potter spawn, same curls and eyes as his parents, the instinct to write him off as a bastard seed of a bastard elder, at war with the starvation and malnutrition and scarring every other part of Severus recognized as danger.

I know where he’s been, she hears echo on repeat over the memory-and-agony. With quick, nimble fingers, Bellatrix separates out the competing desires. Twists the former to suit her needs. What better way to hurt Potter than make his son a Black?

And like a thread severed, Severus collapses, the psychic tension ricocheting through his skull gone. Bellatrix tumbles out of his head just in time, and by the time she’s blinked moisture back into her eyes he’s boneless sprawled out on the rug before her.

“It feels like cheating, that it’s been so easy.”

“Finding him was the easy part.” Severus whispers, rasps. Bellatrix smiles, and pats the nearest body part. Second-nearest, actually; Severus is a prude, and it’s no fun teasing him if Narcissa isn’t there to watch.

“You know where he’s been hidden?”

“I never – I knew they were – “ He cuts himself off. He looks ill. Bellatrix could parse out the whole mess from the fragments brought back into her own mind, but she’s content to sit and wait him out.

“Petunia Evans was the single most vile creature I have ever had the displeasure of knowing.”

“Even beyond the Dark Lord?”

“I adored him.” Severus says, shaking his head, and Bellatrix’s heart flutters a little.

She had, too. Honestly. It hadn’t even had to be forced into her head. Severus agrees with her; that just makes it worse.

“Petunia is Lily’s elder sister. She – if witch burning were still common practice, she would have dragged Lily and I onto that pyre herself, and held us down and watched.”

A cold shiver traces its way down her spine.

“And they left a magical child with her.”

“Given what they told Lord Black – I suspect they thought he wasn’t.”

He looks tired and grey and sick, and Bellatrix lays herself out at his side instead of tugging him up.

“Him not being – that wouldn’t have mattered. The only thing Petunia hated more than people who were different was her darling little sister.”

“Do you want to come with me? When I kill them?”

“Save it for a Yuletime present. Perhaps I’ll have made some progress with the boy by then.” Severus whispers, and Bellatrix –

“I’m pleased.”

“That he’s been so hurt?”

Yes. That he’s so similar. That she’ll know how to help him, will be able to help him. That he’ll take the knife she’ll offer him and Narcissa’s poison and Regulus’ barbed words and Sirius’ curses and Severus’ tutoring and perhaps not enjoy it, but understand it.

“Draco is a miracle. I doubt we’d get so lucky again.” A happy child, well-adjusted and sociable, and the sort to smile brightly and ask like this, Auntie Bella?

She adores him. But he really was a miracle baby. Bellatrix is just grateful the Black in him won out over the Malfoy.

Severus wheezes out a strained laugh.

“He’s in Slytherin House.”

“Oh, Sirius is going to cry.”

“He’s presenting himself as a muggleborn.”

“Oh, Sirius is going to cry.” She repeats, horrified.

“Is it – Sev, is it as bad as it was when we were students?”

“They won’t be able to get away with killing him.” Severus says, finally.

This is not an answer.

Chapter Text

              Hogwarts is tall and beautiful, imposing and whimsical. The stone is warm, the lake deep, and the dungeons dark, and Harry would have been safer crawling back into his cupboard underneath the stairs. The beauty is not an adequate trade-off.

What is – what is is the flash of the library he catches as stone-faced Prefects lead him from the Great Hall, what is is the swish and flicker of wands over their meal, the food that magically appears, ever-filling cups and everything he never could have dreamed of.

Life here will be no harder, no more exhausting, than life in the non-magical world. Life here will be more dangerous, more explicitly dangerous, but Harry has never been safe anywhere he goes, and that does not bother him.

He listens throughout that first meal, hears the whispers of mudblood and filth and the stares and sneers and pointed shifting away.

He’s Sorted into Slytherin, House of the Dark Lord, House of ambition, House of cunning, House of – if the other Houses are to be believed – evil.

That marks him undesirable by three quarters of Hogwarts. His blood earns him the ire of the rest.

“Welcome to Slytherin.” The man says, tall and dour and dark as he stands in the center of the common room. Older students trickle past him, claiming seats and cushions and tables; the Prefects do not move, and neither do the other first years. Harry watches them carefully, one eye on the man. Snape, he’s gleaned, not from any introduction on the man’s part but by the chatter at dinner of the older students.

“We are the house of ambition and cunning. We are intelligent, we are quick, and we do not get caught. Curfew is posted on the board, where you will find any and all relevant announcements. I suggest you make a habit of checking there; I will not often make House-wide announcements. I am your Head of House, and Hogwarts’ resident Potions Master. I will be instructing you in the delicate art of potions soon enough.”

The man pauses. He doesn’t move, although his dark eyes scrutinize the lot of them intently. Weighing.

Harry doesn’t squirm when the man looks to him, but it is a near thing. The man is not sneering at him or looking down on him. Not like the other children. Yet he is their Head.

Harry squashes that thought the minute it starts to form.

“You will find that the rest of the school thinks very little of you. Students will harm you. Professors will let them. You will be punished twice as hard for the most minor of infractions and receive a fraction of the help you would in another House. I expect you to be model students for that reason. You will receive only the best grades. You will not lose points for misbehavior. You will use your manners and show the appropriate respect to your professors. Failure to abide by those rules will net you punishment not only by me, but by the school in general.”

Some of the older students smirk at Harry from behind the professor’s shoulders.

“Breakfast begins at seven. I will hand out timetables at eight. Classes will begin at eight-thirty. Should you have any questions, my office is always open. Anyone of you foolish enough to waste my time will be given detention.”

The older students chuckle as the man strides past Harry and his year mates, and out of the common room. He does not look back at them or make any attempt to look comforting.

“Boys to the left, girls to the right! Chop chop, snakelings! It’s your bedtime!”

Harry is the first to enter the first-year boys’ room. It is circular, with the same dark windows as the common room peering out into the lake set in round frames between each bed. There’s a small desk in front of each window, and trunks set at the foot of each bed – large, four-postered, curtained things like out of a museum or castle or story.

Harry’s is closest to the door on his left – he will not be sandwiched between two of these strangers who have hissed mudblood at him since he first sat at their table in the Great Hall. Good.

Hedwig vibrates quietly when he smooths a hand over her top. When he slides her lid open, she already has his nightclothes waiting on top.

He changes quickly in the attached bathroom – there are cubbies for them to put their things, but the cubbies are not secured – and has just swished his curtains shut around his bed when the other boys tumble in.

They make a show of being loud when they assume, incorrectly, that he is already asleep. Harry twitches his wand in a sharp triangular shape like that in one of his Gringotts’ books, checking the bed’s enchantments, while he listens with half an ear.

The curtains cannot be opened by anyone but him, to ensure privacy. There is a faint temperature regulation charm layered into the heavy cloth, to keep the bed comfortable. And there is a silencing charm woven into the fabric, activated and deactivated with a wand tap.

“Make an example of him.”

“Wonder if he’s got a pet.”

“Scare the freak right out of here.”

Hedwig’s not a pet, not really, but she’s close enough. And Harry goes cold and clammy all over, remembering that she is sitting outside the curtains, with those boys.

“Mudblood.”

“Filth.”

He’ll wake up early, he decides. And find someplace else to sleep tomorrow night, and every night after. Hogwarts is, after all, huge. He’s good at not being noticed. And Hedwig will like having the ability to explore without being caught.

How hard can that be?

X

He succeeds in waking earlier than his year-mates. He showers, and dresses in clean clothes Hedwig picks out for him, packs his satchel, gives Hedwig one last hug, and flees the Slytherin common room before anyone can spot him.

He traces his steps back to the Great Hall first. Confident he can make his way back there, he returns to the dungeons, and starts looking.

He finds plenty of abandoned classrooms and laboratories, some hidden alcoves perfect for quiet reading, stairs secreted away behind tapestries and suits of armor, and rooms filled with nothing but dust. He does little else than peek at his discoveries, and does not step foot past the thresholds housing them. None of the rooms are hidden enough to suit his purposes, and he’ll have to wait to decide about the alcoves until he knows how busy the halls are.

It's hard to tell time in the dungeons, with no window and a pervasive, eerie quiet. Harry heads back up to the Great Hall when he begins getting anxious over the time, and finds the Great Hall just opening for breakfast.

He’s alone at his table, although not alone in the hall, and after a brief moment of deliberation, Harry makes quick work of a morning meal; he takes fruit, and pancakes, and tea. He drops a few apples into his bag, and wraps a warm muffin in a napkin before doing the same, just in case.

The amount of food at his disposal is staggering – nearly a month on his own at the inn Griphook had recommended had normalized enough to eat, but this is so far and above even that, even for his entire House…

Harry slips out his wand and his first-year charm book after he finishes eating. Unlike his other texts, this one has a neat compendium of useful spells outside of the standard curriculum, hidden in the back appendixes. He has yet to see a clock anywhere, and he remembers a time-telling spell…

It takes him a few tries, but pale blue numbers eventually flash into existence above his wand. The numbers fade as soon as he looks away – there are older students trickling in. He tucks his wand away but keeps his book out, pretends to read it while he considers.

He watches his Housemates out of the corner of his eye as they eat, as they cast him disdainful looks and sit pointedly as far from him as they can. Older students jostle each other and cast him dark looks while laughing. He hasn’t been attacked yet. Harry doesn’t expect his luck to last; Dudley was always the most vicious when trying to rile Harry up before lashing out, and that is exactly what these students are doing.

Griphook had warned him. And Harry thinks his stuff is safe; he’s watched Hedwig snap enough mice necks to know she can and will do the same to a wrist. She must be bored in the dorms, though.

He’ll have to find a room as soon as he can.

“Mr. Evans.”

Harry blinks, and jerks his head up sharply. His Head of House is looming over him. Professor Snape. The man is holding out a square of parchment; Harry takes it quickly.

“You will not find a map on your schedule; I suggest you draw one of your own.”

“Why not?” He asks quietly. Professor Snape’s lips quirk upwards into a humorless smile.

“I tested it, my first year teaching. It proved…inadvisable. Having the youngest students consistently walking the same path day in and day out…” Professor Snape’s voice is low, does not carry. It’s a warning.

Harry nods solemnly, and the man sweeps off further down the table. He interacts with most of the children with a restrained kind of professionalism, Harry notes. He only pauses to speak to one or two other students, and those students all remain blank-faced and polite. If they need warnings of their own, they likely don’t want to alert anyone else to it.

Harry wonders if he’s muggleborn too, if that’s why he’s offered help. Something to consider, he thinks, and turns to his schedule.

X

He’s tripped four times by lunch, always by magic. If Harry did not naturally take great care to ensure his satchel was sealed properly, his things would have been stepped on and ruined by the time his first class was over.

There’s a lot of words said that he ignores; that’s easy. The general hostility toward him is harder to stomach, but he’s experienced in that. Harry mostly finds it interesting that no one gets physical.

When Charles Potter and his red-headed friend get into it with two of Harry’s Slytherin year-mates, they all go for their wand first instead of fists – Charles gets up in Crabbe’s face calling him evil and a murderer and a terrorist, apparently with total disregard for a physical retaliation.

And Charles.

They don’t look all that alike, but Charles is bright-eyed and smiling, with baby fat on his cheeks and no scars on his hands. He talks loudly of his parents and his status, and flatters the professors outrageously while preening at every mention of his epithet. It’s unfortunate that Harry has most of his classes with the first-year Gryffindors.

Harry doesn’t think he likes Charles as a person, but – it wouldn’t make sense for Charles to know about him. Kids can’t keep secrets. Dudley had blabbed about the Dursley’s treatment of Harry more often than Harry had, after all.

He spends most of his classes seated in the very back, either alone or with a rotating cast of Slytherins who all make great productions over having to sit with the filthy mudblood. One tries to tip Harry’s inkpot onto his notes. Another succeeds, or would have, if Harry did not know a charm for siphoning liquid back up. Professor McGonagall takes a point from Slytherin for that, for making a mess. Harry doesn’t think she likes him.

He stays in public places between classes. There are snickering students dodging his footsteps; he won’t give them the opportunity they are looking for.

By the time he has his last class of the day, Potions, his hands will not stop trembling.

Professor Snape is cold and sharp to all of them, but he’s methodical and clear about his expectations. He regales them with gory story after gory story of students who failed to meet his safety standards and code of conduct, and then –

Charles Potter scoffs.

“Probably just because they had you as a professor.”

There’s a girl sitting behind him, her hair a bushy brown cloud of curls. Harry watches from the corner of his eye as she stiffens in affront and horror, and then as her spine straightens.

She answers before Professor Snape can do much more than sneer.

“Actually, Professor Snape’s tract record with potions accidents is the lowest Hogwarts has ever had. He’s lowered the yearly death count by nearly eighty-five percent all on his own.”

“I’m astounded that any of you little lions bothered to read anything at all before coming to class. Ten points for the disrespect, Potter. Do not make a habit of it. Now turn to page ten in your textbooks. I have transcribed the recipe onto the chalkboard for ease of access. You have an hour.”

The sneering and muttering directed towards the girl – stuck up mudblood, know-it-all, teacher’s pet, pathetic – fade and pass when Snape seems to ignore her. Harry takes note of that, and steels himself to brave the ingredients’ cabinet.

The Slytherin sitting next to him, a pug faced girl with shiny, perfectly braided black hair, tries three times to flick an extra thorax into his cauldron. She doesn’t try very hard the first two times, and she only tries the third time when one of the Slytherin boys makes a face at her. She still doesn’t try as hard as Dudley does, or did, to hit him with a rock.

Professor Snape notices. He doesn’t say anything, though. He only steps in to berate the Gryffindors for whatever dangerous mistake they are currently in the midst of making, and that seems – strange.

Harry struggles translating over techniques he’s only ever read about into actual practice. He’s not the only one, although he is the worst among the Slytherins. He dices and crushes and minces as well as he can, and his potion turns out decent, but it’s still disheartening, and very confusing.

The techniques should be basics, shouldn’t they be? Why wouldn’t Professor Snape teach them those first?

And then he spots the curl of parchment drifting after the Professor, high enough in the air to be almost invisible amongst the fog of potions’ fumes – magically drawn straight up to the ceiling, where they naturally disperse through some convoluted filtering system.

He’s taking notes on them, Harry realizes. On what they’re struggling with, probably.

He still wishes the professors would hand out schedules or syllabi of some sort, but – he relaxes into the potion, and finishes within the time limit.

Charles Potter, he notices, produces a cauldron full of literal sludge. The red-haired boy at his side does marginally better.

The Gryffindor muggleborn girl does excellently. Up until Charles’ friend sweeps on by her desk with a too-carelessly-wide swish of his arm, and her vial tips over and shatters on the stone floor.

There’s a soft plop. Harry’s gaze flickers back to his own potion in time to see yet another bit of bug sinking down below its surface. There’s no explosion, because the potion is in a vial and off the heat, but –

He grits his teeth, and turns it in.

X

He chooses to be late to dinner and risk the halls alone for a chance to get Hedwig out of the Slytherin dorms. She scampers off into the deep dungeon as he races back up to the Great Hall. Harry had pulled the comforter and two pillows off his bed and shoved them inside the trunk. He doesn’t think he’ll get in trouble for stealing, but he’s still anxious when he sits down as far from any other student as he can and scarfs down a quick meal of roast meats, gravy, glazed carrots and potatoes. He tucks away a handful of buttermilk biscuits and another handful of chocolate cookies, and then heads up to the library.

First day and he already has homework. Very little of it makes sense; all of the homework are essays, all assigned with vague terms. Ten inches on safe brewing techniques. Twelve on organic to non-organic transfiguration. Six on charms affecting weight. Things he could perhaps do easily, if he had a background in the subject. The only one that seems reasonable is Professor Snape’s.

Harry huddles in a back corner of the library, a quill-writing guide and his potions text both propped open in front of him, and scowls.

He’s not worried about his grades. The thing about magic is that it’s so practical. He could fail his classes and still learn enough magic to protect himself, to keep himself warm and dry and comfortable and safe. He just can’t fail out, and if Hogwarts is anything like muggle school, the effort that would take would be more than the effort it would take to pass.

He needs to give his fellow Slytherins time to retaliate. To see if they’ll notice his missing trunk. To see if they’ll report him. He can give them the satisfaction of seeing him flee the dorms tonight. He’ll need to, to see if they’ll go get a professor.

He doesn’t think they will.

He’s known teachers that have assisted and helped the harassment of a student before. McGonagall might, but she doesn’t like any Slytherin. She’d punish any that went to her as much as she’d punish him, if not more. Flitwick seems spacy and excitable. Snape – Snape, he’s not sure of. But –

It’d incriminate them.

He churns out his potions essay and makes a list of appropriate charms and what they do for his charms essay. By then it’s getting closer to almost-curfew than he’d like, so he packs up and slips out to the dungeons.

The Gryffindor muggleborn girl is there, hidden in the stacks like him.

He passes her on his way out.

X

Someone had replaced the pillows and comforter on his bed.

His year-mates had shredded them, of course – soaked them in foul-smelling liquids and burnt them, torn into the curtains and ripped apart the pillows.

There shouldn’t even be feathers spilling like snow, greasy and grimy with ash and concoctions. He’d taken his pillows with him.

Harry lingers in the doorway of their room for another moment, and then turns on his heel and leaves.

Most of Slytherin is packed into the common room; they laugh at his back as he leaves.

Hedwig finds him two corridors later, and nips and tugs at the bottom of his school robe until he follows.

They spend the rest of the week dipping in and out of abandoned rooms. Harry sneaks into the dorms to shower at lunch, keeps his bag in the stall with him and his wand at the ready. He brushes his teeth in the bathroom nearest the Great Hall. Hedwig explores, and shows him secret nooks and crannies every night after dinner. They don’t find a permanent place to settle, but they are slowly pushing into the deeper, darker, less-traveled portions of the dungeons, and Harry is hopeful.

He prefers his nights like this, wrapped up in the stolen comforter on cold stone with Hedwig cuddled up next to him. It is familiar, and comforting, and a relief to know that he is not alone.

So – days become weeks become two, and midway through his third week at Hogwarts, just when he has finally settled into a routine, Hedwig finds something.

X

“This is a fireplace.” Harry informs her. She rattles violently at him.

It’s kind of ugly, and…very out of place. They are in the dungeons, and there’s no chimney. No way to funnel the smoke out.

The room it is in has been abandoned for a very long time – moldering wood and dust thick enough that when he drags his feet he makes mounds clutter its corners – probably thanks to how weird it is. It’s carved of once-white stone, and features two great, massive serpents twisting around the mantle and into the fireplace’s opening, which is also…fanged.

“If you can eat me, that can eat me. You’re going to get me eaten.”

Hedwig stomps her metal corners on the dusty stone beneath them, and then lunges forward and slams into his legs. Harry is not surprised to find himself tumbling over the fangs and into the mouth of the fireplace. He is surprised when Hedwig joins him – after a disturbingly high jump over the teeth – and when the mouth does not promptly snap shut.

“Do you just…want me to sleep in here?” Harry asks curiously, because he is kind of hidden from the door. He knows a restoration charm that can probably cover the tracks they made in the dust. And then no one would know he was here.

But – it is a very obvious hiding place. And Hedwig has shiny bits of metal on her; they might glint and give them away.

Hedwig shakes herself violently at him, and then…bumps into a wall. Harry frowns at her and opens his mouth to ask if she’s okay, but then there’s a cough.

There’s the grinding sound of stone moving against stone. And then a bright green eye opens up above Hedwig.

Harry does not scream, because screaming has never helped him before, but he does grab his wand and the butter knife he keeps secreted away in his sock, except –

“Hello, child.” The voice is soft, whispery and sibilant.

“Who’re you?” He asks. Hedwig is vibrating like she does when she’s excited, not like she does when she’s growling. So. Maybe Hedwig has already met this…eye.

“You speak!”

“Am I not supposed to?”

There is a very long pause, and then more grinding and a second eye opens.

“I open only for Speakers, child, and there has not been a Speaker in a very long time.”

Open.

Harry stares at those eyes for one long, long moment, and then swings his gaze to Hedwig.

“You found a secret room.” He says. She gives a little jump.

She found a secret room, he thinks again, and cannot help the smile pulling at his lips.

“Can we – we’re looking for a place to stay.” He says.

“Are there not dormitories for students like yourself?” The eyes ask. Harry shakes his head.

“They think I’m a muggleborn. So they want to hurt me. They bother me less if I stay out of the dorms anyway, and also I think Hedwig is probably technically illegal to have and I don’t want to lose her.”

“Pah. Illegal. As if magic would ever bow to wizard law. You will find the sanctuary you seek beyond me, child. I ask only that you stop and chat, every once in a while.”

It must be lonely, he thinks, if it hasn’t met a – a Speaker, whatever that is – is so long. And it’s only asking for a chat.

“If you don’t tell anybody we’re here.”

There’s a grinding sound, different from the first. A rumble. Like laughter, Harry thinks.

“Very well, child.” It says, and then the back wall of the fireplace slides soundlessly out of the way.

X

There’s a steep staircase behind the fireplace, crunched in close and tight. And the top is a trapdoor that swings open when Harry gets near it – which is nice, because he’s fumbling around in the dark at that point, because there aren’t any lights on the staircase – and out he pops into a library.

A study, actually, he thinks. Because it’s beautiful.

Three walls are solid stone. Two are completely covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the kind with a rolling ladder to reach the very top shelves. The third features a fireplace, much less ornate and spooky than the one with the secret passage, in which a merry fire springs to life when Harry closes the trap door after Hedwig. It is bracketed by shelves filled with trinkets. There’s two plush couches and an end table arranged around a rug in front of the fire, a big, heavy wooden desk and comfortable chair backed against the fourth wall – which is covered completely in heavy velvet drapes – and the rest of the room is cluttered with a long rectangular table and a smaller round one and more bookshelves.

When he pulls a thick silver rope hanging near the corner, the velvet drapes pull back to reveal a wall entirely made of windows, looking out into the depths of the Black Lake. Bright orbs of soft white or buttery-yellow light snap into existence, hanging artfully around metal chandeliers.

“Wow.” Harry breathes, and then he notices that all the bookshelves are packed and that there are more books piled on all the flat surfaces including the ladders and his second wow is much higher pitched.

There’s a pop, and Harry jumps as a small, crooked-looking creature appears in the middle of the room. Hedwig ignores it, still nosing around the corners, so Harry presses a hand to his chest and tries to calm his racing heart.

“…Hi?”

The creature peers at him sharply with big, bulbous eyes, and two bat-like ears flutter.

“You is being Slytherin.”

The snakes, Harry realizes, and his eyes get big.

“Only a little.” He says. The creature gives a sharp nod.

“Then Willow be allowing little Slytherin into the Study, if little Slytherin be promising not to ruin anything.”

“You’re not – you’re not gonna tell on me?”

The creature’s lips lift in a sneer, but its eyes – gentle. It scurries forward and takes Harry’s hand in its own.

“Willow be taking care of Slytherin, not Hogwarts. Hogwarts being lucky Willow not be burning it to the ground after it be chasing out Master Slytherin.”

The last comes out in a mutter and a baleful look at the floor beneath them. Harry looks at the old, wrinkled hand holding his and squeezes gently.

“I’ll take care of it. Do you – do you mind if I stay here, though?”

“The Study be for whatever little Slytherin needs.” Willow says, and everything within Harry leaps for joy. This is permission, said so dismissively that –

Hedwig doesn’t mind Willow’s presence. Otherwise Harry would be more cautious.

“Can I – can I ask what you are?”

Willow’s face is alien, odd and unlike anything Harry has ever seen, but he recognizes the look that sweeps over it as sorrow.

“Master Slytherin hid his little ones too well, if little Slytherin not be knowing. Willow is being a House Elf, little Slytherin. Wes be making pacts with wizard families, and taking care of each others.”

Its answer strikes him like a punch to the gut.

“Now, little Slytherin not be telling other wizards that. Most families be breaking their pacts, and wes be stuck with them. But Slytherin not be, or Willow be having permission to kill them.”

“Hogwarts has House Elves?” He asks, shakily.

Willow tells him about the cooking, and the cleaning. All the hundred odd things that are done every day, every hour, without the castle’s humans any the wiser.

Hogwarts, she tells him, is better than most other places, and Harry has spent his entire life in a boot cupboard, he knows exactly what that look in her eye means, and –

“How do I fix it?” He asks.

She runs a finger over his cheek, and smiles at him.

“Willow is not being in a bad place. Little Slytherin not breaking our pact.”

“No. I – no, I won’t, but the others. Whose pacts are already broken.”

Willow tilts her head at him. Flashes the barest bit of fang in her smile, and gestures to the bookshelves around them.

“Master Slytherin be looking. Maybe little Slytherin be finding. Willow just be knowing the pacts were written.” She stresses the last word oddly, and Harry’s heart is hammering in his chest as he stares at her, tries to work out what she’s saying, and then there’s a nudge at his leg and he looks down to find Hedwig there, a book balanced carefully on her top.

Runes.

It’s a third year elective. He’s hardly even seen reference to the topic in the studying he’s done so far, just knows that you need arithmancy to use runes properly, but –

But it’s something.

A sharp sound startles him out of his thoughts; his head snaps up. The books and scrolls and parchments that had been cluttered all over the study’s desk are floating, arranging themselves neatly on the nearest clear table. In their place sits a meal.

“Little Slytherin is having school, and his health to worry about first.” She says, and Hedwig rattles in agreement.

Harry breathes past the burn in his eyes, and nods.

X

“Why are you even reading that?”

The Gryffindor muggleborn – he’s not sure of her first name, if he heard it at the sorting it did not stick, but he’s heard Granger sneered enough times in the halls to at least know that – is standing over him, lips pursed and brows knit. He stares at her blankly for a moment, hands tight on the book in his hands, and she gestures towards the modest stack sitting on his desk.

Their spines are clearly legible, he realizes. She can see what it is he’s researching.

And it isn’t a concern. He’s not doing anything suspicious or breaking any rules. All of the books in front of him are non-restricted and all of them from the library proper. The topic is only runes, basic primers and dictionaries and the like.

But Harry has a very long and very eclectic list of topics to research and things to learn. And Granger, at least, is observant enough to notice what he is researching and question it.

A blessing. She’ll be the first. But she won’t be the last.

“We don’t have any classes that deal with Runes, and we won’t until third year.” Granger prompts, when Harry’s silence stretches.

“It’s useful.” He says, after another heartbeat, but by this point she’s drawn attention to them, and that is something Harry cannot afford. He closes the book he is reading and scoops up his pile, and slips past her without looking at her again.

He doesn’t check any of the books out, just puts them back and vanishes, as quickly as he can, into the bowels of the castle.

X

Harry is interested, primarily, in magic that does not necessitate a wand. Things that he can do, use, make – things that he can master and are not barred by the underage wizardry law. Things that will help him.

It does not take him long to discover the wide, varied, and incredible abilities of potions.

He sits on the knowledge for another week before coming to a conclusion, and he doesn’t like it, but he is also aware that his paranoia and fear will cripple him if he does not take this step. It helps that Hedwig and Willow seem to agree with his conclusion, and it is their support that pushes his feet towards Professor Snape’s desk after Potions and pins him there in place while other students stream out.

Even Slytherins do not enjoy Potions; Snape is not the sort of teacher who believes in encouragement, and most Slytherins come from privileged backgrounds. He may favor them in points, but he does not favor them merely for their riches or birth or blood, and spoiled children cannot handle that gracefully.

So; they do not linger. Most likely assume Harry is in trouble – Snape chooses to hold those Slytherins he wishes to lecture after class, rather than reem them out publicly like he does the Gryffindors.

Snape watches him, unblinking and intent, while Harry waits until the classroom door thumps shut behind the last of his classmates.

And then he quirks an eyebrow.

It’s dangerous, to be so put at ease by the man, but –

He’s the only professor in the school that Harry likes, besides Professor Sprout, and she’s – not particularly observant. He likes her despite her ignorance.

“I found a potion in a book in the library that I had a question about.” Harry says quietly. Snape nods, slowly.

“And what potion is this?”

Harry slides the bit of parchment he’d copied the recipe onto over immediately. Snape takes it, and unrolls it, and then goes still.

It’s – interesting. To see him recognize the potion. Harry thinks he recognizes its purpose, too, and what that means for Harry himself, because Snape closes his eyes and sighs and looks old for a heartbeat, for two, for three –

And then he opens his eyes and scowls at Harry.

“You will have detention with me every Thursday evening.”

“Sir?”

“I do not allow students to brew on their own. They kill themselves, and it goes on my record. I am not so ignorant as to recognize when a student is stubborn – or desperate – enough to ignore my rules, Mr. Evans.”

His body flushes hot, and then cold, and Harry feels a little bit dizzy with shockawerelieffear. He swallows, hard, and folds his fingers together in front of him and tries not to fidget.

“I – “

“Glassglow-Rumine Nutrient Potions were developed with a particularly unsettling bit of time magic woven into the brew itself. Morons have and quite often do starve themselves to death on them. There is a reason it is a restricted potion, Mr. Evans. They are unsafe without a supplementary potions regime to bolster vitamin and mineral deficiencies, stimulate appetite, and ease the pain of retroactive growth spurts, among other things. The only book with this particular recipe in it, in the entirety of Hogwarts’ collection, is filled with other similarly dangerous brews for similarly deadly, obscure reasons.”

His Head of House’s eyes are dark and intense, as they scrutinize him.

“I will not allow you to brew these alone.”

Harry bursts into tears.

Chapter Text

              “I heard you have a problem student, Severus.” Quirinus says quietly. Severus glances up from the research paper he’s been scowling at the past hour, and studies his colleague. Aurora, on Quirinus’ other side, leans forward to peer over his shoulder, Cheshire-grin in place and head propped up on a fist.

“Not the sort of problem others would assume.” He answers, voice just as low as Quirinus’, and some of the smugness in Aurora’s expression fades even as Quirinus’ expression tightens.

“Will you need assistance?” Quirinus asks. Severus sighs, and leans back in his chair.

“Not at the moment. But your offer is appreciated Quirinus, and I will let you know when your aid is viable.”

“Don’t count me out, Severus.” Aurora adds, and Severus allows a brief smile to flicker across his face.

He had not expected to make allies, let alone friends, when he had been shunted off to Hogwarts – but Quirinus’ dry sense of humor and barely-bottled rage was akin to Severus’ own, and Aurora had a wit about her than Severus adored; and both were forty-five percent less likely to try and kill him than the Blacks were.

“There is a scheme afoot, never you mind.” He says. It is too much information to give out to others, but also less than nothing to anyone unfamiliar with the topic.

Aurora and Quirinus are Severus’ go-to contacts when something is wrong in the homelife of a student, and vice versa; they plot together on how best to assist, protect, or remove children. To say a scheme is afoot means there is someplace for the child to go; to be speaking of a muggleborn indicates something much deeper at play.

But they will keep his confidence, and he will keep theirs. The rest of the faculty has proven time and time again that they care not enough or are too ignorant to properly protect the students; they three have only each other to rely on.

“Good. I’ve concerns about the Longbottom boy.” Quirinus mutters. Severus sneers a little on reflex, but doesn’t argue.

“Oh, don’t make that face, Severus. We’ll handle it, you won’t have to do a thing.” Aurora teases.

“And for that I thank you.”

“Another grudge?”

“His grandmother should not have been allowed to care for a potted herb, let alone a child.” He deadpans back, and bodily turns his attention back to the meal he had been mostly ignoring prior.

“You were friends with his parents?”

“Friends is a strong word.”

Alice had been Lily’s friend, first and foremost – but she’d understood what the reality of Slytherin House meant during their Hogwarts years in a way Lily had never tried to. And Frank had never had any qualms about slapping down bullies – even if they were targeting a Slytherin.

They both deserved better than they’d gotten. Then what had been done to one of the boys they had called nephew so adoringly.

“One of these days, Severus…”

“I have friends.” He says, offended. Aurora gives him a very pointed, very bland look. Quirinus hunches his shoulders to hide his laughter.

“I hate both of you.” He says. Quirinus finally breaks, his laughter loud enough to startle students, and Severus rises and stalks from the table before he has to suffer any further indignity.

X

Harry can’t afford to avoid the library entirely. He can vary his hours and find increasingly dusty places to hide, but at a certain point the danger of isolation outweighs the benefits; he has to sit somewhere at least semi-public, lest an older student corner him in the stacks and make him regret it.

Meaning:

Granger slides into the seat across the table from him, and gently sets her own tower of books down just far enough away from him that he can’t reach it – can’t topple it on her.

Harry has two books open in front of him, a muggle notebook tucked delicately between them and a roll of parchment lined up neatly on the notebooks top, to better disguise it from anyone walking by. His housemates despise him generally for his dirty blood, but nothing aggravates them more than seeing him with blatantly muggle products, as he has learned firsthand.

But parchment just isn’t enough, not for – this.

“What spell is that?” Granger asks. To her credit, she keeps her voice down. It’s early in the morning. The only other students are a smattering of exhausted Ravenclaws and a handful of panicked Gryffindors trying to finish their homework before class. She isn’t drawing any attention – yet.

And, again, she noticed. His wand is tucked up his sleeve, and the spell itself doesn’t require much more than pointing and visualizing.

“It copies text out. So I can go over it later, and don’t need the book again.” He answers, a little stiffly, and shifts his set up just enough that she can see his notebook; the blocks of printed text and his annotations beside them, title, author, page number.

“Does it hurt the book?” She asks, eyes wide. Harry gives the slightest shake of his head and shifts his things back into place. Her lips twitch. She continues staring at him, unnervingly intense and unblinking, until Harry huffs out a sharp breath and picks up his quill. He scribbles the incantation on the corner of the page he is working on, carefully tears it off, and holds it out. She looks like she wants to lunge forward, but she refrains from snatching it out of his hand quite so viciously.

It's a fair trade; she leaves him alone the rest of the morning.

X

“Much like baking, potions require a particularly stringent adherence to the recipe, and a particularly keen intuition for when to stray.”

This is not news to Harry; Professor Snape had said some variant of the same during their first class. It is only here, now, in his assigned detentions, however, that the professor expands upon those general rules.

“Most wizards do not consciously control their magic – it is why we have wands and other foci. We trick ourselves into thinking magic will work in a particular way if we only wave a special stick in a particular pattern, and it works. It is perfectly possible to create passable potions without the conscious control of one’s power – but with it, one is capable of exponentially increasing the effectiveness, capabilities, or shelf-life of their brews. Even the simplest of concoctions can be rendered powerful by someone who knows what they are doing.”

They’re not in the classroom. Instead, Harry’s Head of House had taken him to his own private lab. There is a long wooden table in the middle of the room, and Harry stands to one side of it, stretched up on his toes so that he can see better, while Snape stands unnervingly still across from him.

There are a variety of ingredients arrayed out between them. Not for the nutrient potion Harry wants to make, but for some of the other potions he will need to take with it – Professor Snape says that these other potions are better to teach techniques with, and that for safety reasons, he necessarily must have some of these done before they can continue to the actual reason Harry is here.

Harry…believes him. He’s not quite sure what to do with that.

They’ve already gone over ingredient selection; despite what many witches and wizards believe, quality only matters for particularly finnicky ingredients or potions, and Professor Snape has been diligent in pointing out which those are.

“Will I have to do that?”

“For the nutrient potion, yes. We will build up to it. You will be doing exercises while we prepare these other potions. If you continue to have trouble, meditating on one’s own is a helpful tool, and is a foundational requirement for many other branches of wandless magic.”

Harry twitches, but only a little. He doesn’t like that his interest has been pegged so cleanly – but he’s beginning to suspect Snape knows from experience, and not mere nosiness, which…helps a little.

“Where do we start?”

“At the boring part.” Snape says dryly, and finally moves, bending down to pull something out from beneath the table.

He sets a series of palm-sized metal bowls on the table. They have seen heavy use, all of them scratched and dull, but there are no dents and each of them is perfectly identical.

“If you were experimenting, I would be less stringent about preparation, but it is easiest and most effective to prepare one’s ingredients – all of them – before beginning the potion itself. This is, of course, a malleable rule – where you have ingredients that require immediate use, or whose properties change after preparation. This prevents problems with timing and overboiling during the brewing process.”

He pulls out a scale as he talks, and a set of weights too. Harry chews on his bottom lip and watches carefully as a set of knives are laid out.

“You don’t use a cutting board?” He asks. Snape shakes his head immediately.

“Wood often has magical properties capable of contaminating ingredients, or potions. Most brewing is done with other material – metals, crystals, stone and the like. Potions that require wooden equipment are often either pseudo-potions for ritual use or for some form of fertility.”

“But the table is wooden.”

“You will notice no nick marks or stains on the surface; when you touch it, you will not feel grain. It is coated and treated so as to render it useful for our purposes.”

Harry gives the man an unimpressed look; Snape’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t smile or elaborate.

“What about plastic?”

“Manufactured material interacts poorly with magic, as a rule. I have never been interested in that particular field of study. I am sure the library will have something for you.”

Snape’s not a particularly patient man, but the only indication that Harry can pick out is the dryness of his tone. He nods slowly, and looks back to the ingredients.

“Now – when preparing ingredients, read the recipe. Read it again. If the recipe calls for eighteen grams of crushed doxie eggs, you will measure out eighteen grams of crushed doxie eggs. If the recipe calls for eighteen grams of doxie eggs, crushed, you will measure out eighteen grams of doxie eggs, and then crush them. The difference could result in your death.”

Harry doesn’t expect to make a lot of progress today; he nods, and puzzles over the recipe requirements with the professor until their time is finished.

They’ll be preparing three different types of potions, first. One to stimulate the appetite, one to provide the body with necessary minerals and vitamins the nutrient potion will drain, and one to strengthen the bones. The first two are capable of killing if taken incorrectly, and the third can lead to a particularly horrifying magical bone disease wherein bones will thicken and mutate and eventually shear straight out of the body, if taken improperly. Despite the risks in consuming them, however, each is relatively simple to brew. Harry will be able to put the ingredients and potions in statis between detentions without adverse effect, and once finished the appetite stimulant will have sufficient time to age while he and Professor Snape move on to more complicated things.

He leaves – satisfied.

And relieved.

X

He gets caught on the way back from Astronomy late one night, perhaps early one morning. It’s the two Dudley-sized boys that hold him down, Crabbe and Goyle, and the blonde girl, Greengrass, that flicks her wand at him. It’s the first time anyone has gotten physical with him since his arrival, and it isn’t the first curse he’s endured but it is the first to leave lasting consequences; she breaks his arm and his leg, the boys insult him, and they sweep off, leaving him in an agonized little heap on the corridor floor.

He's had broken bones before, but never more than one at a time, and it is all he can do to breathe through the pain and not scream.

He’s still lying there when Professor Sinistra turns the corner and trips right over him. The impact whites his vision out and leaves his ears ringing. He’s not sure if he makes noise, but by the time the world sets itself back to rights around him, he’s – elsewhere.

Lying on a bed. The infirmary, he assumes.

“ – class tomorrow, and the next night. Or tonight, I suppose.” He does not recognize this voice. A woman, she sounds groggy.

“I will inform his Head of House.” Professor Sinistra responds. Harry, hesitantly, cracks an eye open. His glasses have been removed; his professor is a tall, willowy shape at the foot of his bed. The other woman is a shorter, rounder blur.

“And where are the others?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who did he fight?” The first woman clarifies, impatient and exasperated, and Harry can’t see well but Professor Sinistra’s body language goes so tense even he can see it.

“I bring you a first-year student left broken after an attack and your first question is where his victims are?” Professor Sinistra’s outrage is a quiet thing, a furious thing. Even spoken in a hiss, Harry has to strain to hear her.

“Oh – no, Aurora, that wasn’t what I meant – “

The blobs shift, a little. Harry doesn’t close his eyes, doesn’t feign unconsciousness, and the other woman’s voice cuts off sharply. The ensuing silence is – well.

She gives him a potion that he does not touch until Professor Sinistra quietly explains what it is, and Harry does not recall falling asleep but when he wakes, his limbs ache but are whole again. The other woman – Madam Pomfrey – does not meet his eyes as she checks on him.

He does not return to the infirmary.

X

“Thank you.”

Willow’s ears flutter in acknowledgement, but she doesn’t say anything, just flicks her fingers at him. Harry puts his quill away and takes care with the books and scrolls he has out, and once he’s cleared off the desk, Willow deposits a tray in their place.

“Little Slytherin be needing exercise, too.”

“I run.”

“You is not getting healthy running from bullies.” She scolds.

“Hedwig and I play chase!”

“Hedwig is being a trunk.”

Hedwig wiggles a little bit in acknowledgement, and Harry does his best impression of her as he stares at the house elf.

Willow is careful for him – not of him, but for him. She announces herself, and sets clear, reasonable rules for his staying in the study, and she talks to him – actually talks to him, helps him if he’s stuck and offers advice and chats with Hedwig and –

Instead of lecturing him, she provides him with books.

She snaps her fingers, and a trio of worn, slim books appear atop his own stack.

“These is being old, so little Slytherin being careful. Healthy wizards be having strong magic – is being prepared to win a fight.”

She hasn’t outright said she wants him to hurt the other students, but she’s implied it, even if she approves of his plan to just lay low. If he asked, he’s sure she’d have a whole list of barely-not-unforgiveable curses ready to go.

“Even if I wanted to, I don’t have a place to exercise.” He points out. Hogwarts has a sports team – Quidditch. Harry’s not on the team, wouldn’t be allowed on it even if he weren’t a first-year – mudbloods don’t get to represent Slytherin House – but only quidditch teams are allowed on the pitch. Hogwarts has grounds, but running around by himself wholly visible to the entirety of the castle would be a death sentence.

“Willow be knowing a place, once little Slytherin be learning the theory.” She says, no-nonsense. Hedwig clatters.

“Hedwig is being invited too.” Willow adds, running a hand over Hedwig’s top, and Harry ducks his head to hide his smile.

X

Charles Potter and his friend Ron Weasley call Granger a litany of mean names while leaving Charms, and she runs away in tears.

The criticisms aren’t wrong – but they aren’t fair either, and neither boy seems to realize the laughter and sneering that backs up their insults is because of her blood rather than her personality. Harry’s fascinated by this ignorance; can’t imagine how the boys could afford it, Weasley especially given his family’s famously impoverished background.

He suspects Charles, at least, is only acting out. All through class, and before, and after – students come up to him and congratulate him on killing the Dark Lord. Thank him. And Charles – Charles grows increasingly furious over it.

Harry thinks he understands, and he sympathizes with it. The flowery joy the rest of the student body – and even teachers – seem to have grates on his nerves as well.

Halloween is the anniversary of the day one would-be uncle betrayed their entire family, sought to kill them, offer them up as sacrifice to a Dark Lord so terrible people fear to speak his name. Halloween is the anniversary of the day another would-be uncle was murdered defending them. Saving them.

Remus Lupin died for them, died for him, and days later his family abandoned him, cut him out of their lives and pretended he never existed.

Remus Lupin may have been the only person to have ever wanted Harry; he won’t celebrate the man’s death.

The Slytherins, Willow tells him, practiced memorializing their dead. She guides him patiently through building a shrine that night, while the rest of the school feasts. Copying Remus’ photo from his book, and preserving it between glass panes pressed with forget-me-nots and poppies and obscurus xiphium. Lighting candles.

He wishes he could still pretend – that his family was dead, that they ever could have wanted him. It would have been a beautiful ceremony for them, for all he has lost.

Instead he sings a hymn with Willow, voice stilted and off-key, and shares a simple meal with a dead man.

X

There’s a troll in the dungeons – thought you ought to know.

Evans isn’t in the fucking Hall.

Quirinus isn’t quite evil enough to make up such a severe threat where there isn’t one; Severus lurches to his feet as the students panic, skimming over his snakes and noting any other absences – none, thank fucking Merlin – and bodily drags Aurora over to them.

Albus, the fucking moron he is, sends them back to their dormitories. Ponoma and Poppy are herding the Hufflepuffs; Severus shoots a glare fit to murder at the Headmaster, but doesn’t argue. There’s no point, and he has a snake missing.

He ignores Quirinus squirming away as children and teachers stream out of the Hall, instead casting shield charms over the blob of students behind him and preparing to cast an only-legal-because-the-Ministry-doesn’t-know-about-it spell on short notice; Aurora casts detecting spells and takes up the rear.

Severus is the first to arrive in the dorm, to an empty common room. He flashes down the hall to Evans’ room, and begins internally screaming when he finds no boy there – no trunk, either, just a bed slashed and cursed to ruin, mudblood filth glittering nastily on the headboard. On one hand – maybe the idiot boy’s absence is a good thing. On the other –

He threatens to kill any student who leaves the common room, drags Aurora out, seals the door shut and layers alert charms if his wayward snake, for whatever reason, stumbles back.

“Harry Evans is missing.” He says flatly, once they are alone, and the vague look of outrage on Aurora’s face vanishes.

“Your problem student?”

“I don’t believe he’s been staying in the dorm to begin with, and he wasn’t at the Feast.”

“Which means?”

Which means –

“He’s holed up in some dusty little corner without any clue there’s a troll hunting the school.”

“Fuck.”

X

“I should kill you.” Severus hisses, under his breath, an hour later. The troll lies dead amidst broken toilets and stalls and sinks. The first-year Gryffindor girl, Granger, is on her way to the hospital wing, Poppy and Minerva at her side.

The girl will live, won’t even lose a limb. The troll had only crushed her wand arm in its hand, stepped on her leg after it had thrown her – her bones had been pulverized into too many fragments to vanish and regrow. She’ll have to heal the long way – long way for wizards, anyway – but will not suffer lasting damage.

She’d been hiding from bullies. Same as Evans is doing.

“Mmm. Yes. I had thought all students were in the Great Hall. I’ll need to tweak my tracking spell.” Quirinus murmurs back, almost apologetically, and nudges the troll’s corpse with his foot.

Albus should be dealing with the fucking thing – but he’s busy dragging the Potter brat and his Weasley friend back to the Gryffindor dorms; the children had run in just as Severus and Quirinus brought the beast down, apparently hunting it for fun or some such bullshit – Severus didn’t believe the cover story of going to warn Granger.

Evans has not been found. With no small amount of trepidation, Severus casts a diagnostic spell at the troll’s body, and nearly wilts in relief when no human child appears in its digestive system. Quirinus looks at him oddly, and Severus grits his teeth.

“One of my snakes is still missing.”

“Oh. Oh, Severus, I apologize.” Now the fucker looks contrite.

“He’s left the dorms – not safe for him, I suspect. Which means he’s hiding somewhere in the castle on a permanent basis.”

“You’ll have to summon him to you, then. A patronus, perhaps? No need to waste the time and energy looking for him if he is capable of coming to you.”

“I should kill you.” Severus repeats, despairs.

“If it makes you feel any better –“

“It won’t.”

“- I was very successful tonight! One more round, I think, and I’ll be done.”

“With what?”

“Oh, Albus is hiding the Philosopher’s Stone on the third floor.” Quirinus says blithely, and –

Well.

Severus can feel his face contorting in horror.

It isn’t that he dislikes alchemy – it’s a powerful branch of magic deeply akin to potions, and he’s done great work melding the two and borrowing alchemical principles in his own studies, even if he never sought a mastery in the topic.

But Flamel.

Flamel.

Flamel is a fucking asshole. The most pretentious bastard Severus has ever had the displeasure of meeting and he served the Dark Lord. He shared a fucking dormitory with Lucius Malfoy. He has to call Sirius fucking Black a friend now and –

“I presume you will dispose of it when you’re done.”

“Oh, of course, of course!”

“Do let me know if you need any assistance.”

Quirinus looks touched. He’ll frame the Defense professor, Severus suspects – a laughably easy task, especially given the woman’s suspicious nature. She, too, is likely after the Stone – a French hit wizard with a well-developed history in alchemy, if he recalls correctly. Nothing that would require Severus’ expertise – but fucking over Flamel and Dumbledore is just too wonderful a prospect to pass up.

Narcissa had told him he needed a hobby.

He flicks his wand, muttering the incantation under his breath, and Quirinus proceeds to choke on air as his patronus materializes.

It’s an unsettling thing; patroni may not be sentient in a way wizards understand but they do carry some form of intelligence – and while a spider patroni is not exactly unusual, his widow’s behavior has always been particularly aggressive.

She holds herself wholly still, staring with all eight of her beady eyes into Quirinus’ soul. She is very good at it; Severus frequently used her to scare Regulus into something approximating socially acceptable conduct.

“Find Harry Evans. Tell him to report to my office at dawn. Then to Aurora, if you would, and let her know the matter has been resolved.”

Her gaze flicks to him, and then she scuttles off.

X

Dawn sees Harry creeping into Professor Snape’s office on silent feet. The man is already sat at his desk, preparing two cups of tea. He ignores Harry’s presence, and Harry sidles into the empty seat across from Professor Snape carefully.

“I trust my patronus found you?”

It had scared him half-to-death. If Willow hadn’t been there –

Hedwig had tried to eat it, only for it to vanish.

“What was it?” Harry asks softly.

“A patronus is a manifestation of positive emotion – love, joy, safety, comfort. They were designed to fight and protect against a particular subspecies of magical creature – Dementors, Lethifolds and the like – but can be sent as messengers if one knows how to do it.”

“Are they all spiders?”

“No, their form changes. Some argue they represent a wizard’s good memories, others say they represent a wizard’s soul. They are something like a muggle spirit animal, I suppose.” Professor Snape adds the last slowly, expression twisted in distaste. Harry nods slowly.

“Last night, during the Halloween Feast, a troll was let loose in the castle. It nearly killed one student caught hiding from her classmates. As you can imagine, I found you missing when I performed a headcount of my House.”

Harry’s face drains of color.

The door behind him is too far away – but there’s no wand in Professor Snape’s hands. He has, in fact, folded his fingers around his teacup, his expression calm.

“I cannot fault you for leaving the dorms; I saw what your yearmates have done to your bed. I cannot step in overmuch into House politics – and yes, their actions constitute politics and have since Headmaster Phineas Black’s time by virtue of being behind closed doors. Our illustrious Headmaster has not seen fit to change those mandates.”

Harry can’t breathe. Is he really –

“I will not require you tell me where you are sleeping, but I will require some form of inspection to ensure it is properly safe and appropriate; that you establish some form of communication with me in the event of another emergency like that of last night; and that you confirm with you that you are, in fact, eating your meals there as I have not seen you at dinner in quite a while; and that you will arrange for additional weekly meetings with me, so that should any issue crop up we will be able to resolve it.”

“Why?” Harry asks, immediate and sharp. Professor Snape’s shoulders shift into an elegant shrug, but his eyes are dark.

“I have arranged for similar measures to be taken by other students in the past – both during my tenure as a professor, and as a student here.”

The same weight that lingered in Professor Snape’s eyes when he gave Harry his timetable ladens his voice; this is a confession as much as an explanation. Harry reaches for the teacup set before him carefully, warily, and takes it in his hands.

They sit in silence for a moment. The teacup – or at least Professor Snape’s – does not seem to empty; the man has drained his twice over if Harry is estimating its volume correctly by the time he speaks.

“Is Slytherin House really that bad?” Harry asks. The Professor snorts.

“Gryffindor prefers public humiliation. The dormitories may be safe but the common rooms are decidedly not; and to not spend as much time as feasible within the common room is a show of cowardice that marks one as an even greater target. Hufflepuff prefers shaming the weakest members of their house, ostracizing them until they do as they are told and conform.”

“And Ravenclaw?” He asks slowly. Wonders how Professor Snape knows this; wonders if the students he’s helped have always been Slytherin, or perhaps were from other Houses.

“Ravenclaw draws the sort of children that never learn to disguise their glee at causing harm to others. Slytherin House, at least, teaches its children to act in socially acceptable manners.”

The Dudleys of the world versus the Petunias, then.

“Why is Hogwarts so miserable?” He asks, after a moment. Takes a sip of his tea as Professor Snape barks out a laugh akin to the sharp edges of shattered glass.

“The Wizarding World ascribes to the notion that children must pay for the sins of the parent, Mr. Evans. You are caught in the crossfire between nearly a century of political conflict, which has spilled over into actual warfare at least twice. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and the Wizarding World does so abhor change.”

Professor Snape reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a bit of parchment; a wave of his hand has a quill dancing over from some other end of the room, already wet with ink, and he scribbles something down.

“Here is a list of books detailing the Wizarding World’s most recent sociopolitical history. Read them together; quality literature is not often published anymore, and these authors are muggleborn besides. They were able to cover a facet of the conflict each; but not the whole picture. It will be a good critical thinking exercise, even if the topic should bore you.”

This is more than Harry had expected; he takes the list carefully, almost reverently.

“Now – how do you propose we keep in touch, Mr. Evans?”

He doesn’t want to take Professor Snape to the study. Doesn’t think he could, even if he wanted to – not just because Hedwig would eat him but because the Fireplace Snake only answers to parseltongue and Harry’s not supposed to use it around other people. But.

“Maybe Willow can help.” He says cautiously.

“Who is Willow?”

“I is being Willow.”

Professor Snape jumps in his seat, the sudden motion jerking his teacup, and a gout of tea sprays out of it – and with a precise snap of fingers, the tea sweeps back into the cup.

Willow stares at the man, unimpressed, and Harry tries to keep breathing.

“You.”

Professor Snape does not sound angry, not exactly. But there is something like a sneer playing at the edges of his mouth, one that Willow returns in kind.

“Mister Snake.” She enunciates each word intentionally, coolly.

“Mr. Evans has volunteered you to inspect his quarters, verify that he has satisfactory access and opportunity to eat appropriate meals, and to assist in emergency communications between the two of us should an event like that of last night occur again.” Professor Snape says flatly, immediately. Willow sniffs at him, and reaches out and lays a hand gently on Harry’s shoulder.

“Willow be willing.” She sounds like she is doing Professor Snape a great favor that is far beneath her; he rolls his eyes at her.

“Your aid is appreciated.” Professor Snape says anyway, despite his attitude, despite hers, and Harry stares. Willow catches his eye and scowls.

“This be the wizard in charge of Master Slytheirn’s legacy.”

“This wizard is doing an admirable job given his descendants saw fit to throw their family’s reputation in the mud.”

“This wizard is an idiot and that fool boy is not being Slytherin.” Willow barks back, and they go back to eyeing each other suspiciously.

“Um. Do…?”

“I will see you at your regular detention tomorrow night.” Snape says, not once looking away from Willow, and Harry takes that as his cue to flee.

Willow, after all, can take care of herself.

Chapter Text

              Harry is not exempt from Professor Snape’s standards in class, no matter how secret their lessons are. He is expected to use what he learns under Professor Snape’s tutelage, put theory into practice, and learn how to deal with the sabotage too, because Professor Snape does not stop it.

It is, Harry suspects, how he had learned as a student – necessity driving memorization of ingredients and their reactive properties, how to neutralize them, how to substitute them. Put like that, he doesn’t mind it all that much, not anymore. And –

The girl who sits next to him, Parkinson, the one who does most of the sabotaging? He kind of likes her. She’s the only Slytherin in their year who doesn’t particularly mind him. Her sneers are mostly performative, her words lacking the same malice lingering in Greengrass’. She bends to the whims of the others when they look at her, but she does go out of her way to not try and outright murder him, which is more than he can say for the rest of his housemates. She, too, is memorizing ingredient reactions out of necessity.

Their comradery is silent and built mostly from gestures, a tilted head or quirked eyebrow or too-long stare. She gets creative to test his knowledge, and he gets creative to solve the issues. If his potion is ruined by the end of class, she smirks at him and calls him an idiot, but steps neatly into the orbit of their housemates until he slips off regardless.

Harry’s techniques improve dramatically; if he slows down his preparation so she can copy, well, that’s his own business and it isn’t like she says anything either.

There’d been a boy like her at his muggle school, brave enough to sneak jokes to Harry while teachers and other students weren’t looking, who’d shared treats and stories with him and taught him simple games he could play alone or with the other. That boy had still spat on him when Dudley started things, but when no one was watching –

This is better than that. Parkinson never curses him. Greengrass had called her out on it once at dinner, brow arched and tone faux-friendly, and Parkinson had given the other girl the most withering look Harry has ever seen before in his life. All he has to do is run to a teacher and have them test your wand, Greengrass. And anyway, proper witches don’t need to resort to spells to get their point across, she’d sniffed. There is a whole complex system there, of gendered expectations and wizardry, and Harry notes it down – if she’s using her sex against other students, he might one day be able to do the same. Or, maybe, in some way, repay her.

He finds the class becomes – almost fun.

It’s an odd thought to have, but a nice one, he thinks.

X

Willow presses her concerns over his physical fitness, and Harry reads through the books she’d given him as quickly as possible, and, hesitantly, draws up a list of goals and a potential plan to achieve them at her urging.

Magic is not necessarily tied to one’s health; stronger muscles do not equate to stronger magic. But there is a correlation, a correlation strong enough to hold true but for notable outliers; lords of old and renowned families too frail to rise from their sickbeds but more than capable of blasting whole villages out of existence, warriors never once struck down by illness but only ever able to cast the most basic of spells.

The more important bit is dueling. Willow is explicit – she does not expect him to become a soldier, but he must learn to defend himself for his assumed blood status and his familial situation. The Wizarding World is recovering from two wars in the past century and while things have stabilized, that peace is still tentative; a near-sacred boy cannot heal the political and social ills that led to the war he ended, after all, no matter what shape his scar takes.

A fit wizard, a wizard with great stamina, is capable of casting longer and faster than his opponent. His spells will not backfire over mumbled words, he will have no need of shields if he can dodge, and in the ways of ancient wizards long since set aside, he will be able to get in close and end the fight not with magic but with the blade in his other hand.

“Master Slytherin was preferring small blades.” Willow says fondly, while Harry regards the moving picture in the book before him. Hedwig is motionless at his side as the sketchy figures strike and parry in a perfectly smooth loop, entranced.

“Because it’s easier to hide? Because Gryffindor had the big sword and Hufflepuff had the big warhammer, so he and Ravenclaw got to be sneaky.”

“Little Slytherin is being right.” She says, amused.

He needs a proper teacher to learn to wield a blade, but to learn to duel without one is to force himself to unlearn all the progress he will make under her tutelage. For now, she wants him to focus on mere fitness, and he agrees with her recommendation. He’s too young for proper dueling yet anyway, not when any adversaries will either be older and therefore skilled or his age and therefore just as unskilled.

It feels, sometimes, like he must discover an answer for all of his problems now. Willow is very good at telling him no. Hedwig is very good at redirecting his panic into something he can do.

He hasn’t heard word from Gringotts, nor from the families he supposedly belongs to. No one has squinted at him and called him Potter and no one has approached him and asked about Black.

“I should learn how to swim. If strong lungs are important.” He says quietly, nervously.

“Little Slytherin is being afraid.”

“Dudley drowned me once.” Harry tells her. She frowns at him.

“Little Slytherin is not to be going back to them.”

“I won’t. I’m gonna rent a place in the Alley after school with Hedwig.”

“Willow be visiting then.” She says softly, gently, and takes his face in her hands. She presses a kiss to his forehead, and Harry blinks back tears.

X

“Are you going to join the Quidditch team next year?”

The question startles Harry so badly he nearly falls from his broom; his heart is still pounding in his throat when he shifts his weight and spins to face Charles Potter head-on.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a natural! Better than Crabbe or Goyle by far – are you going to try out for the Slytherin Quidditch team?”

Harry’s stomach twists with something sour; he’d let himself relax, indulge during the first-year flying class; he may have hung back while everyone else zoomed over the Black Lake but he’s still – making himself memorable.

Memorable enough that Charles Potter has spotted him, is staring up at him with bright eyes.

And asking idiotic questions.

“You think Slytherin House would allow a mudblood on their quidditch team?” Harry asks slowly, the words – heavy.

His brother recoils, a little. Flinches at the use of the slur.

“That isn’t fair!”

“It’s no different than you picking on Granger.” Harry says flatly, and this time, Charles jerks back so hard his broom dips. He recovers near-instantly, but the tell lingers.

“I don’t – not for – “

“You don’t call her a mudblood, but you don’t have to when your classmates will in your stead. You encourage them. Support them. When they say her blood’s too dirty for her to be so smart, you laugh.”

Harry keeps his words measured. Doesn’t let the black rage bubbling inside of him slip into his tone or the steady look he is giving his brother, because –

It feels good, in an angry sort of way, to say such horrible things to Charles. To reprimand him. Harry can’t afford to care about Granger, but the hypocrisy –

He does not understand it. Charles is not some happy child with a perfect family and a perfect life. He has been a public figure since the night they were separated. He cannot afford to be as naïve and ignorant as he is. Harry’s wrath is one-part resentment, one-part concern, one-part disgust, and he does not know how to handle it.

He’d only ever been jealous of Dudley, and even then – for material things, not intangible things, not after seeing Petunia and Vernon and what they considered love up close and personal. This is something wholly other, foreign, and he does not know how best to navigate these waters successfully.

Charles stares at him, pale and wide-eyed. Harry lingers for an instant, just a heartbeat – and then leans his weight to the side and lets his broom swerve off.

X

“How practical is runic magic?” Harry asks hesitantly. Professor Snape is eyeing the knife in his hands intently, wholly focused on ensuring Harry is properly dicing the tubers in front of him, but although Professor Snape is quick to bark at Harry if his attention wanders, he is more than willing to divide his own attention enough to answer questions.

“Immensely. Wands brought about a new age of magic for the speed and convenience; you can cast a spell with a wand in a second that would take months – to prepare a circle, build it, source the ingredients, find a location, and wait for appropriate celestial or weather conditions. Runic magic, however, is capable of building on itself in a way that can render its effects permanent. Wards are the most common example – temporary wards may use wanded magic in their building, but for permanent wards one must built everything by hand.”

This is…more information than Harry had expected. He stills his cutting, takes a moment to readjust his grip and organize his thoughts.

“Is it better?”

“That depends entirely upon context. Wands are better for warfare, for daily tasks, for temporary spells. But wanded magic has rules that cannot be broken. Runic undertakings are far more…malleable. It makes them harder to brute-force one’s way through, for example, where wanded spells often allow a caster to just try again, but harder.”

He giggles a little at the characterization, at the dry tone to his professor’s voice.

“And it can’t be tracked, right?”

The question is a risk; he gets a side-eye for it, Professor Snape recognizing why Harry is asking, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“That depends entirely upon what the runic undertaking is. Great magics often result in discharges of magic powerful enough to alter the ambient magic in the natural world. Ministry Unspeakables track and monitor that energy – much like muggle meteorologists – and would notice. Even if they did not catch you before you began your undertaking, they would likely catch you after. But as for small things – no, not at all.”

“Is that why astronomy and the seasons matter so much?” Harry asks, catching the comparison and holding it tight. He gets something like an approving look for his question, and Harry sets his knife down one final time. Professor Snape inspects his tubers intently, and then leans back, straightens his spine.

“You’ve a tendency to cut too thinly when distracted. Most children your age err on the side of cutting too large; that won’t affect this particular brew but you will need to keep an eye on it later. Do you know why?”

“Um, greater surface area means more room for interactions with the other ingredients, and smaller pieces mean they dissolve faster.”

“Correct. Has Willow been quizzing you?”

“Hedwig.”

“A pet?” Professor Snape asks, and he sounds genuinely surprised. Harry hesitates a moment, but –

“She’s my friend.”

There is a moment of silence; he glances up at Professor Snape through his hair, grown long now without Aunt Petunia to chase after him with kitchen shears every month, but the man is as inscrutable as ever.

“Are you caring for her properly?” Professor Snape asks. He does not ask what Hedwig is, or where Harry found her, or what she eats; he nods his head sharply and Professor Snape nods in turn and that is that.

“You would do well to keep her from the rest of Slytherin House.” Professor Snape warns him, and Harry cannot help the smile that stretches across his lips as he leaves because – yes, of course.

She’d take their fingers if they tried anything with her.

But it’s good of Professor Snape to warn him, anyway.

X

“He is better adjusted than I feared.” Severus allows, and Sirius’ eyes grow feverishly bright. Severus leans farther away from the fool, but that just puts him within grabbing range of Bellatrix.

“How so?” Narcissa asks archly, a steaming cup of something that absolutely isn’t tea in one elegant hand.

“He’s befriended a particularly mean House Elf, earned her loyalty. He has a pet of some sort, and while he’s reluctant to socialize with the other students, he’s swayed the Parkinson girl onto his side quite easily.”

“Easily for children or easily for Slytherins?” Regulus asks immediately, and Severus scoffs.

“Slytherins, of course. They’ve refrained from attempting to assassinate each other, but their attempts at maiming one another are growing more complex.”

Sirius coos to hear it, and relaxes somewhat into his own seat.

Having Harry safe, or at least – under trustworthy supervision – for the first time since the boy went missing has done absolute wonders for the madman. He’s calmed significantly, which means Severus isn’t barricading the floo in his office and watching it warily all night long anymore; House Black is content to give him until Christmas to settle the child.

“Anyone outside of the house?”

“None he’s happy about.” Severus mutters, and Bellatrix smiles to hear it, props her chin on one hand and stares. He ignores her.

“What of his brother?”

To that, Severus can only shrug. The boys do not interact in his class, and he has no way of seeing them together outside of the lab. He’s noticed Harry watching Charles, on occasion, but never obvious enough or frequent enough to warrant concern. If Severus had been in his place he’d have killed his brother by now, so while Harry’s quiet watching is baffling, Severus is willing to not ask any questions. After all, if the boy is biding his time – Severus does not have a strong enough bond with the boy to stop it.

“Try to keep them apart, please.” Sirius asks, his voice strained. Severus is not alone in arching an eyebrow at the man; Sirius looks unrepentant, if guilty.

“I don’t want him going back to – them – because the kid’s not as shitty as they are.”

“I’m not going to interfere unless they come to blows. I doubt you have anything to worry about.” Severus says flatly. Sirius grumbles, but Narcissa shoves a teacup – whiskey? Wine? Something dark-colored, at least – into his hands and he busies himself with it.

Regulus catches his gaze, mouths ignore him, and Severus nods.

“How is Draco doing?” He asks, and Narcissa lights up. A snap of her fingers produces a letter fat enough to be a novel in of itself, which she hands over with a flourish. She launches into a recounting of her beloved child’s antics before he even accepts it, which he tunes out. Bellatrix leans close enough that her lips brush his ear; it is from her he will learn the important parts.

“Lucius reached out to him publicly; he was quick to turn the overture down in as dramatic a fashion as you can imagine. Narcissa’s been inundated with letters from his peers’ families.”

Oh, Merlin; Bellatrix is too much a creature of violence to care but Regulus looks exactly as pained as Severus would have expected.

Durmstrang is as storied an institution as Hogwarts, meaning most of its student body comes from alumni or relatives thereof. Magical Britain functions in as much a closed system as it can, what with only one magical school for its people to attend, but Durmstrang is not located within any existing country, magical or muggle, and therefore accepts an astoundingly diverse spread of applicants.

Dark Lords don’t go to Hogwarts if they plot for global domination; they go to Durmstrang. Narcissa hadn’t, but since sending her son there she’s been angling for inroads with the witches and wizards who had; who historically have shunned outsiders.

Draco’s a good son; if his mother asked him to make a name for himself he would without question.

“You’re letting her go abroad?”

“Well, you let me.” Bellatrix points out blithely.

“That was not what that was for – “

X

Longbottom is scared of him.

Quirinus understands; he’s an unsettling man at best, comes by it honestly through his mother. But it is proving oddly inconvenient, and he’s not quite sure how to handle that. On one hand; the boy is growing increasingly creative and bold in his attempts to avoid him. This is a good thing; good for his self-confidence. On the other, the boy is getting better at avoiding him. This does not bode well for the boy’s continued long-term health.

It isn’t until Severus sulks out of the Great Hall early one evening muttering about detention, the little Evans boy ghosting after him an instant later, that he hits upon a solution – and flees before Aurora can try to tell him no. It is for this reason that he has to lurk until he finds a plausible enough reason to give a detention, too, because Aurora has no problems overturning another professor’s disciplinary decisions – the first year Severus taught at Hogwarts there’d been a splendid duel after she’d cancelled his detentions one too many times.

So:

“Detention, I think.” He says quietly, eyes flicking not just to Longbottom but to the Greengrass girl and her fellows, to Charles Potter and his Weasley, and to the other Weasley too.

“Professor.” Percival Weasley sounds relieved to see him, and releases the shield charm he’d cast between the students with a flick of his wrist so well-practiced as to look easy; he’s so very subtly talented, has been Quirinus’ favorite student since he began at Hogwarts.

“That’s not fair! We weren’t – “

“Detention for all of you, Mister Potter.” Quirinus clarifies, which does little to end the boy’s wrath. He flicks his gaze back to Percival, watching Longbottom closely out of the corner of his eye, and the littlest Gryffindor prefect straightens.

“Greengrass, Parkinson and Crabbe were calling Longbottom slurs when I arrived, Professor. Potter and my brother drew their wands first, but Greengrass cast the first spell.”

The girl looks furious, frustrated. Parkinson is a perfectly blank doll just behind her shoulder; Crabbe still scowling ferociously at the Gryffindors. Longbottom is staring at Quirinus warily, the other boys glaring just as fiercely as Greengrass.

“I know for a fact Professor Snape has his little hatchlings memorize the Hogwarts Code of Conduct before he even lets them out of the common room.” Quirinus says coolly. Parkinson conceals a flinch; the other two show no reaction to his chastisement. Bigotry, probably; he is, after all, the muggle studies teacher. They won’t know his family, but that alone will tell them he’s not of pure blood.

“Minerva’s methods may differ but I know she is no less strict with her own cubs. One does not draw a wand without intent to use it, and one does not draw a wand for mere provocation through words.”

“She was calling Neville a – “ The youngest Weasley boy’s shriek is cut off abruptly by an elbow to his gut; Percival stares unrepentantly back at Quirinus. Presumably, the boy is one of those stupid enough to actually repeat the insult rather than just reference it. Quirinus frowns, but lets the blow go.

“Fifty points from each house, and detention for each of you. One for every night the remainder of this week, I think.” He dolls out a schedule, saving Weasley for last and putting Parkinson and Longbottom beside each other, and sends them on their way. Percival catches the way Quirinus’ gaze lingers on Longbottom’s retreating form, the boy careful not to turn his back fully to him, and flicks an anti-eavesdropping spell into the air about them.

“You’ve scared him!”

“Not intentionally.”

“He’s not going to trust you if you’ve scared him!”

Percival berates him with a familiarity that would astound anyone to hear it, but Quirinus lets the sound wash over him like white noise; no, he suspects fear will be the easiest way into the boy’s confidence.

Aurora is used to wounded birds weak for the touch of a gentle hand. She’s a competent contrast to Severus, who takes a much more ruthless approach to his own vicious little snakes, but functionally useless – said with all the love in the world – when it comes to the children Quirinus picks out as in need.

Quirinus finds the feral ones, is all. The first step in taming a feral beast is to make oneself noticeable to it; the second is to prove oneself not a threat. And it isn’t like Quirinus actually wants the boy tamed, no, that mad thing in his breast will serve him well in his life – so long as he is able to nurture it, control it.

“I have hopes that one detention will be enough.”

“He wouldn’t avoid you if you hadn’t scared him!” Percival barks, and then slashes his own spell to pieces and stalks off.

Percival is not a feral thing. But he has a particular talent for finding those who are. He’s been a fixture in Quirinus’ classroom since his first year, then begging for private lessons solely to have some way to bond with his father and later out of true dedication to the interplay between muggle and magical. He’ll be a terrifyingly competent policymaker one day, may single-handedly save the wizarding world from the onslaught of increasingly advance technological creations the muggles spit out on a daily basis; but for now, he is merely dragging names to his favorite professor like a cat with a bloody mouse and staring unblinking until something is done about the prey.

“Good luck tonight!” Quirinus shouts at the boy’s back; he coos a little when he gets a middle finger for the sentiment; Percival has been paying attention during class!

Teaching muggle curses and slang is not on the approved curriculum – Ministry or Dumbledore – but it’s a treat for the kids, and for him, because he gets to hear purebloods say absolutely silly things, and see the more uptight students – Percival – finally break and use the foreign insults when pushed to their breaking point.

“Ten points to Gryffindor.” He murmurs, and sweeps off. If his luck is this good already, it might be time to make another attempt at breaking into that hack Defense professor’s chambers.

He wants to know her plans before he implements his own, after all.

X

Professor Snape asks him to take Granger a pile of papers for her missed classes before Harry leaves Potions. He freezes to hear the request, finished potion caught between their hands.

Parkinson and Potter are near him; he feels both of their gazes like something sharp on the nape of his neck. So; Harry grits his teeth and nods sharply, lets his vial go, and slips back to his desk.

He’s unhappy about the task, and after an instant of deliberation, makes his displeasure obvious enough to Parkinson as he packs up that she puzzles out some meaning from it, and smirks at him a little before leaving. That takes care of that.

It does not take care of Charles.

Harry tries to linger. Charles does too. He tries to make a break for it, knowing that Professor Snape is watching both of them now, and that gets him out of the classroom before Charles’ sharp cry of Evans! splits the corridor and forces Harry to turn.

“What?”

“I can – take those papers.”

Harry stares.

“What?”

“I can take those to the infirmary. To Granger.” Charles clarifies. He’s – speaking a little faster than he normally does.

He wants the papers, Harry realizes. Why? For the infirmary, maybe. To help Harry, unlikely.

To talk to Granger.

No.

She’s stupid but she doesn’t deserve – not when Charles is the one doing it to her.

Harry shifts the bundle of parchment in his hands. Hugs them closer to his body, and steps back from Charles’ outstretched hand.

“You could.” He says flatly, and turns away.

“But – wait! But you don’t want to do it!” Charles catches up with him, of course, but though he falls in step eerily close to Harry, he doesn’t grab for the papers.

“So?”

“So just let me – “

“Why would you want to?”

Charles’ jaw clacks shut. Harry doesn’t sneer at him, but it’s a close thing, and he knows Charles can see that in his eyes.

“That’s what I thought.” Harry says sharply, and turns again.

This time, Charles doesn’t follow.

Chapter Text

              Sleeping outside of the dorm is wonderful, mostly for his and Hedwig’s continued safety and well-being, but it does put him directly under the supervision of Willow.

Harry is used to early mornings, and even more familiar with early working mornings. He’s had enough time to adjust to Hogwarts’ late, lazy start – but not enough to forget a decade of enforced habit. When Willow wakes him well before dawn one morning and bids him to dress in loose clothing, he grumbles softly but complies without much fuss.

His compliance to Willow’s requests is different than his compliance to Petunia’s had been; he trusts Willow, and so his mood is light as he follows her though a frankly dizzying array of secret passages, halls, and stairwells. Hedwig is on his heels the whole while, shaking with excitement but silent as an apex predator nonetheless.

“Where are we?”

“This is being the seventh floor. Willow be showing little Slytherin a special room.”

He nods slowly, and mimics her when she exaggeratedly strides about the hall. She paces back and forth before a blank spot on the wall thrice, expression scrunched up in concentration, and when Harry next blinks – there is a door.

“The Come and Go Room is being anything required of it.” Willow tells him quietly, and then opens the door, and Harry steps out into – a forest.

A path.

No. A track.

Hedwig lets out an excited clatter.

“You be running now.” Willow says sagely, smugly, and that is all the warning Harry needs.

X

“ – didn’t even fight it.”

“I could never show my face in the common room again, Merlin and Morgana – “

“I bet she went looking for it. Tried to fight it and just wet herself like a little girl!”

“Honestly, what do you expect from a mudblood?”

“ – should have sorted Hufflepuff, but I wouldn’t even wish her on them!”

It’s the older years who start, once she is cleared by Madam Pomfrey and allowed to return to Gryffindor Tower. She thinks some of them tried to start the rumor to help her, better for her to have been injured trying to do something brave rather than for being caught weeping and hiding from bullies, but they are not prepared for the consequences of bending the story to be about her fitness for Gryffindor House, and it spirals wildly out of control almost immediately.

But, Hermione’s age group and the year or two immediately above are markedly less mature than their elders, and Charles Potter and Ronald Weasley have made her a scapegoat since the first day of class. All it takes is Weasley guffawing at a snide comment, and off they go.

Hermione doesn’t care anymore. Not about what they say, anyway, and Professor McGonagall is many things but she does not tolerate magical harassment, and Gryffindor House fears her wrath too greatly to test it with a jinx or hex or curse.

Because –

When she woke up, he was there.

And he’d run but he always runs, because he doesn’t want anybody else to see them. Hermione doesn’t care, a secret friend is still a friend and she is beginning to understand that Slytherin House is wildly different from Gryffindor House – but he came.

And Professor Snape too, which is so insane –

“A word, Miss Granger.” Professor Snape’s voice is in his threatening mode; cold and smooth like velvet. It scatters the lingering students, and Hermione just nods and skips over to his desk while the rest of the class finishes packing their things and drains out.

Evans and Parkinson pack up with surprising ease – or, it would be surprising, but Hermione knows he likes her. Hermione doesn’t have anybody that’s mean performatively to her, at least not for her sake, but she’s seen them exchange looks and seen Parkinson roll her eyes discreetly when Greengrass or Zabini or Nott lean over to whisper at her to recognize it. And she’s glad! Evans is scared all the time, and Parkinson being sort-of nice is much better than nothing.

Hermione’s parents love her. Fiercely. They cannot help her with other children, but they can help her at home, and Hermione has spent so much of her life ostracized, watching – she knows that her family is exceptional. She does not think it a stretch to assume Evans’ family is not.

But he still came. He was the only student to visit her, and he didn’t stay, but –

He’s the only muggleborn student in all of Slytherin. She’s not the only muggleborn in Gryffindor, but the other students had magical relatives or friends or made friends and skitter away from her like she’s contagious. They fit in, where she doesn’t.

It’s fine. She fits in just fine with Evans, and he with her, and Daddy always said she’d find people she fit with one day.

Evans even sneaks a narrow-eyed look at Professor Snape before leaving! And Professor Snape sneers, but there’s no heat to it.

Hermione hugs her things to her chest and tries not to bounce in place with excitement.

“I trust Madam Pomfrey would not have released you without ensuring you where wholly healed, but I do want to take this time to check in with you.”

His voice is stiff. Hermione blinks at him, startled.

“I – um. It’s all better. There’s not even an ache left.”

“Be that as it may, the first time one experiences such extensive magical healing can be quite…traumatizing.”

She chews on that for a moment, and frowns.

“For muggleborns?”

He inclines his head at the same time his shoulders lift in what would be a shrug on anyone else. He’s too severe for it.

“Magical creature attacks are traumatizing on their own, as are near-death experiences. Coupled with invasive applications of healing magic – necessary or not…” He speaks with a certainty that relaxes something in Hermione.

The way everyone is talking –

Wild animal attacks happen all the time in the muggle world, dependent on location and species and contact. She had been bewildered not at the insults to her but the assumption that magical creatures would be any different, any less likely to attack if startled or threatened or – or any other hundred odd things.

“I was asleep for treatment. I felt funny when I woke up, but nothing unusual, professor. I just – um. Who let it in?” She asks.

She’s read Hogwarts, A History. She knows how the wards are supposed to work – at least from what information is available to the general public. She knows no magical creature so inclined towards the taste of human flesh and an inability to make a vow of peace should have ever made it onto the grounds, let alone the interior of the building. Unless someone let it in.

“That matter has been handled.” He says flatly, with such certainty that she believes him. He speaks like he knows the same as she does – as if her question isn’t just preposterous, Miss Granger, whyever would you think that -

“Thank you.” She says suddenly. He raises an eyebrow at her.

“For sending my work. None of the other professors did.”

Professor Snape looks – genuinely flabbergasted.

“None?”

“Professor McGonagall said I needed to rest.” Hermione answers primly, and swallows back her own glee at the disgust on Professor Snape’s face.

She’d – liked Professor McGonagall when the woman had come to introduce her to the wizarding world, ease her parents into the reality of magic. But she’s just – she’s in charge of Gryffindor House! And the only tangible thing she does while in charge is discourage physical or magical confrontations. Which is maybe a big thing when compared to the other houses, but it’s not enough. Hermione’s no stranger to overworked or inattentive teachers, but she’s rarely had a teacher so absent and disengaged with their students.

“Merlin’s sake – if you do not receive missed work and notes by the end of today come speak with me Wednesday after class.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you find yourself having trouble sleeping – Madam Pomfrey is authorized to give you Dreamless Sleep twice weekly for the next month.”

“…Why would I have trouble sleeping?” She asks, and can’t help her expression twisting with confusion, but –

“Nightmares, Miss Granger.” Professor Snape says flatly. He’s eyeing her intently, now.

“About…?”

“The troll.”

“Oh. Um, no, I won’t need that.”

He pauses.

“You aren’t having nightmares?”

“Why would I be having nightmares?” Hermione asks, amused. He covers his face with his hands and sighs.

“Get out.”

“Thank you, professor!”

X

…home for Yule? It can’t be that hard to convince him! Auntie Bella says he sorted Slytherin so he MUST be smart! If you’re having trouble thinking about how to convince him Mother is more than willing to help and if it comes down to it just ask Uncle Regulus for a relocation permit. I took the liberty of researching the matter and the Wizengamot has the authority to dictate the living situation of an at-risk magical child living in the muggle world under the Restoration Bill of ’48. All Uncle Siri needs to do is measure how much magical blood was spilled in the muggle home…

X

Narcissa,

Stop telling your son to ‘help’.

-SS

X

“What about House Elves?” Harry asks.

Severus blinks, and leans back from where he looms over the boy’s shoulder. Harry glances up at him, but continues his even stirring, and Severus…flounders.

The boy’s been shameless in using him as a repository for magical knowledge. Severus doesn’t particularly mind that, finds it a good thing given that Harry has slowly stopped looking like he expects to be struck for every question, grown bolder in making eye contact and asking increasingly more pointed questions, but –

He is, Severus remembers, somehow in the good graces of the scariest fucking house elf Severus has ever had the displeasure of meeting.

“Absolutely not.”

“But – “

“I do not do politics.”

“It’s not politics!” Harry objects, and – that’s a good thing, the child’s openness, his willingness to shout back at him, but – Severus has a horrible realization all the same.

“Turn the burner off.” He instructs. Harry looks at him curiously, but obeys after a heartbeat, and Severus flicks a series of preservation charms over the brew before guiding the boy out of his lab and into his office.

“I forget how isolated you are.” Snape mutters, dropping heavily into his own chair. He gets a scowl for his comment, and he sighs.

“Every magical-born student in this castle knows my history, Mister Evans, before they ever set foot in my classroom.”

“Were you a politician?”

“Terrorist, technically.” Severus can’t resist saying dryly, however unwise that is, and thank Merlin and Morgana herself, Harry only quirks an eyebrow at him. It doesn’t help the cold sweat breaking out across Severus’ whole body at the realization that Harry doesn’t know he was a Death Eater but –

He rolls his sleeve up; sees the child catch on and go still as death in his own seat, as Severus bares his forearm.

There’s no Mark, not since that fateful Halloween night so many years ago, but only an idiot would have thought the Dark Lord content to die without punishing any of his followers stupid enough not to die for him first.

The flesh is warped and melted from his wrist to his elbow all along the inside of his forearm, twisted into valleys and mountains dark with shadows. Severus suspects the curse had been intended to remove the whole of the limb, to permanently mark those the Dark Lord considered faithless, but the Dark Lord had not conceived of it until he had been wholly lost to his madness, and that, disappointingly, led to shoddy spell work.

“You were a Death Eater.”

“I know of exactly one person who escaped being Marked once the Dark Lord decided to do so, and that only for a unique quirk of circumstance the Dark Lord could not overcome.” Severus says dryly. The answer is insufficient for the boy, who scowls again.

“I am a halfblood, Mister Evans. I was Sorted Slytherin at the start of the war, into the seat of the Dark Lord’s power. My prodigious talent with potions kept me alive, but it also served to bring me to his attention. I returned home after my sixth year to find the Dark Lord seated in my kitchen, my father’s corpse in the living room, and my mother bowing at his feet.”

She hadn’t survived the night. She’d sullied herself too greatly, the Dark Lord had said. Severus had still had a chance to purge himself of his parents’ taint.

The Dark Lord had been earnest, honest, in that – that Severus could redeem the sins of his blood in his eyes. He had not once mentioned that Severus’ blood was too great a sin for his followers to forgive, but, then, Severus had known that by then.

“What did you do?” The boy asks lowly. He flexes his hands in his lap, but he doesn’t stand, doesn’t flee, and that’s – more than Severus would have offered, in his place.

“I believe the transcript of the…what amounted to my trial is one of the most publicized documents in Wizengamot history. It would not be a hardship to owl order a copy.”

The boy doesn’t blink. Severus hadn’t expected him to; his answer is a deflection.

“I took the Mark, made myself invaluable to his cause, earned his favor, and then orchestrated the fall of his order.”

Harry is silent for a very long time after that admission, head bowed, thinking.

“He was…supposed to go after…after the Potters?”

Oh, Severus thinks. What suffices as his heart gives a sharp pang.

Harry would have done so very spectacularly during the war. Far better than Severus had done. Not that he wishes such horrors on the child, but – Harry Evans will go far.

“Not the Potters, no. There was another target that night. Consent was given, and an ambush was in place.”

“You got lucky.” Harry accuses.

No. Lupin’s sacrifice had not been luck. His death was not half so meaningless, so useless. Galling, to owe Lupin as much as Severus did – but there is no one else he would rather owe such a great debt.

The only thing more terrifying than a predator is an intelligent predator; than an intelligent predator, an intelligent predator with pups. There are very few Severus would willingly rend reality for, and none for whom he would do so without begrudging every second of it. For Lupin, there had been five.

“The Dark Lord’s death was not due to luck, Mister Evans. Do not do those who died to end him such a disservice, in claiming it mere luck.” He says hollowly, far less sharply than he’d intended. And the boy wilts, melts down into himself and presses back into his chair, not so much cowed as relieved, and Severus does not let himself linger on why he would be.

“How come they let you teach?”

“The Ministry did not intend to investigate any accusations brought forth against anyone brought in at the end of the war. They held a Wizengamot session, wherein they intended to parade us about, shout things at us, and the condemn us to Azkaban without a legal defense or a chance to prove ourselves innocent. It had the barest markings of a trial, to sufficiently withstand protests of illegality. I had not intended to out myself as a spy, but in order to prevent my allies from being similarly punished without cause, I took a chance when it was presented to me.”

House Black calling his name, heady and violent like gravestone, echoing throughout the whole of the chamber –

Severus doesn’t regret it. But he still resents it, because he is an angry, sour, bitter little man and owns to that fully.

“…But Willow and the House Elves aren’t politics, they’re not even legally people.”

“While I am sympathetic to whatever nonsense Willow is stirring up on behalf of her people and wish her the best of luck, I am not an appropriate ally for her. More importantly – they do not need a champion, Mister Evans.”

The boy does not look convinced.

“House elves are not defenseless. If you were to free them, all of them, right this minute – half would kill you for taking them from their loved ones and the other would kill every wizard on Earth.”

“But they can’t leave.” The boy stresses, as if Severus isn’t intimately aware of why their plight would be so deeply sympathetic to a child of Harry Evan’s particular experiences and background. Severus rolls his eyes.

“You will not look for a way to undo whatever magics bound our people together in the first place, Mister Evans. You will instead look at ensuring no future contracts are so one-sided; or at remedying existing contracts to give house elves equal footing.”

“You’ve thought about this too.”

“Many people have thought about it, Mister Evans. It is not a new injustice.”

And the boy’s expression clears.

“So the issue isn’t the what, it’s the how – “

X

Harry’s head is buzzing with information when he stumbles into the Greenhouse; he’s been reading too much, into too many different topics, and retaining too little for the effort spent. On the bright side he still has his notes, which he prioritizes over mere reading when in the library. On the down side, he has finally determined the list of languages he must learn to read fluently, to make proper use of the study’s resources, and it’s…a lot.

Most of the texts are written in regional tongues; old English, Irish, Gaelic. But many of them are from further afield; Ancient Greek, archaic German, Mandarin, and Hindi just to name a few. Willow has had to identify most of the languages for him, but she won’t read him them. He cannot blame her.

Translating charms are temporary and do not always collect the nuances necessary to properly understand something; they will only translate things literally. There are potions to help one learn languages, but they are wildly expensive and would probably kill Harry if he took them, given his current health.

He’s mulling the problem over when he turns down a path half-swallowed in giant purple leaves, and he barely manages to stop himself before he trips over the hunched form of a boy peering cautiously out between nut-brown stalks.

Harry considers the sight; the boy hasn’t noticed him. He wears Gryffindor colors, but is as small and young as Harry himself, if substantially softer and rounder. He looks vaguely familiar.

He lowers himself down beside the boy, and uses his wand to push the thick clump of stalks before him aside enough to see.

One of the professors is standing, hands on his hips, in a wide, open path opposite them. Harry recognizes his face, if not his name – he’s one Professor Snape and Professor Sinistra spend a lot of time with. Beside him stands another Gryffindor, this one older with neatly combed red hair. The student is gesticulating wildly, expression openly furious. The professor looks delighted. Despite their mouths moving, neither of them are making a sound.

The air beside him tenses, and Harry turns to find the other boy staring at him with huge, frightened eyes. He raises an eyebrow like Professor Snape does, and the boy’s whole face goes red.

Harry draws back from his peeping, and shifts the bag of empty vials at his side higher onto his shoulder as he stands. This isn’t his mess, and he isn’t going to get involved; he still needs to collect Professor Sprout’s samples before he goes to meet Professor Snape.

The boy watches him leave.

X

Parkinson shows up on time to her detention, which is a rare delight when dealing with disgruntled eleven-year-olds. The little shits always look smug about showing up late until Quirinus doubles or triples their punishment, as if consequences are a hitherto foreign concept.

“My office, Miss Parkinson. I believe we will have a chat tonight.” He says brightly, sweeping his office door open. She eyes him dubiously, but steps primly in and settles in the seat opposite his desk.

“It’s – empty.”

“The day I leave my personal effects out where any of you monsters could curse them is the day I have officially gone too senile to function as a professor.” He says. The look that earns him is wholly Slytherin, calculating moreso than amused.

It’s not…wholly truthful. Quirinus doesn’t own much. Material possessions are, mostly, a liability and a bore he isn’t interested in. He’s got Aurora and Severus to pawn anything truly important on, and a perfectly serviceable house for the rest. Nothing of importance crosses the threshold of Hogwarts. He’s not that stupid, Albus.

“What will we be speaking about?” She asks. Her legs are crossed neatly, hands folded perfectly on her lap, not a hair out of place. Quirinus would worry somewhat about her parents, to see such unnatural composure on a literal child, but he has met both of her parents. It’s genetic.

“You are a very interesting girl, Miss Parkinson. But you do not have the allies, in your house, to stay interesting.”

He takes his own seat, and taps his wand against the little metal nub half-hidden by his inkwell; he is rewarded with three steaming cups of coffee and a pile of some sort of chocolate pastry. Most Professors simply speak to the House Elves of Hogwarts; Quirinus doesn’t like them listening in on his things. They are not bound to report his…eccentricities and hobbies to the Headmaster, but odds are that they will, and it is a risk he does not choose to take.

“Is that a threat, Professor?”

“It is an observation. Building alliances takes time you do not have. You have held your own thus far admirably, in my opinion. I intend to ensure you will continue to do so, should you so choose.”

“Why? And how?” She does not elaborate on her questions, merely bites them out like something sharp and pointed. Quirinus smiles, and selects a cup and a pastry. Eyes the inverted foe glass tucked away on a bookshelf in his peripherals.

“Slytherin House vexes Severus. It vexes me, and I was not a snake during my time here. I want to upset it. As for how, Miss Parkinson, why, that isn’t up to me.”

Aurora slams the door to his office open in a rage so seething space itself has gone black as void about her physical form.

“Quirinus motherfucking Quirrell what is this I hear about you giving detentions out?!”

X

Hedwig is warm. Harry is sleepy. Willow is humming, somewhere, which is not at all conducive to finishing his homework but Harry is just –

He deserves some time, he thinks. As a treat.

He had successfully finished his first proper potion with Professor Snape earlier; it sits in a special cupboard all on its own now, waiting for the rest of what they will brew.

They’ll repeat the recipe, just scale it up to finish the whole batch at the same time, and then move on to the next potion on Professor Snape’s required list. It’s a small success, but a monumental one all the same.

Everything Harry has learnt under Professor Snape’s tutelage is transferrable. Preparation, cleaning, selecting ingredients, brewing, preserving –

He knows it now, and no one can take that away from him.

He shifts closer to Hedwig, and lets his eyes drift shut. She purrs against him, a heavy, comforting sound.

It’s been a good day.

Chapter Text

              “Like this?” Harry asks, but doesn’t dare glance up; there’s a low hum from somewhere above him.

“A pinch more cinnamon, I expect.” Professor Snape drawls. Harry dutifully snags some of the powdered spice from its designated prep bowl, and kneads it into the blue goop in front of him. The cinnamon, as it works into the mess, turns its near-violent shade of blue into something more matte, and raises the ambient temperature until Harry’s fingers are pleasantly warm.

He doesn’t grasp the theory behind this particular potion yet. Professor Snape had waved it off when he’d brought it up, so as odd as Harry finds it that he’s making playdough out of bug parts and herbs, he lets it go.

“Excellent. Roll it into a ball. We will let it sit out uncovered while we bring the liquids to boil – go wash your hands.”

“Why aren’t we adding the ingredients directly into the liquids?” He asks, even as he shoots his professor a scowl – as if Harry doesn’t know to wash his hands, honestly –

“Much like with cooking, some ingredients incorporate better once you form a slurry of them and add that in, rather then dumping them in directly. There’s a metaphysical element to this – creating something solid to assist in something solid, in this case your bones. The density and state of the dough will help guide the rest of the potion, and prevent most of the more…aggravating side effects from coming about.”

Right. Because this is the potion that turns bones into porcupine quills if you mess it up.

“But it’s more solid than a slurry.”

Professor Snape throws a towel at his head. Harry catches it with his head, and leaves it until he’s finished scrubbing his hands clean of gunk. Once he dries his hands with it, he deposits the towel in a waiting laundry basket under the counter; Professor Snape is absolutely anal about cross-contamination. Classwork is almost always going to be contaminated with something, so the curriculum doesn’t cover potions where such accidents would cause huge problems until after OWLs, but in private, Professor Snape makes no concessions. Harry can’t bring himself to mind too much; he understands the necessity, even if the waste – the energy and supplies and magic expanded in keeping everything so spotless – sort of boggles his mind.

“This is, despite all appearance to the contrary, magic. It isn’t cooking.”

Sure enough, once the liquids are combined and simmering pearly yellow in the cauldron, Professor Snape has him carefully lower the playdough into it, sat in a scooped, long-handled strainer. Harry swirls it gently as the potion thickens and the playdough shrinks in size, until the potion abruptly thins out and it’s gone.

All that is left is a very splashy mass of mauve sort-of liquid. It’s floating a hair above the actual surface of the cauldron.

“Are we done?”

“We bottle this, next. It must age appropriately before we know if your brewing was a success.” Professor Snape says neutrally. It’s his good neutral voice, his you did it but I won’t say anything just yet voice.

“Can I use the silly funnel?”

“Absolutely not – “

X

Quirinus is cowering and Aurora looks equal parts smug and angry when Severus shoulders his way into the staff room. While he should interfere, because last he knew they were fighting over one of his snakes – one of the good ones too – he’s spent the last six hours trying and failing to bait his idiot six years into fucking up outside of the goddamn common room so he can descend upon them like a bat out of hell and ruin their lives eternally.

Dark magic is one thing, but blood magic is another. Only in the sense that Severus doesn’t care about the practice of one within the walls of Hogwarts; the other could prove a dangerous threat given all the ancient magic no one recalls used to build the damned castle. If students want to put their own lives at risk that’s their business; but not when they put the whole of Hogwarts and likely Hogsmeade too to the blade.

He will have to hope they kill themselves over Yule, or slip up on the New Year. He does not like his odds.

“What are you doing?”

“Christmas sign-up!” Aurora barks out. The smile she shoots him is near-maniacal.

Ah.

“You don’t even celebrate Christmas. Or Yule.” Quirinus mutters petulantly. He is ignored, as he is every year. Of the three of them, Aurora lacks the patience to put up with the Hogwarts’ problems uninterrupted for the duration of the school year. While staff members have a set rotation for those who stay to supervise the remaining children and those who return home like most of the student body, Severus and Quirinus have been trading off Aurora’s turns for years now; should Dumbledore die of anything but the most natural of causes, suspicion will fall on Severus’ head, and Quirinus succeeds in staying under the radar mostly by virtue of not being under intense scrutiny. Their generosity is as much driven by self-interest on Severus’ part as it is loyalty and what he hesitatingly dubs friendship.

“Mark me as staying, this year.” Severus instructs, beelining for a spread of perfectly preserved refreshments laid out along the far wall.

A staff room is rather redundant in a school run by a man that intentionally tries to keep his staff separated as much as possible; it saw genuine use only during the sporadic staff meetings Dumbledore called, never on a schedule and always on a whim, or during emergencies. Most staff members used it to store things they didn’t want children finding – future lesson plans and the like mostly. The House Elves, however, kept the good teas and coffees stocked here and nowhere else, so – Severus often made the trip.

“You’re off rotation this year.”

“I am staying in the castle this year. Don’t make me repeat myself.” He bites back, thumping a muggle thermos the approximate size and width of his arm onto the table housing the refreshments; Quirinus is muttering something foul under his breath but Aurora is silent in that creeping way she so often is behind him. Severus ignores whatever plotting she is doing, and upends the coffee carafe into his thermos. Liquid continues flowing out far past what the volume of the container should hold; his thermos, likewise, continues to fill far past what it should.

Lily had created the enchantment back in their third year, used it on her father’s work thermos to make his days just a little easier, a little brighter.

Severus starts actively occluding, mood souring – he’ll need to call Bellatrix tonight, or his mind will continue to eat itself alive through the night. Quirinus saves him before the spiral can really begin, hunching up over Severus’ shoulder like a gangly lethifold.

He looks to his colleague out of the corner of his eye; Quirinus’ eyes are big and calculating.

“Family business. I’ll say no more.”

“You really must introduce us.”

“We’re no longer asking.” Aurora’s at his other shoulder. They have the decency to wait until he puts the carafe down before mashing into his shoulders. It’s a juvenile, but effective, way to keep him from walking away.

“You can write.” He stresses. Even if he wanted to let the Blacks in the same room as these two – this is not the time for it. Not with what is to come; what Severus has been putting off, what Sirius and Regulus and Bellatrix and Narcissa and Draco have been waiting for. He’d like Family Black to make a good impression on his colleagues, and they’ll be doing little but weeping and whining until the New Year.

Aurora and Quirinus, both taller than him, confer over his head.

“Acceptable.”

“We’ll have our letters on your desk by tonight.”

“Get off of me before I curse you.”

Aurora slaps a kiss to his cheek for that – just as Pomona walks in.

Pomona, who obsesses over match-making and the romantic lives of everyone around her – students included! – and who has, for the entire time Severus has worked with her, oscillated violently between thinking he just needs to find the right woman and she knows just who, and gossiping with Minerva about whether he’s gay or not.

She’s going to spend the next ten years trying to get him to fuck Aurora, Severus realizes despairingly.

Aurora has the decency mouth sorry at him.

X

Severus wakes up to an elbow digging into his hip, which is, unfortunately, a familiar enough occurrence that he does not react by wandlessly blasting the whole room to smithereens.

Severus has never been one for physical contact. Regulus – Regulus always has been, particularly with those he considered kin. Severus had spent most of his years as a student ushering Regulus at Barty or vice-versa when the younger students started looking a little too grabby, but –

Barty’s dead now. Would sooner burn the two of them alive with Fiendfyre than touch them if he weren’t. And Sirius is an apt replacement only when sane.

“Bastard.” Severu grunts, but by that point Regulus has snuck a hand under the blankets and it’s not much longer before there’s an ice block plastered to his side.

“I’ve brought a selection of presents for the boy. There are more at the house, but Cissa was distracted and her selection was too – ambitious, I think.”

“It is two in the morning.”

“Sirius hasn’t been this excitable in ages.”

“The boy hasn’t been safe in ages; with the bond not literally torturing him anymore he’s bound to be doing better.” Severus cuts in, hoping to kill the wistful tone in Regulus’ voice – too-loud given that he’s talking right into Severus’ ear – before the idiot can start reminiscing.

“I have to see the Potters at a Ministry function over Yule.” Regulus continues on, as if Severus hadn’t spoken at all.

“Don’t kill them.”

“Bella still wants to declare a blood feud once we have him.”

“Bad idea.” Severus says before he can properly process what a colossally bad idea that is, and he gives up on sleep when Regulus promptly jolts right up, blankets flying off the both of them.

“What does that mean!?”

“Regulus motherfucking Black – “

“Severus motherfucking Snape, don’t you try to change the subject, why would a blood feud be a bad idea?!”

Regulus tolerates Severus re-acquiring the blankets because December in a giant stone castle in the middle of Scotland is cold, Merlin dammit, but Severus then has to contend with Regulus all but crawling on top of him to better stare menacingly at him.

This is why Severus has fifty galleons on Regulus’ animagus form being a raccoon. Bellatrix still believes it will be something majestic, befitting a son of the House of Black – like a mutt is any better.

“He’s making friends. For a given value of the word.”

Regulus hunches closer to Severus’ face, squinting in the near-dark, and then leans back.

“You’re rubbing off on the boy.”

“This year is tense. All of the children feel it. Even the Potter brat – and no, I don’t know why, Harry seems to despise him at best, but that is, to my knowledge, how sibling relationships work.”

It isn’t the sort of loathing that will last, the disdain he finds in Harry Evan’s face when confronted with his twin. Severus knows that sort of hate very well, thank you – and Harry Evans might not know it well, but Severus suspects the boy recognizes his own mislike as a temporary fixture, given how dedicated he is to avoidance and ignorance. Not just of Charles Potter, of course – the Granger girl too. Parkinson alone he makes no effort to push away, and that only because Parkinson holds him at as much an arm’s length as he does in turn.

“I don’t care about the other boy, and neither will Bella.”

“No, but if Draco ever catches wind that you denied him the chance to have a friend so close to home he might just pack his bags and show up on Lucius’ doorstep.” Severus says blandly, and Regulus curses under his breath in response. Draco wouldn’t – not to his father, anyway. But he would be furious and heartbroken over the loss of someone to whom he and his might lay an actual claim; there is something proprietary about the brother of a boy one wishes to take and make one’s own, however distant or convoluted or nonsensical such a claim is. Draco is very much is mother’s son.

“A modified blood feud, then.”

“Common folk call that an Atonement, and Sirius would find it too merciful to offer the Potters.”

“You think it’s too merciful. But it won’t impact the boy, that way.” Regulus grouses, but he’s finally settling down, volume lowering and worming his way back into a comfortable position.

Unacceptable. Severus is now wide-awake and cold at two in the fucking morning. Regulus does not deserve sleep.

He waits until he hears Regulus’ jaw crack as he yawns, and then slaps a hand to the rune he’s etched onto his bedpost for this very reason.

Regulus’ shriek when the room flares bright with light is a soothing balm to his irritation.

X

“Hey.”

Harry looks up slowly. Charles Potter stands in front of him, rocking back and forth on his heels nervously. His hands are stuffed into his pockets, wand tucked behind his ear, and he is alone.

Harry isn’t researching anything too suspicious, thankfully, but a spike of rage still lurches up his throat at the interruption, the inconvenience, the threat.

Harry doesn’t say anything, just stares until Charles starts shifting side-to-side and finally clears his throat.

“Are you, uh, studying?”

Harry narrows his eyes.

“I – merlin, c’mon, mate, I’m not even doing anything!”

“You’re bothering me.”

“I’m just standing here!”

“Irritating me.” Harry answers evenly, and Charles throws his hands up in the air.

He’s been – better. Harry can honestly say that. Hard to not improve when you’re already at the bottom, but he hasn’t said a bad word about Granger and while Charles hasn’t said anything to anyone who takes it too far, he does nudge his friend Weasley when the other boy starts in on her. Tries to cut that particular annoyance off before it can really begin. The oddly timed pro-muggleborn comments might make Harry cringe, but given the alternative, he’ll take what he can get.

Not that Charles is his responsibility. At all.

“I just – you’re friends with Granger, yeah?”

“No.” Harry says flatly, immediately, and that seems to throw his brother off-kilter.

“I – what do you mean, no?”

“We’re not friends.”

Charles just gapes at him. Harry narrows his eyes, and then, finally, closes the book he’s reading and begins packing up. He hadn’t been doing anything too intensive this time, so it’s easy to do, and Charles just…sort of stares at him while he does.

“You – alright, but – I don’t know what to get her for Christmas. I’m staying over the holidays so I can’t ask my mum or my dad but I can owl-order something, but I have no idea what she likes.”

“Why would you get her something for Christmas?” Harry asks before he can stop himself – and he can’t stop the thread of hostility in his tone either.

The Durselys had gotten him a broken hanger for Christmas, one year. A sock – unwashed and holey – another. There is something worse than getting nothing at all; he wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even Granger.

Maybe Charles. Just a little.

“To make up for – you know, the troll.”

Harry realizes immediately that Charles is confiding in him, thanks more to the way the boy hunches forward and lowers his voice and hisses out the last word like something secret, shameful. And he cannot, will not, tolerate that.

He shoulders his bag and, rather than push past Charles so the Gryffindor can follow him out of the library chattering loudly and obviously – he steps back into the stacks behind him.

Hedwig had tattled on him to Willow, and she’d – helped soothe his anxieties about getting caught in the library some. Told him how to spot books that were more than just books, and Harry has memorized the location of each – even those that move! – religiously since.

He slips out of Charles’ sight and rushes to the next aisle over. He snags a frayed velvet ribbon peeking out from the closed pages of a tome the size of his head, tugs, and slips into the shelf like it is nothing more than a curtain.

Five great steps through pitch-black darkness, and then Harry is standing in the middle of a corridor. He doesn’t know where he is, but he’s not in the library, which is a plus. He hikes bag up higher on his shoulder, and sets out for home.

Harry’s still uneasy that Charles sought him out, but - really. Charles is either stupid or as observant as an actual, literal, non-magical brick to not be able to figure out something Granger would like. She’s perhaps the easiest person to read Harry’s ever encountered.

And he’s not even friends with her.

X

At the end of what would have been their last session before the winter holiday, if Harry had been leaving Hogwarts, Professor Snape bids him to take a seat at his desk.

Harry goes curiously. Professor Snape has already informed him that, because the two of them are both staying over the holiday, ‘detentions’ will continue on schedule, as will the check-in meetings Professor Snape requires of Harry. He can’t imagine what else the potions master has to tell him.

As is custom, there is a tray of snacks and steaming cups of drink; hot chocolate, thick with cream and marshmallow, the cookies frosted and cut into picture-perfect representations of evergreen trees glittering with fairy lights. They wink and twinkle when Harry picks one up, and sputter outrageously when he dips it into his mug.

“I have something unpleasant to discuss with you. It will upset you. I would recommend you ask Willow to be present for this discussion, if you trust her as deeply as I suspect you do.” Professor Snape says abruptly. He’s never been one for wasting words, but Harry’s still surprised at how blunt he is – how displeased he looks, expression gone sour and irate with it.

He’s not any happier to be having this conversation than he thinks Harry will be to hear it.

Huh. Harry squints suspiciously at him and shoves his soggy cookie in his mouth. Professor Snape just blinks tiredly back at him while Harry chews.

This time, when he calls for Willow and she appears violently at Harry’s side, arms already crossed in disapproval, Professor Snape doesn’t so much as twitch.

“What is I being here for?”

“Professor Snape said I’d want you here.”

The way her eyes narrow at the professor is distinctly predatory. She magnanimously waves a hand at Professor Snape, gesturing him for him to speak, and he doesn’t even roll his eyes in response.

Harry sets his hot chocolate down.

“Did you ever order a transcript of my trial?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” The Professor doesn’t look surprised. Harry’s uneasy at that; should he have? Would it have been –

“I am merely considering how much more I will need to tell you.”

“Is it all relevant?”

“The trial, no. My associations, yes.”

“Your…friends?” Harry tries, puzzled. A brief look of horror crosses Professor’s Snape face before a grimace overtakes it; Harry’s amused at the reaction. It isn’t as if Harry doesn’t know Professor Snape does have friends; Professor Sinistra and the other man, the Muggle Studies teacher. Maybe he means one of the – the Death Eaters? But Harry doesn’t see how that would be relevant to him.

“I was outed as a spy by Sirius Black during the trial. Or – he gave me the opportunity to come forward. His relatives were my allies, and he came to save them. I was merely collateral at the time. He’d had need of my skill and sought to keep the favor of the rest of his kin, to whom I am very well…acquainted. So – he saved me. I owed him a debt. And he had a missing godson to find.”

Harry’s blood runs frigid. He cannot breathe, cannot –

Professor Snape remains seated as he had been, slumped awkwardly in his chair, frowning. He is holding his right wrist with his left hand; the arm that had been injured. His wand has been left out on the desk, opposite his own cup of tea. Harry hadn’t even seen him take it out.

“You know.” Harry breathes, and his professor inclines his head.

“I was neighbors with your mother as a child, Mister Evans. The wizarding world may see fit to ignore who she was before she married their precious James Potter, but I called her kin, once, long before then.”

He sounds bitter. He sounds aggrieved. But not – sad.

“You…” His voice fails him. Harry swallows. Willow is still as stone in his peripherals, but she isn’t posturing like she does when Hedwig gets too excited and clips a bookcase – she’s calm.

And if Snape had told someone – surely there would have been something done about it by now? Charles’ odd behavior isn’t so odd as to make Harry think he knows – and wouldn’t the Potters send him first, to endear him to them? He would, if he were in their position – but he never would have thrown away a baby in the first place.

Which leaves – Sirius Black.

“Why are you telling me?”

“I am not going to deliver you to your godfather, much as he hates me for that. You will go willingly or not at all, at least while you are under the protection of Hogwarts. But he is impatient, with good reason, and I am many things but a post-owl is not one of them.”

Professor Snape inclines his head, and Harry follows the motion to find a –

One of the office’s end tables has been cleared of the potions papers and publications that usually drown it. There is a soft velvet bag, tied with a silky silver ribbon, slouched on its surface instead.

His whole body burns hot and then cold and then hot again and Harry swallows once, and then twice, and tears his gaze away from the bag – no matter how wrong it feels to turn his back to it, as if it might come to life and strike at him – and looks back to Professor Snape.

“What does he want?”

“He is your sworn godfather, Mister Evans. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means he vowed on his magic and blood to protect you, guide you, and love you as his own. It means that if the Potters didn’t want you, you should have gone straight to him.” Professor Snape stops there, hesitating, and Willow makes a low sound. Harry looks to her immediately. She looks – discomforted.

“What?”

“He be knowing when little Slytherin is being in danger. Is being hurt.”

The chill that takes Harry is violent enough to have him jerk in his seat.

“How?”

“Oath is being – “ Willow cuts herself off. She twitches just as harshly as Harry has, and looks to Professor Snape.

“Pain, Mister Evans. His magic urges him to act. To fulfill his oaths and protect you. Has for the past decade. Sirius has been unable to – we were never able to find you – and so his magic causes him debilitating agony. It is wild, uncontrollable. If he weren’t already a Black, already cursed to madness, if magic itself did not understand that he was not at fault for his inability to find you, it would have driven him insane.”

There is too much to parse there – too much information, too much left unsaid, but Harry finds himself clutching the important parts anyway.

His godfather is being tortured for his absence.

“Why would he – if he’s being hurt why would he want to –“

“Sirius Black would flay the world alive for you, Mister Evans. This is a torture he has taken up gladly, because at least it let him know you were alive.”

Why would he not –

“They told him I was dead?” Harrys’ voice is small. Wounded. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the burn in his eyes or the aching in his throat but he can’t seem to stop it either.

His parents had been too cowardly to kill him in the first place; but they’d let others think they –

“When he wouldn’t stop looking for you. I believe they thought it would be kinder to let him think you gone. They forgot what his bond to you truly meant, and what a mockery such a lie made of Lupin’s sacrifice.”

“I don’t care if they thought they were helping – “

“And neither do I.”

That draws Harry up short. His face is wet, when he meets his professor’s gaze.

“We failed you, Mister Evans. I swear to you, on my magic, that the Blacks want only for your safety and comfort. I would not put you in contact with someone I believed a danger to you. I knew Petunia as a child; I knew what a vile creature she was; and I never thought to look for you in her home because despite it all, I still thought Lily was a better person that she is. That is my failure. I began helping you to atone for that mistake, just as much as I have continued helping you because you have proven an excellent student.”

Professor Snape’s voice goes soft, gentle at the end. He gestures, again, towards the bag. This time, Willow moves. Steps forward and takes it in her hands, hefts it on deceptively thin arms and blinks once, deliberately. It vanishes.

“Is being safe, little Slytherin. Hedwig is being guard just in case.” She says softly, and Harry –

Harry bursts into confused, anguished, panicked tears.

X

When it had become apparent that Severus was not, in fact, going to escape the Dark Lord’s clutches, he’d mastered Occlumency.

Well. That is a lie. He’d mastered it long before then; even as a child Severus was a paranoid little brat, and his mother had been even worse. The point, however, remains the same; he’d recognized that the whole of his being would not survive the Dark Lord’s attentions, and so he’d sat down and brainstormed what version of himself could.

He’d not been ignorant to the rumors hissed at his back; haflblood Snape and his pet mudblood, panting after a filthy bitch who thought herself too good for a Potter. By the time sex was even a thought in Severus’ mind, Lily had been firmly boxed into sister rather than lover, but Severus is and was reserved and Lily so very open and intimate with those she loved that the general public had seen the opposite.

The Severus Snape that inhabited his body, when he met with the Dark Lord – and his lieutenants, and frankly anyone Marked whom Severus couldn’t trust – had loathed his father and loved his mother like the real Severus did. He’d loved his best friend as the real Severus never could, and he’d hated James Potter as the real Severus didn’t allow himself to. Schoolyard crushes and bullies made such a tantalizingly perfect tale for a schoolchild recruited by force and intimidation…and Severus had played the part perfectly.

He had tried to warn Lily. She had either deliberately ignored him or not understood; likely the latter, given that she had never at any point seemed to comprehend how much danger he was in during their school days.

Building her up as a perfect thing, an ideal more than a woman had been…uncomfortably easy. He’d already put her on a pedestal, after all. The Severus Snape that wanted to be the Dark Lord’s with every fiber of his being – he’d just elevated her a touch, and not even the Dark Lord had noticed the difference.

It makes the whole – thing – worse. The hatred of James Potter is one thing, his loathing of Petunia is one thing, his fear for a child is one thing, his concern over one of his own snakes is one thing – but all of that is compounded by the still heart-shattering revelation that Lily Evans is not who he thought she was and never, ever was.

The real Severus Snape is fucking exhausted by the time Bellatrix rolls into the floo and vanishes. World-weary. He’s too old for this shit. Too old for living.

“I miss the Dark Lord.” He mutters into the gloom of his bedroom. This is an objectively true statement, and it feels like that on his tongue; astringent and bitter in the way only truth can be. The best lies are built on grains of truth; the Severus Snape that had taken the Dark Mark willingly was only shades different than the real one. He’d have joined the Dark Lord without being actively hunted and harassed into it.

Things shouldn’t have been simpler during the war, but –

Here he is.

Severus drags himself to his feet. He feels like death. It is late beyond reason, the castle mostly empty now, but he is familiar with this kind of exhaustion. He won’t be able to sleep, not yet. And he has rounds to make anyway; might as well stagger around Hogwarts for an hour or two before his body gives out on him and he collapses wherever he finds himself.

The crux of his angst is this; he’s wasted his whole fucking life on a shade of a woman who doesn’t exist. He might’ve done it intentionally, and for very good reason, he might’ve known the lies he was constructing were paper-thin bullshit from the start, but it is still fucking galling to realize not only was she not worth the effort, she really wasn’t worth the fucking effort.

Some part of him had thought he was immortalizing a friend. A sister. Someone he loved., and cared for, and could continue to love for what she had been to him even if they never again spoke or she died or he died or what the fuck ever. Severus is not one for grand gestures, but this had been one, and Lily had in one single night punted the little medal Severus had given her off a cliff and drowned the damn thing with fiendfyre. He’s done a spectacular job avoiding that particular emotional nightmare over the last decade, but now he can’t escape the object of Lily’s wrongdoings and that brings things up.

He's particularly prone to reminiscing and flashbacks. Seeing Harry Evans weeping had slammed a blasting curse on every single one of his triggers, and he’d barely held it together long enough to awkwardly pat the child on his head and send him off with his house elf. Bellatrix had come when he’d called, but he’d barely been coherent enough to shove a hand into the floo and wave until she’d seen.

“I need a drink. Or ten.” Severus mutters under his breath, and squints blearily at the faint outline of an open door down the hall.

Candelight, not a spell. He rubs his eyes in the hopes that the world will fuzz together into a slightly more coherent blob, and shuffles through the cracked door.

Within is an abandoned classroom. And a heart attack. An actual, literal, what the fuck is Dumbledore thinking heart attack.

Severus is not familiar with the specifics of the cursed mirror glittering seductively in front of him; he doesn’t need to be. He’s been inside House Black’s inner circle long enough to recognize the malevolence settled into every atom of the artefact, stood at the Dark Lord’s side long enough to be able to ready the intent in the gaping, starved maw dangling pretty bait before the actual fucking child about to touch the Merlin-damned thing –

Using his magic is physically painful, like claws tearing through his sternum, but he slashes his wand before he can register what it is he’s doing and Charles Potter is yanked back from the mirror and into Severus’ legs.

“A hundred points from Gryffindor for trying to touch the cursed murder mirror, Potter!” He barks. His voice is raspier than he’d like it to be; he doesn’t usually encounter people after needing Bellatrix’ help so urgently, not this late. The brat is either going to have nightmares or tell the rest of the school Severus drinks on the job, he can already tell.

The boy is too spooked to protest; he in fact huddles closer and Severus has to physically refrain from recoiling.

“It’s – cursed?”

“If your parents haven’t yet taught you to look for such things they want you dead.” Severus says flatly, disdainfully. Charles twitches – not strongly enough to indicate one way or the other – but he does squint at the mirror and then mash himself even further against Severus.

“It’s – but it was – “

“A pretty lure, I’m sure. The best traps have them.”

This trap won’t be meant for Quirinus, not yet. It’s too early, and he’s too subtle to have given away his hand just yet. The Defense Professor, perhaps, but she’s not worth this trouble. Albus is playing a game of some sort, Severus assumes, one he doesn’t mind paying for with the lives of children caught as collateral.

The boy swallows.

“I saw – everyone was there. It was home, but it wasn’t, there was – the fireplace was lit and there were books off the shelves and Mum had a big old knit blanket on her lap, the one she doesn’t let us touch up in the attic – “

That punches the breath from Severus’ lungs; he knows exactly what blanket the child is rambling about and the sheer rage that boils up within him is breathtaking.

Rose Evans had been gifted with fabric crafts. But her gifts had never been free of rules; use them, she’d always insisted. I made these to keep my children warm, not collect dust. She’d put that commandment in her will. It’s a small sin in the grand scheme of things but Rose Evans was the only woman to have ever earned the privilege of Severus calling her mother, unconditionally and wholly –

“ – and she was laughing with all sorts of people! Her and Dad and Uncle Moony and this tall man with grey eyes and you and a really big blonde lady and Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom and a really short lady with the weirdest glasses, and I was standing there with a – “

“It wasn’t real, Mr. Potter.” And despite himself, despite what he’s done to himself, Bellatrix’ fixing is so fresh that he cannot even summon the sharpness the boy deserves. The boy looks up at him, suddenly small, a child, eyes big and watery. Falls silent abruptly.

“You know why you were there. Do you – how come? Do you know who the other people were?”

There’s an urgency to his voice. Severus sighs, and flicks his wand at the cursed mirror; grits his teeth as he layers protective spells over it. Basic, won’t hold up to much – but enough to last until he can get Quirinus up here. The casting lets him take a closer look at the artefact. See the strikingly bold letters etched into its frame. He recognizes it then, if only vaguely.

“The Mirror of Erised. Deceptively deadly. It feeds on those it ensnares, Mr. Potter. Devours them alive. With every kill, its strength grows. It should not be here.”

“You’re not answering my questions.” Charles Potter’s voice waivers, but he holds steady. Has his sticky little hands fisted in Severus’ robes.

“It showed you your heart’s true desire, child. A family, welcoming and warm. Real, and unconcerned with threats or safety or appearances.”

“Then why would you be there?”

“I called your mother sister, once.” He says, and the child recoils.

“Sirius Black – a man who once called your father brother. Marlene McKinnon, a beloved friend of your parents from their school days, murdered with her whole family by the Dark Lord during the war. Pandora Lovegood, who was once Lily’s research partner, before Lily abandoned her career with the Department of Mysteries, dead in a spellcrafting accident some years back.”

“What happened?” The child shouldn’t be asking this; he at least knows of Severus’ history. Should know of the bad blood between House Black and House Potter.

But it would be a very Gryffindor thing, to ignore and refuse to accept a betrayal so great, so deep.

“I had not believed your mother capable of such great evil until she – “

Severus cuts himself off. His mind is too tired to keep up with this; Charles blending distressingly into young Mister Evans the longer Severus has to look at him. He puts a hand to the boy’s shoulder and pulls him out of the room, and the child goes wordlessly.

“Ask your parents what they did to House Black, Mister Potter. Lily may never have forgiven me for what I did during the war, but she and your father waited until the war was over before…”

Rose Evans would disown her daughter for it, he realizes, if she had lived long enough to see what Lily had done. And Mr. Evans –

He’s too exhausted for this, too weary.

“To bed, Mister Potter.” He says hoarsely. The child obeys. Severus stands there, aching and hurt, until the boy is gone.

Summoning his patronus sends him into a coughing fit, black spots in his vision and world spinning concerningly, but his widow skitters for Quirinus with all due haste, and Severus finally lets himself slide to the floor.

His face, he realizes, is wet.

X

“Can you open it?” He asks. His voice is so, so small, but Harry can’t bring himself to touch the bag set on the rug before the study’s fireplace. Hedwig clatters reassuringly at his side. Willow smiles at him, a soft thing, a sweet thing, and Harry’s eyes burn anew.

He hasn’t stopped crying, he thinks, since he left Professor Snape’s office.

“Willow can.” She says gently, and she does.

First comes a thick stack of letters tied with a black leather cord. READ FIRST is written in bold black ink on the one at the very top.

Second comes a comforter bigger than any Harry has ever seen in a beautiful dove grey, thick enough to swallow him whole. Willow tells him that it is enchanted to stay clean and soft and smell comforting and always be warm, but even then, Harry can’t move, can’t do anything but stare as she spreads the whole of it out in the air above their heads and spells it into a neat folded pile nearly as tall as Harry is.

Third, and last – comes a plush. It is small. Old, and worn, a dog well past its prime. Fabric gone grey instead of black, stone eyes scratched and dulled with handling.

It is sized for an infant.

Harry bursts into sobs so great he cannot breathe.

Chapter Text

Harry,

If you’ve done as I asked, you are reading this letter first. I hate to keep you separated from your godfather any longer than you have already been, but Severus tells us you know nothing of our history and none of our family are of a mind to explain it to you.

My name is Regulus Black. My elder brother is Sirius Black, your godfather. Besides letters from myself and my brother, I have also enclosed letters from our cousins Bellatrix and Narcissa Black, and letters from Narcissa’s son Draco – who is most excited to finally speak with you. There are more, of course, but I fear even what I have sent thus far will overwhelm you. Do not feel obligated to read or to respond to our letters, although if you were to at least read this one and Sirius’, I would be indebted.

Godparent is a bit of a misnomer; we wizards stole the name from early Christianity as it suited our purposes well, and allowed our rather complex family dynamics to blend in a little better with the muggles. A magical godparent serves much the same function as a nonmagical godparent; they promise to care for, guide, and protect their charge. The great difference comes with the magic involved.

A godparent vow is a magical oath. Something that is supernaturally binding, enforced upon the parties with or without their consent, and, most importantly, unbreakable. Given what little Severus has told us, you will need to understand this first and foremost; Sirius is quite literally incapable of causing you harm through action or inaction. You will not trust me when I tell you he would not even without the oath, so – trust that magic protects you from him, and as he is the Lord of House Black, from any harm from those of us who are his kin.

Sirius did not know of the attack on Halloween that saw Lupin destroy the Dark Lord – did you know? You were never in any danger with the wolf there to protect you, even with the Dark Lord baying for your blood and that of your brother’s. But he felt it, the moment your parents hid you away – and when they would not answer him nor help him recover you, he turned to us.

For a godparent to fail in their vows, a godparent must do so intentionally. They must turn their back or their wand on their godchild. Magic cannot help, but it will not punish, godparents who are prevented from fulfilling their vows due to the actions of third parties. Sirius’ magic is unsteady, and should you agree to meet with us, will likely frighten you. He is not in control of himself, most times, and he is often too ill with the effects of his wounded godparent bond to see to his duties. House Black allows me to share the burdens with him – the Lordship, the politics that come with it, and the magical cost. I know exactly how often you have been well and truly safe since you vanished, Harry. We would see you never face such dangers again.

X

The Ministry’s Christmas – or Yule, depending upon who you ask – Ball is as ugly and garish as ever. Regulus wouldn’t go, but given how close Sirius and Severus are to baiting their lost little lamb back into the fold, it is imperative they draw no unwanted attention to them. Overly cautious, yes, borderline paranoid, yes, but Regulus lives thanks to that creed and he won’t spurn it merely because wizarding Britain is in peacetime.

A false peacetime. Sirius had cowed all the blood purists into pissing themselves and capitulating to the war’s end, but by the time House Black had settled itself into its political might, too much time had passed to really drive any cleanup efforts in the Ministry. The Dark Lord’s faithful will pull something, within the next few years, Regulus expects. He expects it to be pathetic and wholly useless, and is quite confident in his plan to set Bellatrix loose on the lot of them.

In the meantime – Regulus does what he can. Keeps the wizarding world too distracted with the threat of his brother to notice the small changes he makes, tiny reforms and adjustments. Come the next onslaught, magical Britain will be in a stronger place than it was before the war – but only just.

He swipes a drink from a floating tray, a pretty globe of magically contained alcohol swirling metallic silver around a cheery white flame. Ostentatious and useless – and frankly appalling on the palate – but with a low enough percentage of alcohol that Regulus can play his part without getting absolutely fucking wasted. The drink looks absolutely silly with the giant cream-and-gold striped straw sticking out of it, but needs must.

He's said his annual hellos and threats to most of his targets so far; a few hours more and he will be safe to return home. Regulus sighs dramatically to himself, and sweeps behind a heavy velvet drape into a silent antechamber – and right into one Lily Potter.

The enchantments on his drink do not survive contact with her. It splashes down the front of her evergreen dress robes in a wash of silver and smoke. Her own drink, contained much more practically in a tall champagne glass, makes a break for it down her arm and mostly succeeds.

“Whoops.” Regulus deadpans, and steps to the side.

“Mister – Lord Black.” Her greeting is stilted, surprised. She does not move past him. She is lingering.

When it had all started, when Regulus had first stepped into his brother’s shoes to help carry the burden of Lordship – the Potters had thought he would be more reasonable, more amenable, and sought him out frequently.

Regulus had never engaged in any public displays of wrath with them, and had never allowed a private meeting. That did not in any way make him an ally of theirs. Lily Potter for what she had done to Sirius, and James Potter – James Potter for what he’d done to Regulus first, Sirius second.

Sirius hadn’t dropped him the moment Regulus had sorted Slytherin. The distance had been a slow, creeping threat, and James Potter had been the architect behind it. Refusing to pass on messages to Sirius, or collect him from the Gryffindor common room. Announcing alternative obligations, bigger and better adventures, when Sirius should have been spending time with him. Bullying an eleven-year-old into repeating his family’s rhetoric in the halls and deriding him for it – despite the fact that Regulus had never even heard a proper opposing viewpoint before in his life, never even met a mudblood before going to Hogwarts, hadn’t even done anything –

Sirius coming to him in the wake of the Potter’s betrayal should’ve been a heartbreaking show of trust on the part of his brother. Regulus had been – and still was – joyful over it. Warm, loved, and his brother no longer under the yoke of that fucking piece of shit –

The point is; their plans had never worked. That had not dissuaded the Potters from trying periodically, however.

Sure enough, out comes her wand – flicking first into privacy charms, before addressing the mess adorning her clothing.

“I was surprised to hear your House so vehemently protest the Welfare Act at the last session.” Regulus says, resigning himself to a conversation. He doesn’t have to be nice about it.

Better to nip it in the bud now than risk her pushing it, showing up at his office or home.

“Excuse me? M – Lord Black, the Welfare Act was a transparent attempt to enact You-Know-Who’s early policy changes by forcibly removing children from their parents! Why would I or my husband have backed it?”

She’s a gifted speaker, passionate and engaging, and wholly baffled by his comment. Regulus raises an eyebrow.

“We both know you don’t consider squibs children, Lady Potter.”

The Act had been a blatant piece of propaganda, poorly thought out and only on the floor because the older Purebloods wanted to feel like they were productive. Broadly speaking, it was meant to legalize the taking of magical children from nonmagical parents, and streamline the process of removing nonmagical children from magical households. Calling it the Changeling Act would’ve been more appropriate, but the morons who proposed it had had enough sense to avoid those particular connotations.

She looks like he’d just struck her, face paling, eyes going wild, recoiling back a step. He rolls his eyes at the display.

“That’s not what happened.” Her voice is a dry whisper.

“Isn’t it?” He asks, arching an eyebrow.

“My aunt would have liked you, Lady Potter. She ascribed to the same attitudes as you and your husband; she preferred drowning to get rid of the pests. Given the Potter’s historic penchant for flames, I assume you burned yours?”

The boy’s alive. Regulus knows it, she knows it, but her husband had told Sirius the opposite and had never spoken a word against that story after; the Potters are more comfortable supporting the murder of squib children than they are the giving away of one. And who is Regulus to deny them such a preference?

“How can you even say that?”

The fury that strikes him then – strikes him blind. Between one blink and the next the world goes white, and then he has the woman backed up against the wall behind her, wand digging pointedly into the flesh beneath her jaw, her own wand in his other hand.

“Let me remind you, Lady Potter, you removed our heir from our care. Threw him away like rubbish when his sworn godfather was busy ensuing none of the Dark Lord’s devotees could finish the job their master started, ensuring the safety and wellbeing of your family. You know Sirius cannot have children of his own – Harry is his only child and will be until the day my brother dies, and the only child capable of taking on the Lordship when we pass. You spent years calling him brother, kin, family, friend and you doomed his entire fucking family to a slow death because you wouldn’t sully your line with a squib.”

Every world comes out frozen, sharp and bladed. She’s shaking, tears spilling down her cheeks, when he’s done, and Regulus is tempted to curse her, right then and there – but the only spells coming to mind are insufficient. If he’s going to kill the Potters, he’s not going to go to Azkaban after.

Sirius may have revolutionized House Black through unholy rage, spite and might, but inheritance is not something he could have challenged without fighting the whole of the Wizengamot. Not something Regulus’ brother was necessarily opposed to, but that’s besides the point; none of them are upset that Sirius’ godson is the heir. The problem is, as it always is, political. Unless Sirius took Narcissa or Bellatrix to wife, no child of theirs could inherit; even Draco, despite being subsumed back into his mother’s blood, is not Black enough, what with the Malfoy name still hanging over him like a death shroud.

“Sirius has the rest of you.” Is what she says. Regulus’ hand spasms around her wand; the sound it makes when it snaps is a lovely thing, almost as satisfying as slapping her would have been.

“Sirius will not see the rest of us raped, not like our parents would have. Not as you would, apparently. It’s enlightening to know where you stand, Lady Potter. I’ll keep that in mind in our future encounters.” His tone is almost jovial when he draws back, despite the static creeping in on the edges of his vision. He tucks his wand away and tosses the remnants of hers to the floor; she stands frozen as he sneers in disgust and wipes his hand on his robes.

She wouldn’t know the specifics; he won’t tell her. But for her to insinuate – after what had happened to –

Fuck, but he wants to kill her for that.

She lets out a hitching sob as he slips out of the antechamber, the sound cutting off sharply as he exits her privacy spells.

He needs a shower. And to kill something. And a hug. Not necessarily in that order.

But first; he’s a few more marks to chat up. He’s a Creature Welfare bill to put forth by the next Wizengamot meeting; with any luck, little Harry at Hogwarts will see House Black’s name attached to it and think well of them, given Severus’ last update, that the boy likes elves.

It eases something in Regulus, to know that he and the child will get along.

X

…introduce myself. I am your favorite Auntie, I don’t care what my hag of a sister tells you. She’ll teach you to use a salad fork correctly, I’ll teach you how to charm eyeballs right out of their sockets, and one of those things is obviously more interesting than the other.

I’ve a Mastery in Mind Magics – although if you’ve heard of me from any of my work we’ll be having a Talk, young man, even attempting to practice at your age can cause irreparable harm. You’ve seen Severus, you don’t want to grow up to be like him, do you? And yes, love, there is a correct answer there. Severus may be a dear, and we all love him greatly, but a role model he is most certainly not, unlike myself.

I’ve also obtained what is technically a Mastery in the Dark Arts, although Britain doesn’t recognize it. The Ministry likes to make all the fun magics illegal, to its own detriment. If our House’s pride mattered any less to me I’d insist we abandon the Isles and go somewhere we will be appreciated, but I would quite literally rather die than let that Malfoy bastard be the last asshole standing – and don’t worry, love, your uncle Reggie’s got all the history for you, you won’t be ignorant long.

X

“There you are!”

Harry startles so badly that he jumps, and smacks his head into the shelf above him. The pain shocks him out of the fog he’s been floating in, and he turns to find Granger bouncing on her toes behind him, curls undulating in an unsettling halo about her head.

“Are you okay?” Her concern has his skin-crawling; he shies away from her when she reaches out to touch him before he can stop himself. She immediately drops her hand, though, and that – well it’s better than it could be.

“M’fine.”

“Did you have a good holiday?”

“It was – “

“Granger!”

Harry goes rigid to hear Charles’ voice, and Granger sees it. Scowls herself, to match Harry’s, and that – lessens some of the irritation in him.

Her scowl drops away just as quickly, however, into something bright and mischievous and near-manic. She lurches forward and smashes something into his chest; Harry barely catches it before she’s spinning on her heel to face Charles.

“My daddy says I don’t have to put up with you anymore.”

“I – what - !” Charles breaks off in a scream as Granger bodily tackles him. Harry stands there, the sound of flesh striking flesh and Charles squealing more in panic than in pain incomprehensible to him.

“I’m sorry!”

“Not sorry enough!” Granger barks, but she sounds kind of happy, and Charles’ answering screech is pure dramatics. Harry shuffles back into the stacks, and leaves the two of them to…whatever that is.

X

…about your age. A few months older, if I recall correctly, and I am sorry to say he will hold that over your head. I am just grateful you are not attending Hogwarts together else none of us would survive the coming years.

Draco is enrolled at Drumstrang, which is a superior school in terms of actual hands-on instruction, but it does lack the resources and knowledge Hogwarts has hidden in its walls. Hogwarts might bill itself as a school first and foremost but don’t let that fool you; Hogwarts is a place of unparalleled learning for those who take initiative. If you treat your years there as one would a muggle school, attending classes and homework and naught else to sharpen your mind, you will waste your childhood. You must learn to hunt, if you wish to find truly powerful knowledge there.

Severus seems to think you’ve already learnt that particular lesson, and for that I am thrilled. My Draco is not a natural scholar. He is gifted at numbers, of course, which will serve him better on the day-to-day than the arcane arts will, but it will be wonderful to have another truly dedicated student of magic in the home.

Speaking of which, should you ever have need of a ritual room, you’ll find many around the castle but the thing to keep in mind is that location does matter for ritual magic, and the closer one is to the ley lines crossed beneath the castle the better. When I was a girl I found one such room above what I believe to be the wardstone of the castle itself – your godfather to this day refuses to confirm or deny this, which is as good a confession in my book…

X

Quirinus is squinting out a narrow window at the grounds, fingers tapping at the stonework details carved on the sill, when the child finds him. He is, in fact, so distracted, that he does not even register the child’s presence until the littlest Longbottom tugs at his robes.

The Mirror is a problem; it speaks to a larger game being played that Quirinus is wholly baffled by. Albus is the sort of moron to agree to hide a friend’s priceless artefact in a school filled with vulnerable children without a second thought to the children’s safety; he’s already done so. But the Mirror – the Mirror speaks to an expectation of threat. It says that Albus expects thieves to come for the Stone – with skill or numbers great enough to warrant a carnivorous mirror more than willing to ensnare the innocent children Albus caretakes rather than a criminal.

Either Albus always intended to increase security around the Stone – or something has spooked him.

This complicates Quirinus’ plans. If there is a credible threat after the damned thing, he cannot take it early, else risk a temper tantrum that would likely result in hostages by anyone stupid enough to challenge Albus in Hogwarts proper. Quirinus’ position is wholly different; any moron unfamiliar with Albus, however, is hardly likely to be intelligent enough not to lose their shit at being thwarted.

His timeline has now become something delicate and gossamer-thin; it is these considerations that Neville Longbottom interrupts.

Quirinus looks down at the boy curiously, genuinely surprised to see the boy willingly so close to him – willingly touching him.

“Can I help you, Mister Longbottom?” He asks. It takes effort to moderate his glee, to be approached by the child. He’s not sure he’s wholly successful, but the boy doesn’t flee him again – merely shoves something at his face.

It’s a photograph. Quirinus takes it gingerly. There is a hole punched through the right-hand side of it, singes and rust-colored stains on the whole of its edges. He doesn’t need to see what it depicts to recognize it.

The child doesn’t so much as twitch when Quirinus draws his wand ad begins to cast privacy spells. The child doesn’t even protest the silence, which grows and lengthens even after Quirinus has finished. He’s not sure – not sure what to say.

He hadn’t expected this.

“Who is that?”

“Where did you find this, Mister Longbottom?” He finally asks, fingers tapping at the handle of his wand despite how – well. He’s unsettled; it’s a weakness. The boy doesn’t look half as triumphant as he should, to have wrung that from him.

“It was in my mother’s things. A keepsake – a memorial box.”

That…would make sense. They were…

“Who is it? Did you – did you both know my mother?”

Quirinus drags the whole of his attention to the child with effort; he feels the strain of it like a physical thing.

“Your grandmother has not educated you on your mother’s family at all?” He asks, tone sharper than it should have been – the boy flinches, hard. But he shakes his head all the same.

“Elizabeth Dodgson was your mother’s cousin. They were raised as siblings; Lizzie called her sister, although I never spoke much with your mother. Alice went on to become an auror; Lizzie went on to become an Unspeakable.”

His thumb swipes across the hole; the discoloration there. A younger version of his own face is scowling at a laughing teenager in matching Ravenclaw blue. Most of Lizzie’s torso is gone, an empty hole punched through the picture. Their form blurs and shifts, distorts, as Lizzie moves across the width of it.

“Were you friends?”

Quirinus blinks, and looks away from the picture. Holds it out jerkily.

“Lizzie spent their life working on enchantments and disenchantments. Objects, to do what spells already could – or in many cases could not. Lizzie was a true genius, Mister Longbottom; you should be proud to be related.”

“S – they?”

“Lizzie ascribed to no particular gender unless it amused them. They would not be opposed to you considering them aunt, Mister Longbottom.” He adds; he’s familiar with the panicked look that crosses the boy’s face.

“How do you know them? Are they – um. Are they dead?”

Quirinus risks a glance around, praying to every god he doesn’t believe in that Severus will materialize out of the ether – to no avail. He is not surprised; Quirinus doesn’t believe in such paltry things as atonement, necessarily, or Lizzie would yammer on about responsibility or some such, the symmetry in forcing him to tell their nephew of their fate.

“You know what an inferi is, yes?” He asks. The boy pales, but nods brave as the lion on his uniform. Doesn’t balk.

Quirinus is not surprised that the boy knows; inferi are a horror story from the war, but a salient one even now. The Dark Lord’s attacks had not left behind corpses; there’d been no recovering of the dead unless the dead were snarling at your throat. The Dark Lord had only ever left corpses when a line had been culled in its entirety; to have something to bury was no victory when every man, woman and child of a family lay cold and still at your feet. And when those corpses were sent out – it was always after their loved ones.

“Lizzie kept this photograph in their breast pocket. Over their heart; they were sentimental like that. Knew I thought it silly, I suppose. A blow through the heart is not sufficient to slay and inferi, Mister Longbottom, but if you enchant a tool with sufficiently powerful and complex disenchantment runes – a paradox, I know, that is why we never published it and why no one ever managed to replicate it on their own – it is possible to sever the magics reanimating the corpse entirely.”

They never would have published their findings in the first place; Quirinus does not care for public adoration or attention, and Lizzie preferred keeping their weapons out of the hands of their enemies, but the point remains the same. He runs his thumb over that hole again, the one he had put there, and presses the picture into the boy’s chest until he takes it clumsily.

“I returned their body to your mother. I did not know she kept Lizzie’s personal effects.” Alice had never struck him as the sentimental type, but he supposed Lizzie must have gotten it from somewhere. He’d never met the elder Dodgson generations; there’d been no bad blood, but Quirinus was hardly capable of a normal relationship and Lizzie had been a private person. Not private enough, given that the Dark Lord had known to send them after him, but –

But the Unspeakables that had dared take the Mark were dead for that, and had been for some time.

“Is that why you want to talk to me?” The boy asks.

It’s a brilliant deduction. Wholly false – Quirinus had not even realized –

But it makes the boy comfortable. To have a reason, Quirinus suspects, rather than any sort of familial relationship. A motive understandable for such a young child.

In truth, Quirinus had not cared for any of Lizzie’s kin. He’d known of them perfunctorily, Alice only because Lizzie spoke so often of her. Quirinus’ interest had never extended past the person before him. Lizzie had never held that against him.

“We would never have married. Not through the Ministry.” He says instead. It is closer to a confession than he would like it to be.

The boy’s expression firms up into something Quirinus does not recognize, and between one heartbeat and the next, Neville Longbottom steps forward and hugs Quirinus’ midsection with all the strength his eleven-year-old body can muster.

He twitches, a spell already rising on his tongue to forcibly pry the boy off of him, but a flash of red own the hall catches his eye; Percival is there, half-hidden around the corner of another corridor, eyes narrowed dangerously and wand openly brandished.

To his horror, Quirinus realizes he will have to endure the contact.

And Neville does not seem interested in letting go.

Well played, Percival. Well played…

X

…suitemates don’t really play quidditch, they’re all bores. Durmstrang has a surprisingly robust sports program for more sports than I could even name, but if quidditch wasn’t so internationally popular I don’t think anyone here would bother with it except Krum which is a shame. Which! If you don’t know what quidditch is, don’t worry! I’ll teach you! But don’t go asking anyone else for help or I’ll have to teach you to unlearn whatever inadequate lessons Hogwarts gives you – I’ll teach you the best ways to play Seeker and Chaser. Those are two of the positions on a quidditch team, if you don’t know, Seeker’s the best but Chaser’s pretty good too.

Other than flying, I like puzzles, do you? Uncle Reg is great at coming up with them, he makes me a whole booklet each year for my birthday. I’m still stuck on last year’s, which is annoying – he said I needed a real challenge so he stopped using just numbers. I still have my older ones, so if you like puzzles I can lend them to you or we can ask Uncle Reg to make you some new ones!

Uncle Siri’s who you have to go to if you want something all the other adults say no about, by the way. Mother doesn’t let me have muggle candy – they have a much much higher sugar content than wizarding sweets, and Mother’s suspicious of how processed a lot of them are – but Uncle Siri always sneaks me out into London, there’s this candy store a couple blocks away from Grimmauld, you’ll love it! My favorite are these sour neon….

X

She’d given him an enchanted notebook. It is leather, a soft buttery brown stamped with a series of ringed runes on the front and back that hum pleasantly at his touch. It will never run out of pages, although organizing it, Harry suspects, will eventually grow to be a task in of itself.

He fears the expense of the gift, but Willow laughs – there are no other features accompanying the never-ending pages; these sorts of notebooks come relatively cheap in the magical world, and are typically the cast-off attempts by enchanting or runesmith apprentices, sold to recoup the cost of the materials and labor.

Still – it is a thoughtful gift, as is Merry Christmas! Written on the inside cover, with love sent from the whole of the Granger family.

Harry is deeply uncomfortable with it – and so the next day he sneaks back into the library, and lurks until he finds Granger’s table. She’s absent, likely out hunting for books, but her things are unpacked and set out as if she’d only just vanished for a moment.

He slips a roll of parchment into her bag before she can return, and scurries out. He hadn’t signed it, but he’d listed out all the useful little spells he’s been using while taking his own notes. Spells to correct grammar, to keep paper clean, to erase ink spills and to correct crooked lines, spells to copy out citations automatically, spells to repair the more delicate sorts of parchment the older books contain. And some to dampen sound he’d thought she would use, spells capable of increasing the likelihood one is ignored or not noticed by others. He’s made sure they’re obscure spells, not things she would have been likely to find in their textbooks.

Maybe, he thinks, she’ll leave him alone now.

X

Sweetheart, I don’t know what to write. I’ve been imagining speaking to you, writing to you, telling you how sorry I am that I failed you for years, and now that the opportunity is finally here I can’t even string two words together coherently. I’m having your auntie Bellatrix proof-read this for me before I seal it up just in case.

I am so, so sorry, love. I should’ve realized Petunia was an option. I knew of her. I’d met her, and I cannot imagine the hurts she’s inflicted on you, and I am so, so, so sorry that I never found you. That I let you be taken in the first place.

Are you safe? Hogwarts isn’t always – not that it isn’t wonderful but especially for snakes, things can be dangerous, yeah? Not that it’s bad you’re in Slytherin! Don’t believe anything Severus says about that, your House doesn’t define you as a person no matter what I said as an idiot kid, he just holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe –

Anyway. Are you liking Hogwarts? How are your classes? Extracurriculars? I loved pranks at your age; there was something special in making someone else smile, making someone laugh. Or in getting back at someone for being an asshole. Hogwarts got a lot of those; please don’t do as poor a job as I did at getting back at them, I got caught so often my first year that the whole staff started using my middle name when yelling for me, which was horrifically embarrassing.

I have missed you every minute you were gone, sweetheart. I don’t have the words to tell you how much I love you; I’ve loved you since the minute you were first plopped into my arms all doe-eyed and scowling. Never seen a baby look so unimpressed before – you didn’t crack a smile until I turned into Padfoot and then you wouldn’t let go of me.

I got you Padfoot so you’d always have something of me even when I was gone – I didn’t get to spend as much time with you and – with you as I wanted to, not with the war on. There wasn’t a lot of us capable of properly fucking up the enemy, which meant I was in high demand. But – that’s getting off topic. I’m an animagus, love – Padfoot’s a nickname that – stuck. Names are important things; I couldn’t get rid of it if I tried now. It’s the only thing the Grim answers to. I made Cissa sew this for you so it’d actually match. Broke into Malfoy Manor and everything; we might’ve been on opposite sides of the war then but we were always family first. She’s so excited to meet you. Bellatrix technically met you once when you were a baby but that’s because she broke into my flat when I snuck out with you to grab my bike, and I made her swear to take it to the grave…

X

He feels swollen and stuffy and spent; hasn’t been able to taste anything but salt since he left Professor Snape’s office, and Harry just –

He twists his fingers around the edge of the blanket, staring down at it. There’s a palm-sized crest sewn into one of the corners in black thread. It looks like the same thread that spells his initials – his old initials – out on the bottom of one of the stuffed dog’s feet. H.J.P.

He wonders if the Blacks made this blanket, too, or if they bought it and sewed the crest in themselves. If Narcissa did. If anybody helped.

It’s been days and he’s just – it’s too much. There’s too much, and the letters haven’t helped no matter how many times Harry’s read them but –

He smushes his face into the blanket and takes a breath. He should go to sleep. It’s still early, but classes start tomorrow morning, and if he looks any more pathetic than usual the other kids will remember he exists, and that won’t be pleasant. He’d seen Greengrass in the hall earlier and she had not looked pleased.

When he lifts his head, Hedwig is already spitting out some parchment and a quill. She looks at him expectantly when she’s done.

Harry swallows. Lets out a slow, shuddery breath and blinks back another stinging rush of heat in his eyes.

And takes the quill.

Chapter Text

                Harry’s – comfortable. He doesn’t realize how comfortable he is until he’s knocking at Professor Snape’s friend’s office door and realizes he’s not – worried. Not wary.

Professor Snape hasn’t exactly vouched for his friend, but Professor Snape also wouldn’t send Harry to drop off a collection of suspiciously twinkly vials – generally; the prettier the bottle or potion, the more devastating and illegal its effects are – at his personal office after hours if the man was a threat.

It’s…not an uncomfortable thought. It’s just an odd one.

Professor Quirrell doesn’t open the door, however; one of the Gryffindors in his year does. It’s the same boy Harry had seen spying on Professor Quirrell all that time ago in the greenhouse; he’s just as mousy-looking as he was last time, eyes just as big and round with surprise.

The other boy has opened the door wide enough for Harry to slip by him, though, and when the other boy makes no move to let him in – he slips past anyway.

Professor Quirrell’s office is barren. It makes it easy to spot the oddly shaped wooden table Professor Snape had told him about; Harry trots over to it and deposits the vials dead center just like he’d been told, and watches curiously as a sticky sort of dull golden glow crawls over the entire case before vanishing. He’s unfamiliar with the enchantment, but Professor Snape might know – and will let him know if it’s safe to touch.

Not all spells or enchantments have a physical sensation to accompany the visual or magical, but those that do tend to be fun to touch, if they’re safe to touch. They’ve graduated to that part in potions-making; learning magic by touch helps one recognize when a potion is veering too far in one direction or another. Professor Snape is able to adjust things on the fly because he can recognize the sensation he is experiencing. Harry’s just learning to identify general categories of magic at this point.

The Gryffindor boy is at Harry’s shoulder, when he finally turns away from the table; the boy’s been studying Harry and the table, he realizes. He looks kind of – not angry, exactly. But hostile nonetheless.

Maybe he has detentions with Professor Quirrell like Harry does with Professor Snape; Harry knows he wouldn’t be happy if someone else was there during their lessons.

“Those are for Professor Quirrell. Professor Snape said to leave them there if he wasn’t here.” Harry offers, and then leaves before the other boy can say anything.

X

Pansy went to Slytherin for a reason, not for tradition or politics or blood. The other girls in her year – well, those in Slytherin, anyway – grow appalled at the merest insinuation that any of them were sorted for anything but optics; Pansy doesn’t blink.

It isn’t an accusation, that she Sorted for her ambition and desire for power. It’s a fact, and knowing that isn’t going to prepare any of her enemies for her more than ignorance would.

See, she is a war child – all of those at Hogwarts are. Hers is perhaps the first generation to not vividly recall the war in all its bloodstained glory; they were instead raised in its aftermath.

Magical populations had been on the decline since before Grindelwald; his war had only exacerbated the problem. Britain had not been heavily impacted by the deaths – but Voldemort’s had been devastating in turn.

Muggleborn births had never been great enough to replace pure- and half-blood magical families. Smarter countries had made permanent relocation to the magical world more enticing than resuming nonmagical life after education; more ruthless countries had fostered strict cultures of nationalism and birthed what were in effect government-run matchmaking offices. More evil countries had done away with bodily autonomy and things like domestic violence protections and marital equality laws.

Britain – Britain hadn’t done anything so overt. The old houses had never really involved the Ministry in their ways; they hadn’t needed to. Magical Britain had once been Camelot, after all; its traditions and Houses and Ways were Merlin-and-Morgana-sent. The sort of weight that claim gave them superseded any need for legal enforcement.

So instead –

Instead, it is men who run the Ministry and men who run Hogwarts and men who are expected to lead their Houses and if their House histories demand otherwise, well, she’s not much more than a figurehead, is she? Instead, it is growing up listening to the adults around her compare her sexual eligibility against every other child her age, and then every other child, and then every other entity with a cock still capable of impregnating her. Instead it is the insidious knowledge that her future will hinge almost entirely upon the whims of whatever man sets his eyes on her. It is her fertility, the strength of her womb, that dictate her humanity; because blood purity meant something in Britain, and to repopulate one needed to repopulate with the right sort –

Pansy’s parents do not subscribe to the same evils; they would protect her, defend her, save her if need be – but their support will not matter when they are absent, will not matter when it is the whole of magical Britain against her. Pansy would like to simply kill anyone who dares look at her like a broodmare but she doesn’t have the strength, or the knowledge, or the ability –

Or; she didn’t.

Not until Professor Sinistra came for tea, over the holidays.

“Most girls – don’t realize their position. Can’t allow themselves to comprehend the horror of what they face. And that isn’t a slight against them; neither is it a slight against your Pansy, that she has. But I would like to make sure she has that power, that ability, to choose for herself.”

Britain hadn’t always been so bad about it; and non-pureblood circles were still tolerable. They just…weren’t the ones in charge, Professor Sinistra tells her. She never expands upon her own history. But – Pansy isn’t a fan of history, not generally. She doesn’t care how things used to be. She doesn’t even care how things should be.

She wants the power to curse Daphne Greengrass’ tongue from her mouth without facing any consequences beyond that which she can endure; she wants to be able to smirk back at Evans in class and not fear hostile eyes are watching her for improper behavior unbecoming of a future Lady. She wants the power to look a man in the eyes and tell him then die next time an asshole thrice her father’s age makes a comment about her duty to the wizarding world –

“Power will come with time, dear. You’re still growing; as tempting as it might be, to tax your magic regularly and severely before you’ve fully matured can cause lasting damage. Magic isn’t a muscle. It doesn’t grow stronger when broken, even moderately.”

Practical application isn’t wholly out of Pansy’s reach – but it is vastly limited by her age and circumstance. As frustrating as that is for her – it doesn’t bother Professor Sinistra one bit.

“You have the time and opportunity now to learn the magical theory and background older students are only just realizing. Do your book learning now, my dear, so that you’ve greater resources to dedicate to practical knowledge later.”

So –

Pansy’s not a particularly book-smart person. She’s not a particularly academically gifted person, either; she’s brightest when dealing with other people, with words, with language – not texts.

She’s only eleven; she might have the extra time now to struggle through things – but she’ll still have to revisit much of the material she’s learning now later, when she has the age and experience to better grasp it.

“This is bullshit.” She says flatly.

“For every chapter you complete, you get a weeks’ worth of self-defense lessons.” Professor Sinistra doesn’t even look up from the chart spread out in front of her as she speaks. She doesn’t need to, Pansy pauses regardless and squints at her professor, tutor, mentor.

“…What kind of self-defense?”

“Physical. Wizards never expect a throat-punch.”

“…Alright.”

X

He’s not happy to be forced to attend breakfast in the Great Hall, but Harry’s willing to humor Willow. She doesn’t ask a lot of him, and the study is hers first and foremost, no matter what she says about his welcome there – if she needs him gone so she can deep-clean it, he’ll make himself scarce. Hedwig doesn’t need any encouragement to run rampant through the dungeons, anyway – she’d brought him a scrap of a school robe the other day, and Goyle had been sporting a rather uneven trim on his outer robes since. Harry doesn’t ask questions as long as Hedwig doesn’t have so much as a scrape on her, though he had asked Willow to maybe keep an eye on her.

Harry isn’t privy to the conversations going on in the Slytherin dormitory; Hedwig might be a ghost tale or an identified nuisance, and students may or may not have begun plotting ways to deal with her. He just – doesn’t know.

Not that he’s genuinely worried for her; she can take care of herself. But she’s not very subtle, and getting caught is something even Professor Snape might not be able to help with.

He gathers some stares from the Slytherins awake enough to register his presence, but he’s able to eat unmolested and even makes it out of the hall before a glint of magic has him jerking back.

Pale blue light splashes harmlessly against the bricks in front of him; Greengrass recovers from her miss with a sneer, but her expression is tighter than it would’ve been had she landed the hit.

She’s posturing again; Crabbe and Goyle at her shoulders, the rest of their year in a much looser cluster behind her. Parkinson’s missing. So are a handful of other students – not enough to make a real difference, but enough that Harry takes note.

“I suppose it wouldn’t have survived so long without developing some sort of instinct for these sorts of things. Isn’t that right, mudblood?”

Harry’s never deigned to respond to her shit-talking before and he doesn’t intend to now; but now, here, in front of the Great Hall with scattered students milling about curiously – he doesn’t have to.

A bolt of red light hits Greengrass full in the face. She reels back, shrieking in surprise, and Harry’s nearly knocked over when someone shoves past him – Hermione, snarling, wand out and vibrating in barely-suppressed rage. Her free hand is clenched tight in a fist – and part of Charles’ robe is caught in it; his eyes are huge when he meets Harry’s startled look.

“Say that again, you inbred twit!”

“Attacking somebody when their back’s turned is a sure sign of a coward – but, well, you didn’t Sort Gryffindor for a reason, did you Greengrass?” Charles’ voice is raised a little too loud, but he covers for his surprise well enough that Harry can hardly tell; Hermione might’ve accidentally dragged him over, but he clearly doesn’t have any issue backing her up – unlike his red-headed friend, who is staring in horror some ways away and trying desperately to meld himself into the wall behind him.

Greengrass manages to stagger back upright. Her hands are quick to fall from her face – one to properly hold her wand, the other to gesture angrily at the Gryffindors – but before she speaks, she gets an odd look on her face.

Her teeth, Harry realizes, are growing. Her front teeth. Can’t cast spells if you can’t pronounce them – he spares Hermione a startled, impressed look only to see her go bright red in embarrassment, and –

Professor Sprout is coming. He awkwardly nods at the Gryffindors, and slips down the nearest hall before anyone can stop him.

X

Harry slides an envelope under Professor Snape’s notebook, when he hands over his and Parkinson’s potion project. He keeps his eyes wide and doesn’t blink as he does it with a neat little sleight-of-hand he’d perfected as a child after hours with nothing but a handful of bent cards to entertain himself with; Professor Snape sneers openly at him but doesn’t slide it back out.

Harry could send his mail through the school’s owls, like a normal magical child – but school owls are tracked, no matter how marginally, no matter how rarely the records are ever actually checked. And school owls are public – sent from the Owlery, received at breakfast before the whole of the school –

The Blacks have no reason to be contacting him. Not yet. Not – not openly. But Professor Snape is more than capable of acting as their own personal post-owl, and perfectly willing as long as Harry doesn’t say a word when the man complains about it. Which is – incessantly. The Blacks have all written letters over the years, and Draco writes like three a day, and they all want Harry to read all of them at once but most especially the newest, so Professor Snape does a lot of pre-reading and selecting and looking like he wants to die.

Harry does his best to not reflexively apologize every time they make eye contact, and shoves copies of potions texts from the study into Professor Snape’s things when he isn’t looking. It’s a fair trade-off, he thinks.

“How did you get the color so dark?” Professor Snape asks, before Harry can properly retreat back to his seat. His voice carries, low and dark and cutting; he does this periodically, accosts a student and asks a technical question to use as a teaching moment for the rest of the class.

Professor Snape doesn’t write all the instructions for the recipes they make on the board. It isn’t that he leaves things out; their books wouldn’t include such minute details either – but he does omit what he already knows are necessary or important steps. Things that feature heavily in the readings assigned to their class; he looks for students who recognize the missing piece and go ahead with it, for those who recognize it and hesitate too long, and those who do not even realize there’s anything amiss in the first place.

“When using ingredients that are very – um, liquid-y when cut up, you have to boil or thicken the potion for longer to keep it from being diluted. We kept it on the heat for longer and added half an extra diced bat liver to compensate.”

“Liquid-y when cut up.” Professor Snape repeats disdainfully. The whole room is silent, now. Harry hears Parkinson clear her throat.

“Juicy.” She enunciates clearly, and Professor Snape’s expression twists in disgust.

“Get out.”

X

Severus is not capable of feeling guilt, no mater what foul rumors Regulus spreads behind his back – but he thinks, as he does every time, that losing the Principality is a shame.

The Princes’ had never been particularly public figures. They had quietly set up shop in Britain after some tragic horror no one ever bothered to tell Severus about, and built themselves an absolute fortress without ever alerting their neighbors to the hoarded power, wealth and prestige backing their seclusion. This is not an altogether uncommon backstory for immigrant magical families in Britain; only the Princes’ refusal to brag and throw around their wealth marked them as unusual.

The Principality had been built to be a place of learning; a laboratory and research center before a home. A library before a manor. Severus could have learnt to love this place, and to love it deeply –

If not for the fact that it was part and parcel of the Prince legacy.

“Have I ever told you how deeply you frighten me, Severus?” Narcissa asks lightly. She remains perfectly poised as she delicately picks her way across the Principality’s main foyer, skirts hitched high enough to flash the ankles of her dragonhide heels. Her movements raise soft furls of dust from the tile that do not seem capable of grasping onto her gown – unlike his own robes, which are already much more grey than they had been prior to their arrival.

“It never gets old.” Severus answers flippantly. Her laugh is a bright, tinkling thing.

Sullen eyes glare out from sunken faces in drab colors, shawls of cobweb and drapes gone lank and flat with disuse. The portraits do not speak, but they gather to follow his progress through the house; most simply hate. Some, very few, weep.

Severus’ mother had been betrothed, once-upon-a-time, and deeply unhappy with it. The wizarding public thought she’d spurned her family when she’d spurned her match. She hadn’t; she’d brokered a deal with them – her freedom for an heir capable of restoring their family to the greatness that saw the Principality built, once upon an age ago.

Severus’ mother had squandered her freedom on a drunken, abusive piece of shit muggle. But she’d had him in the process, her sacrificial lamb ready to be knocked about until he was just the right sort of jaded, her family watching with hungry, salivating jaws over her shoulder all the while.

Princes tended towards academics with poor interpersonal abilities. Their political acumen was either learnt painfully through experience or cajoled into the line through outside marriages – of which the Princes employed more than most old pureblood families, if fewer than strictly comfortable. One too many generations of bookworms in a row had seen the family plumet so far out of the public eye that their name was hardly remembered and their legacy all but forgotten; and rather than release the research and inventions generations of Princes had crafted over the years, they’d sought to build their own savior.

Why they thought any child knowingly left to suffer at the hands of near everyone and everything that should have loved him would have ever been grateful to find his distant kin knowingly complacent in his tragedies – is beyond Severus.

He has no qualms in taking what they so freely handed over to him. He’ll be their Half-Blood Prince – but he will also be the last to ever bear the name for the insult.

A greater insult than merely tearing the Principality and its treasures down, giving them to Regulus and letting the Blacks do with it what they will – is to erase the Prince name from history entirely.

It’s a horror story, a nightmare whispered to pureblood children to frighten them into behaving; one of the few terrors of the wizarding world that are truly, wholly, fiction. The Statute of Secrecy came close – but it had such fantastical drawbacks as to render it harmless, pleasant, even, to the public. For a wizarding name to be erased from history…

…only takes a potion. A devilishly complicated one, paired with an equally mad bit of ritual magic – but a potion all the same.

The family magic can stay; Severus will adjust the wards accordingly, and the power now called Family Prince will have the opportunity to snatch up some unsuspecting muggleborn or halfblood or squib caught wandering too close to the property line one day. The poor fool will find a treasure trove of knowledge and a frankly wonderful research-center-cum-home at their disposal; all for the low, low price of a new name.

The portraits of Severus’ ancestors will be able to pass on their wealth of knowledge and experience – but never their names or their history.

Severus hadn’t gotten to kill any of his extended family. But, he imagines, this is far more satisfying.

“Do you have everything you’ll need?”

“We won’t be enacting the ritual today, no. Aurora’s presence will be necessary to ensure the proper planetary alignment. I just hoped you would take a look at the calculations one last time while I check the wards.”

“What was your excuse to Dumbledore this time? Are you sure he’s not grown suspicious? You do come to visit like clockwork.”

“Suspicious of what? This is family business – he has no reach here. He was made aware years ago that I would have to periodically check on the Prince estate.”

“So you just told him, oh, don’t mind me, leaving in the middle of a school day, I’m just off to build a haunted house?” Narcissa challenges. She’s in a spectacular mood; it isn’t a rare thing, exactly, but it is unusual for her to be so bright, so open about it. She’s always been the most reserved of the Black sisters, even if she is just as passionate as Bellatrix.

“Of course not. I mumbled something about ingredients and tripped Quirinus into his porridge before he could ask anything further. Before either of them could recover, I left.” Which, he won’t pay for. Dumbledore will wax some cute little story about Severus finally having a sense of playfulness, but Quirinus owes him enough that he’ll probably elect to ignore him for a week and move on. It’d been a calculated move on Severus’ part.

She laughs again, and Severus takes the lead as they enter a veritable maze of laboratories and classrooms – his ancestors had never actually used the Principality to teach anyone but their own anything, but it had at one point been a serious enough consideration as to affect the building of the estate.

He leads her to the only room in the whole house he hasn’t stripped of interesting materials and left to stagnate, a single potions lab at the very lowest of the underground levels, set squarely above the Principality’s central wardstone. The room holds value to the legacy of Severus’ ancestors and to the home; crafting their demise there adds a certain flavor of magical potency to the product.

Narcissa brushes past him once he’s unlocked the laboratory, and sweeps by imperiously. She takes a seat at his desk as Severus begins activating the lights, already summoning an elaborate, silky white quill and a pot of vibrant red ink. She sets to work making the stack of calculations before her bleed without so much as a comment about his handwriting.

Ah. If only all his acquaintances were so competent.

X

“You made things worse.” Harry informs Charles matter-of-factly, and he watches the boy deflate. Hermione already looks contrite at his side; at some point since Halloween she seems to have grasped the reality of Harry’s situation, although he’s not sure she fully understands the intricacies – not that Harry understands all the intricacies, of course, given that he’s cut off from whatever inter-house politics are at play.

“I’m sorry. I lost my temper. Well, I’m not sorry for hexing her. I didn’t even get a detention for it. But I am sorry for causing you trouble.”

“Why isn’t Snape doing something about it?” Charles demands.

“Have you seen any professor do something about any of the bullying going on here?” Harry asks, more than a little derisively, at the same time Hermione speaks up.

“I didn’t even get a detention for cursing a girl in full view of the whole Great Hall during breakfast, Potter. Sprout didn’t do anything about it! I hit her in the face!”

Frankly, Hermione sounds most upset that she’d been so sloppy as to be caught, but Harry isn’t going to voice that.

“It was a good hit.” Harry allows. Hermione beams.

“But why’s Greengrass being such a pain? Her family was neutral during the war!”

Harry does a double-take, and nearly drops the book he’s holding; Charles, to his credit, seems to realize immediately that he mis-stepped but not how and he looks panicked as a result. Hermione squints at the both of them, visibly working through the past three seconds.

Which is – odd. He’d have expected both of them to…but, well. It’s fresh in Harry’s mind, thanks to Professor Snape’s chats. They don’t have that benefit.

“The war, where one side wanted genocide and the other didn’t? The Greengrasses were neutral during that war, the kill everyone or don’t war? There’s no such thing as neutral – if the didn’t fight Voldemort they were on his side, they just didn’t want to say it. Potter, you’re a moron.”

Greengrass being significantly more violent than her parents is interesting – especially given how acceptable violence was during the war. But – not altogether unsurprising. Not in Slytherin, not in Hogwarts. Not, Harry suspects, in the wizarding world. She’ll have something to prove, lest they make her a target instead.

Charles looks baffled.

“That’s – “

“You should find some muggle history books about World War Two.”

“Do we have any here?” Hermione asks, interested.

“No, Hogwarts doesn’t carry any books on muggle topics other than copies of the Muggles Studies texts. Which are useless.” Harry adds; he hasn’t read the lot of them, there’s too much on his to-do list, but he had skimmed through one of them once and then pestered Professor Snape about it in genuine disbelief.

Professor Quirrell, as it turns out, ignores the textbooks almost entirely. So the current generations of students at Hogwarts taking the class are at least getting real information. But that’s still not a very high bar.

“I – wait, but, can we – genocide?”

Harry eyes Charles warily, and then looks to Hermione, who is also side-eyeing her fellow Gryffindor. She shakes her head, curls bouncing brightly.

“I’ll handle this.” She says decisively, and Harry leaves it to her.

X

Diagon Alley is far from the most glamorous wizarding shopping district in the world, but there is a sort of charm all its own that makes it, despite everything, Narcissa’s favorite.

She knows of no other shopping district that provides, not by design but rather by the will of those who have come to call it home, quite literally anything that can be bought and then some.

Diagon is greater than the main drag, of course; its tributaries may bear other names but they are beholden to the title of Diagon Alley by the very nature of the spells binding space and earth into a secret hollow; Diagon can grow, but never into something other, else its protective wards would collapse and all hell would break lose.

Knockturn provides the most visible source of illicit goods, but shops and service providers and stalls lay secreted in every corner and twist of the cobblestone street; thirty paces from Diagon’s entrance is a lamppost that hides a stall selling the highest quality ever-burning matches in all magical Britain, if one merely takes hold of it and spins thirty-degrees to the left. The curtain of ivy barely visible down the narrow alley kissing Flourish & Blott’s side hides a used bookstore that sells all the books its cousin legally can’t, if one has enough coin. Narcissa’s favorite of these hidden shops is much simpler than many would expect; buried in the shadows at the entrance to Horizont Alley is a creature that sells hand pies that remain, to this day, the best thing Narcissa has ever eaten in her life – not that she’ll ever tell Kreacher, of course.

It is these little treasures that make up for the Alley’s greatest drawback – the stares.

Narcissa does not, technically, have a black mark on her name. Her reputation is – complicated like that.

Lucius had betrayed the sanctity of their marital vows by enslaving himself to a madman. That had been grounds for dissolving them; not something Narcissa could ever have done on her own, but Sirius had always been violently overprotective of the lot of them.

Narcissa had not pushed, cajoled, manipulated, or asked for a divorce. Sirius’ actions had been unilateral and a shock to everyone – not just her and Lucius. That alone had absolved her of any ill repute – but she still remained a once-married daughter of the House of Black, with a child caught in the odd legal limbo of an heirship not surrendered. To befriend her was to make an enemy of Lucius. To engage with her was to draw the attention of her cousins and sister. To spite her was to make an enemy of House Black and all its allies – and every decent high society family, because no one was within their rights to shun her for her former husband’s failings or her cousin’s rightful actions.

It makes her something of the greatest terror of any self-respecting high society woman, and an uncomfortable reminder to every high society man, what the consequences of their actions could be.

She’s yet to find anyone tolerable who is capable of disregarding her history outside her family and their immediate circle. It would be more comfortable for Magical Britain if she kept herself at home or to foreign soil, but, well –

There is something absolutely delicious about how the sight of her strikes fear into the hearts of those that see her.

Bellatrix had been the one to grab fear and hold onto it with both hands; she’d used violence and terror to escape their parents just like Andromeda had used responsibility and maturity. Narcissa hadn’t had a lot left to pick from; being the perfect pureblood lady didn’t offer anywhere near as much freedom. She enjoys the ability to expand, to grow past that role – now that she can afford to risk it.

“Miss Narcissa!”

The shout has heads snapping around like they’d just heard someone died; Narcissa keeps her expression pleasantly neutral only through sheer force of will.

When she turns, it is to catch a delighted seven-year-old in her skirts.

Mrs. Wylandriah Malfoy freezes a little, when Narcissa’s eyes land on her, hand outstretched to grab her young son; her daughter is straining excitedly in her other hand, already beaming.

No one else on the street is even breathing.

Narcissa steadies the boy with a delicate hand between his shoulder blades, and slips on a charming smile.

“Wylandriah, how wonderful to see you out and about. I hope the children are behaving themselves?” Her tone is warm, her voice gentle, and Lucius’ wife relaxes.

“I’m so sorry about that – Armand, mind your manners!” Her scolding is toned down significantly; Wylandriah is playing the game just as Narcissa is – the woman’s not fool enough to take Narcissa’s warmth at its face, no, but she’s also not the sort to waste time and energy prodding and testing it. Narcissa is being polite; so she will be too.

She deserves far better than to be a broodmare for Lucius.

“Is Draco here?!” Her son’s half-brother asks, wholly ignoring his mother, and Narcissa doesn’t find it quite so challenging to bring herself to laugh.

“No, dear – school is still in session. He won’t be home until the summer.”

Both Malfoy children deflate, although young Lysandra still writhes frantically until she can join her brother, and throw her arms around Narcissa’s knees in delight.

“Can you give him this hug from me?” Lysandra asks, words lisping. The girl’s mother sighs, and exchanges a rueful little smile with Narcissa.

“Of course, dear.” She says, and the child wriggles in delight.

This had not been her doing, this adoration, this closeness. It had not been Lucius’ either, or even Wylandriah’s – although Narcissa suspects Lucius’ wife had figured out what was going on first, and done her best to support it.

House Redforde was a fairly minor noble family hailing from France. They did not engage in politics overmuch and had never, to Narcissa’s knowledge, suffered any sort of succession fight – their strength lay in the loyalty and devotion every member of the small family had for each other. Those traits were, perhaps, the only thing that could have saved Wylandriah’s children from kinslaying, a taboo so great none of her house of birth had ever broken it – so she’d encouraged them.

Wylandriah steps close enough to press a soft kiss to Narcissa’s cheek, and peel her children off.

“If you two could stop slipping away like leeches, perhaps I would find a treat an appropriate reward.” Wylandriah’s voice is light with good-humor, her touch gentle as she runs her nails through her eldest’s fine hair, and Narcissa is struck breathless with how dearly she misses her own son in that moment.

Draco had been wholly ambivalent about his stepmother, but the moment his first sibling had been born, he had been over the moon.

He did not have the relationship he wanted with them. Narcissa could do nothing about it, not with Lucius’ – not with his behavior.

She would have liked to have been the one to give him a sibling, to give him many siblings. She should, by all rights, hate Wylandriah for doing what she could not, but –

“I find it’s the type of treat that matters most. Draco only ever behaved if Cousin Sirius snuck him muggle candy.” She says, and Mrs. Malfoy rolls her eyes even as her children gasp in scandalized awe. The children are not the only ones.

“I don’t think either of these monsters could handle that much sugar. Could Draco, when he was their age?”

“Oh, no. He was Sirius’ problem until the rush wore off.”

Wylandriah laughs – wistfully. She’s two brothers, if Narcissa remembers correctly. Two brothers she has not seen since her wedding. There is no one to watch the children for her like that, not here in Britain, not in Malfoy Manor – not unless Wylandriah trusts Lucius’ house elves, which is unlikely.

The woman is a good mother, after all.

“A sensible policy to have.”

The pleasantries they exchange grow slightly more personal; the children are content to mill about their ankles and remain fairly quiet. They are both listening intently to everything said, but without their elder brother there to capture their attention, they aren’t very focused.

They are not a threat to her son. Not yet – they can’t act until they’re adults, not officially, and by that time Draco will have either solidified his position or spurned it wholesale. In the interim, they love him too much to even think of acting against him.

It’s…difficult, sometimes, to remind herself of that. Easier, somehow, in the presence of their mother. Their sticky hands and runny noses and wide eyes bother her less.

“You must come over for tea sometime. Perhaps when Draco is home this summer, so that the children might play together?” She says suddenly, without properly considering it. Again, the crowd of eavesdroppers around them freeze – but Wylandriah’s smile grows, sweet and warm and genuine.

Something in her eases to see it.

“We would be honored.”

X

“Severus, my dear boy!” The Headmaster’s jovial call echoes gratingly down the hall. The man is always careful to modulate his volume, but Hogwarts bends to his will by virtue of his position even without his conscious input, and Aurora has to fight to keep her shoulders from hitching up around her ears.

Quirinus leaves immediately, deadpanning something about overseeing a detention. This earns him a bout of pleasantries from Albus, but only briefly. Aurora’s not quick enough to similarly bullshit her way out of the Headmaster’s way.

Severus remains standing blankly at her side, looking like he wants to die.

“Ah, and Aurora! How are you doing, my dear?”

“As well as can be expected, Headmaster. Three of my seventh-years cornered me last night to ask about forcibly changing the phases of the moon.” She says; that had, after all, been what she’d been bitching to the others about before his arrival.

Children are not prone to thinking through the consequences of their actions, and when they do their scope is often so limited as to be useless. They could wait a few weeks for the particular phase they need for their extracurricular project, but why bother when technically its possible to force the moon into the phase they need? Nevermind the catastrophic ecological and gravitational effects such an action would have on the planet – their only planet! – or the apocalyptic ramifications of unraveling one of the foundational tenets of magical theory since the first ape grew a core! They didn’t have the patience.

Severus gets to deal with the idiots doing illegal arcane things down in the dungeons; Aurora’s horrors derive mostly from perfectly legal magic in the hands of a child too inexperienced or ignorant to not try it.

Albus, to his credit, looks deeply discomforted by her words.

“I trust you were able to dissuade them of such a foolish idea?”

“If any of them so much as twitch out of bed after curfew for the remainder of the year I will skin them and tack their hides to the wall of the Astronomy Tower.” She assures him. This does not have its intended effect; for perhaps the first time in her life she hears Albus laugh nervously and edge away from her. She’s only ever seen Quirinus have that effect on him.

Severus is now glaring at her, blatantly jealous. Aurora does her best not to preen.

“I suppose I should ask the both of you – have either of you caught any students out and about near the third floor corridor?”

He’s rarely so direct; something had to have spooked him. Not Quirinus, he’s already done with his adventure. The Defense professor, then.

“Not yet, although I would ask Minerva. Her lions are always the most likely to take those sorts of risks.” She says blithely; it isn’t even a lie. She makes a point not to linger around the corridor, and so hasn’t caught anyone sneaking into it, even if she’s technically supposed to patrol it. If Quirinus ever needs clean help, her ignorance will only be a boon.

“And yourself, Severus?” Albus asks, and Severus scowls at the both of them. He refuses to verbally answer. The silence stretches and stretches, Albus’ intensity never wavering.

“Is there something the matter, Headmaster?” Aurora asks in her sweetest voice. She nearly gags at her own tone after, but it does the trick; Albus is suspiciously quick to reassure her that he’d merely heard rumblings among the students and wanted to check in, as the muggles call it. Which – what an absurd statement, but she’s fairly certain he bullshits it then and there so she doesn’t ask anything further of him.

For all his great skill at deception, Albus is deeply uncomfortable when it comes to outright lying.

She watches him go with a critical eye. He’ll avoid her for the rest of the year. Besides Minerva, Severus is the only faculty member he routinely checks in with.

“Does he really not realize it’s the defense professor?”

“Willful ignorance.”

“Delusional.”

“Perhaps. He’s hardly the only wizard in a position of power to cling to anything but reality.”

“No, but he is the only one in charge of a school full of children.”

The looks they exchange are dark.

Loaded.

“Did Quirinus tell you our tea plans for this weekend?” Aurora asks suddenly. If she doesn’t change the subject she’ll start fantasizing about murder, and she does try to limit her daydreams to realistic goals.

If anything happens to Dumbledore while Severus is in the castle, he will be blamed – and the Ministry isn’t quite as keen on investigating as they’d like the public to believe. Especially when the target of their corruption being put away would deal such a significant blow to such a significantly powerful political force.

“I’m sure I’ll hear all about it. From all of you.” Severus says darkly, bitterly. Aurora rolls her eyes.

“I’m sure Bellatrix makes a magnificent story teller!”

“If you’re deaf, perhaps.”

“Why, I’m sure she has so very many stories about you!”

To her absolute delight, he resumes looking like he wants to die.

X

“Does this happen a lot?” Pansy asks critically. She’s new to the whole – mentor thing – but Professor Sinistra has never once passed out in an armchair smelling like firewhiskey in lieu of teaching her anything.

She’s also never been shoved into a room with other students who have their own faculty mentors and told to stay put before, but there is a first time for everything.

Evans turns the whole of his focus very pointedly on Longbottom, who immediately begins squirming uncomfortably.

Evans gets weird with people. He’s perfectly fine with her, of course, but Pansy has made note of the general disdain and distrust he holds for all the other students. Granger’s eked her way out of that, but only by a little. Pansy’s not impressed by Evans choice there, but Granger’s at least got the brains to make that particular softening make sense.

He hasn’t said a word since he was shuffled inside by an irate Professor Snape. He’s been staring judgmentally at Professor Quirrell the whole time. Pansy spent a few minutes trying to copy the exact narrowing of his eyes before getting bored.

“He’s your Professor.” Evans accuses. Accuses.

“I think he’s my uncle.” Longbottom blurts out.

Pansy stares right alongside Evans.

“Right, well, I’m not babysitting him.” Pansy announces after a moment.

“What are we supposed to do?” Evans asks doubtfully. He looks as eager to leave as she is. She assumes he’s not thrilled about disobeying Professor Snape, but that he doesn’t hesitate to consider it speaks well.

Not necessarily of him, but – of what they can do. She suppresses the urge to wiggle excitedly.

“We could go break into the restricted section.” She offers. Longbotom pales so rapidly she’s half-afraid he’ll pass out. Evans brightens visibly.

When Longbottom follows them, though – it raises her estimate of his character.

Maybe what they can do will include more than just herself and Evans.

Chapter Text

              It isn’t really a choice at all, is the thing.

People act like the legacy of the worst night of Charles’ life trumps everything else about him; his age, his name, his intelligence, his power. Kids don’t get choices, but the Boy-Who-Lived isn’t a child, isn’t even really a person, so surely –

He goes to Professor McGonagall about what he overheard in detention, and she dismisses him. And Charles would, contrary to popular opinion, be totally willing to let it lie like that – except that the Philosopher’s Stone is at risk, and the DADA professor had been –

There’s a line where – where it doesn’t matter anymore. The consequences of not acting, even if he’s just a kid and even if it isn’t his job and even if it’s just gonna kill him become too grand. Too terrible.

He’s already written to his parents but that won’t get to them in time. The Headmaster is gone and Hagrid is, lovingly put, useless.

Ron has been weird and getting weirder the closer Charles has been getting to Hermione, and Charles refuses to wedge himself between Ron and his brothers because he can already see things spiraling even if Ron’s cordial to him most of the time which is a whole other thing, and Charles doesn’t know what else to do.

Dean and Seamus hang out with Ron more nowadays then he does, and that hurts. Mum had told him friends drift apart all the time – and Snape’s hollow-eyed confession at Christmas did nothing but prove her point – but he doesn’t like it, doesn’t like that it happened to him and Ron, doesn’t like that it is happening in front of him so slowly he can see it coming and still not be able to stop it.

So –

Here he is, arguing with Hermione about stopping a thief in a school run by people who do not believe in children.

Maybe Evans could help, if Charles could get down to the Slytherin dormitories? But he has no idea where those are and already knows the snakes wouldn’t let him in the door. And after Hermione’s display in the Great Hall, Charles has been extra cognizant of what people might do to Evans if they see Charles hanging out with him. He still misses a lot, but he isn’t missing that anymore.

“You told me to tell a professor, and I did, but she – “ Charles’ voice warbles alarmingly, and he cuts himself off. His hand drops down against his thigh with a too-loud smack. It’s late, too late, there’s no one else awake and Hermione is so dimly lit in the embers of the common room’s fires that she is more curly blob than person.

McGonagall had been a bitter pill to swallow. Hogwarts has always been a haven, a paradise, a place of unadulterated joy and life – not just from his parents, but from every wizarding adult he’s ever spoken to, and the Deputy Headmistress had been such a large part of so many of those stories, her bond with his parents so warm and intimate – he’d never expected her to turn him away. Not that he’d expected her to turn any child away, but him specifically just – just made it worse.

“I told you to tell a real professor, Charles.”

“I – what?”

He can’t tell if she rolls her eyes at him. He doesn’t…he doesn’t think she does, Hermione’s voice is too expressive not to give it away and her tone is too gentle but…

“When I got attacked by the troll, I told McGonagall why I was in the bathroom.” Hermione says matter-of-factly. Charles flinches, and feels his blood freeze in his veins.

He hadn’t done anything to Hermione. He’d barely even said anything. But he’d said enough, and that had been enough, for everyone else to run with. Mum had warned him, called him his father’s son and told him he was naturally charismatic, and that with the fame his last name gave him it’d be worse, but he hadn’t understood, not really, not until Evans had confronted him and…

He doesn’t talk as much anymore. He tries to be careful about it, but…he’s only eleven. And most of the students are so much older than him – and the teachers too –

“I’m sorry.”

“You already apologized.”

“I mean – yeah, but – for her not…for her not doing anything. She should have.”

“Yeah. And neither did Madam Pomfrey. Or the Headmaster. But – Professor Snape pulled me aside.”

Professor Snape, the most beloathed adult in the whole school –

And the only one Evans ever relaxes around.

Charles lets out a soft little oh. He sees the flash of Hermione’s teeth when she smiles.

“He’s down in the dungeons, though. I am willing to go with you, but if we get caught, we have to have a plan.” She says severely, and reliefhopeohgod flares up in Charles’ chest like a sunburst.

“Well, one of us runs and the other distracts. That’s easy. But we won’t get caught.”

She tilts her head curiously.

Charles’ grin is all teeth.

X

The knock is rapid and loud and wholly unwelcome.

Quirinus is helping him puzzle through the remnants of a blood circle he’d found – fucking seventh-years – and they are both far too drunk and incensed to handle people. Severus needs to find out if there’s a demon running around the dungeons or if there’s a corpse stuffed into some broom closet he has to dig out, and Quirinus is convinced this particularly poor example of forbidden magic actually just detached some limbs, and they are both willing to fight over it –

And there is a knocking at his door.

It isn’t Harry; the boy barely knocks anymore and when he does it is little more than the soft patter of knuckles on wood. This is loud and –

Granger, he thinks.

“I’m not sober enough to cover this up.” Quirinus says after a moment.

“If we get caught, it’s Black’s fault.”

“Oh, which one?” Quirinus asks, but Severus is already yanking open the door and scowling.

There is a disembodied hand floating in front of him, poised to knock once more. There is a beat of silence, and then in a frantic rustle of cloth – two students standing wide-eyed in front of him.

“If I ever find out you have so much as considered doing anything untoward with that I will skin you alive, Potter.” Severus growls. The boy frantically nods his head, bundling his father’s cloak up into as small a wad as he can. Granger beams.

“Good evening, Professor!”

“What are you breaking curfew for.”

“The Defense Professor is trying to steal the stone the Headmaster hid on the third floor corridor and McGonagall thinks we’re just being silly children about it.” She chirps right back.

“I overheard her in detention yesterday night, she was – she said you make them with sacrifices and so she might need to make some sacrifices to get to it and also it’s a Philosopher’s Stone, so – ”

Severus cranes his head back. Quirinus is violently shaking his head in denial. That will have to be good enough, he thinks, and steps away from his doorway.

Nobody knew how the Philosopher’s Stone had been made. Not really. Most of the theory was just out there, common knowledge, but Flammel had worked out something extra necessary for the gifting of immortal life, and he’d never seen fit to share.

Quirinus had his theories, of course, and he’d shared them with Severus. One of the foundational tenets of magic was, much like with muggle science, that you could not create from nothing. Whether the cost was in energy or magic or material –

Creating eternity was, is, impossible.

But theft? Theft was easy. Theft was child’s play.

Was it really immortality? Or was it merely a close facsimile?

And if Albus’ pick for Defense had figured that out – that made her a genuine threat.

“In. You will remain here until I come to fetch you. I expect you will be spending the night. If you touch anything, break anything, or so much as breathe on anything, I will break every bone in your body. Miss Granger, under no circumstances are you to read anything on my desk.”

“Is it illegal?”

“There’s a common misconception that ritualistic sacrifice is illegal under the Ministry’s – “

“Quirinus shut the fuck up and come here, this is your fault.”

“It is not – “

“No reading, Miss Granger.”

She does chirp out a yessir, and Severus has misgivings about Potter existing in the same room as that, but Miss Granger is of the sort to wait until she’s of age before diving into dangerous illegal magics if told to.

It will have to do.

Severus has a coworker to murder.

X

The problem is – no one can pronounce her name.

Children are stupid and none of the staff actually cares enough to try, and the woman goes ballistic at any shortening they’ve attempted – they, of course, meaning Aurora and Sprout – so –

It isn’t really a problem, Quirinus amends, as Severus strides right into Albus’ final chamber without announcing their presence. She’s bent over a convoluted array she’s almost finished scorching into the stone, the eyesore of a cursed mirror Quirinus had been forced to handle at Yule skulking in the center, muttering to herself so fervently that she misses the sharp click of Severus’ footsteps until it’s almost too late.

Quirinus hums excitedly and takes up position near a stone column. He has never had the chance to watch Severus duel a person before - and oh, is it art.

She’s good, well-trained and capable even half-manic. But Severus was the Dark Lord’s darling, and it shows.

He uses his wand as a distraction. He’s casting wandlessly and wordlessly even as he shouts verbal commands, expression a study in boredom and disdain the whole while. His movements are precise and economical, and Quirinus wouldn’t say he is holding back, but Severus clearly sees no need to throw caution to the wind either, and she does not even realize it.

He risks a glance down. Her array is…stupid. And familiar; he’s just spent the last four hours burning it into his retinas.

The students in question must have seen or stolen her notes, then. That, at least, explains how the idiots got the work – Severus lives in perpetual terror of hidden libraries, and Aurora grows just as grey and ill at the thought. Hogwarts is too old and magical to ever be properly childproofed, after all.

Severus hisses something eerily reminiscent of parseltongue, the syllables sharp and punchy, and flicks the fingers of his spare hand.

Scarlet blooms across her upraised arm, brilliant and bright. Quirinus feels his eyes go wide as her limb slips free of the rest of her body – she hadn’t stopped moving, after all – without so much as a sound, and drops to the floor. Her wand is still perfectly held in her fingers.

He’s laughing for a whole heartbeat before she begins screaming.

X

Albus is not surprised. Severus isn’t surprised that Albus isn’t surprised. Severus is moderately relieved that Albus is visibly relieved at the Frenchwoman’s capture – he had not, after all, actually killed her.

Severus is deeply suspicious at the odd flash of disappointment he’d caught on Albus’ lips during the woman’s questioning.

“Quirinus informed me that her array matches the circles I’ve spent the year hunting down in the dungeons. My working theory is that some students found her notes and have been trying to replicate them – poorly, I might add.”

“Do you need help, my boy? Ill done or not, using alchemical principles like this can easily be devastating no matter how benign a student tries to make it.”

The stupidity of that assumption would have taken him out at the knees, if he were still fresh to Hogwarts’ madness.

“No. She made a critical error in her draw – see there? She accounted for the staff and students and creatures, but not Hogwarts itself. She would have blown all of Scotland off the map if we hadn’t interrupted her. The students haven’t picked up on the error either, but by scaling back the size and intent of the array, they’ve either nulled their own attempts or reversed the flow. I’ll be able to pick out which of my idiot snakes are responsible in the morning; they’ll be too magically drained to function.” The thought pleases him. The year may be ending but he will still make those cretins’ lives absolute hell until they graduate for the trouble they have – and almost – caused.

Perhaps he owes the woman; a duel was just what he needed to finally puzzle out his students’ chicken scratch.

Albus visibly relaxes, and smiles warmly at him.

“It is always a treat to hear you talk theory, Severus.”

“If I find you ever bring another cursed object into these walls I will skin you alive, Albus.” Severus replies coolly, and turns to cast a sharp glance at the mirror.

Amusingly, Quirinus had left the woman’s arm behind when he’d helped hustle her off to the infirmary – to avoid Albus, of course. It had rolled to the mirror’s base, and while the severed limb is not alive and has no soul to it, a wand has enough of a being that the wood is slowly blackening and crumbling where it rests against the mirror’s metal foot.

That could have been a student. That almost was a student.

“Of course, of course. I am just grateful it served its purpose.” Albus says quickly, and sweeps awkwardly around the bloodstains to approach it. Severus watches, unimpressed, while the old man engages in some ritual before the mirror – and then shoves his arm inside its silvery surface.

Pity. It doesn’t eat him.

Perhaps not – it may simply be slower-acting than he expected, Severus corrects internally. Albus’ face has quite suddenly gone grey as ash.

“Albus – “

“It’s gone!”

“What are you talking about?”

Wild blue eyes whirl to face him.

“The Philosopher’s Stone!”

X

Hedwig has been busy all year, and now that classes are over – Harry takes the time to see what she’s found.

She’s delighted about it, of course. She might have a hard time getting into the narrower spaces, but the constrains of her physical form mean nothing to her and Hogwarts either likes her or is scared of her enough to not fuss about it.

Harry is happy she’s happy; and that she wants to share.

There are pathways and tunnels and corridors, hidden rooms and niches – places to hide, if he needs to. There are hidden paintings so old and long-abandoned that they do not speak English, or at least not a recognizable version of it. She takes him to a whole orchestra pit, fully kitted out and blanketed so thickly in dust that Harry is afraid to breathe in case it kills him, and an abandoned pool – still perfectly maintained – and a cavern with dirt walls and floor that he thinks someone was using to grow mushrooms in, once upon a time.

But the biggest secret of all is a passage out of the castle.

He doesn’t realize they’re leaving Hogwarts until they’ve actually left it, and Hedwig is nudging him into opening the thick iron door at the end of the narrow, cramped hall – Hedwig has been inching her way in front of him sideways for the whole duration of this part of their journey, and if Harry were any larger his shoulders would be scraping both walls.

The door opens out into – the forest. Dark and green and wild.

And a very surprised Prefect.

Harry freezes. Hedwig bursts free of the hall and promptly takes the Prefect out at the knees. He goes down silently, not saying a word, and Harry can hardly breathe because this is –

And that’s Weasley, not some random student but Charles’ Weasley’s Weasley and –

And he’s dropped his bag. A bag full of…potions ingredients, he realizes. Very poisonous ones; mushrooms and lichens and bones, berries and herbs and roots still covered in dirt.

Harry’s eyes dart back to the Weasley, only to catch the boy staring right back at him. Harry’s gaze flicks back, pointedly, to the bag. The Weasley’s gaze flicks just as pointedly to Hedwig, who lets out a curious clatter. Harry lunges forward and yanks her back before she can take a bite, and endures the resulting sulking and bruised shins stoically.

The Weasley pushes himself up, and dusts himself off.

“Carry on.” The boy says firmly, and then sweeps up his treasures and vanishes into the tunnel.

He – Harry stares after him.

He is fairly certain the Prefect Weasley is the one who is so adamant about school rules his brothers quite literally use his name as a curse; and – and he’s a prefect and Harry’s in the Forbidden Forest –

Hedwig thumps into his leg again.

Well.

He’s not alone.

“Let’s see if we can find where he got those redcaps.” Harry whispers. She beams.

X

“ – midnight by the time we got to Professor Snape’s office, but he and Professor Quirrell, the muggle studies professor, were very quick to take action.”

Harry is staring at her in mute horror, but he’s also listening, and that is more than enough. Hermione beams at him, and does her best not to wriggle in her seat.

She and Charles had been left unattended in Professor Snape’s office for only a few minutes – just long enough to look at what the professors had been working on – before Professor Sinistra had arrived, and rather than take them back to the dorms she’d transfigured Professor Snape’s furniture into beds for them, and set watch by the door. She’d exchanged messages all night with silvery animal figures made of mist and smoke behind a ward keeping her words private. The ward had not extended to keeping her and Charles’ whispers from her; she’d let them murmur and speculate for an hour or two before threatening to hit them with a sleeping charm if they didn’t go to bed.

Hermione shouldn’t have felt safe, not with the enormity of the threat facing Hogwarts slowly dawning on her as those messages continued to pour in, as she worked through what little of the calculations and runic arrays she’d seen that she could recognize, but…Professor Sinistra had never once turned her attention from the door.

Charles had asked her, come morning, if they’d been given special treatment for his fame. The question had made Hermione cringe, but there’d been something calculating in his eyes as he’d asked; and Professor Sinistra had laughed.

“Hogwarts is well-warded and the common rooms especially so, but those are mostly intent-based; they work against entities who want to cause harm. Now, only the Headmaster is allowed to so much as look at the wards of the castle, let alone touch them, but professor’s offices are our own to do with as we please. Severus, Quirinus and I have altered our offices to withstand a nuclear fallout. That would not be enough to protect us from the backlash of whatever that idiot alchemist was dreaming of.”

“Why not evacuate the school, then?”

“Professors cannot give the order to evacuate. That power lies in the Headmaster’s hands and the Headmaster’s hands alone. Perhaps the Deputy Headmistress, if she was quick-witted enough to argue with Hogwarts itself, could do so – but she would be unable to activate the wards meant to assist in an evacuation. It would have to be done manually.”

Professor Sinistra had not once sneered, had not once let her contempt bleed into her tone, but…she’d also not sugarcoated her ire either.

The Professors hadn’t been able to evacuate anyone – but they’d had her and Charles in a safer location than the common rooms, and even if it wouldn’t have meant much, they’d kept them there just in case.

Hermione tells Harry this quietly, earnestly. She thinks he knows by now that Professor Snape’s friends are trustworthy professors too, but she wants to make sure he hears it plainly. Even if he doesn’t believe her, even if he never acts on it – at least he’ll have the thought in his head.

He looks at her dubiously when she’s done.

“If the DADA professor really tried to blow up the school that makes her an international criminal. She’s a French citizen. They’ll have to call the aurors and the ICW and the French authorities.”

Hermione blinks at him. They hadn’t called anyone last night. And it is early. Which meant –

“If we hurry, I bet we can watch them take her in.”

Harry’s grin is a quick thing, little more than a flash across his usually serious face, but it is a victory all the same.

X

Their last exam is Potions. Unlike the rest of the professors, Professor Snape treats it like a regular class, with instructions on the board and students working in pairs at their usual desks. Harry half-expects a trick of some sort, but besides ruthlessly cracking down on any sabotage attempts, Professor Snape remains wholly invested in treating the most stressful exam of their lives to-date as nothing more than an average Friday.

He and Parkinson do very well together, better than usual without the typical thrown ingredients and bullying to endure – Professor Snape’s nonchalance has only made the rest of the student body more stressed, amusingly enough.

As if to make up for the orderliness of the exam, once Professor Snape has collected all of their vials and each station has been cleaned thoroughly, he bids them to leave immediately and the whole class erupts into shouts and cheers.

Parkinson whirls on him so quickly that Harry leans half-out of his seat to avoid her hair, and he eyes her warily. This is the most forward she’s been all year. Even if she’s gotten increasingly bolder about her disdain for the other Slytherin girls and her apparent interest in him, that’s always been subtle.

“You have no excuse not to write me over the summer. Post-owls are cheap and primarily self-sustaining if you purchase one for yourself, and public ones might be slow but they are very affordable.” Her tone is imperious, and she fishes something out of her bag and holds it out towards him. Harry takes it gingerly, if only because she looks like she will shove it down his throat if he refuses.

“And if that isn’t an option, this is my family address. We accept mail the muggle way – despite what they want you to think, any old family still in business does.”

No one else can hear them; no one else is paying attention to them. But this is a statement, all the same. A declaration of allegiance. To Harry, to the muggleborn, against the blood purity the rest of Slytherin House espouses. Parkinson’s had an easy year. She won’t, next year, for this.

Despite himself – Harry is touched. He folds the parchment carefully and tucks it into his own bag.

“I’m – staying with some extended family over the summer. Owls will be okay.” He says quietly. Parkinson’s expression breaks into a smug smirk. Harry narrows his eyes at her.

“You were more prepared than anyone with no knowledge or contact of the wizarding world should have been. If not a relative than someone who wants to be.” She says, tossing her thick hair over one shoulder.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Adoption is one of those things that would solve half of the traditional talking points, if their arguments were really about muggleborns. Your relatives are putting their money where their mouth is.” Your relatives are trustworthy, she doesn’t say, but Harry hears anyway.

He blushes so hard he feels himself go red. He’s aware enough to mumble out a hurried goodbye before bolting – and turns just before he exits the classroom to see Parkinson staring down the back of Greengrass’ head, still smirking.

X

“Willow.”

Severus loathes to ask the house-elf for her assistance, but needs must.

He’d managed, over the course of the year, to keep Harry from squirreling away the potions they’ve brewed as they’ve finished them, and had instead convinced the boy to let him pack them in an appropriately protected box after their last session. This had been deliberate on Severus’ part, because Harry has not volunteered his plans for the summer to him yet and if Severus does not have a genuine reason to ask the house elf to send the boy to him, she will ignore him. At best.

The potions have been parceled out by dosage, each set bundled together and very strict instructions carved into the inside of the box’s lid as well as plastered to each potion set. Severus has been preparing for Harry Evans to vanish off the face of the earth over the summer despite the shrinking possibility of it; he hasn’t managed to confirm the boy’s presence at Grimmauld with any of House Black’s members since the alchemist’s attack a week ago. His contact with them isn’t by any means illegal, but the whole school is under extreme scrutiny and Severus’ allies have the sorts of enemies that would use a benign floo call as ammunition.

Severus is left waiting for almost a full minute before Willow deigns to appear. Her arms are already folded over her chest, foot tapping and mouth twisted into a sneer.

“Have I interrupted you?”

“You is always interrupting Willow.”

“Oh, good, I would so hate to break with tradition this late into the year. If Mister Evans does not want me attempting to hunt him down tonight please inform him he will be in my office at six o’clock sharp. Please also remind the boy that if I do have to hunt him down, I will not be kind.”

The threat is weak. For any other student – Severus would tear their hidey-hole apart brick-by-brick with his bare hands. Would drag them out before the whole of the school and embarrass them irreparably for the inconvenience. Would – commit a whole litany of petty revenges.

Alas; Harry Evans is Harry Evans, and Severus is more sympathetic to this particular child’s survival than the rest, which means he must necessarily be delicate.

She looks him dead in the eye and says something incomprehensible and vanishes. Severus assumes it’d been an insult, and settles in to finish scouring his office and classroom clear of the detritus of the past year – Albus spends the summers snooping, no matter how he denies it, and Severus refuses to give the old fuck the pleasure of uncovering so much as an abandoned candy wrapper. He’s not stupid enough to keep anything incriminating at Hogwarts.

At six exactly, his door opens and a sullen little Slytherin sulks in.

“I was busy.” Harry bites out as he flops into his customary chair. He scowls harder when he realizes there is no tea or biscuits.

“Doing what?” Severus asks, amused.

“Saying goodbye to my friends.”

“What friends?”

“You’re mean.” The boy says, but this at least is said appreciatively, as the worst of the boy’s sulk fades.

“If you behave properly this will only take a moment.”

“You’re stalling.”

“It is called being polite, Mister Evans. Small-talk is an invaluable skill to learn.”

“You couldn’t teach me that.” The boy responds dismissively, and it takes everything Severus has not to crack a smile.

The boy’s grown increasingly belligerent with him as the year has gone on; Severus is pleased by it, even if the sheer attitude he now has to deal with is nothing but an inconvenience. It reminds him, not of Lily as a child, not of James, not of any of the Evanses or Potters – but, rather, of little Regulus. Little Barty.

“I called you here to ask about your summer plans. I have not been kept abreast of any potential developments you may or may not have made, and as I think our previous discussions have made clear to you, I will not tolerate you going off unattended for months at a time.”

Harry looks amused, and his lips quirk up into a little smile as Severus talks. But he curls nervously in his seat, clasps his hands together, and shakes his head just hard enough that his curls bounce.

“Um – they’re picking me up. Willow said she’d snatch me back if it goes poorly. And she said she knows where you live.”

“I will likely be spending much of the summer with you, or with Quirinus.”

“The weird professor.”

“Yes, that would be an accurate descriptor.” Severus sighs, and the boy giggles, but he seems – more relaxed, his nerves less strong, than they had been before Severus’ confession.

“You will be taking the train, then?” He asks. Harry nods quickly.

“I – um. I don’t think they would’ve let me but with all the aurors around everywhere they don’t want to risk anything.”

“Better safe than sorry.” Severus agrees, and finally allows himself to relax. He flicks his wand and floats over the boy’s potions’ case, setting it down carefully in front of him.

“You have a sufficient store of miscellaneous medical ointments and draughts to last some time. Those for your treatment, however, I have already portioned out. You will not take any of these until your relatives perform appropriate medical checks on you, am I clear?”

“Yessir.”

“Once they have determined we did not miss anything, you will find dosage instructions on the lid of the box. Do not under any circumstances move these potions into another box, or Merlin forbid lose this one.”

“I’ll feed it to Hedwig.” The boy affirms quickly.

Severus pauses.

“…Feed it  - !“

X

The train home is overwhelming and frankly horrifying in a way that the train to Hogwarts wasn’t; then, there had been children afraid to make friends. Now, it was full of children with friends, all of them desperate to spend as many seconds as possible together before the summer separated them.

They were loud, obnoxious, and everywhere.

Harry ends up in a compartment with Charles, blatantly hiding under a cloak that turns him invisible, Longbottom, hunched like a gremlin over those plant pots he could not fit into his trunk, and Hermione, kicking her feet excitedly and drumming her fingers on the stack of books in her lap.

“Why are you hiding?”

“Ron decided we’re friends again.” Charles’ voice is muffled. Harry raises an eyebrow.

“Are you not?”

“He thinks I stole Charles.” Hermione answers matter-of-factly. Longbottom’s mouth briefly flickers up in a sneer, but his eyes remain wide and unblinking and suspicious on the lot of them all the same.

Harry eases himself farther from the boy and his plants. This puts him halfway into Hermione’s cloud of curls, but that is a sacrifice he is willing to make.

“We’re about to be in public, so he wants to reconcile.” Harry deduces. Charles makes a groaning sound.

The door to their compartment flies open, only to slam shut an instant later.

Parkinson looks down her nose at all of them, smirks at Harry, and plops down in the sliver of space between him and the wall. Harry lurches further into Hermione, who scoots over with a hum to him and a ferocious scowl at Parkinson over his head.

“I’ve been wondering where you squirrelled yourself away to.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ve caused my scene. I have to avoid causing another one before we get to the platform.” She says primly. Charles pops his head out of his cloak and squints at her.

“What’d you do?”

“Nott got lippy with me.” Parkinson says brightly.

“Nott’s usually fine.” Harry points out. His fellow housemate shrugs.

Harry doesn’t know the particulars of House Slytherin’s drama, but Nott barely bothers to sneer with the rest of their year-mates. His enthusiasm for being an intolerable bigot has waned as the year went on; Harry doesn’t consider himself safe, but he’s certainly not dangerous by any means.

Not actively anyway.

“And now he’ll stay that way.” She replies, satisfied.

“Oh, you’re crazy.” Charles gasps, and flips his cloak back over his head. It is a little odd, Harry thinks, that she hasn’t commented on Charles’ invisibility. She continues to ignore it and smiles pleasantly.

“Anyway, Evans, do you still have what I gave you?”

“…Did you jinx it?” Harry asks suspiciously. She’s turned to face him fully; he leans further into Hermione. She’s the lesser of the predators in the compartment, not that he will ever vocalize that.

Willow and Hedwig both like being told they are dangerous. Neither of them appreciates being told they are less dangerous than anything else, even each other, even if it is objectively true. Hedwig is, in fact, wiggling warningly above Charles’ head in the luggage rack. Harry glues his gaze to Parkinson’s nose.

There’s a thump. Behind him, Hermione moves.

“You gave Harry a cursed object?!”

X

Harry is the last to leave the compartment, and he lingers just long enough that no one he knows is around when he slips off the train, Hedwig in hand.

No one looks twice at him as he slips through the crowd.

Parkinson is beaming up at a woman with the same dark hair and nose as her. There, Neville is stepping into the floo while a large, sour-looking woman with a stuffed bird on her head sniffs at him. There, Hermione skips through the entrance to the muggle part of King’s Cross. There, Charles is smiling up at his parents, visible only in a slim hand squeezing his shoulder and a riot of dark curls above the mob of reporters and people crowding close to them. Harry stays as far from them as he can manage without being blatantly suspicious.

He counts to ten before following after Hermione, and is very careful to keep his eyes peeled as he skirts the muggle crowd.

The sunlight nearly blinds him when he steps out of the station. The shout of people and the rumble of cars, the shriek of horns and the clatter of rails – it nearly deafens him too, and Harry’s hand is clammy and sweaty where he holds Hedwig’s handle.

He swallows once, twice. Squeezes Hedwig, and mouths Willow’s name for comfort.

The lights at the crosswalk are too-bright, and Harry keeps his head ducked low as he hurries across on the fringes of a knot of other people; he peels away only when he spies the open mouth of an alley.

It isn’t dark. It’s lit brightly in the daylight, clean and orderly.

And Harry relaxes his hold on Hedwig.

Waiting for him halfway down it is a big, shaggy black dog.

- End of Year One -

Chapter Text

              Charles is mostly asleep when they make it home.

His father’s cologne is warm and spicy in his nose, the rocking of his steps steady and firm beneath him. His father had forgone robes in favor of thick muggle flannels and jeans, and Charles is glad for the choice, because his face is pressed comfortably into soft cloth instead of some elaborate embroidery like Mum’s robes.

He would like to let himself drift off completely, let his father’s gait and breathing lull him into soft, warm dreams, but –

Charles stirs, and forces his head up.

“We can talk in the morning, love.” Mum’s voice is soft, gentle under the harsher song of crickets and frogs and owls filling the forest around them. Charles scrubs his face on his shoulder and makes a sound of protest just as soft as hers.

“’s too important for that.” He says, his voice rough with exhaustion and raspy with use. Mum’s figure is more shadow than woman, a few steps ahead of Dad with her wand naked in her dominant hand. Her smile is more an impression in the evening gloom than something visible. She looks sad.

Dad sighs, and stops walking. He crouches, and Charles slides carefully off his back. He stumbles a little bit on the uneven ground, but Dad’s hand steadies him in a moment.

The walk home from the apparation point is not that long, but it is lengthy enough that Charles will be fully awake by the time they arrive.

He hasn’t had a chance to really talk to his parents since he got off the Express. He isn’t surprised by that; had expected it, even if the public rigamarole had dragged on far longer than he had expected – they’d gone to the Ministry, after, and from there a public dinner, and only after that had Dad managed to politely tell the reporters and politicians and socialites still crowding them goodbye.

“Hermione said the Defense professor was gonna kill everybody in the school.” Charles starts, scampering up to his mother’s side. She goes tense at his words.

“Hermione, your new friend?” Dad asks. His tone is casual, like they’re talking about the weather, but – Dad’s voice usually is.

“Mm. She saw her notes.”

“Albus left those out where a student could find?” Mum asks sharply. Charles shakes his head.

“No, she did. Some Slytherins got ‘em. Professor Snape and Professor Quirrell were trying to figure out what it was when we interrupted them. Hermione says because she didn’t recognize the language it was in, she wasn’t technically reading them, so Professor Snape can’t give her detention. But there was enough math for her to figure it out.” Arithmancy, technically, but Charles is tired and he cares very little for the finer points of alchemy and ritual-crafting.

He looks over his shoulder. Dad doesn’t look happy, but he still smiles when he sees Charles looking at him.

It takes courage to take his next breath, and to speak.

“She almost did it. Killed us all.”

“The staff caught her before she could, love.” Mum says reassuringly.

“I told Professor McGonagall what she was planning. Professor McGonagall ignored me. And if it wasn’t for Hermione, we wouldn’t have found anybody who’d listen in time.”

It feels like he’s getting his Head of House in trouble. He probably is. It isn’t a good feeling, by any means, but – it is still a necessary one.

His parents are quiet. Charles turns his attention back to the bleary shapes of tree roots and ferns at his feet, and plods along.

“Did Professor Snape tell you?” He asks. He feels more than sees his mother flinch at his side.

“We haven’t spoken to any of the staff but Albus yet. We’ll send him a letter tomorrow, before Albus comes.” Dad sighs. He doesn’t sound upset or angry, just exhausted, and that eases something in Charles.

His Dad is fiercely protective of him and Mum. Professor Snape and Mum might’ve once been friends and might’ve fallen apart, but whatever it was – Dad doesn’t think he’s a bad guy.

Dad would be wrong if he did, but…it’s reassuring.

“The Headmaster’s coming?” Charles asks.

“He hasn’t told us when. You remember what to do?” Mum asks. She touches his head, smooths her palm over his curls.

He falters a little, glances up at her, but nods all the same.

“Questions after?”

“Always.” Mum promises warmly.

And, like that, the wards enclosing Neugle’s Pool slam down on them. Charles’ entire body shudders, all the way from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and he wriggles with delight as the feeling of home sweeps over him.

Charles doesn’t remember most of the places he’d grown up in; they had been temporary, brief stops at rentals bought through three different pseudonyms or safe-houses run by the Order or stays with allies with wards strong enough to protect them. Never had he come to know the feel of wards bound to his blood and that of his family, never had he come to know what it meant when those around him spoke of home – not until he was old enough that the sensation was something wholly foreign to him.

Voldemort’s attack that fateful Halloween night had cost him more than a godfather; it’d cost his family their only remaining home. Godric’s Hollow was – tainted after. Charles has been back once, and that was for the memory of Remus Lupin, and what the Ministry had done to the remains of the cottage was – vile.

And his grandparent’s place, Potter Manor, had been so thoroughly destroyed early on in the war – one of the first really ugly Death Eater raids against a pureblood family – that it had taken years to repair, and had been meant to be home too, but Voldemort had taken that from them just as thoroughly.

Mum and Dad couldn’t do all the repairs themselves. There were curses to nullify and dark magic to dispel, ruins to clear and belongings to salvage, a building to rebuild from the very foundations, acreage to restore and lands to scape and wildlife to coax back to health and wards to raise and –

Dad had realized how public, how exposed and unsecure, that made the Manor early on. Charles doesn’t remember the sting of this; he’s not sure his parents had told him that the Manor couldn’t be home back then. It’d been a slow thing to realize, and that only after they’d first revealed the Pool to him.

That, they’d built on their own. Mum had set up a complicated set of false identities and shell companies the way the muggles do to purchase the land. Dad had used every trick Grandpa and Grandma had ever taught him to get the land declared a magical preserve, along with a whole host of other places, in a way that couldn’t be traced back to him.

They’d built it with their own two hands. Fixed it up as their errors became apparent. Laid down wards the way they wanted to, not the way polite society would’ve dictated.

Mum and Dad kept Potter Manor, though. That was where they hosted things and met with people and went, so the public could see them going home. That was where they got mail delivered and where they held meetings, and where they invited the rare reporter for intimate interviews.

The charade meant they had to spend stolen moments in the Pool. Charles and his parents had to know every in and out of the Manor like the back of their own hands to keep from arousing any suspicion – but once everyone else left and all the work was done, they got to go home.

The forest thins out abruptly as the wards settle behind them, and Charles breaks out into a run through the clearing that spills open before them. Home awaits, windows dark and chimney still but warm all the same.

“Race you!” He shouts, and Mum shouts back that he’s a cheater, voice light with amusement.

Dad proves her wrong by cheating himself; Charles is only halfway there when he registers the pounding of hooves, and a great stag overtakes him.

If he cries into his pillow that night, after he’s in his own bed in his own room, his parents just down the hall – well.

That’s his business.

X

The first thing Harry thinks, when he is finally able to take Sirius Black in face-to-face, is that Professor Snape told the truth.

His godfather is a tall man on the thin side of slender; he would perhaps be healthy if not for the pallor of his skin or the cane clutched tight in his dominant hand, the gauntness of ill health lingering in the shadows of his sharp, angular features.

His eyes are haunted and mad, but warm as they regard Harry. His hands are calloused and scarred but gentle.

His clothes are what Harry has come to expect as typical of a pureblood; expensive robes well-tailored and embroidered, but soft and comfortable despite it all.

“Welcome home.” Sirius Black says hoarsely, and squeezes Harry’s hand gently with his own, and the door in front of them swings upon all on its own.

Harry swallows, and steps inside. He pulls Hedwig after him, and does not let go of his godfather’s hand.

The building itself is not all that old, not compared to Hogwarts or what Harry has gleaned most other pureblood homes are, but Harry has not felt so much power in a place before even at Hogwarts, allegedly the most magical building in all of Britain.

“The place will – move, a bit. That’s just me. Can’t keep a firm grip on it all the time, but my control’s been getting better lately.” Sirius says the last with a weak little smile on his face, and Harry might’ve flinched at the reminder that Professor Snape had been wholly truthful about the torture, but it is – reassuring. Morbid and…cruel, maybe, but…the damage done to Sirius Black is a direct result of his devotion to Harry, and Harry is still wary, is still afraid, but he wants more than he’s ever wanted anything, even Hogwarts, even magic.

“What happens if I get lost?” He asks quietly.

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll get lost. Might end up looping back around to wherever I am though.” Sirius says with an apologetic grimace; Harry fights back a smile.

The house, however, is quiet – not still, but quiet.

“Where is everybody else?”

“Regulus dragged the girls out until dinner, he was afraid they’d overwhelm you before you were settled. Draco doesn’t come home for another week – Hogwarts gets out earlier, but Durmstrang starts later.”

Sirius guides him deeper into the building, and Harry goes willingly. He lets go of Hedwig once the front door is closed behind them, and she promptly scuttles off, and Harry’s not sure if his godfather even notices.

The first floor consists of sitting rooms, dining rooms, the kitchen, and other rooms meant for entertaining. Harry has no idea how any of the Blacks keep any of the rooms straight, except for those that have been repurposed – he glimpses one filled with fabric and mannequins and sewing equipment both magical and muggle, another filled with two motorcycles and mechanical parts, a third with a pottery wheel.

“Do you have a lot of parties?” Harry asks, as they pass what he realizes is a ballroom, and Sirius barks out a laugh.

“No. Grimmauld was never meant for that sort of entertaining in the first place, and after I took up the Lordship, nobody who isn’t a friend of the family is willing to subject themselves to my authority. When I rebuilt this place, I was more concerned with what was in it, not what it was – and, I admit, I have no imagination for architecture. I told Cissa if she drew up a plan I’d accommodate it but Reggie threatened to kill me if I rebuilt the place again, because I broke all the dishes and Kreacher sobbed for weeks the last time. I – oh, Kreacher’s Reggie’s nightmare of a house-elf, you’ll meet him soon too.”

Sirius pauses before the door to the room he’s given Harry, hesitates, and then sighs.

“I – it’s gotten better, promise, pup, but last I saw you, you were a baby. So your room might get a little...nursery-ish sometimes. We’re working on it.”

He’s embarrassed, Harry realizes, even as his heart stutters in his chest – that he’d had a nursery here, from when he was just a baby, that this is and has been his room for longer than he’s ever even thought possible, that he has a room, a real room –

The walls are a soft dove-grey with white moons and stars and suns painted on them. The ceiling is a night sky; like the Great Hall at Hogwarts but cloudless, dark and glittering and blushed all the hues of the rainbow where galaxies rest. There’s a bed like the one he’d had for a single night in the Slytherin dormitory, a dresser, a wardrobe, a desk, a mirror, a fireplace and squashy chairs –

Hedwig is already plodding her way around the silver rug stretched out beneath the bed. He’s not sure how she’d known this was his room, but his blanket and stuffed dog have been dumped on the bed itself and one of the fireside chairs contains the books he’d last been reading.

“…Is that trunk moving?”

“That’s Hedwig.”

“I thought Hedwig was an owl.” Sirius says faintly. Harry shakes his head.

“No, she’s a trunk.”

“I…is she friendly?”

“No, she bites.”

And Sirius – looks relieved.

X

Uncle Regulus is the same sort of too-thin as Sirius, but he, at least, looks the picture of health otherwise. His hair isn’t as long as Sirius’ but is too long to be appropriate, or would be, if he were a muggle. Harry’s impression of the man from his letters was a – not uptight, exactly, but a very proper man, and while Uncle Regulus certainly speaks that way, he still slouches and wears unbuttoned shirts and rumpled robes like a regular person would.

Aunt Cissa is beautiful and perfectly poised – Harry’s absolutely unnerved by how elegant everything she does is; her manners are perfect and she’s dressed like she’s going to a ball or something with jewels and a fancy dress and a stole. She kisses his cheeks when she greets him and then calls Sirius fucking dramatic in the exact same tone of voice she’d used to introduce herself as a Lady.

Auntie Bella is loud and wholly improper where her sister and cousins at least attempt to look the part of fancy pureblood witches and wizards; her laugh is an ugly, cackling thing and she shows too many teeth when she smiles and she sweeps Harry up into a hug so tight his bones creak – but she’s the one to notice that he likes the salad at dinner and wink before sending the serving bowl dancing over to his corner of the table.

All of the Blacks wait until they think he’s not looking at them to stare like he’s something they want to devour whole. He thinks this is polite, even if Hedwig and Hermione certainly don’t care whether he notices when they do it, and he appreciates the effort.

They’re trying not to be weird around him, like Professor Snape told him they would. It won’t last long, Harry thinks, but – even the letters hadn’t prepared him to meet them all like this and he’s grateful for the reprieve.

They don’t talk about him as a baby overmuch. They don’t know him, besides what he or Professor Snape have told them, and that, too is – reassuring. That they don’t pretend they do.

“Sirius tells me you’ve a pet.” Uncle Regulus says, after dinner, and Harry can’t help but perk up a little.

“Do you want to meet her?”

“Where’d you get a pet? The Forbidden Forest?” Auntie Bella asks, amused, and Harry shakes his head before he remembers and –

He blushes. But –

“No, the – um. The vaults.”

Aunt Cissa’s head whips around to face Sirius, who immediately throws his hands up.

“It hasn’t bit him yet, he’s fine!”

“Sirius Orion Black – “

“It’s got teeth? What is it?”

“The Black vaults? Or the Potter?”

“Her name’s Hedwig.” Harry says loudly, and then she comes clattering into the dining hall all on her own. There is something struggling frantically at the corner of her lid; the adults all fall silent to see her, and she opens her lid and claps it shut with a violent snap as her dinner vanishes.

And then she wiggles in greeting.

“I love her.” Auntie Bella breathes.

X

Waking is – peculiar.

The bed is soft and warm and big, Hedwig a heavy weight at Harry’s back and even the hard press of her side against his spine is rendered something luxurious. He curls his fingers around the edges of his Christmas blanket slowly, carefully, and lets a slow almost-yawn out as he blinks at the dim, silvery light illuminating his room.

It’d been darker when he had gone to bed; despite the heavy curtains pulled over his windows, the room has lightened just enough to see the edges of things, preserved itself in that strange twilight too bright to be called shadow and too dim to be called light.

“I’m not afraid of the dark.” He mumbles into his bedding. He’s not sure Grimmauld will hear. He might have to tell Sirius – but he doesn’t mind the light.

He has his own attached bathroom. The fixtures are old, antique, the tub big and metal and clawed and freestanding. It fills with steaming water at a brush of his fingers, and between one blink and the next there are an array of soaps and scrubs and bottles and a robe laid out in a wooden tray stretched out over one end of the tub. When he turns his head, the biggest, fluffiest towel he has ever seen hangs neatly over a towel bar.

“Thank you.” He says, this time awkwardly, but he doesn’t hesitate to shuck off his clothes and sink into the warm water.

He hasn’t had a bath in – ever. He’s been snatching stolen showers out of the Slytherin dorms all year, quick and usually cold as a result. Harry keeps himself clean, of course, but this is – it makes him feel clean, to douse himself in soap that smells of warm, musky things and soft florals, to linger in the heat and carefully arrange a pyramid of bubbles on the top of his head.

He brushes his teeth, combs his hair, takes the clothes Hedwig gives him without protest, and then shuffles barefoot out of his room.

The house is quiet again. Less quiet than before; he can hear the faint murmur of other living things, and he follows that downstairs to the same dining room they’d eaten dinner in.

Sirius and Auntie Bella are draped over their chairs like somebody spilled them into it. There’s crumbs all down the front of Sirius’ nightshirt, and he’s cradling an absolutely giant mug of coffee. Auntie Bella is daintily eating some sort of mouthwatering steak-and-eggs dish, and angrily slashing a quill in a notebook at the same time.

“Morning.” He says hesitantly, awkwardly. He sort of expects Sirius to jolt, but his godfather’s attention swings to him immediately and the man smiles, warm and soft, without so much as twitching. Maybe he’d sensed Harry coming – that might make sneaking around later hard, but Harry is beginning to suspect Sirius won’t care if Harry sneaks around.

“Sit, sit! Breakfast is rather informal here, sweetling – are you craving anything in particular?”

He sits where she directs him, beside Sirius, and watches her carefully when she makes a pointed flourish with her wrist, does something to her napkin that lays it out in a sharp snap of fabric over her lap.

Sirius watches, warm and amused, while Harry copies her until he gets the trick down.

“Y’know, I hated the whole pureblood routine as a kid – but I never much minded all the manners. Most of it’s wordplay – insulting somebody without them noticing – or sleight of hand.” Sirius says, and then winks and demonstrates something that outright vanishes the silverware in front of him.

“Bodily functions and needs are to be kept as discrete as possible. Closed mouths while chewing, covered mouths if coughing or yawning, absolutely no passing gas in public…” Auntie Bella flaps her hand dismissively as she trails off, attention falling back to her paper.

“Mostly, you just have to learn how to vanish things without a wand.” Sirius says, and does another thing with his fingers, and his fork reappears.

Something whacks Sirius’ ankle so hard he spins right around in his seat until he’s sitting mostly upright. Harry starts, and meets the beady, bulging eyes of the meanest looking house elf he has ever seen in his life.

His teeth are yellowed and pointed and thin like needles, his skin dark brown like polished oak and wrinkled and knobby like a tree too. One of his eyes is milky and clouded, a stark white thread of scarred flesh peeling through his brow and up across his skull. His ears are tattered and torn.

“Filthy mutt is ruining Master’s furniture!”

“Harry, this is Kreacher. Kreacher, this is Harry.” Sirius says conversationally, gesturing genially towards the house elf as if it hadn’t just smacked him.

Willow smacks people. But Harry has gotten the impression that other house elves very much do not.

“Hi. Do you know Willow?” He asks anyway. Kreacher’s eyes narrow. There is a pop.

Willow stares imperiously down at Kreacher from atop the dining table.

“Get. Off. Master’s. Table.” Kreacher hisses out, each word sharp and spat like a projectile. Willow’s ears flutter a little bit like they do when Hedwig does something exciting.

She says something back in her native tongue, the one only other house elves can speak. Kreacher gasps, loud and affronted, and clutches at his chest. Willow maintains her air of utter disdain admirably in the face of his horror.

“What’d you call him?” Sirius whispers, awed, into the ensuing silence.

“She called him a bitch.” Harry offers. It’s not an exact translation, but he’s gotten enough context to understand the point.

“…How do you know that?”

“That’s what she calls Professor Snape.”

X

“Hermione, love, you’ve got a letter!”

She pauses.

Already?

No. Harry wouldn’t write to her. She’ll have to write to him. And Neville is too shy to – not so soon. Charles is too busy.

So…

She thumps downstairs suspiciously, and inches her way into the kitchen suspiciously, and squints even more suspiciously at the fancy envelope Mum’s set in front of her spot at the table. Mum’s busy making tea at the island. Dad is clustered up around her shoulders, trying to give Hermione and her mysterious letter privacy while also making cow eyes at her and blatantly staring, as he is wont to do.

She chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment, and then takes a decisive step forward. Picks it up – heavy, real parchment and ink and wax – and breaks the seal.

Granger, it opens in looping purple cursive.

“That bitch!”

“Hermione Jean Granger – !“

X

Charles holds his breath and slowly eases himself past the final beam, and then works his jaw to get his ears to pop as the resulting change in pressure bears down on him in full.

He’d left a blanket back here last time. It’s gross and dusty now, but it’s also a lot softer than bare wood, so he lowers himself down onto it anyway.

He’d spent a lot of time in the walls as a kid. Still did – more than most people would ever have assumed, even despite knowing how much of a trouble-maker his father was at his age. Except Charles isn’t like his dad, doesn’t disobey or get into stuff for the sake of it.

He has parental permission to be here. He has parental blessings to be here. He smugs a little bit about it as he settles into place.

He’s not left waiting for long. The Headmaster is always quick to get to the point when he visits, no matter how vague his actual words are or silly the point he makes is.

Most of the time Charles does this he doesn’t learn much. Dumbledore rarely tells his parents what he wants from them, and even more rarely actually tells them why he came. He’s the sort of man to speak in riddles and half-truths and allusions; Charles doesn’t have a head for it like his father does. Dad does a lot of explaining after Dumbledore leaves, usually, and even then, Dad doesn’t always know what’s going on.

“ – to drink?”

“Thank you, my dear girl, but I will have to refuse.”

The Headmaster sounds tired. There’s the sound of shuffling feet and furniture and cloth as all three adults settle in. Charles sometimes tries to guess where people sit in Dad’s office, if the meeting is about Boring things and he’s there more for practice than real substance, but this – this involves him, and his year, and his friends, and his teachers, and his school, and so Charles stares into the darkness of the space-between and breathes as softly as he can.

“Charles told us some of what happened.” Mum says. Her voice is soft.

The Headmaster sighs.

“It was a perfect storm of – incidents. They were not related. I am afraid that even now, in my old age, I am no better dealing with the unexpected than I was as a child.”

“So it wasn’t some grand conspiracy?”

“Oh, there were conspiracies at work, perhaps some of them could even be called grand. We are – I am – immeasurably lucky that those conspiracies were so often working at cross purposes.”

“Hogwarts truly would have fallen?”

“Ah, well – I suppose that is a good place to start. I have not identified how our former professor made it onto the shortlist of candidates. I suspect there is nothing I could ever do to have prevented it; the Flamels are as cunning as they are powerful, and for all they rarely choose to interfere in the matters of common wix, they are never unsuccessful when they do. I have determined how she managed to pass the subsequent checks and tests, however, and have remedied them so as not to miss those like her with half a mind gone to targeted obliviations and memory curses.”

“She what?”

Charles felt his eyes go as wide as his mother’s voice grew shrill. The Headmaster’s laugh is not at all amused.

“There was not much left to her but single-minded obsession and half a mastery in alchemy. Nicolas was methodical in what he ripped from her mind, and Perenelle surgical in what she excised so completely I do believe her brain would resemble a close cousin of Swiss cheese, if a comparison were to be made. She was a disgraced former apprentice of theirs.”

“So she could have – “

“She could not have. She did not possess the knowledge. Perenelle ripped out much of the most important tenets of alchemical knowledge from her root and stem. She could not correct her lack of knowledge because she did not know it was missing; she could not even process her own errors. Much as the oaths Hogwarts’ faculty give determined she bore no ill intent to the school or the children – she wasn’t capable of true malice.”

She hadn’t known what she was doing was bad? That was it? Hogwarts’ oaths were that –

Mum lets out a shaky curse. Dad’s probably trying to touch her now, a hand on her back or over her own. Charles curls himself closer to his ratty blanket.

Hermione is going to be so angry when she finds out. Intent means a lot in magic, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways around it. Through it. Over it, or under it.

Charles’ hiding spot is the perfect example. It is part of his father’s study insofar as the wards are concerned; it is other insofar as any detection spells cast within the study are concerned. Mum told him he probably wouldn’t get it until he needed to, the sort of contradictory intent-and-belief needed to make something both itself and its opposite. It’s the sort of magic that goes down in family grimoires and legacies; the sort that earns masteries and Unspeakable accolades and global renown too.

Mum kept it for them. If they’d had it during the war – maybe Charles would still have a godfather. And in the next one, maybe the Potters won’t lose so much.

“She’s in custody?”

“I believe she is dead now, even if they have not announced it. The Flamels sent her here for some sort of game, and she failed.”

“What would they have wanted her in Hogwarts for?”

“That, my dear boy, brings us to the second conspiracy.” The Headmaster says.

His head already hurts. Charles wishes, belatedly, that he had brought some parchment.

Hermione will want notes.

Chapter Text

                “And this one?”

“Yes.” Parkinson says firmly. Hermione frowns dubiously, but stretches up on her tip-toes to add the volume in question to the stack of books in front of her. Miss Mayflower’s Manners for the Magnificent is a solemn volume in doe-brown and periwinkle blue, which is significantly less appalling than the glittery monstrosities at Flourish & Botts, but it still seems…excessive.

“Are manners really that important?”

“No, not really – not now, anyway. For us. But for adults it is and they’ll use them, and it helps them take us seriously. And you’ll need to know how to insult people properly – they’ll get weird once they realize you’re not just a mudblood but a girl.”

“That’s a slur.” Hermione points out mildly.

“Polite society calls all muggleborns mudbloods until they prove they are adequately domesticated.” Parkinson replies promptly. The other girl is bouncing on her toes, a bundle of books clutched in her arms even as her expression remains perfectly poised and vaguely disdainful.

It’s a little relieving that there’s so many books spelling out the details of magical society and culture for the uneducated and uninitiated. They’re no longer in print, and therefore no longer sold in Flourish & Botts, and certainly not advertised by Hogwarts or the Ministry, but copies are plentiful and useful. The wizarding world is dreadfully slow to adapt to any sort of changes; the books in front of Hermione are typically about a decade out-of-date, but they’ll serve her perfectly well. Any archaic behaviors she accumulates will likely serve her better, because magical-born people will read them as a devotion to the traditional and a desire to fit in. Parkinson says that will be useful when she’s older, because it will let her get a foot in the door.

Parkinson’s been gleeful all day. People aren’t really paying attention to them; Hermione knows how to not draw attention to herself and Parkinson is perfectly friendly if horribly crass – but it’s still a political statement, the daughter of a pureblood legacy arm-in-arm with a muggleborn the summer after their first year, let alone a Slytherin and a Gryffindor.

Hermione is being used. She knows this. She’s alright with it – and alright with not pushing back against Parkinson’s chosen subjects too much. It’s all still soft skills, things she won’t learn in a classroom, and Parkinson making a startlingly good effort to supply Hermione with tools she can use to further her other interests too.

“Is this all you think I’ll need?”

“For now. We’ll come back when you’re done with these and move onto other things.” Parkinson says, and gestures to the shelves around them excitedly. Hermione can’t help but beam back.

Magical used bookstores are incredible. Hermione hasn’t puzzled out the whys of it all just yet – there’s something cultural, she thinks, in that wizards seem to value heirlooms deeply but only certain types, and just as strongly value new things over old. She’s not sure where the line there is, but the result is that magical folk will often dump estranged relatives’ belongings in secondhand shops for a quick galleon rather than keep them, and those who know where to look can find handwritten journals, notes, diaries, and annotated textbooks for pennies on the dollar. Hermione dislikes defacing books, but these ones – these are whole books inside of books, practically!

“What next, then?”

“I’ll show you how to double-check that they’re safe. We should really do this before touching anything on shelves, but this particular shop boasts a very high reputation for doing this sort of thing beforehand.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been very in fashion to curse things to kill or maim muggles for ages, but during the last war it got just as popular to curse things to kill half-bloods and muggleborns. And generally most families make sure only relatives can read their journals and the like. Also, people will probably try to send you cursed things if you keep doing so well in classes so you really should learn these spells sooner rather than later.” Parkinson adds. Hermione gapes.

“But – we’re in public and we’re underage!”

Parkinson looks bewildered for half a second, and then her eyes blow wide.

“You don’t know about the Trace?”

“Of course I know about the Trace! That’s why we can’t – “

“That’s why we can! Detection spells are perfectly alright to cast! The Trace only really pays attention to spells with active, visible, or property-changing effects! So like, transfiguration’s out, but basic safety spells are perfectly legal…as long as you’re in a magical area. So maybe you are right – you wouldn’t be able to cast these at home so – you’d best learn them now, then!”

Hermione debates throwing herself over the stack of books and throttling Pansy Parkinson where she stands.

And then she huffs and grabs her wand.

X

Draco comes home too soon after Harry’s arrival for Sirius’ child to have settled into a comfortable routine. It had not been a concern of Regulus’ until the boys introduced themselves to each other; Draco bright and eager and throwing his arms around Harry’s neck in delight and Harry stiff and wide-eyed and already resigned.

Harry does not see Draco as a threat. And that is perfectly grand; but Regulus had not thought to consider he might until it is too late, which is an inexcusable failing on his part.

“Have you met everyone yet?!”

“Everyone important.” Harry answers in that dry tone he so favors.

“Then you’ve only met Mother so far!” Draco exclaims right on cue, and Harry smothers the barest hint of a snort in his own shoulder.

“And Uncle Regulus.” Harry replies, and shoots him a soft, small smile, and Regulus hopes his own face isn’t contorting in visible pain when he responds in kind.

He adores his nephew – nephews – but Draco in particular is not –

“Have you been formally adopted yet?”

- Subtle.

Harry does not look at Regulus. The only tell he has is the briefest flicker of his fingers, spasming shut around the tip of his wand; he smooths his hand out in a surprisingly deft gesture and presses it back into his holster, hidden beneath his sleeve, immediately.

Draco turns accusing eyes on him, and Regulus sighs.

“We will discuss that later.”

“But – !“

X

Sirius swallows down the lump in his throat, the size of the moon twice over and fit enough to choke him, and sets his arms on the desk in front of him. Clasps his hands and squeezes.

He feels more himself now than he has in a decade, and his Harry is sat silent, dark-eyed and watchful in the seat across from him but not afraid. Not wary.

Severus was right to make him wait so long. Right to deny every demand to see him, every attempt to get through the floo, every letter –

Because Harry came to him already trusting him, ink and parchment and paltry tokens enough to mend the unforgiveable; and Sirius might not blame himself for what happened, but he certainly blames himself for not fixing it –

Draco bounces into the room and beelines for Sirius; he throws himself bodily into Sirius’ side, heedless of the furniture in his way, and worms himself under Sirius’ arm. Smushes into him until Sirius scoots over and gives a half an inch of space to his nephew. Draco looks distinctly pleased with himself when he manages to finish worming his way into Sirius’ chair.

Draco then throws something to Harry. Harry snatches it out of the air – candy, Sirius recognizes – and raises an eyebrow; before he can catalogue anything else, however, Draco is shoving another sugar-coated stick into Sirius’ mouth.

“Kid – “

“Uncle Siri is the worst for serious talks. He gets all mopey. I can’t believe Auntie Bella is letting you give this one.” Draco declares, and Sirius is forced to let his nephew mash the treat into his mouth and chew or else risk a black eye.

“Thank you.”

“I only have a little bit left and Mum will try to throw it out if she sees it, so we have to eat it before dinner.” Draco says sagely, and finally settles. Harry nods, solemn and serious, and takes a little bite of his own candy. He pulls a face at the sour taste, but takes another, so – Sirius supposes he must like it.

“Who’re we waiting for?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, you little gremlin.” Sirius grouses, ruffling Draco’s hair – too fine to really ruffle, honestly, Malfoy couldn’t even give him the good Black-hair genes – and just on cue, Severus sweeps into the room.

He lobs a diagnostic spell at Sirius, and another at Harry, without a word. Regulus inches past in the background and eases the study door shut; with himself safely on the other side, of course.

“Good afternoon, Professor.”

“Uncle Sev!”

“Draco.” Severus acknowledges Draco verbally, but it’s Harry who earns a hand to the shoulder. Sirius watches Draco intently, but his nephew just beams and throws himself out of Sirius’ chair and into Severus’ side.

He’s such a good-natured boy. This will be problematic when he gets older and starts dating. Neither Sirius nor Bella were jealous children growing up – not of family, not of those they considered theirs – which is the same sort of easy-going acceptance Draco is currently expressing. That’s not a problem now. It will be when Draco inevitably tries to share a romantic partner with a friend. Or cousin. Draco doesn’t have many close friends – Harry is going to have to deal with some very awkward conversations in the future. Unless Harry develops it himself; it is a Black trait.

Sirius will take it over the sort of rampant insecurity he’d expected – that typical of Draco’s father’s family. Case in point; Fucking Lucius.

“What was that for?” Harry asks curiously, still gnawing on his candy. Severus ignores the question and casts a third spell, which conjures a distressingly large pile of parchment covered in ink of various colors on the table between them.

Sirius lets out a gusty sigh at the familiar sight and slumps back in his chair.

“Narcissa is arranging for a qualified healer to come in tomorrow evening and do a full, proper examination of you – after which we will be adjusting your potions regiment. Draco, Sirius and Regulus are likewise due for a checkup.”

“Do I get to start taking things?” Draco asks brightly. Severus sneers something terrible at the question; Harry catches Sirius’ eye, visibly puzzled. Something soft flutters in Sirius’ chest to see it.

“Draco, I don’t think anyone’s explained your medical history to Harry yet – have you?” He asks, voice pitched high enough to catch Draco’s attention over Severus’ grumblings.

“Oh. Ohhhh. I forgot he wouldn’t know.” The last is said in a whisper, uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Are you sick?” Harry asks, and he sounds genuinely concerned. This does not appear to help; Draco looks, somehow, even paler after the question.

“Draco is a boy. He wasn’t always. There are a number of ways to magically change one’s body, but many of them are unsafe or temporary or come with side-effects Narcissa has deemed unacceptable. Draco will need to undergo a few years’ worth of prefatory care before he will be ready to undergo a series of rituals which will permanently adjust his physical form to his preferred gender.” Severus deadpans the whole of his little speech, looking bored as all hells while doing so. Draco’s eyes get big, almost fearful, and then Harry’s face scrunches up.

“Why’s it so hard to do?”

“Draco is a more extreme case than most – someone who prefers any gender or no gender at all will have a significantly easier time making the same alterations to their body. Draco, however, carries a recessive metamorphmagus gene, which needs to be properly counter-acted lest his body simply begin undoing things. He will be actively fighting the fluidity and change inherent to the magic called upon to assist him, where others undergoing similar processes would merely be directing that nature.”

Severus pauses, takes a breath, and Sirius jumps in before Draco can burst into tears or Harry can ask another follow-up question.

The Wizarding World cared, of course, about things like gender. Britain more than most – mostly for asshole reasons, but reasons meant little when Draco had been shunned as thoroughly as his mother when it came out.

Lucius hadn’t reacted well either, but as loathe as Sirius is to acknowledge any semi-decent facet of Lucius’ existence – there had been extenuating circumstances to Lucius’ reaction.

When the decision had been made to send him to Durmstrang, they’d just – not mentioned it. Draco, to Sirius’ knowledge, had not made it publicly known. But, then, Durmstrang is a surprisingly welcome place for those like Draco; even if it did come out, there’d be little beyond a few spats between Draco and the less tolerant student body, and Sirius had no doubt Draco would come out on top of those particular fights – anyone raised in any part by Bellatrix Black could only lose a schoolyard duel if they wanted to.

“There isn’t a lot of potion-work that Severus can’t do, Harry, but the stuff Draco needs are all top-secret semi-religious recipes passed down in the old druidic practice and they won’t share.”

Harry lets out a low oohhh as Severus sneers, and then giggles. Severus takes a subtle half-step forward, and the boys make tentative eye contact. Harry promptly scoots over in his seat, and Draco throws himself into it.

Severus and the boys both settle, and Sirius watches.

There’s something – sharply domestic about this. About having Harry safe in the walls of Grimmauld proper, protected and secure and loved as he should have always been. It feels like blades on his bones, like being skinned alive, sometimes, to just hear Harry asking Bella quiet questions over breakfast or look up to find Harry dragging his Christmas comforter into whatever room Sirius is in and curling up with Hedwig by the fireplace.

It's a good pain, a welcome pain. Even – now. Even with the sin Sirius has yet to vocalize to him.

Severus rolls out some of the conjured parchment, pinning the corners with various paperweights and knickknacks, and then raps his knuckles sharply on the desk – the boys stop whispering to each other immediately, and Sirius snaps his focus back.

“This paper is part of your readout, Mister Evans. You do not have the background in arithmancy necessary to understand this, but I thought a visual aid would be helpful for this conversation. This paper is your godfather’s.”

Draco leans forward and whistles; Sirius rolls his eyes. He skips over his own, instead looking to the cramped ink on Harry’s – upside down and too small to read from this angle, but he’s familiar enough with them after a decade of constant medical monitoring and chronic illness to understand that Harry’s – while not as bad as his – is nowhere near optimal.

He very carefully does not allow himself to consider what it would have looked like mere months ago.

“Adoption in the magical world comes in a variety of flavors. Most are not weighted differently from each other but for one broad distinction; some adoptions are akin to muggle adoptions, meaning, the adoptee will retain their surname and magical heritage, and some are more akin to being reborn – the adoptee will ritualistically sacrifice their magical heritage and surname in favor of a new one.”

Sirius thinks Harry stops breathing for an instant. His pup’s gaze flickers up, eyes wide and near-unreadable, and Sirius smiles at him even if it comes out more a grimace than anything else.

“I do not trust James and Lily with your care, pup. I will not leave any chance that they could take you away again. And any sort of adoption will become viciously public once we do it. So – we’re waiting until both you and I are strong enough to go the ritual path. If you want.” Sirius asks, although this – is mere lip service.

If Harry tells him no, here and now – Sirius might agree to calm him. But Family Black has adopted unwilling children before, and Harry’s consent does not need to be given for the ritual to work; Sirius will gladly bear the cost of that if only to ensure his safety.

Harry knows that. Can – see it, Sirius thinks. And he gives that soft, sweet little smile, the barest twitch of the corners of his lips, and ducks his head. Nods.

“What does that mean?”

“My family – our family – has had centuries untold to create and tweak our own adoption ritual. Most will cut out all contribution from the birth parents, for example – magically inherited curses, traits, and gifts included. But we want to keep those things – we just want to sever ties with the Potters. So you’ll give up the heirship and any claim to their fortune. When you raided the vault – if you took any grimoires you might have to return those, but nothing else should be magically bound to the family and you were within your rights to take that stuff when you did. They won’t have any power over you anymore.”

Family Black has been stealing talents and gifts – and curses – from other magicals for centuries. Metamorphmagi were not natural to their line – or, hadn’t been until the late seventeen hundreds. The complexity involved in the ritual makes it far more taxing than similar rituals – and therefore the consequences of failure much more dire – but the end result will be worth it. Harry deserves to remain himself. He deserves to continue to recognize himself when he looks in the mirror.

There had been a time when Sirius had been wholly willing to throw away everything he was just to be rid of his parents; that is a horror he does not want Harry to ever have to consider.

“You can copy the grimoires now, though, and then you’ll have them for later. Just make sure you do it all by hand and not with magic – you gotta copy it on muggle paper with a muggle pen first, and then you can copy that onto proper parchment or a new grimoire.” Draco says flippantly.

Severus freezes. Sirius freezes.

“That sounds like a lot of extra work.”

“It’s ‘cuz they have magical protections. Muggle stuff doesn’t hold magic well usually because it’s so processed, you know? So you get an inert copy without protections and then you put that back on parchment that does hold magic and you can charm it to eat people’s fingers or whatever if they touch it.”

“I think Hedwig would get jealous.”

“Oh, they won’t be sentient. Not now anyway, it takes a long long time for books to get – “

Morgana’s fucking sake -

“CISSA WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR KID?”

X

Charles throws himself onto the ground next to Ginny, and grins when she just turns a baleful eye on him. Ginny’s got the good comforter spread out on the grass beneath her, the one that still has a functioning softening charm, which means Charles can indulge in his theatrics and not get a rock in his kidney or something.

“Why aren’t you bothering Ron?” She asks pointedly. There’s a spread of books laid out in front of her, and Percy is laid out flat on his back on her other side, hands folded on his stomach and staring up at the sky with a frankly unsettlingly intense look of despair on his face.

“We got in a fight.” He says. He sounds kind of cheerful, which hadn’t been his intent, but it’s better than the alternative.

He’s kind of mad now. He was sad when school first let out about it; now he’s mad.

Ron’s been more vocal about it since this morning. Less rude, but more vocal, and Charles tried to be polite and not call his oldest friend a cunt in front of his mother but Ron can’t take a hint to save his life, and Charles wants to sink his fingers into Ron’s face and tear, which is – a new thing for him.

Realistically, he’s probably just starting to hit puberty or whatever. But Charles mostly thinks he’s been hanging out with Hermione too much, because Hermione’s been hanging out in the dungeons too much, and that sort of stuff is transferable.

Not that all Slytherins are violent psychopaths. But out of everyone at Hogwarts, Evans would be the first person Charles would ask to help hide a body, and he knows that mostly from observing Hermione coming out of her shell over the course of the year.

He’s written Evans a letter asking about it, but hasn’t gotten a response yet. He’ll send another one tomorrow night if he still feels so snarly.

“Did he call your new friends names again?” She asks knowingly. Percy doesn’t so much as twitch at her side; Charles isn’t even sure he’s breathing.

“He’s doing that here?” Charles asks, shocked, and Ginny rolls her eyes.

She sweeps a couple of the books in front of her into a frighteningly neat pile, unburying yet another book with a cover so creased and faded Charles can’t make out the title, just that it looks handwritten.

“You made him popular. He likes that. Then you called all his new popular friends pricks and stopped hanging out with them.”

“…Did he mention they were blood purists.”

“No. But Ron craves attention. He wants to be recognized. Percy says he’ll grow out of it but at this point he’d cuddle up with Death Eaters for the attention.” She says sourly, and Charles is  - he blinks at her. He doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t…he doesn’t get why I’m mad.”

“He doesn’t get why you stopped hanging out with them in the first place.”

“How do you know all this.”

“Percy gave Luna a bunch of old muggle textbooks about the mind and brain and I read them out loud when we go creature hunting. Luna’s really into some spooky things right now and the more I read the less I have to look at or touch her friends.”

That stumps him.

Charles doesn’t interact much with Luna. She’s Ginny’s friend. Kinda weird, but sweet. Ginny, though – if Ron will do anything to be popular, Ginny will do anything out of spite. She’s perfectly at home with the creepy-crawlies that her brothers abhor; Charles once dared her to eat some weird muggle candy Mum had bought him for his birthday with actual bugs in it and she’d crunched through the scorpion without hesitation.

If she thinks Luna’s creatures are spooky, Charles does not want to know what they are. Or, he does, so he can avoid them in the future, but – he doesn’t want to meet them.

“Is that what these are?” He asks. It’s a conscious effort to let the conversation about Ron go, but – it’s the right one, he thinks. It’s uncomfortable talking to any of the Weasleys about each other. They’re siblings first and foremost, before they’re his friends. Charles doesn’t begrudge them that, but he’s always been uncertain of where that boundary is. It moves too much, changes depending on who he’s talking to and the time of year and what is going on.

“My old diaries. The new one Mum got me. I’m seeing if there’s anything I want to take with me to Hogwarts.” She says, patting the books as she identifies them.

Percy doesn’t interject when Ginny says this, but he does get a little bit…grayer. Charles isn’t sure he’s breathing at this point.

“That’s a terrible idea. It might take a few weeks but people will try to steal it and if they do they will read it out loud to the whole common room.” Charles warns her.

“What do I do then?! I can’t not write in one, all my plots go in there!” Ginny looks horrified. As she should be. Fred and George would go ballistic if someone read their baby sister’s diary out loud to the common room – or, Merlin forbid, the Great Hall – but no one at Hogwarts has any real understanding of how protective the Weasley boys are of their baby sister. A deterrent against subsequent attempts won’t do anything about that first successful attempt, after all.

“Mum warded my trunk before I went to Hogwarts. It’s safer to ward the trunk instead of just your book so then all your stuff is safe, right? If we ask, I bet she’d do yours.”

Ginny throws herself down at Percy’s side in an instant.

“Perce, did Mrs. Potter ward your trunk?” She asks urgently. Percy blinks – thank Merlin he is alive – once.

“Professor Quirrell warded my trunk to break the bones of anyone else who tries to get into it. He didn’t ask.”

“…How’d Professor Quirrell get into the Gryffindor dormitories?” Charles asks, mystified, and Percy pushes himself up lethargically.

“He didn’t. He had one of Hogwarts’ house elves steal it from the train.”

“That’s a thoughtful gift.” Ginny says, and then her expression freezes.

“Percy, why’s a professor giving you gifts?”

Charles’s head snaps up. Percy looks at him, and then at his sister. His expression flickers rapid-fire through every flavor of despair Charles knows and then some, and settles on resignation with a large side of sour.

“I’m apprenticing under him.”

“You’re getting a Mastery in Muggle Studies?”

“No.” He says flatly.

“Then in what?”

X

Harry creeps into the library on silent feet, Hedwig trundling behind him. Creeps is perhaps the wrong word; he’s not hiding that he’s come in and his silence is mostly natural, his caution something softer and warmer than something caused by true fear.

Sirius notices him right away anyway. He’s woken a few times, typically in the library but elsewhere in the house too, to find Harry settled near him – the empty armchair across from him, the floor in front of Sirius’ couch, the end of whatever chaise he passed out on. Harry always occupies himself with old books Hedwig regurgitates or homework or older books filched from Grimmauld’s library. He’s always got something in his hands generally, something to turn to quietly and unobtrusively.

And if Sirius is awake –

Harry makes a beeline right for him and clambers onto the couch beside Sirius, carefully balancing a stack of muggle notebooks, worn books and writing implements on the squashy couch’s squashier arm. The pile wobbles, but holds when Harry narrows his eyes at it, and Sirius bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling at the satisfied look that earns.

Harry then whips his head around to stare imploringly at him, and Sirius stops trying to hide his smile.

“Where were we?”

“The history books are all messed up.” Harry says promptly. Sirius barks out a startled laugh, and shoves aside his own pile of papers and texts – more research for a bill Regulus wants to put together.

“Ah. Right. Well. What do you know about the Hunts? And the Statute of Secrecy?”

“They happened.”

“That’s it?”

“History was low on my priorities this past year.” Harry says simply.

No, he’d been worried about practical magic, about theory and foundation and how the magical world works. Harry is more than willing to talk about the things he’s been teaching himself – frankly the only thing Harry doesn’t typically talk about are friends, Sirius has noticed.

And that – well. Severus reports plenty about that without prompting; about Pansy Parkinson and Charles Potter and Hermione Granger circling him like sharks. It’s – cute. Reminds Sirius a little bit of Remus, back in Hogwarts, those first few months – never seeming to understand that the rest of them kept coming to him to hang out or pull him into pranks or for help with homework because they liked him. It’s a depressing comparison, but a fond one all the same, and that fondness keeps the murderous rage from taking over his every waking thought.

Sirius hums thoughtfully, considering.

“Well – there’s a lot of places I could start, so I won’t try to give you a clear timeline on things. In part, because we don’t know the timeline – the Hunts ended with the Statute of Secrecy being enacted, but it was a desperate gamble and we were not prepared for the consequences. We still aren’t.”

The story is – convoluted, as he tells it to Harry. As convoluted as when it was told to him.

The Statute erased magic from the minds of those who could not naturally wield it – and any evidence that magic existed, too. For a world bound together, blood and magic alike – the severing had been cataclysmic.

Whole peoples destroyed, cultures and societies disintegrated when the Statute could not neatly separate out one from the other. Creatures and places torn from living memory, languages lost, memories shredded like fine paper, written and depicted histories annihilated.

The impact might not have been so outsized, if there’d been any elders left. But the Hunts had claimed the lives of the oldest of magical beings first – elders with the power to stand against armies, parents, trained witches and wizards and hedgemages who died in defense of the young. Non-magical memory of magic was destroyed, and magical memory of magic had already been culled so thoroughly…

The world had had to relearn magic, in the aftermath. Wands, portable foci, became popular. If portable foci had existed during the Hunts, fewer magicals would have died. Or, at least, that’s what they’d told themselves. Poor comfort when millennia of magical knowledge lay still smoldering in every village on the continent. Ritual magic wasn’t an option because no one knew how to do it, not by any choice of the survivors.

Sirius’ ancestors had, like most established magical families, clawed what truth they could from the world with desperate fervor. Sirius’ ancestors had, unlike the rest of the world, devoted a frankly unholy amount of effort into discovering a way to impart history and knowledge and culture no great working like the Statute could ever again destroy.

They hadn’t succeeded. So they’d seduced a method that would do so from Inuit mage-priests and called it equivalent.

“Can I learn?” Harry asks softly, hesitantly, and Sirius presses a kiss to the top of his head.

“It’ll hurt. It’s like – spoken runes; spoken magic, so that no mortal thing could ever rend it from reality again. It’ll make Runes very interesting when you hit third year.” Sirius adds. Harry doesn’t move, not truly, but he – feels the shift of his cheek against his shirt; a smile.

“Does Draco know?”

“No. He’s still technically a Malfoy, and this is Family Black’s knowledge to share.” Sirius murmurs. Draco’s too canny to give up a prize like the Malfoy heirship, as much as Lucius would prefer it, as much as Sirius thinks he’d prefer it himself. Draco hasn’t, to Sirius’ knowledge, told Harry how relieved he is his missing cousin is back – to take the pressure of the Black heirship from him. But he’d seen the relief in his nephew, the curl of his shoulders, the firmness to his voice when he’d asked his mother when he could see his siblings next.

“I’ll do it.” Harry swears.

“You will.”

X

Charles is startled abruptly to the solid thunk of bone on wood. He’s half out of bed before he registers his father’s voice swearing softly in the hall outside his room, and Charles drops his wand immediately, throws open his bedroom door, and throws himself at his father.

His attack isn’t a surprise; Charles had upset the stack of books he’d borrowed from Ginny-slash-Luna-slash-Percy-he-hasn’t-clarified-yet with a clatter just as loud as his father’s. Dad catches him, still wincing.

“What are you doing up?”

“What are you doing up?” Charles counters, squinting.

Mum’s more militant about bedtime than Dad is by leaps and bounds, but neither of his parents are the sort of people to be up at three-ish in the morning for no reason. And Dad’s wearing his work uniform, Charles realizes belatedly.

Dad doesn’t have a work uniform, not really – hasn’t since he was an auror, and he so rarely gets called out on jobs now that he hasn’t needed an official one. But he only wears cargo pants when he’s got one.

The Ministry doesn’t like to call him in on things, not unless it’s bad. Dad distinguished himself spectacularly enough during the war and during the end of it that he earned a mastery in investigative wizardry – a specialized title granted by the ICW one step below hit wizardry – for his ability to track and trace his prey.

Molly Weasley had called Dad a jumped-up bounty hunter at a New Years party the year Dad got the promotion, and that’s about all Charles knows about his father’s career path.

“It’s three in the morning.” Charles whispers, and swallows around the nerves that swell in his stomach. Dad sighs, and cups Charles’ face with one hand.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back. Your Mum has some appointments today; if you don’t want to go with her, the Weasleys will be more than happy to host you.”

“Dad – “

“I don’t know what’s going on, kiddo. I’m going to check it out.”

Charles doesn’t pay particularly close attention to news on crime – the wizarding world doesn’t really have a proper concept of it, not like the muggle world does. Britain judges internal concern over criminals on a standard of ‘sensationalist to scare people’ and ‘Dark Lord’ with just enough space for unsubstantiated high society rumors in between.

And if his parents had heard about anything of concern – they would’ve told him beforehand.

“Can I ask my friend Hermione to come over instead?”

“The muggleborn? If your Mum says it’s okay, and if her parents say it’s okay, but make sure the wards are up.”

“The wards are always up. But I’ll double check.”

Dad presses a kiss to his forehead.

“And only if you go to bed.”

“I was reading.”

“Go to bed, bookworm.”

“Be safe?”

“Always.”

X

Harry chews it over for about twelve whole minutes before speaking.

“I feel like we’re doing something we’re not allowed to.”

Draco looks up from the literal barrel he’s fishing sugar-encrusted gummies out of, and grins.

“Doesn’t it?”

Draco’s favorite store ever, the candy store to end all candy stores, is in fact a very small shop that would be wholly at home in Diagon, Harry thinks, if any of the candy started moving. Everything is worn wood and scuffed plexiglass and cramped, but also packed floor-to-ceiling with treats Harry could never have ever imagined.

Harry refused point-blank to grab a sack for his candy; he doesn’t trust the open bins Draco and half a dozen other children seem to favor to be hygienic, let alone edible. That hardly limits his choice, though, and he’s carefully selected a handful of pre-packaged goodies and set them in one of the little plastic baskets the shop sets out for its more discerning customers.

He’s never been to a candy store proper before. Never gone out anywhere with a friend before, either.

But that’s – Draco. A friend.

Harry doesn’t want another cousin and Draco doesn’t know how to be one; what Draco does know how to be is a brother, and Harry doesn’t know how to be one in turn but he thinks friend works well to bridge the gap.

“I don’t want to be Heir Black. I’m not like Mum or Uncle Siri. I care enough to want the family to thrive. So – I’m really glad you’re back.” Draco had whispered, his first night back, eyes huge and luminous as he laid next to Harry sharing his blanket and – there’s a need there. It makes Harry a little bit nervous, but it’s a good kind of need, and a need he is more than willing to oblige.

The Potters will keep their heirship eventually; if he were to keep it he’d necessarily have to put himself in their grasp. But the Black heirship will give him power; power and ability and it is all his.

“And you’re sure your Mum won’t be mad?”

“If we eat it all before dinner she will be. Or if we sneak some in the middle of the night. Or if we have company over.”

“That’s a lot of ors.”

“We don’t have company over ever. Well – my little brother and sister might be coming over soon, but that’ll be a first.”

“Professor Snape comes over all the time.”

“He’s not a guest, he’s family.” Draco sneers, and then hisses victoriously and unpeels himself from the candy barrel; there’s an absurdly long gummy worm pinched in the grubby tongs he’s holding. Harry obligingly helps hold Draco’s sack open while he feeds the worm into it.

“That doesn’t even look good.”

“Of course it doesn’t, but it tastes good.”

“Your aunt is gonna charm it alive once you put it in your mouth.” Harry says lowly, and Draco giggles maniacally in response.

“Animation charms aren’t that bad.”

“She gives things legs.” Harry says flatly, and pinches the bag shut before Draco gets the idea to add more to it; it’s already heavy enough to make Harry’s arm ache. Harry’s protests have no impact on Draco, who likes the crunch skittering legs bring to things, apparently.

There’s a sound behind Harry, a startled noise someone fails to properly muffle; Draco’s eyes flick up and his expression doesn’t – Aunt Cissa’s been too good a teacher for him to freeze or give himself away in any kind of tell, but something in Draco’s smile changes.

“Cousin Nymphadora.” He says brightly, but he steps up right against Harry’s shoulder when he takes his sack of candy back. There’s a warning when his fingers touch Harry’s, staying there rather than pulling away.

Draco’s not scared. Not exactly. But he is wary, and alert in a way Harry’s never seen before, in a way he recognizes form Auntie Bella’s lectures.

Family Black has enemies. Not many worth fearing, but Auntie Bella is always careful to stress that even the most harmless of worms can be dangerous in their own right.

“Malfoy.” A woman’s voice answers, sort of strangled and very awkward.

“I didn’t know you had a sweet tooth!”

“I didn’t know you did either. Do you come here often?” The woman say slowly. She recovers quickly under Draco’s enthusiasm, but – not quickly enough.

Draco’s last name is meaningful, and what others choose to call him is even more meaningful.

Draco Black has claim to the name Malfoy, even if it isn’t his legal name after his father’s actions. It’s incorrect and impolite to call him Malfoy in polite society, and for someone Draco calls cousin to do so says more about the woman’s politics than a fourteen-page questionnaire could.

Harry catches Draco’s hand in his own and squeezes it, turns until he’s behind Draco’s shoulder and facing the stranger, and let his chin drop and his shoulders hunch a little – nothing extreme, not enough to be noticed, but enough to help shroud his face behind his hair.

Cousin Nymphadora is a short woman, young enough that perhaps teenager would be a better descriptor, with bubblegum pink hair. Her face is round and open; expressive, too.

“Mmhm! Uncle Reggie takes me all the time. We’re supposed to meet him and Auntie Bella for lunch soon – this is Evan, a friend of mine from Durmstrang. Evan, this is my cousin Nymphadora Tonks!”

She winces at the familial term, but she still looks sharply at him at the mention of Durmstrang.

Harry doesn’t freeze at her attention, but he doesn’t lean into it either. He keeps his expression sort of sullen, and jerks his chin in a sharp nod. He doesn’t offer a hand, or speak, and he doesn’t meet her eyes.

“And his parents are alright with him being here?” Cousin Nymphadora asks too quickly. Draco’s smile widens.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

She flinches a little, and looks at the both of them suspiciously.

“We’ll be late if we don’t go checkout now, but you should come with us! I know Auntie Bella would be – “

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to – intrude. You’d best hurry.” She adds, and sort of – contorts herself to usher them past her. Draco’s smile doesn’t falter; he chirps out a thanks and slips paster her without hesitation, so Harry goes too. She does not reply to Draco’s bright goodbye!, but her eyes stay on them until they leave the store, and Draco is careful to not stop chattering about silly useless things the whole while – careful to not let Harry have a chance to say anything in response.

Draco’s smile doesn’t falter when they leave the store. Harry keeps hold of his hand, and draws as close to him as he can.

“What was that about?”

“There’s more of them.”

“More of who?”

“Nymphadora’s an auror-trainee. She didn’t expect to see us, and she’s not alone, which means she’s working or shadowing someone here.”

They’re only a few blocks from Grimmauld; Harry swallows down the unease Draco’s words cause.

“Auror trainee. A cop apprentice?”

“Kinda. Aurors don’t deal in petty or property crime, though.” Draco’s voice is clipped, short, and hushed. Harry joins him in surveying their surroundings – other shoppers, people walking their dogs or packs of children their age or older chattering excitedly.

There; a man in a poorly transfigured brown robe lurking under the awning of a barber shop. The man’s eyes pass over them entirely, but Harry’s skin still crawls.

“But they deal with violent stuff.”

“Violent stuff and things that impact the muggle world.”

Death Eaters.

“Race you home!” Harry chirps, and it takes effort to make his voice sound half as bright and bubbly and relaxed as Draco’s; he knocks his shoulder into Draco’s enough to make the other boy stumble, and untangles himself in the same instant.

“Hey – “

“Loser has to eat a sour squid at dinner!”

“Loser’s gonna eat all the sour squid – “

X

Bellatrix startles when the front door slaps open. She’s in the hall before the boys have even crossed the threshold, and has her wand drawn before the drop their bags and throw themselves bodily at the door behind them, both of them red-faced and breathing hard, and start manually slamming the deadbolts home.

She is the only adult present; Regulus and Sirius are at the Ministry, and Narcissa is out doing the social groundwork necessary for Draco’s siblings to visit – namely, subtly arranging another meeting with Lady Malfoy to then arrange a suitable time and arrange for Lucius to be particularly distracted the same day – and Severus working on his pet project; meaning –

She hadn’t even known the boys had left.

“What happened?” She asks, sharply, and begins casting the series of spells she will need to activate the war-wards. Sirius could raise them with a thought, and so could Regulus; Narcissa has keys to the wardroom to do it manually, but Bellatrix is still too great a security risk to allow such seamless integration into Grimmauld’s defenses.

“There are aurors everywhere out there.”

“Nobody followed us. We ran into a cousin or something.” Harry adds breathlessly, staring up at her with big eyes, and by some miracle his words do not register until Bellatrix has snapped off the last part of the spell; she drops her wand when they do, but Family Black is already snarling in her bones as ancient protections strong enough to hold back Grindelwald himself snap awake.

“I – “

“We’re not hurt.” Draco announces. Bellatrix takes a breath, lets it out, and snatches her wand back up.

Only her – only Cissa would raise a boy mischievous enough to sneak out on his own and responsible enough to return at the first sign of trouble; to tell them.

But – aurors. Loose in muggle London. Andromeda’s daughter –

“Kreacher! Please inform Sirius and Regulus that the boys are home safe. They’ll help me ensure the house is properly prepared. Cissa will want you to collect her and Severus when you’re done.”

Kreacher does not appear, but she hears the faint crack of him vanishing elsewhere in the house.

“What do you mean prepare?” Draco asks, nose wrinkling and already offended. Harry is busy staring consideringly at the spot the boys’ bags had just been instead.

Bellatrix sighs.

“Sirius isn’t here to do it for us, gremlins. We’ll have to ensure every window is closed and if we find the courtyard, we’ll need to make sure everything inside is secure.”

“If we find the courtyard?”

“We have a courtyard?”

X

“So who was Nymphadora?” Harry asks quietly. Draco’s busy arranging his pile of pillows just so, but he pauses his pummeling and lets out a huh noise.

“I forgot you wouldn’t know. Wow, you did great at the store. I would’ve lost it, not knowing.”

Harry very much doubts that, but Draco looks genuinely impressed, so he endures the gushing as Draco abandons his task and scrambles across the bed to sit cross-legged across from him. It’s too big for both of them and Hedwig, but Draco likes sleepovers and Harry – doesn’t mind them. He’s never had one before, not a real one, but it’s – comforting. To have someone else there.

“Right, well – Mum and Auntie Bella have another sister. Andromeda.”

“They don’t ever talk about her.”

“She abandoned the family.” Draco says, matter-of-factly. Harry’s never heard him sound so – derisive.

“What do you mean?”

“She was supposed to marry my dad. It was arranged, had been since they were little. The wedding was going to be right after she graduated Hogwarts. But she never came home. She ran away with another Seventh Year.”

“And that was bad?”

“Well – on its own it would’ve been great. Mum and Dad were in love, and for a little bit they thought Andromeda ran away so they could get married, because Auntie Bella wasn’t able to take Andromeda’s place, except – Andromeda married a muggleborn.”

“And that was bad?” Harry asks dubiously, because by now he knows it doesn’t matter to his godfather or uncle or aunts or Draco, but –

Draco swallows, hard. He isn’t looking at Harry; he’s twisting his fingers in his lap.

“Andromeda knew what would happen to my Mum and Auntie Bella. She knew what she was doing to Uncle Siri and Uncle Reggie. And she not only abandoned them, but she did so in a way that spit in the face of every single one of the adult Blacks back then. She pissed them off and left them with her baby sisters and baby cousins as targets.”

A chill chases down Harry’s spine.

“And after the war ended, she refused to come to Uncle Siri’s call. Uncle Siri had to rescue me and Mum and Auntie Bella all by himself, while looking for you and caring for Uncle Reggie, and while his godfather bond was making him sick. If he hadn’t done anything Auntie Bella would’ve gone to Azkaban or been put to death for something she didn’t do, and Andromeda made it public that she thinks Auntie Bella should’ve, even though she’s innocent.”

“And Nymphadora is her daughter?” Harry asks slowly. It sounds – horrific. He’s – he doesn’t know the Potters, he barely knows Charles, and he can’t imagine –

Because what Draco is describing isn’t a spur of the moment thing. There are tracking spells and summoning spells; if Andromeda wasn’t recovered, it was because she first made sure those wouldn’t work. Andromeda’s abandonment was premeditated.

“With the muggleborn. She – a couple years ago she showed up and wanted to meet everybody and everything, and we believed her. But she was just – trying to use that to watch us.”

“But you were nice to her.”

“She didn’t do anything obvious, but the aurors showed up soon after she started visiting and claimed they had evidence of Uncle Siri and Uncle Reggie possessing dark artifacts and stuff. Nothing happened because we’re smarter than they are, but they looked in specific places you’d have had to know about beforehand. So.”

Draco sounds bitter. Harry stares, because that’s –

“It’s this whole thing, because everybody knows what Andromeda did to us, and if it weren’t for the war and the politics around it nobody would associate with her, but she’s on the right side of the war and Family Black sort of wasn’t because of our grandparents – because they sucked – so she gets like, bonus points for not associating with evil dark wizards and it kind of balances itself out, even if nobody would trust her for anything ever.”

“She’s evil.” Harry says, appalled. Draco’s smile is a weak, fleeting thing.

“Andromeda got to recover from what she did because of social stuff, so I’m nice and pretend I don’t know what’s going on with Nymphadora and she mostly buys it even if she thinks I’m a baby Death Eater because I’m never gonna let her get away with it again.”

“That’s a lot of work.”

“It’s what I do with my dad. And my siblings, but they’re – they’re real. At least for now. And Mum thinks we have a pretty good shot and making sure they don’t try to stab me in the back later too.” Draco adds, hopeful.

“If they’re not, we’ll take care of them.” Harry promises.

Draco doesn’t cry, but his smile is watery all the same.

Chapter Text

                -papers but Hermione brought a ton and a muggle radio we accidentally blew up because of the wards so then we had to go get another one and go to a park to figure out what was going on, but that didn’t work either. It’s frustrating but Dad’s been out so much I don’t have time to bug him when I do see him and Mum’s sort of been enlisted to help keep things calm with the public – she’s got a lot of appearances and parties and stuff on her calendar she didn’t before, she hasn’t actually told me anything either, but –

X

- doing well and staying safe! I duct-taped a knife to this letter so you’ll have something to defend yourself with; I’ve got one too but its got a purple hilt. My mother thinks I’m going to be one of those teenagers who’s ashamed of her femininity so she keeps buying me things in pink and purple and yellow and giving me lectures about feminism. I lent her one of the books I got with Parkinson about gendered roles in the wizarding world. She hasn’t finished it yet! Thank goodness. She’s going to get so much worse when she realizes how bad it is. I’m hoping I’ll be able to arrange for her to meet Parkinson when that happens though because Parkinson deserves to suffer through that. Did she tell you –

X

Family Black shifts the walls and floor in a dizzying kaleidoscope of gleeful fury as Severus steps into Grimmauld’s wardroom. Sirius looks wholly unbothered, does not even seem to register to the tile turning to stone turning to wood turning to earth beneath his feet; Bellatrix and Narcissa are clinging to each other and resolutely staring at the wardstone as they inch forward. Harry and Draco, on the other hand, are scrambling around the edges of the walls as they flux, chasing the seam of stone-wallpaper-wood-earth as it breathes.

“Well, here’s to hoping this goes better than last time.” Sirius says brightly, clapping his hands together. Harry’s head swings around immediately.

“What happened last time?”

Bellatrix hacks out something akin to a cough, and presses her face into Narcissa’s hair. Severus closes his own eyes and sighs.

His – hint – had not, apparently, been blatant enough.

“Order a copy of the damned transcript.”

“This wasn’t in the transcript!”

“You opening my arteries on your parents’ corpses did make it into the official report.”

“Still not a transcript.”

“You did what?”

“War wards reset every time they go up as a safety precaution, so to make sure non-family members are protected, we have to manually add them each time. Sev needs to make a reciprocal oath of protection to the family. Blood’s the easiest way to bind that oath to the wards, and the wards back to him. It was easy last time, but none of us should’ve been playing with knives and I hadn’t – anyway. My hand slipped.”

Slipped his whole entire ass.

The truth of the matter is that werewolves are hardier than humans and Sirius had not opened the veins of a non-creature in some time. Coupled with their exhaustion and grief and panic and pain –

Well. Severus hadn’t noticed at first either, so it isn’t as if he holds much a grudge for the incident.

“Can I learn to do it?”

“Blood wards are grandfathered in, pup. Can’t legally do them, just maintain them.”

“That won’t stop us, dear.” Narcissa chimes in, and Harry brightens and bounces right up to her side to continue questioning her.

There’s little actual ceremony to the oath-making and the blood-binding. Ages past there may have been, and theorists maintain ceremony and tradition do something to the spells – and Severus doesn’t necessarily disagree, either, but Sirius is irreverent and Family Black has no great qualm in following its Lord’s lead in these matters. Sirius produces a knife, Severus produces his arm, eyes are rolled, oaths are recited, and Draco stands up on his tip-toes to bind a blindingly white strip of cloth over the wound. The child does not let go of his arm once finished, and Severus suffers through the weight dragging the left half of his body down as they all troupe back upstairs.

Grimmauld settles as they move farther from the wardstone. Harry gives it a few considering looks as they leave, however, and Severus goes through great trouble to catch the boy’s eye and glare. He does not think it deters much, unfortunately.

“Will we have to add Draco’s siblings to it? And his stepmum?”

“If we wanted them to come here we would.”

“That won’t be necessary. We’ll be meeting them at Sharp’s next week.” Narcissa says softly. Draco lets out a chirp of excitement and momentarily pulls harder at Severus’ arm before settling.

“I don’t want any of the kids left home alone while all this is going on.” Sirius interjects, eyes flickering to Harry and then – to Severus.

“I have work.”

“Harry can babysit you.”

“I thought you were out during the summer?” Harry demands in turn, wholly ignoring Sirius’ quip.

“Severus spends his summers on an elaborate revenge scheme, dear.”

“I can help!”

“You can make a nuisance of yourself, yes.” Severus agrees.

Draco would’ve puffed right up in indignation at the insult; Harry merely narrows hie eyes to thin slits and ceases blinking. Severus waits until Sirius’ back is turn to smirk at him.

He’s not opposed to taking the boy with him, he supposes. He certainly trusts Harry over Draco to wander the estate without supervision. There isn’t much he hasn’t already rendered inert that could pose a threat, after all – but there’s certainly no need to tell the child that.

“Auntie Bella, can we practice some dueling later?” Harry asks sweetly, expression not wavering, and Bellatrix laughs.

“That’s cute, pup, but Severus is about as skilled at dueling as he is at potions.”

“Because he was a terrorist?”

“Other way around, mostly.” Sirius says, amused, and Severus is seriously considering hexing the moron when the house shudders. Sirius spins on his heel, and the heavy sound of a knock rings out, solemn and amplified enough to ache.

“What’s that mean?” Draco asks, voice hushed.

“Somebody’s at the door.” Severus answers, flat, and twists his arm to grip Draco’s wrist; Harry quits glaring but does not otherwise react when Severus’ other hand comes down on his shoulder.

Narcissa’s pale hand shoots out to grasp her sister’s arm tightly enough to bruise. Bellatrix tenses, sets her jaw like she had the night of her wedding. Sirius does not move, watching, not them but the front door and whomever dares to seek entry to his abode.

“Come. The two of you will be brewing with me this afternoon.” Severus says, and the children allow him to shuffle them to the other side of the house.

Harry casts the lab’s door a long, lingering look when it vanishes behind them, but says nothing.

X

Sirius flexes his hands twice, breathing slow and even, and opens the door with a bitter press of his will and his will alone.

It is some sort of mercy, that Nymphadora is not standing on the other side of it. There’s Shacklebolt, instead, with a pair of men Sirius does not recognize, both in the same drab auror robes as Shacklebolt himself, who grants Sirius a weary sort of smile when their eyes meet.

“Good Morning, Lord Black.”

“I doubt that very much. You’re here to accuse my dear cousin of murder, after all.” Sirius answers, his tone even and mild in all the ways Regulus had hexed into him after their – after they’d reunited.

There is nothing Sirius Black will not do for those he loves. Getting competent at politics still remains pretty much the single most vile thing he’s ever done for the sake of his family, but it is undoubtedly useful.

“So you are aware of the – unfortunate passings that have occurred.” One of the nobodies blurts out. Sirius raises an eyebrow.

“The victims had muggle identities, as you should well know. Cissa helps run the neighborhood book club; Miss Renfield on Fairfax was Mister Diggory’s paramour. She’s been devastated by his death.”

And thank fuck for Cissa’s incessant need to network because fucking Morgana, that ready-made excuse – not that them knowing anything was illegal but –

They have to cross every t and dot every i at all times to keep the Ministry in its place. They’ve had to for years, and it’s second nature but times like this, where it’s relevant, where it’s necessary in an immediate and painful sort of way, Sirius still gets weak at the knees in relief that they do.

Bellatrix rarely socialized with the muggles in their neighborhood, but Cissa – well. She’d been planting seeds for years, stripping their rather complicated family dynamics of magic, twisting the truth and retaining all of the drama. Every housewife and lady on the block knew that Bella had spent years tortured at the hands of an abusive husband and his cult, that the Cousins Black had moved in together to help protect her and let her heal, that Cissa’s husband had found the arrangement intolerable and divorced her and abandoned their young son.

The Aurors might go poking around the rest of the neighborhood next – but any insinuation that Bellatrix is responsible will be beat down with the righteous indignation of Cissa’s friends.

“She didn’t witness it?”

“As I understand it, no witnesses survived. But, no – she was visiting her godchildren when it happened. The youngest is in the hospital with cancer. Recovering well, thank Morgana, but still - gravely ill. Cissa was planning on delivering some meals to her later this week, if you would like an introduction.”

Shacklebolt flinches.

“That won’t be necessary.” He says, too quickly, even if his expression doesn’t change, and something cold settles in the pit of Sirius’ stomach.

The rest of the interaction is – much colder, much sharper, and mostly a blur. He confirms that he raised his war wards. There’s a minor in the house. Draco has a friend visiting from school. He has his brother and cousins to protect. The whole lot of them were home, the night of the murder; they’re a reclusive family generally, and their insularity is well known.

Can you verify Ms. Black’s whereabouts under oath, Shacklebolt asks. He’s – he doesn’t ask accusingly, but he doesn’t need to, because it’s an accusation all the same. Sirius’ always is sharp enough to cut his own tongue; he tastes blood when he slams the door shut in their faces.

His hands are trembling. His breathing is unsteady. The door thickens beneath his palms, grows heavier, wood groaning gently as iron slithers across its boards and locks sprout along its length.

James was there.

Harry is upstairs. Rooms away. And – Shacklebolt had demurred his aide only because Sirius would have left Grimmauld to give it. Out into the wind, carrying the scent of something invisible lingering in the front door’s blindspots.

His throat works. Sirius isn’t sure if he’s going to vomit or not, but his rage is something searing and blinding as it thrashes through his bloodstream all the same.

X

Harry counts steadily down from twenty-eight while he watches the lab’s windows shudder and swell, glass warping opaque in alien runic patterns as cold iron ripples out of the woodwork and settles heavy across the sill. When he hits zero, he opens his hand and lets the oak knot resting there fall into his potion with a deeply satisfying plop.

Snape whacks him in the side, and Harry scuttles around to the other side of the work station. The ceiling above them wiggles – it hasn’t figured out how tall it wants to be yet. But the floors don’t move and don’t accidentally trip him like they did Snape earlier, so Harry counts it as a win.

“When is this gonna be done?”

“I assume you are not referring to the potion.”

“We just started that.” Harry says derisively. Snape rolls his eyes.

“Sirius is more meticulous than most give him credit for. And the last time he entrusted your safety to anyone else – “ Snape doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t so much as cut himself off as let the words die, but they linger all the same. Harry turns it over in his head, the things left unsaid, and –

“Can I ask about that night?”

“Which night?”

“The night Remus Lupin died.” Harry says slowly, deliberately. Snape already knows, of course; the man sighs, shoulder slumping. He puts down the knife he’s been using to dice immature fallowroot and studies Harry for a moment.

“Kreacher.” Snape tilts his head away from Harry when he calls for the elf. Aunt Cissa and Auntie Bella don’t; they’ll drop Kreacher’s name right into a conversation like it’s nothing. Sirius screams for the elf mostly to annoy him; but Uncle Regulus and Snape both act like Kreacher can hear them all the time, is already there, is already listening.

Willow, Harry knows, always is watching – he’s not perturbed the omnipresence of the elves. He just – thinks it’s interesting. Those that acknowledge that power, and those that don’t.

Kreacher pops into the room before the last syllable has left Snape’s mouth, big eyes locked on Snape and unblinking.

“Fetch your idiot of a master, please.”

Kreacher nods once, sharply, and vanishes as quickly as he’d appeared. The walls shiver again not half a second later, and Harry casts a dubious glance at the window. The iron is thicker, now, and he can feel its chill even through his thick sweater.

“Won’t that affect the potion?”

“The iron? Not this one, although that is something to be aware of when brewing here. Now come – we’ll put this on stasis. You chose to bring this up at perhaps the only time we could successfully pause our brewing without damaging the potion.”

“I know what I’m doing.” Harry sniffs at the implication his timing hadn’t been intentional, the faint thread of reproachment in Snape’s voice. Hedwig rustles her way out of the pile of discarded drapes under the window – Grimmauld had not managed to hold onto the fixtures with all its changing, and Hedwig liked to burrow – and clatters over to him excitedly. Harry has to dodge her while he helps Snape clean up the potion ingredients they’ve pulled out, and to her credit, she waits until they’re mostly done before knocking Harry’s legs out from under him and parading him around on the top of her lid. Snape eyes her balefully the whole time.

“She is not welcome to join us in any future detentions you may have.”

“You can’t stop her.” Harry responds derisively.

Sirius chooses that moment to burst in through the door, half-frantic, wild-eyed. Snape calls Kreacher again and wrestles Sirius into a newly-appeared armchair awkwardly positioned in front of the brewing stations. Hedwig sidles up to the far side of Sirius, armchair and godfather firmly between them and Snape.

Sirius catches Harry’s eye, and Harry’s mouth quirks up, a little; and the tension so suffusing Sirius bleeds out immediately.

“Kreacher said you – that you were asking about Remus.”

“Professor Snape doesn’t like answering my questions.”

“Read. The. Transcript.”

“The transcript won’t tell him anything about – “

“You coddling the boy certainly won’t help either!”

Sirius rolls his eyes in response, and twists his spine until he’s half hung-over the chair and facing Harry more directly. His expression goes – soft. Worn and sad and fond and warm.

“Most people will say they don’t know what happened that night, and that’s entirely because they didn’t know Remus. This Boy-Who-Lived nonsense – it took off before we had a chance to breathe and after, the Ministry would never have revealed what happened. Not that we told them.”

“My…parents know?”

“Yes. I don’t know if they told your brother – I assume so, but – Lily had already put it together before we did, and one of the last civil conversations we had was about it.” Sirius’ voice is quiet and firm, and that…

Harry shifts a little uncomfortably. Charles had been obviously well-versed and familiar with his fame at Hogwarts, and he’d certainly used it, thrown his weight around, but he had…stopped as the year went on. Or – shifted his use thereof. And Harry cannot, for the life of him, remember Charles ever outright taking responsibility for the Dark Lord’s defeat, outside of jokes. Others had always done that for him.

“Then – why?”

Sirius watches him for a moment. Everything about this conversation, Harry realizes, is slow, intimate. Personal. And that feels right.

Because his family didn’t want him.

But Remus Lupin had wanted him enough to die for him. And Harry does not know what to do with that; but holding his story so close and so carefully is – just.

“Remus was a werewolf.”

X

“We were not winning the war. The Ministry never fell, but that was only a technicality. The auror corps had been decimated and political parties culled. Those left gave up or fully believed in Voldemort’s position. All real resistance by that point was vigilante – like us, the Order of the Phoenix – or individual. Dumbledore organized us early on, prepared us early on, which put us leagues above the rest. But we were outnumbered. The Death Eaters had greater access to resources, allies and no problems using horrific magic on us. We were – smaller, poorer, and even though those who weren’t willing to hurt the enemy died early, we were still – softer.”

“For every Death Eater we killed, ten of ours were made a spectacle of. The Dark Lord made a point from the start to – torture and curse his victims so horrifically much of his actions have been deliberately left out of the history books. There is a whole wing of the Department of Mysteries dedicated to unraveling the evils he wrought on his victims.”

“Which meant – people were too afraid to fight. Too afraid to help us, too.”

“In the year leading up to the attack, things grew exponentially worse. The McKinnon family was slaughtered and put on display, down to every last infant. The Prewett brothers, Dorcas Meadows, the cousins Travers, Fortescue and Dodgson and Gibbons. Sarah Selwyn. Order members and their families began to turn up dead in ever-more horrifying tableaus. General targets expanded to include squibs, creatures, halfbloods. It was not unusual for Death Eaters to raid magical districts and slaughter every so-called undesirable they found right then and there on the streets. Britain had few foreign allies then; almost to the last they turned their backs on us, called the Dark Lord an internal problem and washed their hands of it, no matter how many he slew in their own borders.”

“We were being picked off, one by one. Places and people the Death Eaters shouldn’t have known about were being found. Our raids and strikes and rescue missions were nine times out of ten an ambush. When Reggie reached out to me – fuck, we saved his life by punting Kreacher back and forth between us. I never even saw him after….”

“There was a spy in the Order.”

X

Sirius looks – agonized. His hands shake. He’s gone pale, like he might be sick. Harry watches carefully, intently.

“We were losing. And there was a traitor. We knew there was a traitor. We just – didn’t know who.” Sirius rasps, eventually.

Sirius stops himself then. Visibly, like he’s run into a wall. His throat works, soundless, and his eyes skitter away. The wall behind him swells out, as if its touch will calm him. Harry hopes so; but he’s not even sure Sirius notices.

“Dumbledore – ran things like a spymaster. We had a lot of success early on with his tactics. But that kind of approach doesn’t work during an all-out war. He should’ve…we should’ve pushed harder about it. But – we were kids. We were kids when he recruited us, and most of us were kids when we died.”

Snape breathes in, then. Draws in a breath so ragged and aching Harry can hear it, even though his professor is typically silent as a grave. Harry can’t see Snape – the counter is in the way, and Sirius’ chair is too big for Hedwig to squirm around – but Sirius looks towards where Snape must be anyway.

They are friends, Harry knows. But – the sort of friends that are primarily friends with each other’s loved ones. They’re not really distant from each other, but they are – careful. And Sirius looks careful, looks solemn, as he stares at the other man.

“He sent us on secret missions. Every mission was secret. If someone wasn’t with you on it, you couldn’t talk about it. And – we knew he had spies in the Death Eater camp. So we started – trying to figure out who it was. Because even if he knew about the traitor or it was some long-term plan of his – they were doing too much damage to be worth keeping around.”

Snape stands up. Harry’s head snaps up to better see him; he’s as pale as Sirius, but he looks – more distinctly uncomfortable than upset.

“The Potters, and Lupin, believed the traitor was your godfather.” He says.

Harry cannot comprehend that, not – not immediately. It sounds absurd, to hear it like that, and when the words finally process, the bottom of his stomach drops out.

He looks to Sirius, whose expression is bleak, vacant.

“I was estranged from my family because I wouldn’t join the Death Eaters. Because I wouldn’t be what my parents wanted me to be. I fought every day to be seen as literally anything other than my last name. They – knew me. They should have known me. But I can’t even – I can’t even be mad about that. Because I was sneaking around. Kreacher and Bella and I – trying to keep Regulus alive. Trying to keep you and your brother safe. Remus could – Remus could smell them on me. So they had….Remus had good cause.”

“Did you know he could smell them?” Harry asks slowly.

Sirius’ smile is a crooked, broken thing.

“Yeah. ‘S why I thought he was the traitor. He never turned me in.”

X

Hedwig shoves herself bodily into Sirius’ chair while Harry clings to her for dear life, processing the absolute horror of Sirius’ statement, and the screech of wood-on-tile cuts through the odd tension filing the lab.

This close Harry can sort of see Snape; sees his hand move, his wand flick, and Sirius’ chair rises and scoots over enough that Hedwig can settle in at an angle with a clear view of both adults. Snape’s lips are pressed into a thin line, eyes strained, jaw clenched. Harry’s never seen him look so – upset before. His eyes, when he looks to Harry, are hard as stone.

“The traitor was a man named Peter Pettigrew. He was – all but a brother to Sirius, to Lupin, and to your parents. You and your brother called him uncle. But he was also – Sirius’ partner, at his side for nearly every Order mission they were sent on. What Sirius knew, Pettigrew knew, and Pettigrew was clever enough to begin sowing the seeds of Sirius’ guilt long before the Dark Lord ever took action on Pettigrew’s intelligence. As I understand it, he convinced your parents first, Lupin second, and then approached Dumbledore.”

“About Sirius being the traitor.” Harry clarifies slowly, and Snape gives a jerky nod.

“The Dark Lord was not sane enough to hide what he was doing – that he had an inside man, that the Order was compromised. He was sane enough to gleefully misdirect his own followers about the identity of his pet traitor. Neither the Dark Lord nor Pettigrew knew that I was a spy for the Order – but the information I brought back still affirmed Pettigrew’s story.”

He was, Harry realizes, beaten at his own game. And Judging by the barely-restrained fury in the potion’s master’s expression – it was a slight Snape has never forgotten.

Good, Harry thinks, and curls his fingers over the edge of Hedwig’s top, presses his nails against the metal seam there.

“What happened to him?”

“He told the Dark Lord where your parents were hiding, where you and your brother were hiding. He led the Dark Lord to your home, invited him past the wards. And then the Dark Lord slew him where he stood.”

“Why?”

“Because Voldemort liked Severus. And Severus was best friends with your mother. He was – he was a madman, Harry, as quick to torture and kill his own followers as he was his enemies, but when he had a favorite…”

Snape’s mouth twists into a sneer, but it looks performative. Harry watches, rapt, because Sirius looks – tired. His smirk is faded.

“Sirius could have been – would have been – held above us all, had he joined. I suspect the Dark Lord agreed to Peter’s plot entirely because Sirius would not bow to him. It…had it worked, it would have laid a claim to him even innocence could not have washed away.”

“But it didn’t work.”

“It didn’t work because you went missing.” Sirius’ words are strained.

“How?”

Sirius falls silent; Snape lets out an explosive sigh and flops back in his own conjured chair.

“Your parents went into hiding by utilizing spell called the Fidelius Charm. It is closer to ritual magic than simple spell, very hard to complete successfully, and the consequences of failure can be catastrophic. It was created by those studying the Statute of Secrecy – it isn’t the same spell or even a variation of it, but it does succeed in a similar effect on a smaller scall. Those casting the Fidelius choose an outsider whom they trust completely; and whom makes the oath intending to keep it wholesale; and hide a secret in the soul of the other, who is called a Secret-Keeper. In effect, this means the secret is erased from all the world but for the Secret-Keeper, who is then able to tell others the Secret – but only willingly, uncoerced and unthreatened.”

“Your parents hid the location of their home. It – wasn’t, still isn’t, a well-tested spell. Lily thought to hide the knowledge that they had any children, but…a place was easier and the consequences, if the spell failed – it’s easier to deal with accidentally erasing a house from existence than it would be to accidentally erase your own children.”

“Your parents told everyone that Sirius was the Secret-Keeper. Only Sirius and your parents knew it was really Pettigrew.”

Pettigrew, who died inside the wards –

“What happened when he died?”

“The Fidelius broke. It’s – a warning siren. The secret could be shared freely and voluntarily, but never taken by force or coercion. Killing the Secret-Keeper would stop protecting the secret – but it would also alert everyone who shared it that the Secret-Keeper was dead. We were – we felt it. The break. And that wouldn’t have meant anything if I hadn’t been there, with your parents, with Dumbledore and the Order, and if Peter’s body hadn’t been found inside the wards.”

That sounded like a lot more than suspicion. That sounded like intent. Like a grudge. That was – that was people deciding, from the start. Harry is intimately familiar with that sort of calculation; he’s lived it, every neighbor in Privet Drive intent on his aunt and uncle’s poison.

“Why’d he – pick then, then? If you were all together?”

Snape snorts.

“Because Dumbledore decided to try and assassinate the Dark Lord that night – set a trap with the whole of the Order and bait the Dark Lord could not resist. None of us considered he would try to murder you and your brother before coming to kill the Longbottoms.”

Longbottom. Like – Professor Quirrell’s Gryffindor. Neville. Harry’s head snaps towards Sirius.

“Ah, well – you lot were targeted, pup. There was a prophecy. That all doesn’t matter; everybody misinterpreted it, as you do, and it’s been – handled. But back then – everyone thought it was about a baby to be born during the war capable of destroying Voldemort. There was you and your brother, and then Alice and Frank’s son. Alice and Frank didn’t use the Fidelius – they stayed behind ancestral wards – so they were an easier target. Alice sent her baby off with some cousins and – we spread the word that Frank was looking to hire a competent curse breaker to do some ward repair.”

“And you thought that would work?”

“We didn’t have any other options. This was our last chance to end him before he ended us.” Snape says bleakly. Harry still can’t comprehend it – the hopelessness of the situation.

“And it did work?”

“Oh, sort of. Death Eaters poured in. We didn’t – we did not notice that Peter wasn’t around until the battle had been going on long enough that Voldemort should have shown up. And when Peter died…Remus hadn’t known the attack was that night. He’d been wounded, and it was a full moon. I think the plan was, if it all went to shit, to get a package of intel to Remus and send him out of the country with any survivors. But nobody ever confirmed that with me. I thought nobody told him because they suspected him – and I knew they thought it was me, but I didn’t realize – that your parents thought it was me. That Dumbledore thought it was me.”

“Which brings us to what Lupin did, exactly.” Snape intones, his lecture-voice back to full-strength, and even Sirius manages a grin. Harry squints suspiciously at them; they’re giving him emotional whiplash, but now it seems to be intentional.

“Which was…?”

“What do you know about lycanthropy?”

“I know it exists.”

“A brief primer, then – and yes, it is relevant. Modern lycanthropy is an irreversible curse, but it is also a magical disease. It is, in fact, almost solely why every magical community in existence so heavily regulates magi-medical research; it is believed that modern lycanthropy came about as a side-effect of research into true lycanthropy, although what, exactly, the fucking idiots could have been – “

“Severus.”

“ – anyway – modern lycanthropy is a combination of true lycanthropy, namely, the turning of a human into a magical creature with a transformation cycle tied to the moon, and something that metastasized into both a curse and a disease on the very essence of lycanthropy itself. Modern lycanthropes suffer from a near-separation of their human and wolf minds, uncontrollable hunger and hatred for the various humanoid races of the world, and unspeakable agony accompanying their transformations. Without sufficient prey to slaughter, a modern werewolf will begin tearing themselves to pieces while transformed, and often do so much damage to themselves even outside of the transformations that their bodies typically fail them within a few decades. All of these traits are – from what the records indicate – distinct from what lycanthropy used to be.”

Kreacher apparates atop the counter with an ear-splitting crack, and then very reverently hands Snape a tall glass filled with some unidentifiable liquid. Snape eyes the house elf warily, but accepts, and takes a sip.

“The curse that overtook true lycanthropy swept across the world within a handful of years. It was not transmitted by bite, like lycanthropy itself; I suspect some sort of airborne component. Every attempt to cure it has failed spectacularly.”

“How come?” Hary asks. Kreacher snaps his fingers and significantly less fancy drinks appear for himself and Sirus; Harry ducks a smile into his chest when he picks his up. Hot cocoa, thick with cream and marshmallow.

“Mostly, because people researching it realized lycanthropy is a type of soul magic, and that shit’s so illegal us telling you about it could get us arrested.” Sirius offers. It’s a little jarring, his interjection. Snape’s lectures are usually interruption-free, and Harry’s used to that – but it isn’t unwelcome, even by Snape.

“I suspect the original offender did not realize lycanthropy was a form of soul magic, making them the stupidest person to have ever lived. But – to get back to relevant information – soul magic affects one’s very being; the essence of who and what one is. Lycanthropy is soul magic because it does not curse a human to turn into a wolf; it turns a human into a werewolf. A wholly separate and distinct magical species. Vampirism functions in a similar manner. And something very few realize is that soul magic that fundamentally alters what one is necessarily kills what one was. Remus Lupin was a human until he was bitten. His bite functionally served as a second birth. Remus Lupin the human ceased to exist; Remus Lupin the werewolf began to exist.”

“…I think I get it.”

“The night the Dark Lord attacked you and your brother was a full moon.”

“…He bit Voldemort?”

“He bit Voldemort.”

X

Sirius censors himself. Severus follows his lead – not a hardship, in this.

The story is messy. The story is agonizing. But for Harry; it is simple.

They do not tell Harry what the Dark Lord did. They do not tell him of horcruxes.

They do not tell him that the Dark Lord’s secret to immortality functioned solely on the principal of the division of the indivisible; that the strain of a soul separated-but-not was the mechanism by which the Dark Lord was to be pulled back from death. That the Dark Lord had already rent himself to the breaking point with his numerous horcruxes.

What they do tell him is this:

Lycanthropy is soul magic, and it is the sort of soul magic fit to end a soul and create a new one with only the mere touch of fang to flesh as catalyst. True lycanthropy was not wholly unique, but modern lycanthropy, with all its contagion and madness and hunger, is.

Remus Lupin the human ceased to exist at four years and four months old. His soul never passed on or vanished; it did not blink out, and nothing took its place. Remus Lupin’s existence was continuous. But after the bite – Remus Lupin the werewolf stood in a human’s place.

Modern lycanthropy manages a transmutation of the soul, where no other similar magical disease or curse or thing can.

The moment Remus Lupin sunk his fangs into the Dark Lord’s forearm, the Dark Lord’s soul, too, was transmuted. His connections to his horcruxes were severed instantly, immediately. The locket Regulus had been in possession of exploded into black smoke and screaming and foul black magic remnants at the exact moment of the bite. The others would have followed suite.

The Dark Lord had managed to cast a Killing Curse at the beast tearing his limb from his body before the agony of his very soul imploding hit. He’d not survived a second longer.

And they do not tell the boy that Remus Lupin – the man the Potters believed an ally, that Sirius believed a traitor – had been in the nursery when the Dark Lord attacked.

X

“I think there’s more than one.” James says quietly, words measured. His hands stay stuffed in his pants pockets, his eyes on the pinboard the trainees have been putting together.

Shacklebolt turns his head sharply towards him; the rest of the room quiets and follows suit one by one. Cornelius is the last to fall silent, the last to stop blustering.

Reginald Diggory smiles wryly out from the photograph pinned over a muggle map of his neighborhood, mouth moving silently as he shakes his head on a loop. His granddaughter had taken the picture; she was a third-year at Hogwarts. Reginald’s son had provided it when James and the on-duty aurors had delivered news of his father’s death.

Reginald is not the first squib to be murdered so violently; he’s just the first with magical kin who cared enough to make a fuss, and whose murder was public enough that the Ministry could not quash news of it in time. A muggle postman and a neighbor had been killed too; not tortured, their killings had been messy – caught the killer in the act, most like.

One would not have been enough to see justice done. Both still might not be, but combined they certainly give the late Mr. Diggory a fucking chance, and offered the other victims a slim hope all their own.

The other victims don’t have photos. They don’t even have files. The magical world does not concern itself with the deaths of squibs, no matter how blatant their killers were.

Reginald is also the first victim to be old, too, although that’s just – demographics. James can count on one hand the number of mature squibs he has met over his life, even taking into account his parents’ friends and acquaintances. Reginald had been a fighter, and very loved, to have lived long enough to have grandchildren.

He’s dead, now. Tortured and mutilated and slain in his own home for sport.

“More than one what?”

“Killer.”

And he wasn’t any closer to finding any of them.

“What makes you say that?” Shacklebolt asks. His voice is pitched low; James’ words had sparked another roar from the politicians in the room. James nods his head towards one of the autopsy photos.

“Those cuts were deliberate. On his limbs. Everywhere else has significant damage – but his veins were opened carefully, and deliberately.”

The precision was wholly unlike the rest of the violence done to the victims.

“What would his veins need to be opened for?” Shacklebolt asks, face pinched. James shrugs.

“Anything. Collection, experimentation, some fucked up new torture method we’ve never encountered. I’ll be submitting a request through the ICW, see if the marks line up with anything anybody else has uncovered.” It’ll be more to get this sort of mutilation on the record than out of any hope to find anything. Wizards are more freely mobile than muggles in theory, but magical communities are so insular that even the most wanted among them rarely seek safer hunting grounds.

James has worked hard to build the ICW’s investigative unit into something truly approaching an international network. There are political reasons to submit a report there, too.

“And it couldn’t just be – different stages in the same attack?”

“The muggle autopsy reports we’ve managed to pull from other, similar kills, mention the same cuts.”

There weren’t many of those, and by we, James meant him. He’d only gotten five files, but suspected there were more. Suspected the time frame for these attacks extended further back than anyone knew.

That was the pattern in the lead up to Grindelwald’s war. That was the pattern in the lead up to the Death Eaters.

If this is the lead up to another –

Well.

There are very few alive as good as hunting as James, and none better.

He won’t be leaving these perpetrators alive when he catches them.