Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I had a good life, in the real world I mean, I was eighteen and just finished the German equivalent of High School and was on my way to study pharmacy in Munich. But then the accident happened. I saw my sister, who was two years younger than I, run to get her football from the street in front of our house. She was careless and had her airpods on, she didn't hear the bus.

To this day I cannot tell you why I ran to push her aside, I didn't think I just ran.

But enough of this, you're here to read about Eda. Poor girl, I'm technically her, I know, but she does not remember me. At all. 

Her life started at the end of August in the year 1980, somewhere in northern England. She was a normal baby with a shock of dark hair on her head and grey eyes. The first year of her life went by fine. Until Voldemort of course killed her mother and her family and then went for James and Lily Potter, her godparents, though she never caught their last names- she was still just a baby with limited cognitive ability. Her father Sirius went after Peter and landed himself in prison, Azkaban to be exact. 

Eda Euphemia Black was given into the custody of Walburga Black, her paternal grandmother. The old hag died of dragonpox not long after. When that happened Eda had been taken in by Narcissa Malfoy, her fathers cousin. Narcissa is married and has her own son, Draco, who is conveniently Eda's age, just a month or two older. Narcissa loved her little niece just like she loved her son, she found Eda to look similar to her sister Bellatrix, perhaps that's why she had a soft spot for her. Lucius Malfoy had been annoyed at first but he too loved his son Draco just as much as his wife did, and after a few months he softened towards the toddler girl. 

As the years passed, Eda did not remember her past life, she only ever got weird dreams or started remembering the names of things in German. Sometimes she’d reference stuff that made no sense to her family. Like the term ‘sleeping beauty’, it came from a muggle fairytale about a princess who had been cursed to sleep but was often used to describe people who slept in a lot. Time passed quickly for her and she felt at peace with her family, unaware of the looming darkness around her.

That feeling of peace vanished on September 1st 1991, the day she started attending Hogwarts. Eda and Draco had been sorted into Slytherin, much to their family's delight and sat in the great hall eating and talking with the other first years. Eda looked around quietly and caught sight of Harry Potter across the hall at the Gryffindor's table. He looked a little shabby but.. happy? She couldn't tell. Eda smiled politely and Harry looked as though he was about to return the smile but to her luck he got distracted by a third year boy. 

She turned to Daphne Greengrass who sat next to her, they'd met a handful of times before but they weren't friends or anything. "You'll sit with me during classes" Eda told her, almost commanding. As the daughter of the notorious Sirius Black and as the sole heiress to the Black fortune Eda most definitely held some type of power over her peers. 

Daphne nodded wordlessly. 

The first year Eda mostly sat back and watched Draco trying to get under Harry Potters skin, multiple times. He even got himself detention with the boy once, she of course had written aunt Narcissa all about it and tattled on him. She kept all her grades at E, never O because did not wish to draw attention to herself and end up like Hermione Granger. No one liked show-offs, now did they?

One day, right before the end of the school year Eda had gone to the library to give back her borrowed books when she overheard a group of what she guessed were third year Ravenclaws talk about a book franchise. A tall boy with brown hair spoke adamantly to his friends "-and the witch really wanted those yellow shoes Dorothy wore-" Eda furrowed with her eyebrows before shooting out "you mean the red shoes, right? The brick road is yellow." The boy, a muggleborn, nodded and looked a bit annoyed at being corrected "yeah right- anyway".

Eda turned and walked away, she knew had never read that book- the wizard of Oz. And yet she knew it. How strange, she thought.

She had many more of these strange moments during the second year when the chamber of secrets had been opened. Everyone was suspecting her to be the heir, then Potter after a duel revealed him to be a parselmouth. Eda walked past the only female Weasley once in the courtyard and stopped her out of the blue. "Where are you off to, Ginerva?" Eda's voice pierced. Ginny looked surprised that a second year Slytherin girl would know her full name and just stop her like this in broad daylight, she stuttered a little "uhm nowhere?".

Eda crinkled her nose slightly and zeroed in on the diary the girl held, a light went on in her head but she couldn't follow it. "You better not get that wet." was all she had to say before turning away and walking to her charms class. Later that night Eda turned and twisted in bed thinking about the black diary being underwater, and the embarrassing comment she made earlier to the Weasley girl. 

Chapter Text

It was the end of July, 1993, when the news broke: Sirius Black had escaped Azkaban.

The announcement traveled faster than wildfire across the wizarding world, but when it reached Malfoy Manor it arrived in the form of heavy boots and clipped voices. The Minister of Magic himself, Cornelius Fudge, appeared at the great front doors with three aurors in tow. Their wands were out, their expressions grim.

Eda had been in the drawing room with Draco, half-listening to his endless complaints about the quality of the family’s new broom polish, when the sound of raised voices drew them both to the grand staircase. She had just enough time to glimpse Fudge’s round face beneath his bowler hat before Narcissa swept forward, her smile sweet, practiced, and razor-sharp all at once.

“Minister,” her aunt said warmly, though her pale eyes betrayed nothing. “What an… unexpected honor.”

Behind her, Lucius Malfoy stood tall, his face drained of the smug confidence it usually carried. Eda noticed the tightness in his jaw, the way his fingers flexed slightly around the head of his silver cane. Only weeks before, he had been sacked from the Board of Governors. Without his position, he had no leverage, no shield.

Fudge wasted little time on pleasantries. “Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. We’re searching every property that may be connected to him. Malfoy Manor, regrettably, is on that list.”

Eda’s heart thumped so loudly she was certain Draco could hear it. She stayed frozen on the staircase as Narcissa inclined her head with impeccable grace. “Of course, Minister. You will find us most cooperative. Please, search wherever you see fit.”

The aurors didn’t hesitate. They spread through the manor in quick, purposeful strides, their cloaks brushing the polished marble floors.

Draco tugged at Eda’s sleeve and pulled her up the staircase to his room on the third floor. From there, the two of them pressed their faces against the windowpane, watching as more aurors arrived by broom and apparition to comb through the sprawling grounds.

Draco leaned close, his breath fogging the glass. “Do you think he’s here?” he whispered, his voice a mixture of excitement and unease.

Eda shook her head slowly, her dark eyes fixed on the figures below. “No. I highly doubt Father has come to look for me here.”

Draco turned to her, brow furrowed. “What d’you mean by that?”

She hesitated, gnawing her lip before answering. “I don’t think he even knows I was given to your parents to be looked after. I mean… would he even know Grandmother died?”

For once, Draco didn’t have a clever retort. He blinked at her, then gave a small nod. “Probably not.”

They fell into silence, watching the aurors scour the rose gardens and the shadowy tree line beyond. Their dark cloaks moved like ink stains across the pristine lawns. Somewhere below, an enchanted hound barked, its echo carrying up to their window.

Hours passed before the aurors were satisfied with their initial search. When they finally departed, Eda excused herself from Draco with a muttered word and retreated to her own room.

Her room at Malfoy Manor was vast, decorated in silver and green tones that Narcissa insisted would “suit her better than those dreadful Gryffindor colors she might have inherited otherwise.” It had never truly felt like hers.

She sat down heavily on her bed, her mind racing.

Should she?

Yes.

“Kreacher!” she called, her voice firmer than she felt.

With a crack, the ancient house-elf appeared, his bat-like ears drooping, his eyes as yellowed and watery as old parchment. He bowed low, the silver candlesticks reflecting his hunched form.

“Mistress called for Kreacher?” he rasped, his voice dripping with weariness.

Eda folded her arms tightly across her chest. “It appears my father has escaped Azkaban. Did you hear?” She kept her tone low, annoyed, but there was an edge of something sharper—something she refused to name.

Kreacher gasped, his gnarled hands clutching his filthy tea towel. “The blood trait—”

“I need you to keep watch over Grimmauld Place,” she interrupted, her tone commanding now, steadier. “If he approaches, I want you to let him in. And you will tell no one. Not Aunt Narcissa, not Uncle Lucius, not Draco. Only me. Do you understand?”

Kreacher trembled, his huge eyes darting nervously. “But Mistress—”

“And another thing,” she said sharply, her voice low and dangerous. “He is not a blood traitor. Don’t ever call him that again. Understood?”

For a moment, Kreacher looked mutinous, his lips twitching as though the insult wanted to force its way out. But at last he nodded, bowing once more. “As Mistress commands.”

Eda exhaled slowly and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. The crack of his disappearance echoed like a shot in the silence of her room.

The Malfoys had originally planned to visit Diagon Alley that week, but Sirius Black’s escape complicated everything. Instead, Narcissa sent their new house-elf to fetch Draco and Eda’s supplies, claiming it was “far safer not to parade children through London when a madman is on the loose.”

So August stretched on in confinement.

The Manor became their cage and their playground all at once. Draco filled the hours with endless games of Exploding Snap, which Eda won more often than not, and wizard chess, which Draco claimed was rigged against him. The truth was, he was careless and predictable—Eda had learned long ago to think three steps ahead.

Some afternoons, they practiced Quidditch maneuvers on the Manor’s private pitch, though Narcissa often scolded them for risking injury. Draco boasted about his Nimbus 2001 until Eda grew tired of hearing about its “superior balance” and “perfect polish.”

But when the games ended and Draco’s voice faded down the corridors, Eda found herself alone.

Night after night, she sat at her bedroom window, the cool glass pressed against her temple as she stared out across the sprawling grounds. She told herself she was watching for her father, though something deep inside whispered the truth: she didn’t expect him. Not here. Not ever.

And yet, she watched.

The moon carved silver shapes across the lawns. The shadows of hedgerows stretched long and eerie. Sometimes an owl swooped low, its wings whispering in the silence.

Every night, she stayed there for hours, eyes straining, heart pounding whenever a tree swayed too sharply in the breeze.

But he never came.

Chapter Text

The summer ended, as it always did, far too suddenly.

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was crowded with the noise of families, owls screeching in their cages, and trunks being hauled into compartments. The familiar scarlet steam engine let out a whistle, clouding the platform in thick plumes.

Eda Black pulled her cloak tighter around herself, willing it to hide her more than it did. It didn’t matter—people were staring anyway. They always stared. Some faces wore fear, others barely veiled curiosity, and a handful—mostly Gryffindors—looked at her with open dislike. She felt their whispers prickling at the back of her neck.

Still, she held her head high, her chin tilted with practiced indifference, and followed Draco up the steps of the train. He seemed oblivious to the way people’s gazes clung to her, or perhaps he simply didn’t care. Malfoys didn’t notice things beneath them.

The two of them wandered down the corridor in search of Crabbe and Goyle. As they passed a compartment, Eda caught sight of a man slumped against the window, fast asleep. His threadbare robes and shabby suitcase were out of place among the gleaming Hogwarts trunks. His chest rose and fell steadily, his face drawn but peaceful.

“Pathetic,” Draco muttered, wrinkling his nose as though poverty itself was contagious.

Eda said nothing, only glanced at the man once more before moving on. There was something odd about him—something worn and weary in a way that didn’t quite match the rest of the train’s lively chaos.

Daphne Greengrass found them soon after, her blonde hair shining under the flickering lamps of the corridor. “There you are,” she said, waving them over. “Crabbe and Goyle have been hoarding compartments again.”

Together, the group claimed their seats. Crabbe and Goyle immediately began tearing into packets of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans while Draco launched into yet another retelling of Buckbeak’s “savage attack” during Care of Magical Creatures the term before.

Eda tuned him out. She pressed her forehead lightly against the cool window, watching the blur of faces outside. It was easier to let her mind wander than to dwell on the way everyone looked at her now.

No one in the compartment mentioned her surname. No one dared. She was grateful for that.

After what felt like an eternity of sitting still, Eda pushed herself up from her seat. “I can’t sit anymore. My legs are going numb. I’m going for a walk.”

Daphne started to rise with her. “I’ll come—”

Eda held up a hand, sharp. “Alone.”

Something in her tone made Daphne settle back down without argument.

The corridor was noisy, laughter spilling from open compartments, the occasional burst of spell sparks as someone tried to show off. Yet whenever Eda passed, conversations faltered. Voices dipped into hurried whispers. She didn’t have to strain to know her name was being tossed like a curse between their tongues.

She rolled her eyes. Childish. Immature.

At the trolley, she bought several chocolate frogs, slipping one into her cloak pocket for later and carrying the others back for Daphne and the boys. But before she could return, the train jolted violently.

The lamps flickered once, twice, then went out entirely.

The air changed—thickened, chilled. It pressed against her skin like icy fingers.

Eda stilled. She had better night vision than most, but what she saw ahead made her blood freeze.

A tall, cloaked shape glided toward her, its skeletal hand brushing against the wall, its presence sucking every trace of warmth from the corridor. It was not a person. It was something far worse.

Her breath caught in her throat. Instinct screamed before thought could catch up. She spun on her heel and bolted down the corridor, her cloak whipping behind her.

“ITS A DEMENTOR!” she shouted, voice hoarse with terror.

Her legs pumped furiously, her lungs burning as the cold closed in. She risked a glance back and immediately wished she hadn’t. The creature floated after her, its hidden face angled toward her as though it could drink the fear pouring off her in waves.

Somewhere up ahead, a voice rang out—urgent, female. “Harry?!”

Another voice—older, steady. A man’s. “Stay back!”

Light exploded behind her. A brilliant silvery shape burst forth, cutting through the suffocating darkness. The cold peeled away, chased off like mist before a fire. The dementor recoiled, retreating with a shriek of wind before vanishing.

Eda stumbled to the wall, gripping it hard. Her heart slammed against her ribs. “It was… it was a dementor,” she whispered, her own voice sounding far away to her ears.

A figure approached her through the dimness. Not a student. A man. His face was thin, worn, with tired amber eyes and a faded scar stretching across one cheek.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice calm but concerned. “I’m Professor Lupin.”

Eda’s head snapped up. “You’re the new Defense professor??

He nodded, already reaching into his pocket. He produced a bar of chocolate and broke off a piece, offering it to her. “Here. This will help.”

Eda shook her head sharply. “I have my own chocolate, Professor. Thank you.”

Before either could say more, Ronald Weasley’s panicked voice rang out from the next compartment. “Professor—Harry’s fainted!”

Lupin’s eyes flickered back to Eda for just a fraction of a second, widening at the sound of her surname when she had spoken it. But he schooled his face quickly, nodding once before hurrying past her.

Eda stood frozen in the corridor for a long while, chocolate frog clutched tightly in her palm.

Hours later, the Great Hall was alight with floating candles and the hum of whispers. The sorting had ended, and Dumbledore had risen to address the students.

His voice was solemn, carrying clearly across the room. “The Ministry of Magic has stationed dementors around Hogwarts as a precaution, due to Sirius Black’s recent escape.”

The words had barely left his mouth when dozens of eyes flicked to the Slytherin table. Specifically—to her.

Eda’s grip on her goblet tightened. Her stomach twisted, but she refused to flinch. Instead, she lifted her chin higher, spearing a roasted potato on her fork with deliberate calm.

Dumbledore continued, introducing Professor Lupin as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, before inviting the feast to begin. Platters filled themselves with roast meats, puddings, and every dish imaginable, but Eda’s appetite had vanished. She picked at half her plate before excusing herself.

Draco didn’t notice. He was too busy gleefully recounting Harry Potter’s fainting spell on the train to anyone who would listen.

Their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class arrived a few days later. The

Slytherins and Gryffindors shared it—much to everyone’s displeasure.

Professor Lupin greeted them warmly, though his shabby robes drew immediate snickers from Draco and Pansy. He ignored them, consulting a roll of parchment.

“Who can tell me what a boggart is?” he asked.

Several hands shot up. Hermione Granger’s, predictably, was the highest. Eda raised hers too, though more measured.

“Yes—Miss Black,” Lupin called.

The class turned at once. Whispers rose. Eda ignored them. “A boggart is a shape-shifter. It becomes whatever its victim fears most.”

“Correct,” Lupin said, his eyes lingering on her for a fraction longer than anyone else.

The lesson continued, the professor explaining the counter-curse—Riddikulus. Draco scoffed loudly, muttering about how “utterly ridiculous” the spell sounded, earning a ripple of laughter from the Slytherins. Eda snickered quietly at his theatrics but got in line with the others.

One by one, students stepped forward to face the boggart Lupin had trapped in a wardrobe. It shifted grotesquely from spiders to severed hands to banshees, each transformed by the incantations hurled at it.

When it was Harry’s turn, the boggart twisted and stretched into the towering, hooded form of a dementor. The air turned cold, an echo of the train creeping back into Eda’s bones.

But before Harry could act, Lupin darted forward. “Here!” he commanded, stepping between them. The dementor shuddered and warped, folding in on itself until it became nothing more than the ghostly glow of a full moon behind clouds.

The class fell silent.

“Enough for today,” Lupin said firmly, snapping the wardrobe shut. “Class dismissed.”

“Great doing, Potter,” Eda muttered under her breath as she slipped past him toward the door, Daphne in tow. Her tone was sharper than she intended, but she couldn’t stop it. The memory of cold and fear clung to her still, and Potter had somehow made it everyone’s problem.

Daphne cast her a sidelong look but said nothing.

The corridor outside was warm compared to the classroom, but the chill in Eda’s chest remained.

She wondered, not for the first time, what shape the boggart would have taken if it had been her turn.

And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Chapter Text

The first two months of school passed by quicker than Eda expected, the way they usually did. Classes blurred into one another, homework piled in frustrating stacks, and her cousin Draco was still milking his so-called “grievous injury” from Care of Magical Creatures. He cradled his arm at meals like he’d nearly lost it, and exaggerated every wince until half the year was rolling their eyes.

Uncle Lucius, naturally, was writing letters back and forth to Dumbledore and the school board about banning hippogriffs altogether. Something about dangerous beasts and liability and—honestly—Eda couldn’t bring herself to care. It was funny at first, watching Draco pretend he couldn’t pick up a quill without trembling dramatically, but the joke had gone stale weeks ago.

Now Halloween was fast approaching, and with it the first Hogsmeade weekend for the third-years. Everyone needed a signed permission slip. Unfortunately, Eda didn’t have one.

Her aunt and uncle had been blunt over the summer: she was to stay inside the castle, where it was safe. Not that she hadn’t tried to argue—she had—but they’d refused to budge. Sirius Black was still out there, and that meant she was grounded by proxy.

So while Daphne and Pansy were squealing over what to wear in Hogsmeade, Eda sat cross-legged on her bed with a book, resigned to being left behind.

A snip-snip-snip sound broke her concentration. She glanced up just in time to see Pansy holding a pair of scissors dangerously close to Daphne’s forehead.

“Wait, wait, wait—what are you doing with the scissors?!” Eda blurted, eyes wide.

“Relax,” Daphne said through the mirror, trying to keep a straight face as Pansy tugged on a strand of her fringe. “She’s giving me bangs.”

“Bangs?!” Eda nearly dropped her book. “Do not laugh, Daphne, she’ll ruin your hair! Pansy Parkinson is not certified in haircutting!”

Pansy sniffed. “Excuse me, I’ve been cutting ribbons for presents since I was five. Same concept.”

“It is not the same concept!” Eda pressed a hand to her forehead, as though physically holding in her common sense.

But Daphne just giggled, cheeks pink. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic, E. Besides, it’s for the trip.”

Eda narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Yes, but why? No—who?”

Daphne’s blush deepened. “For moi,” she said airily, fluttering her lashes.

“Oh really?” Eda leaned forward. “You’re sure this has nothing to do with, I don’t know, a certain boy?”

Daphne made a sharp tsk noise and looked away, but her ears betrayed her, glowing red. “Pansy, just start cutting.”

And Pansy, with far too much delight, obeyed.

At first, it wasn’t catastrophic. A neat little row of fringe fell into place. Eda squinted, prepared to admit—privately—that maybe it wasn’t a disaster. But then Daphne got bold.

“Do more,” she insisted. “This is barely noticeable!”

“Daphne Greengrass,” Eda said, tone dire. “This is how tragedies happen.”

But Pansy was already hacking away, and the scissors made that gleeful shnk-shnk noise that sent shivers down Eda’s spine.

A chunk of blond hair tumbled to the floor. Daphne inhaled sharply.

“Pansy!” Eda half-yelped, half-laughed in horror. “You’ve scalped her!”

“I have not!” Pansy protested, though her grin betrayed her glee. “Hold still, Daphne, I’m fixing it.”

“You’d better be fixing my head,” Daphne hissed, trying not to move as her bangs got shorter and shorter.

By the time Pansy finally set the scissors down with a flourish, Daphne peeked at her reflection and blinked. Slowly, she reached up, brushing her new fringe into place.

“…Huh,” Daphne said at last, tilting her head.

Eda leaned over to inspect the damage. Against all odds, it didn’t look dreadful. In fact, it kind of…worked.

“Well,” Eda admitted reluctantly, “you don’t look completely insane.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Daphne said smugly, flipping her hair.

Pansy clapped her hands. “See? I told you I was brilliant.”

“Lucky, not brilliant,” Eda muttered. “If you’d sneezed, she’d have a bald spot.”

The three of them dissolved into laughter, the room echoing with it until Daphne and Pansy finally dashed off to show the other girls their handiwork.

Left behind, Eda shut her book with a sigh and followed them down toward the courtyard, trailing after the excited cluster of Slytherins as they chattered about sweets and butterbeer.

The rest unfolded just as she expected. Students handed in their slips, prefects herded them together, and she lingered near the back, pretending she wasn’t sulking.

That was when she noticed Potter.

He was standing near Professor McGonagall, practically begging, his hands waving helplessly. Eda slowed, crossing her arms, and watched as McGonagall’s stern expression shut him down with finality. He looked crushed, and before she could stop herself, Eda let out a chuckle.

Potter spun around, green eyes narrowing. “Oi, what’s so funny, Black?”

Eda raised her brows innocently. “Nothing, Potter. Mind your business.”

“Me? You were the one laughing about me!”

She bit back a grin. “I did not laugh. And even if I did, Merlin, do you always think everything’s about you? I’m not allowed to go either.”

His scowl faltered. “Why not?”

“You do know that’s my dad out there, right?” she said dryly. “My aunt and uncle think it’s too dangerous. Apparently.” She shifted her weight, adding, “What’s your excuse then?”

Potter hesitated before muttering, “My aunt and uncle wouldn’t sign.”

Eda blinked at him, surprised, but let it drop. “Bummer.”

There was a pause, awkward but not unbearable. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but she beat him to it.

“I’m going back to the dorm. Have fun, Potter.” She turned, but his voice stopped her.

“Wait, Black.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “Yes?”

He swallowed, then blurted, “Do you…want to play chess with me?”

She stared. “You want me to play chess with you? Yeah, no way.”

His shoulders slumped, and for a second he looked almost small. “I just thought—since we’re the only ones not going—that maybe we could pass the time together.”

Eda pursed her lips, humming. “…Well. I don’t want to be seen with you, but—” she caught the flicker of hope in his eyes “—I suppose a quick game of chess wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Chapter Text

The empty classroom had that forgotten sunlight smelled like chalk and old varnish. Eda slipped in first and nudged the door almost shut with her heel. One intact desk had already been dragged to the center by some previous delinquent; she pushed two rickety chairs up to it and set down the heavy wizard chess set she’d borrowed from a dorm trunk years ago and quietly commandeered. The lid rasped. The pieces woke at once, yawning and flexing their small stone hands, exchanging looks like soldiers checking straps. Harry Potter came in a half-minute later. He hesitated on the threshold just long enough to read the room—windows tall as church panes, chalkboard furred with the ghosts of problems, furniture stacked like a barricade along the walls. Then he shut the door with careful fingers and crossed to the table.

“You cut it close,” Eda said, mostly to watch how he handled being told he’d done something wrong.

“Filch was circling the corridor,” he said, sliding into the chair opposite. “He’s got a sixth sense for when people are having fun.”

“Chess is fun?” She set the board between them, black queen precise as a thorn. The white king cracked his neck with the resigned air of someone who knew he’d be humiliated for an audience.

“It’s something I’m allowed to do,” he said lightly. “That’s practically fun.” He’d tried to make it a joke; it landed like a bruise.

Eda pretended to busy herself with lining up the pawns, though they were already aligned as straight as her handwriting. She had chosen black. She liked the weight of responding. The game drew out better that way; it made people show themselves.

“White moves first,” she said.

Harry glanced at her, as if expecting some trap on the first line, then pushed his king’s pawn forward two squares. His pawn stomped and squared his shoulders, proud, the way all pawns are before they know what they are. Eda answered with her queen’s pawn one square. No need to hurry the center. No need to hurry anything.

She watched his hands; quick, but not fidgety. She watched his eyes; they flicked to her face more than to the board at first. He wanted to know what kind of snake he’d invited to play. They opened quietly—the way adults pretend to talk when children are listening. Harry developed his knight early; Eda mirrored with one of her own and felt the pleasant click in her mind of shapes finding one another.

The stone horses muttered as they took their places, proud of their carved nostrils and flared manes. The room settled. Outside, somewhere down the corridor, laughter flared and died like a match; the Hogsmeade crowd filtering back in pairs with paper bags and windburned cheeks. “You brought your own set,” Harry said, making a small face as his bishop grumbled about his diagonal.

“This one knows me.” Eda said. She didn’t smile. It wasn’t unkind; it simply was true. A rook saluted her with his spear; a pawn thumped his little chest. “Mine are used to shouting at me.”

“This lot won’t shout,” she said. “they know better.” She moved her other knight and felt the tug of a plan ease into place. Harry was cautious. Not the blundering, showy kind of Gryffindor who tried to punch open a door that had a key under the mat.

He watched, then stepped. She didn’t like that. People who watched first were either dangerous or tired. Sometimes both. They played three, four minutes without speaking. The pieces did the talking anyway: bones-on-stone skids, the occasional daggered whisper from a pawn who didn’t appreciate being sacrificed to say something clever. Eda let the silence live. It was the right size for Harry to think he could fill. He tried. “You said—earlier—you couldn’t go to Hogsmeade.”

“Mmm,” Eda hummed, as though he’d remarked on the weather. “Because of your—” He didn’t say the name.

The Ministry had hung it on banners like a curse. Everyone else said it like a punchline. “Because of the thing that makes everyone whisper in corridors,” she said. „yes.” Harry’s knight stepped to c3 with a neat clop. He didn’t look up from the board when he asked, very casually, “Do you remember him?” Eda’s queen’s bishop shifted across black squares to pin a knight to a king.

The bishop’s beard bristled with satisfaction. She kept her face bored. “Do you remember your parents?”

He glanced up, fast, wounded despite himself, and anger snuffed in just as quickly. “Some things,” he said. “Sounds.”

“That’s more than I can remember.” she said. She tapped a knuckle against the bishop’s head.

“Check.” He parried with his queen. Sensible. She preferred not to admire it. “Was he—” Harry braced his forearms on the table. His sleeves were fraying at the cuffs; she filed that away next to the way he’d try not to ask and then ask anyway. “—people say he’s dangerous.”

“People say a lot.“ Eda said. She watched the black queen’s shadow cut across the board. Dementors we’re stationed around the lake, breathing human heat out of the air. She hadn’t gone too near them after what happened on the train in September. A memory that wasn’t a memory brushed her—salt, dog hair in a jumper, a laugh that knocked against walls—and it vanished like a draft under a door. Her stomach tightened. “Do you always repeat things you hear to see if they sound better in your voice?” He flushed.

He wasn’t good at hiding anything that happened on his face. It made him almost unfair to play against; part of her worried she’d start to pity him and then he’d do something idiotic and she’d be left with spare pity she couldn’t use. “I was asking what you think,” he said.

“You weren’t,” she said, and took his knight. Her knight swung down; the white piece shattered with a melodramatic sigh. “But if you keep pretending you were, I can pretend I answered.”

Harry leaned back in the chair and blew out a breath, fogging the lens of his glasses. He rubbed it clear with the side of his fist. “I just… wondered what you believe.” The word stuck.

Believe.

Not think. It lodged under her ribs the way a seed finds a seam in stone. What do you believe? Eda reached, not with her hand, with that other trained part of herself, for the things she trusted—a ledger of properties, a chain of names that linked her to this castle like a nail; Aunt Narcissa’s voice as crisp as starched cuffs; Draco’s drawl and the way he’d lean too far into a triumph; the Black family tapestry with holes in it shaped like choices.

Underneath those, lower, older, the inexplicable small faith that flared when someone said Sirius Black and the posters on the walls seemed to be lying. Not a thought. A pressure. She didn’t know its source, which was infuriating.

She didn’t show infuriated. “I believe,” she said, and slid her rook to the open file with an unassuming click that would become important later, “in position.” He huffed once, unwilling and amused. The huff said: ‚I deserved that’.

He moved his queen back a square and tried to suck the board into safety. Eda let him. Safety isn’t a place; it’s a shape other people see around you and steer into on purpose.

They played longer: a tangle of trades that looked equal and weren’t, a feint that attracted two of his pieces to the queenside while hers turned and smoked down the files she’d been quietly opening. Harry concentrated now; the little line between his brows deepened. He was better when he forgot he was trying to be careful with his questions. He didn’t look like a boy anyone should be afraid of; that might’ve been the entire point of him.

“Is Malfoy angry you didn’t go to Hogsmeade?” Harry asked, dropping his bishop into a fianchetto he had no plan for. His bishop complained in a thin tenor about his knees.

Eda sat back, considering. “Draco is incapable of being angry about something that isn’t immediately visible to a mirror.” she said. “Why?”

“Just wondering if he—if they—” He flicked a glance to her sleeve, where the very expensive fabric did its best not to look like anything at all and failed in exactly the way money fails to pretend it wasn’t there. “If they’re strict.”

“They’re merely concerned.” She slid a pawn one square and watched his expression, not the board.

Harry looked at the board, he hadn’t expected that. She slid her queen. He swallowed. “Everyone’s saying he’s after me though.”

Eda looked at the board so she wouldn’t look at him and give away too much of anything. Her pieces waited, obedient and cruel. She remembered—no, imagined, perhaps—how a person might sit at the end of a sofa with one ankle tucked under the other knee, a dog sprawling and knocking into things with a tail too happy, a light like afternoon on a bad day. She had never sat on that sofa. She had never had a dog. She tasted the word anyway: innocent. It wasn’t a thought. It wasn’t a hope. It was a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing in an empty house.

“And you think everyone really is after you?” she asked neutrally.

He didn’t flinch. “Often enough.” “Unfortunate.” She moved her rook to the seventh rank. The rook thumped his spear into the wood and grinned like a man who has decided not to be merciful.

“Check.” Harry answered with the only move that didn’t immediately end matters, and that had been the problem for several turns now: he was making only moves that didn’t immediately end matters.

She took advantage. The rest was housekeeping. Rook to e1. Queen to h5, a flourish she’d set up eight minutes ago. The white king staggered into the wrong corner heavy with cover that wasn’t cover. Her knight tucked in. He saw it at the same time the king did—the little circle of air tightening. He shut his eyes, briefly, like someone bracing for a wave. “Mate in two,” Eda said, because she disliked lies and mercy more than she disliked cruelty. He stared at the board a moment longer, then made the move that delayed the inevitable, the way people do when they know the inevitable is, in fact, inevitable. She finished it.

The white king set his crown down with dignity, and the pawns groaned theatrically and flopped. Harry let go of his breath. “Do you—ever—” He stopped, grimaced. “Good game.” “Yes,” she said. He smiled properly then, bare and quick, the way you do when you’ve had a thing taken from you and you’re still you. “Want to go again?” “No,” she said, gathering the pieces, her hands moving with the efficient tenderness you use to put away weapons you like. “Games are better when you leave the second one for another day.” “That sounds like something a professor would say,” he said, standing.

“My favourite kind of insult,” Eda said, and closed the lid. The pieces inside the box quieted, as if they understood the day was done. He hovered a heartbeat. Still a question on his tongue. She tilted her head, giving him permission to ask and modelling what it looks like to keep your dignity if you don’t get an answer. It was a gift, in its way.

“Do you think—” Harry began, and his voice did something small and honest. “If you found out you were wrong about him—about—would you want to know?” Eda met his eyes. They were the same furious green as the stories said. “I don’t collect wrong things,” she said. “If one slips in, I throw it out.” He nodded, as if that were the answer he’d come for.

Perhaps it was; perhaps he would make it be. He left with the soft tread of someone practiced at not being noticed leaving. The silence afterward was a little larger than the room. Eda carried the box against her ribs as she walked.

Inside the common room Pansy was telling a story about a Hogsmeade shopkeeper who had pretended not to recognize her surname and then had recognized it too much, and both reactions had offended her; she was making a meal of it.

Eda nodded where nods were expected and slipped away to the empty girls’ dormitory with her head down in the approved uninterested manner. Behind her curtains the world sharpened. She set the chess box on the trunk at the foot of her bed and pressed fingers, briefly, to the muscles at the back of her neck, easing them loose.

Her dormitory smelled faintly of perfume and ink and something damp from the lake. She drew the curtains shut. The little cocoon of it—fabric, privacy—worked like a charm.

“Kreacher,” she said, in the voice that had been taught to her by women who could kill small things with looks. He arrived with a sound like someone snapping a dry twig. The elf’s head flopped forward into a bow so deep it couldn’t be called a bow; it was a punishment he gave himself every time he had to appear. His ears were like old parchment; his eyes, too large, too bright.

“Mistress calls,” he croaked. “Kreacher hoped Mistress would call sooner. Kreacher is always waiting, oh yes.”

“That’s not healthy,” Eda said, and sat.

She didn’t soften; kindness made elves strange. “I need you to go to my father’s old places. The flat he had from his Uncle Alphard. And his bedroom at Grimmauld Place.”

Kreacher’s mouth collapsed on itself. His hands, knobbled as joints of dead wood, twisted in front of him. “The blood-traitor’s den,” he murmured, tasting the words like sour milk. “The shameful room. Mistress should not foul her mind with the dust of it.”

“Then it will be a relief for you to fetch the dust and bring it here,” Eda said, crisp as napery. “Letters. Photographs. Anything with handwriting. Notes. Keepsakes. Anything that looks like it wanted to be hidden.” Kreacher’s eyes narrowed; grief and glee passed over his face like a cloud over a field.

“Kreacher knows where the traitor kept things,” he said, almost lovingly. “Behind the loose panel. Under the floorboard. In the lining of the jacket he wore when—” He cut himself off with a snap of his teeth and bowed so hard his nose brushed the carpet. “Kreacher says nothing Mistress does not want to hear.” Good. Eda’s pulse ticked, steady.

She took the small leather pouch she kept for that purpose from under her pillow. A charm lay over it that would only open for her hand and Kreacher’s. The clasp was carved like a serpent biting its tail. She passed it to him palm-up so he’d have to take it from her skin, which was how you said both ‚I trust you‘ and ‚Don’t mistake what this is‘.

“Put anything from Alphard’s flat in the left compartment,” she said, “and anything from Grimmauld in the right. Don’t mix them. If you must move something to find something else, move it back exactly. Leave no trace that anything was touched, except where you must. And Kreacher—” She let the next word weight itself. “No one must know. Not Aunt Narcissa. Not Lucius. Not Draco. No one.”

Kreacher stared at the pouch as if it were a snake that had agreed to be a rope for one minute. Then he pressed it to his chest and nodded with relish. “Kreacher obeys his Mistress.” he whispered. „Kreacher serves House Black. Kreacher will tear the house open and feed Mistress all the bones.”

“Metaphorically,” Eda said automatically. The corner of her mouth almost gave itself away; she pinned it still. “Go while the corridors are full. Noise hides noise.” Kreacher’s head gave a little judder of a nod; with elves it meant both Yes and You are clever in a way that makes me feel safe and furious. He glanced once at the curtains, as if checking for ghosts or eavesdroppers, and vanished with a pop that folded itself into the room’s hush.

The door to the dormitory clicked three times in the world outside the curtains—once hard, twice soft. Daphne’s steps, unhurried, the way she walked when she’d accomplished exactly what she’d meant to and might be a little bored about it.

“Bring anything that won’t stick my teeth together?” Eda asked, voice drawing back into the usual easy shape.

“Liquorice wands,” Daphne said, flicking the bag onto Eda’s bed. “And scandal, but that won’t fit in a bag.”

“I’ll take the wands,” Eda said. “You can keep the scandal for Draco.” Daphne smirked and toed off her shoes.

“He’s hoarding his own.” Eda snorted, honest and small. The night tucked itself around that scrap of normalcy. Her hands had already stopped shaking—she noticed only because they weren’t trembling now and she hadn’t felt them start.

Later, when the dormitory softened into sleep noises, Eda lay on her side and watched the thin stripe of moonlight dragged across the floor by the lake’s slow turning. She hoped Kreacher would find something evident— of what she did not know

Chapter Text

October 31st, 1993

The Great Hall had been transformed again, and Eda supposed that was Hogwarts’ true trick: making the ordinary look magical enough that you forgot to question it.

Pumpkins the size of armchairs hovered in the air, their carved faces flickering orange light across the tables. Hundreds of bats swooped in lazy clusters under the bewitched ceiling, darting around the storm clouds that had gathered there for the occasion. The smell of roast chicken and treacle tart clung to the air so thickly it might have been poured.

Draco, naturally, was in his element. He lounged on the bench as though the entire hall were his stage. “If Hogwarts keeps getting any worse.,” he was saying loudly, “father says he’ll send us to Durmstrang. They don’t let Mudbloods in there. Proper standards.”

Crabbe and Goyle laughed, late and too loud, as if paid by the joke.

Daphne Greengrass gave him a look that could have been carved out of boredom. “Do you ever eat and not talk?” she asked, plucking a sugar quill from the nearest bowl.

“Not my fault you lot are jealous.“ Draco shot back, smirking.

Eda let the noise slide over her. She was picking at the edge of her treacle tart, turning it over with the back of her fork. She wasn’t really hungry. The hall’s noise felt too sharp tonight, like everyone was speaking half an octave higher than usual.

She glanced up. Across the hall, the Gryffindor table was in its usual state of chaos. Potter was in the middle of it all, of course, hunched slightly as if bracing against the storm of voices. Weasley was gesturing with a chicken leg, almost whacking him in the face, while Granger was trying and failing to tell them both off.

Potter laughed at something, the sound almost swallowed by the hall. It was odd—he looked lighter than he had during their chess game a few nights ago. Lighter, but not unguarded. His eyes flicked around as though waiting for the next thing to go wrong.

Eda’s gaze slid to the staff table. Professor Lupin was there, speaking to Flitwick, though his attention kept straying. His eyes scanned the hall and—of course—caught hers. Just for a second too long.

She dropped her gaze to her plate, her jaw tight. He always did that. Looked at her like she was something that had survived a fire when it shouldn’t have. Not cruelly, exactly, but not kindly either. She supposed it made sense: he’d been at Hogwarts the same years as her father. They must have known each other. Maybe hated each other. That was enough of a reason. Everyone had one, after all.

She sipped her pumpkin juice and tried to ignore it.

Then the doors banged open.

The crack of wood against stone echoed so sharply half the hall jumped. Filch stood in the doorway, lantern swinging madly, his hair more unkempt than usual. He was panting hard, his voice breaking when he croaked:

“Headmaster! Headmaster, it’s the Fat Lady! Attacked!”

The words sank like lead into silence. Forks froze halfway to mouths. A pumpkin burst with a hiss of flame somewhere above, scattering sparks.

Dumbledore was on his feet at once, his robes sweeping behind him like spilled ink. The teachers followed, chairs scraping.

The prefects rose next, shouting for calm, but the tide had already turned. Panic was blooming. Voices rose sharp and quick, carrying scraps of rumor before anyone had the facts.

Draco leaned across the table, his smirk razor-thin. “Told you Potter wouldn’t last the year.” he drawled, just loud enough for the Gryffindors at the next table to hear.

“Shut it, Malfoy,” one Ravenclaw boy shot back at once. “You’ll be crying for mummy when he comes for you.”

Draco only grinned wider.

Eda didn’t join in. Her pulse had jumped at the words Fat Lady attacked, but not with excitement. With recognition. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she knew whose name would be on everyone’s lips before the night was out.

Sirius Black.

Her father.

It spread through the hall in whispers first, then in gasps, then in shouts. It was him. He broke in. He slashed the portrait. He’s here.

And then came the stares.

One after another, heads turned in her direction, as if by magnetic pull. Students’ eyes lingered just a little too long, curiosity clashing with fear, with morbid fascination. Some didn’t bother to hide it. Others pretended to glance past her, then back again.

The daughter of the madman.

Eda kept her face still. She cut her tart in half and took a slow bite, forcing her hand not to tremble. She’d been stared at before. Being a Black meant attention, whispers, assumptions. This was worse. This was heavier.

Her chest clenched with something she couldn’t name. Not shame. Not even fear. Wrongness. The kind that makes your skin feel too tight.

Her father was supposed to have come here, tonight, to kill Potter. That was the story spreading like fire. But deep in her gut, something fought it. As stubborn as her heartbeat. He wouldn’t. Not him. Not like this.

But she couldn’t say that aloud. Not here. Not to anyone.

The prefects managed to herd them out of the hall at last, into the corridors, voices bouncing like panicked birds. The teachers swept ahead, wands lit. Lupin passed close, his expression tight, his eyes flicking briefly—always briefly—toward her. Eda looked away before he could catch her watching.

They weren’t sent to their dormitories. Not tonight. Too dangerous, too close to the scene of the break-in. Instead, the whole school was shepherded back into the Great Hall. The tables were gone, vanished into nothing. In their place: hundreds of squashy sleeping bags, scattered like bright cocoons across the stone floor.

It looked like a battlefield dressed up for children.

Eda found her place among the Slytherins, slipping into a green sleeping bag at the edge of the cluster. Around her, voices rose and fell, half-whispers, half-shouts. Draco was boasting again, of course. “Father always said this school wasn’t safe,” he was declaring. “he’d have got through Gryffindor’s door ages ago. Pathetic security.”

“Malfoy,” Pansy whispered, glancing at the staff pacing along the walls, “keep your voice down—”

But Draco only grinned, clearly enjoying himself. “What, afraid the escaped prisoner will hear me?”

A few sniggers followed, but not from everyone. Even Slytherins knew some lines not to cross. Sirius Black’s name had a weight to it, even here. Especially here.

Eda rolled onto her side, tugging the sleeping bag up to her chin, as if she were cold. She wasn’t. Her skin burned under the weight of eyes, even when no one was looking.

She stared at the enchanted ceiling. The storm clouds had spread, heavy and low, their edges lit by the flicker of hundreds of candles. Somewhere in the hall, a first-year sniffled. The sound carried far too clearly.

Her stomach churned. Not at the thought of her father breaking in. At the thought of everyone believing it so easily. Of everyone wanting to believe it.

Because she didn’t. She couldn’t.

Why, though? Why was she so certain? She had no memories of him. No evidence. Nothing but a gnawing conviction, wordless and insistent, that Sirius Black wasn’t what they said.

It made her angry, the not-knowing. Angry enough that she pressed her hand flat against her heart, as if to smother it.

Across the hall, Potter was visible among the Gryffindors, sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag, talking in low, fierce tones to Weasley. He looked pale, shaken, but stubbornly alert. He caught her gaze by accident. Just for a second.

She looked away first.

The teachers patrolled in silence. Dumbledore stood at the front of the hall, calm and unreadable. And Lupin—always Lupin—paced the rows with quiet, watchful eyes. When they brushed across her, his face tightened in some unspoken way. Not hate, not quite. Something heavier.

Eda shut her eyes, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her unsettled.

Sleep didn’t come. The Great Hall was too loud, too crowded, too heavy with whispers and fear. She lay awake, the word hammering against her ribs with every heartbeat:

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

And though she didn’t dare speak it aloud, another word lived there too.

Innocent.

Chapter Text

By November, the castle had gone cold right through its stones. Draughts ran in the corridors like they belonged there, and the sky seemed to settle into one colour; grey. Everyone walked about with red noses and stiff fingers, clutching books to their chests as if they could be used for warmth.

The Slytherin common room stayed damp with lake-water light. Lamps shone greenish, and the fire was never quite enough. It suited Eda fine. November was a month for keeping quiet.

The whole school, however, was incapable of quiet. The first Quidditch match had been the talk of every breakfast and corridor since the Halloween debacle. Posters went up, scarves came out of trunks, and arguments broke out between Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs about whose Seeker would be better. Draco found new ways every day to mention his “injury,” usually loud enough for passing teachers to overhear.

“You’d think,” Daphne muttered one morning on the way into Charms, “that his arm had been bitten off by a Hungarian Horntail the way he goes on.”

“Don’t give him ideas,” Eda said. 

Inside the classroom, Professor Flitwick had them working on Banishing Charms. Pillows shot across the room in ungainly arcs. Some thumped against walls, others nosedived into the floor. Daphne’s bolted off so quickly it nearly knocked over Parvati Patil.

“Sorry!” Daphne called.

Parvati waved it off with a smile, though her friend Lavender giggled.

Eda flicked her wand at her cushion, careful, measured. It skidded neatly across the table into the basket Flitwick had set up.

“Well done, Miss Black!” Flitwick squeaked, clapping his tiny hands. “Five points to Slytherin!”

Eda only nodded, sliding her wand back into her sleeve. She never celebrated. People remembered if you looked pleased.

By the end of the lesson, Hermione Granger had managed to send hers so perfectly that it nestled on top of all the others like a crown jewel. Flitwick nearly burst with praise. Eda kept her expression smooth and began mentally calculating how many answers she could afford to miss on the next essay so her marks stayed comfortably at E.

Later in the week, History of Magic was unbearable as ever. Professor Binns floated near the ceiling, droning about goblin revolts in his usual monotone. Half the class stared glassy-eyed at the chalkboard, and someone in the back was definitely asleep.

Eda tapped her quill against the margin of her notes, restless. Words sometimes slipped out of her head uninvited in these dull hours, little phrases she didn’t know the source of. Today it came again: Remember, remember… The rhythm of it itched against the silence. She wrote it down before she could stop herself.

“Oi,” whispered Theodore Nott from the next desk, leaning sideways. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Eda said, snapping her book closed a little louder than intended. “Pay attention, Nott.”

“As if you are,” he muttered, but he sat back, his smirk fading when she didn’t rise to it.

The words stayed, heavy in her notebook, until she crossed them out hard enough to tear the page.

The morning of the match dawned blustery and grey. Students poured into the Great Hall buzzing with nerves, the sound of it swelling until it was almost unbearable. Yellow and scarlet rosettes bobbed across tables like flowers.

“You’re really not coming?” Daphne asked again, adjusting her gloves as they walked toward the entrance hall with the crowd.

“No,” Eda said. “It’ll be windy and loud, and I’d rather keep my ears.”

Daphne gave her a look that was part amusement, part exasperation. “Suit yourself. Don’t nick my notes while I’m gone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Eda said.

And then she was alone in the corridor, the stampede of footsteps fading as the last stragglers hurried toward the pitch. The castle settled into an eerie kind of emptiness, like it had exhaled.

Eda wandered back through the dungeons, enjoying the quiet. She took her books to the library, where Madam Pince seemed positively cheerful at the lack of noise, and spread her parchment across a table near the back. The silence was so complete she could hear the scratch of her own quill, the faint creak of the shelves.

She worked for hours without interruption, losing herself in the neatness of ink and margins. Every so often, a faint roar reached her ears—distant crowd noise carried on the wind. She ignored it.

By the time the castle began to fill again, the noise returned like a storm breaking. Eda left the library to find students flooding the corridors, soaked and windblown, their voices tripping over each other in frantic retellings.

“…and then he just dropped—straight off his broom!”

“Dementors, honestly, hundreds of them—”

“Wasn’t hundreds, don’t be thick—”

“Well, it looked like it from where I was sitting!”

She slipped past them, catching only scraps. Potter’s name kept surfacing like a buoy. He’d fainted. He’d fallen. His broom had been destroyed somehow. No one seemed to agree on the details, but the atmosphere was charged—half horror, half glee, depending which House you asked.

In the common room, Draco was sprawled across a chair, basking in attention. “Typical,” he was saying. “Potter faints if someone so much as sneezes near him.“

The laughter that followed was loud, though not all of it was genuine. Eda drifted to the fire without comment, hands tucked into her sleeves. She didn’t care about Quidditch, but the word Dementors made her skin crawl. She remembered the train, the way the air had turned to ice and sound had been sucked out of the world. She pushed the thought aside, but it lingered.

That night, long after the common room quieted and the dormitories filled with the steady hush of sleep, Eda sat cross-legged on her bed with her curtains drawn. Her lamp cast a small circle of light over her quilt.

“Kreacher,” she whispered.

The elf appeared with a crack of displaced air, bent nearly double under the weight of what he carried. His great batlike ears quivered; his muttering was nearly drowned out by the sound of papers and objects shifting in his arms.

“Kreacher brings what Mistress wanted.” he rasped, dropping the bundle onto the quilt with a thump. “Kreacher searched the blood-traitor’s rooms, and the uncle’s flat too, foul places both, crawling with shameful rubbish.”

Eda pulled the pile toward her. It smelled faintly of dust and old parchment, like rooms long shut. She began to sift through.

There were letters first, tied with string—ink faded but still legible. She glimpsed her father’s name on the front of one, written in a bold hand: Sirius. Her chest tightened. She set it aside carefully.

Next, a photograph. Four boys by the Black Lake, jostling one another, grinning at the camera. One of them—lean, dark-haired, sharp-eyed—looked so much like the wanted posters that her throat closed for a moment. But he was smiling, carefree, his arm slung around the messy-haired boy beside him. The other two laughed too, one fair and wiry, the other pale and watchful. Eda stared at their faces, feeling a pull she couldn’t explain.

Kreacher’s voice grated on. “Filthy Gryffindor scarf,” he muttered, producing a frayed bit of red-and-gold wool. “stuffed in a drawer. Kreacher nearly burned it on the spot.”

Eda took it between her fingers. The fabric was rough, worn soft at the edges. She folded it and placed it beside the letters.

There were scraps of parchment too: a cartoonish sketch of a motorbike with a dog astride it; a torn bit of paper with a footprint inked on the corner; notes scribbled in shorthand that meant nothing to her yet. Each piece added weight to the bundle on her bed, as if her father’s life were being rebuilt one fragment at a time.

The last thing Kreacher produced was a postcard, battered at the edges. On the back, a few lines of writing in neat script: Stop sulking. Full moon’s a menace. Keep your head. —M.

Eda traced the words with her finger. Whoever M was, they’d written like someone who expected to be obeyed.

She gathered everything into a careful pile. The pouch she kept for hiding them was already waiting under her pillow; she slid the fragments inside, the clasp clicking shut. Her chest felt tight, her head loud with thoughts she couldn’t shape.

Kreacher bowed, muttering darkly about “shameful keepsakes,” and disappeared with another crack.

Eda lay back against her pillow, staring at the canopy above. The whole world called her father a murderer. A madman. A traitor. Yet what Kreacher had brought her didn’t look like the possessions of a man who despised his friends. They looked like memories someone had chosen not to let go of.

The conviction she’d been carrying quietly all this time swelled until it pressed against her ribs. She didn’t know why she believed it, couldn’t explain how she knew. But looking at the evidence—letters, photographs, scraps of life—she felt it more than ever.

Her father wasn’t what they said.

He couldn’t be.

And she was going to find out the truth.

Chapter Text

The school couldn’t stop talking about Quidditch. Not the Gryffindor match—the one Harry had fainted in—but Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff, which had played out a week later. Eda had heard the entire story three times before she even finished her porridge the next morning.

“Diggory caught the Snitch—clean, right out from under Cho Chang’s nose,” a Ravenclaw was saying smugly in the corridor, striding past with his scarf half falling off.

“But it was close!” a Hufflepuff girl argued, hugging her books to her chest. “If it hadn’t been so foggy—”

“Still counts,” the boy shot back.

In the Slytherin common room, the retellings took on a nastier flavour. Draco sat with his bad arm propped up like a trophy, sneering to anyone who would listen.

“Ravenclaw might as well give up now,” he said loudly, tossing his fringe back. “They’re nothing without Chang, and she clearly can’t handle pressure. At least Diggory didn’t fall off his broom fainting like Potter. Pathetic, really.”

Pansy tittered. Crabbe and Goyle laughed on cue.

Eda sat nearby, book open, not really reading. Quidditch talk bored her stiff, but she let herself absorb the tone of it anyway—the swell of Houses against each other, the pride and pettiness. The game mattered to them the way numbers on parchment mattered to Gringotts goblins. But to her, it was just noise.

By December, the castle had iced over. The windows sweated frost, draughts turned vicious, and the grounds sparkled white in the mornings. Everyone seemed to be talking about Hogsmeade trips—who’d bought what, who’d smuggled in sweets.

Eda stayed indoors. She always did. Between the Dementors and the fact that her father was supposedly at large, wandering about the countryside wasn’t high on her list of hobbies, not that she was allowed to go anyway. The dungeons were safer. The library, safer. The only snow she ever let touch her boots came from the leaks in the ceiling near the east stairwell.

She buried herself in study, and when that became dull, she returned to the pouch of her father’s things. Kreacher’s haul had become a kind of private ritual. She would wait until her dormmates’ chatter dulled into sleep, then pull the bundle into her lap by lamplight.

Letters first: James’s messy scrawl across yellowed parchment, filled with bravado and complaints about essays; a shorter note from someone who signed Moony, words neat and clipped. She studied the handwriting until her eyes blurred, searching for meaning between the lines.

The photograph still drew her eye most. Four boys in black Hogwarts robes by the lake. Sirius—her father—laughing with his arm thrown around James Potter, the resemblance to Harry impossible to ignore. The ratty one, Wormtail, always trying to get between them, face eager and round. The pale one—Moony, she realised, after connecting names from letters—hovering half in, half out of the group, his smile quieter, sadder.

Wormtail. Moony. Padfoot. Prongs. She’d pieced the names together like clues in a puzzle, though she didn’t understand why they’d chosen them. Code names, maybe. Boys made games out of everything.

Moony troubled her most. She thought about Professor Lupin, about his boggart— the moon, and the scar that carved across his face, pale and ragged.

Werewolves.

The thought had come quickly, almost too obvious. Then she frowned, immediately challenging herself: But if he’s afraid of werewolves, wouldn’t his boggart have shown one? Not the moon itself.

Maybe, she reasoned, he’d had a bad encounter once. Something in his past that made him fear them. And the boggart had latched onto the thing that reminded him of it—the moon. It was an explanation. Not a good one, but it kept her from feeling like she was missing the joke.

She folded the photo back into the pouch, unsettled.

On December 18th, the castle thrummed with excitement. Another Hogsmeade weekend. Everyone not bound to the school grounds by signatures or excuses piled into cloaks and scarves, bustling out into the snow with shrieks and laughter.

Eda sat in the library, enjoying the silence. She had the second row to herself and copied notes from her Potions text, the scratch of her quill the only sound.

By late afternoon, though, she decided she’d had enough of ink. She packed her things slowly, letting the stillness linger, and drifted out into the corridor.

That was when she saw him.

Harry Potter, standing at the end of the hall. His hair looked wind-whipped, his cheeks flushed, his whole posture taut like a bowstring. He wasn’t surrounded by Gryffindors this time. He wasn’t even pretending to smile. He just stood there, jaw tight, staring at her.

Anger. Not the usual kind he reserved for Draco’s taunts, not defensive pride. Something deeper.

Eda slowed, brows knitting. She opened her mouth “What?” but he’d already turned sharply, disappearing up the stairs without a word.

She stood there a moment longer, pulse quickened, a frown pulling at her mouth.

Later, when the dormitories had filled again with chatter about Hogsmeade sweets and Zonko’s pranks, she slipped away. She told herself she was looking for Potter because she wanted to suggest another game of chess—neutral ground, something ordinary. But the truth was itchier: she wanted to know what that look had meant.

She searched the usual places: a quiet classroom near the library, a nook by the staircase where she’d once seen him with Weasley. No sign. The castle swallowed footsteps easily in winter; every corridor felt like a secret.

Crossing the courtyard, breath ghosting in the air, she caught movement near the cloisters. A ginger cat—Crookshanks, Granger’s—pelted after something small and grey.

A rat.

It scurried frantically over the snow, tail leaving frantic lines, Crookshanks at its heels. They disappeared under a bench.

With a small shake of her head, she moved on.

By the time she circled back toward Gryffindor Tower, the students were drifting in from supper. She caught a glimpse of Harry in the throng, head low, shoulders hunched. But before she could push forward, he vanished into the crowd of red-and-gold scarves.

She gave up the search.

That night, back in the dormitory, she pulled the pouch from beneath her pillow and sat with it in her lap. She opened it carefully, lifting the photograph again. The four boys grinned and shoved each other, forever preserved at sixteen.

“Padfoot,” she murmured to herself, touching her father’s laughing face. “Prongs.” James Potter’s grin. “Wormtail.” The small one, round and overeager.

Her finger landed on the last. “Moony.”

Professor Lupin’s younger face stared back, tired even in the photo. She thought of the boggart, of the moon, of his scar. Of how he watched her sometimes as though she weren’t meant to be alive at all.

Werewolves. The idea wouldn’t leave her alone.

“But if you were scared of them,” she whispered into the quiet, “wouldn’t your boggart be one?”

The question hung unanswered in the dormitory shadows.

She folded the photo back into the pouch, her chest tight. Whatever secrets tied these four together, they were thicker than the stories everyone else swallowed. And she was going to untangle them—one thread at a time.

Her dreams cleared things up for her. She saw Lupin morph into a werewolf under the moon and when she woke up in the morning with sweaty palms she knew— he wasn’t scared of werewolves, he was one.

Chapter Text

The whistle of the Hogwarts Express cut the air cleanly in two, steam boiling across the platform and swallowing coats and trunks and chatter. Students darted through the white like actors slipping between scenes.

Eda stood a little to the side, not in uniform for once—no crest pinned over her heart, no green tie knotted under her chin. Just a dark green winter cloak, heavy and lined, the fur-trimmed hood soft against the nape of her neck. It felt… calmer. Less like walking about with her surname stitched to her throat.

She looked back up towards the castle. In the slate-grey winter light, Hogwarts was mostly shadow and gold: turrets black against the sky, windows lit as though they held all the warmth in Britain. If she squinted she could imagine she saw the flicker of the Slytherin fire somewhere in the vastness; ridiculous, but there it was. 

That was when she saw it.

At the rim of the forest, where the steam thinned and the snowflakes drifted slower, a dog stood watching the platform. It was too big by half—massive through the shoulders, coat shaggy and black as coal. It didn’t pace, didn’t fuss, didn’t look away. It simply stood with its head up, ears pricked, eyes fixed on the chaos of departing children.

Eda’s breath snagged. She had the sudden, unreasonable certainty that it was seeing her, not them. Snow blurred the edge of it; the world held still for the length of a heartbeat.

“Eda! Come on!”

Draco’s voice, impatient, dragged at the moment. He was already half inside their carriage, hair catching flakes, sling artfully arranged even though anyone with eyes knew the arm was perfectly fine by now. She glanced back to the trees on instinct.

Empty. Just snow and trunks and that thick winter quiet that eats sound. The dog was gone.

Strange, she thought, moving, the suitcase handle bumping her shin. Strange, and somehow important.

Malfoy Manor rose out of the white like a statement.

The long drive curved through frost-stiff hedges, statues powdered with snow, and then the house unfurled—long and elegant, all pale stone and black windows beaming warm light. Out on the grounds, Aurors paced. Two by two, cloaks flapping, breath smoking in the cold. Wands in their hands like walking sticks they didn’t trust. Their tracks crossed and recrossed the lawns in neat lines, as though someone had planned the pattern.

August had been like this too: patrols under the lemon-sour summer sun, rules written at the edges of rooms, Draco and Eda not allowed out without someone counting their footsteps. Sirius Black had escaped. The Ministry—publicly very calm and privately very frantic—had decided the Malfoy name, useful and notorious both, needed guarding. Or watching. You could call it either.

Inside, warmth hit like a spell. House-elves whisked away cloaks and gloves. Fires roared in fireplaces dressed with evergreen and silver ribbon. The Yule tree—green-black and enormous—climbed almost to the painted ceiling in the great hall, candles floating amongst its branches as if the air had learned to hold them.

Narcissa swept across the marble like she’d been waiting in the doorway for hours. “My darlings,” she said, gathering Draco close with one arm and Eda with the other, her perfume a memory Eda had carried around all term without meaning to. Draco submitted to the hug with princely longsuffering; Eda leaned into it without letting herself look needy. “Safe and sound” Narcissa murmured against her hair, and let them go to look them up and down like a seamstress judging a hem.

Lucius was there too, pale as the stone, cane in one hand, expression arranged in that polite nothingness he wore in public. It warmed, almost invisibly, as his eyes rested on them. His gloved fingers came down on Draco’s shoulder, then Eda’s—one second only, a blessing brief as a touch of water at the temple. “Welcome home,” he said. He could make two words sound like a formal gift. “How does Hogwarts treat you?”

“Snape says my essays are ahead of fourth-years,” Draco announced.

“Snape says your essays would be ahead of anyone’s if you used fewer adjectives,” Eda said mildly.

Lucius’s mouth curled. “A correct criticism,” he murmured, which made Draco scowl for an interesting two seconds, then preen anyway.

The trunks vanished upward in a procession of anxious elves. Shoes shone themselves. Somewhere in another room, a clock chimed a deep, contented note. For the first time since September, the walls didn’t listen back. Eda let the feeling of it soak in.

She kept circling back to the dream she’d had before leaving Hogwarts — Lupin’s face shifting, the wolf inside him clawing out. It made too much sense. His absences, the boggart, the scar.

She nearly told Aunt Narcissa over dinner, nearly whispered it like a casual fact. She thought about Draco too, who’d gloat but believe her. Daphne, who would laugh but not tell a soul.

But the words stuck in her throat. The secret sat heavier when it stayed hers. Better to hold it. Better to watch.

Malfoy Manor in winter moved on rules that weren’t written down because they didn’t need to be. Breakfast in the long room with the tall windows, tea in porcelain shallow as lily pads, the fire making the spoons wink. Narcissa asked how many hours’ reading McGonagall thought a child could do before she went blind; Draco inflated his achievements until they bowed under their own weight; Lucius pushed a plate of kippers across to Eda and said, “Eat,” which in this house was how care sounded.

Afternoons belonged to whoever reached for them. Draco reached for the orchard and the icy air, and the Aurors’ distant presence as a kind of audience. Eda reached for the library, because libraries have a way of making you feel you can get nearer to clean answers.

Snow feathered against a tall window that didn’t quite fit its frame. The draught made the candles fuss; it made the glass complain. Beyond, a line of patrol crossed the lawn. Eda turned a page and didn’t read it, and in that pause she heard voices like you hear a tune you didn’t know you remembered.

“…I don’t get it,” a young woman was saying, voice low but edged with nerves. “They never explained it properly in training. Why would the Potters put their lives on Black of all people? Everyone says he was trouble even back at school.”

A man snorted. Older, rougher, with the rhythm of someone who’d been walking these rounds too long. “Because he was their boy’s godfather, that’s why. Closest friend James Potter ever had. You’ve not heard that part? Course not. They don’t put everything in the Prophet.”

“I heard he betrayed them,” she said quickly, like she was reciting what she’d heard around the ministry. “That’s why You-Know-Who found them.”

“That’s the line.” A pause as snow crunched under boots. “Truth is, they’d hidden themselves under a Fidelius Charm. You know how that works?”

“Bit,” she admitted.

“Keeper holds the secret. Only one who can say it. You could hex him to bits and still not get the address unless he chose to give it up. Potters made Black their Keeper.”

Silence for a beat. Then: “…oh. So if—if He found them, it had to be Black.”

“That’s what we were told. That’s what most of the office believed. Young family in hiding, trusted their friend more than anyone else, and he sold them out.”

The woman lowered her voice further, though the cold air carried it still. “But wasn’t there talk of someone else? Pettigrew?”

The man grunted. “Peter Pettigrew. Another mate of theirs. Poor sod. Went after Black himself when he heard what happened. Cornered him in some Muggle street. Black blasted the lot of them. Pettigrew and a dozen Muggles dead. You know what they found of him? One finger. That’s it. Rest of him blown to dust.”

Eda’s grip tightened on the edge of her book.

The woman swore under her breath. “Merlin. And Black just stood there?”

“Laughing, they say. Mad as a hatter. Aurors brought him in without a fight. Straight to Azkaban. Didn’t even bother with a trial.” The man’s voice soured a little, but he didn’t take it back.

“And now he’s out.” The younger one sounded half-thrilled, half-horrified.

“Yeah. Twelve years in a cell, and he slips through the cracks like smoke.” Their boots scuffed closer. “And here we are, pacing hedges in Wiltshire in case Black fancies calling on his old cousins. Or that daughter of his they’ve got inside. Doubt he even knows she’s here, but the Ministry doesn’t like leaving holes for madmen to crawl through.”

The woman gave a shaky laugh. Their voices faded with their steps.

Eda stayed pressed against the wood of the bookcase long after. Keeper. Fidelius. Pettigrew dead—or only a finger left. Her father laughing as they dragged him away.

The pieces made one picture when she held them out at arm’s length. But when she brought them closer, they slid and refused to lock. Her father’s letters from James. The photo of four boys. The scarf. Why would a traitor keep those? Why would a betrayer keep reminders of the betrayed?

That night, when her room was only lamp and quiet and the sound of the house turning itself over to night, Eda opened her journal.

She wrote the date. She wrote Fidelius: Keeper holds address. Not a password. Can’t be forced out. She underlined can’t twice.

Then:

Older Auror says it was Father as Keeper. Not public. Pettigrew = “Wormtail.” Street. Hole. Finger. Twelve Muggles dead. Laughed (?)

She hesitated, staring at the curve of the letter d in dead until it stopped looking like a word and was only a shape.

Lupin = “Moony.” Boggart. Scar. Absences. Dream → werewolf. She paused again. On Malfoy carpets, the word came out shinier than it did in her head. Raised to believe dangerous. Untrustworthy. 

She tapped the quill against the edge of the page and made herself put the thought down that had been trying all day to be thought.

He arrives at Hogwarts this year. Father escapes this year. Coincidence? She hated the word; it felt like lying.

What if he framed Father? If he was Keeper instead. Or if he changed it at the last minute. 

The pen stalled. That line felt good to write, but also not. It fitted her anger like a coat. She had no proof. 

On the last lines of the page she wrote:

I don’t know. (Horrible.) Keep watching Lupin. Keep Father’s things safe. Find out what “Moony” wrote to him. Do not be stupid.

She shut the journal before the ink dried, as if not looking at the words would stop them being quite so loud. She then realised she had written everything in German. That would serve her good, no one would be able to sneak a look in it and understood what she had written.

Yule came looking like an illustration. The long table wore a runner of dark leaves and silver. The tree was so tall the star at its top threw light on the ceiling’s painted sky. Elves moved like quick thoughts, carrying trays breathing steam. The Aurors were dark shapes beyond the windows, ghosts in ministry-issue wool.

Narcissa had dressed the day in black velvet and kindness. She fussed with Draco’s cuff as if he were six again. She tucked a loose bit of Eda’s hair behind her ear and said, “There,” as though she’d fixed something larger than hair. Lucius carved pheasant as neatly as if the meat might be marking him on technique.

They exchanged gifts after dinner in the drawing room, the fire making the silver pieces blink awake. Draco got the polish set he’d been on about since September and an enchanted model pitch that re-enacted famous saves if you tapped the scoreboard. Narcissa’s present to Eda was a bracelet—fine silver, tiny constellations that chimed against one another when she moved her hand. “For luck,” she said, fastening it with cool fingers. Lucius’s was a Charms text bound in black with Eda Euphemia Black written on the inside front in his tidy hand. He said, “For work,” and that, in his mouth, counted as for love.

After the fuss, they played chess. Draco lost, sulked, tried reckless tactics, lost again. Narcissa read in a chair by the fire, and from time to time Eda felt that gaze mothers have when their hands are busy and their heads are in a book but they know where you are anyway. Lucius dozed with his glass on the armrest and the quiet satisfaction of a man whose plans—for this evening at least—had no need to be amended.

If life were a thing you could freeze and keep in a jar, Eda would have kept that hour. The house held. Her bracelet chimed when she reached for a bishop. No one’s name was being hissed under doors.

But even there, even then, the thought kept rolling back like the tide: a dog black as a shadow watching a train platform. A laugh she’d never heard and couldn’t imagine. A word scratchy as a wool collar—Keeper. And Lupin’s face folding the way not-human faces fold.

She slept badly, with her journal under her pillow and her bracelet cold against her skin. Out beyond the glass, Aurors turned again at the end of their line, boots cracking the thin ice where the lawn dipped. The cold threaded through the loose window and found her cheek. She tucked the blankets tighter and let the black dog watch whatever it wanted to watch until morning.

Chapter Text

The return to Hogwarts always felt quieter than leaving it. No steam clouding the platform, no frantic hugs or owls hooting as if they knew the world was ending. Just tired faces, red noses, and the drag of trunks across frost-bitten stone.

Eda stepped off the train and tugged her cloak tighter. The air bit at her ears. A dozen voices rose and fell around her, but her eyes flicked instinctively towards one person: Harry Potter.

He was with Weasley and Granger, of course, heads bent together in some running conversation. But when he glanced up—just for a moment, just long enough to notice her—his expression tightened. Anger, sharp and green, flashed across his face. Then it was gone, replaced by whatever easy scowl he gave Malfoy in public.

But Eda had seen it. And she saw it again, and again, over the next week.

Always when no one else was watching. In the corridor outside Charms, at the foot of the stairs near the Great Hall, across the tables at breakfast when his friends’ heads were turned. His eyes would flick to her, colder than before. He wasn’t just disliking her anymore—he knew something.

Eda’s stomach twisted with certainty: he must’ve found out about the Fidelius. That her father had been the one to betray James and Lily Potter. Harry didn’t have to say a word; the knowledge was written across his face, ugly and accusing.

And Eda hated how her pulse always leapt when she caught him at it, like he was carrying a piece of the puzzle she needed.

The first week back, she tried to corner him in the library.

She’d chosen a day when Granger was buried under parchment and Weasley was nowhere in sight. Harry had slipped away from their table, books under his arm, heading down the quieter row of shelves. Eda followed, silent as she could manage on the stone floor.

She reached the end of the row—empty. The shelves stretched on, shadows pooled at the far end. Potter was gone.

Her fingers curled tight on the spine of the nearest book. He’d heard her. He’d run.

The second time was outside Potions. The Slytherins and Gryffindors always spilled out in opposite tides after class, but Eda saw her chance when Malfoy got distracted boasting about Snape’s compliments. Harry slipped through the crowd, and she darted forward.

“Potter,” she began, but Weasley clapped a hand on Harry’s shoulder before he could stop. “Come on, mate—Quidditch practice,” he said, loud and oblivious, and dragged him away.

Harry didn’t look back.

The third try came a few days later. A narrow stairwell between the third and fourth floors, where hardly anyone passed at that hour. She waited, half-hidden in the alcove, until she heard footsteps and saw his shadow bend around the wall.

She stepped out—too quickly, too obvious. Harry froze at the sight of her. For a moment she thought he might actually stop.

Then he brushed past, shoulder stiff, eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Coward,” she muttered under her breath, though he was already gone.

The rest of January dragged with the heavy rhythm of classes and cold. The castle walls wept with damp. Breath misted in the air of every corridor. The chatter of Quidditch swelled louder than ever: Slytherin was to play Ravenclaw next.

Draco went on and on about it, naturally, strutting through the common room as though he were captain rather than a Seeker with more bravado than record. He bragged about Nimbus superiority, about Cho Chang’s inexperience. His little gang echoed him until the walls practically rattled.

Eda ignored the lot of it.

On the day of the match, she curled into her usual corner of the library, relishing the rare silence. The castle felt hollow without the roar of students rushing to the pitch. She dipped her quill in ink, scratching notes half-heartedly, her thoughts drifting not to Potions but to Potter’s looks.

When the crowd returned, the silence shattered. Cheers thundered through the corridors, echoing off stone. Someone was chanting Cho Chang’s name.

Eda didn’t have to ask who’d won.

By supper, the Great Hall was a mess of colour and noise. Gryffindors banged their cups on the table, chanting Ravenclaw’s song. Slytherins slumped in bad moods, Draco loudest among them, insisting it wasn’t fair, that Chang had used dirty tricks.

Eda sat across from Daphne, picking at roast potatoes while the noise swirled. Daphne was quiet, more intent on watching the Ravenclaw table than eating.

Finally, she leaned in close enough that only Eda could hear. “Do you think Nott was looking at me during breakfast?” she asked, as though it were a question of life or death.

Eda raised her brows, fighting a smile. “Nott?”

Daphne nodded, eyes fixed on her plate.

Eda leaned in further, voice dry. “Is that the same boy you cut your bangs for before the first Hogsmeade trip?”

Colour bloomed high on Daphne’s cheeks. She huffed, rolling her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her. “Shut up.”

Eda smirked, spearing another potato. “I’m just asking.”

Daphne muttered something under her breath, but Eda caught the small, pleased twist of her lips.

The chatter of the Hall swelled again, Slytherins snapping at Gryffindors across the room. A group of Hufflepuffs clapped Cho Chang on the back as she walked past, smiling shyly. Draco muttered furiously to Crabbe and Goyle, who nodded as though his sulks were gospel.

Eda let it all wash over her, more interested in the flicker of movement outside the window—something small and grey darting across the ledge before vanishing from sight. A rat, she thought idly, chased by the cold.

The days wound on, heavy with frost. Eda found herself watching Potter more often than she’d like to admit. Not openly, not like Draco with his jeers. Quietly. Measuring the way his expression sharpened whenever their eyes crossed.

He knew. That much was clear. Somehow, he’d learned about the Fidelius. He looked at her like she was living proof of his parents’ betrayal.

And Eda couldn’t stand not knowing what else he might know.

Three failed attempts gnawed at her. He slipped through her fingers every time, as if he knew she was coming. And maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to keep his knowledge to himself.

But she wouldn’t let him keep it forever.

Late one night, back in the dormitory, she opened her journal. The bracelet aunt Narcissa had given her slid loose around her wrist as she wrote.

Potter knows: Father was the Keeper. That he betrayed them. He looks at me like it’s true. But it doesn’t fit. It still doesn’t fit.

She paused, quill tip blotting the page.

If Potter knows something I don’t, I’ll make him tell me. Somehow.

She shut the book hard, sliding it back under her pillow. Outside, snow pressed against the windows like a curtain. Somewhere in the shadows, she thought she heard a faint scuffle—like tiny claws on stone—but when she looked, there was nothing there

Chapter Text

On the night of the sixth of February, everyone woke to noise.

It started like a dropped plate somewhere far away—one of those little bangs the castle makes when it settles—and built into shouts and feet hammering on stairs. Doors opened, heads poked out, questions poured into the corridors.

“—Gryffindor Tower—”

“—someone broke—”

“—knife—”

By the time Eda had her cloak around her shoulders, the disturbance had moved. Slytherin was too deep into the rock for the panic to come down in full, but word travels faster than fire when the word is the right one. They weren’t called up to the Great Hall this time; they weren’t told to roll out sleeping bags and pretend it was exciting. But the message was the same: stay put; the staff are sweeping the castle; doors barred, portraits alert, staircases re-charmed.

By breakfast the story had stopped being fog and turned into a sharp thing: Sirius Black had got into the Gryffindor common room and cut Ron Weasley’s bed curtains with a knife. No one was dead. No one knew how he’d got in. Draco held court like he’d arranged the whole affair and spent fifteen minutes workshopping the best line to call out to a Gryffindor at lunch. Eda let it all go past her. It stuck anyway.

Harry hadn’t slept, if his face was any sign. He looked like someone had rung a bell inside his skull. When their eyes met, and only when no one could have sworn to it, the look he gave her went past anger into something worse.

He wants blood, she thought, and then hated herself for thinking it. He was thirteen, same as her. But grief makes ages do odd things.

On the twelfth, aunt Narcissa’s owl found Eda at breakfast and dropped a thick envelope onto her plate—the elegant hand she knew anywhere.

Darling girl, do take care. The Committee is convening today on that Hippogriff incident; there’s talk of a formal hearing at the Ministry. It won’t be pretty. Your uncle says sentiment has no place where claws are involved. I’m afraid you’ll be hearing about it in the corridors. Keep your head down. Write when you can.

—Aunt Cissa.

They were in the courtyard later, Eda and Daphne, coats tight, fingers inside sleeves. Their breath made little ghosts and the flagstones squeaked where snow had melted and refrozen.

“So?” Daphne said, eyes alive for news she could trust. “The hearing?”

“It was yesterday,” Eda said, keeping her voice even. “In London. Committee for Disposal of Dangerous Creatures.”

“Disposal,” Daphne repeated grimly. “That doesn’t sound hopeful.”

“It’s not meant to,” Eda said. “Luc—my uncle thinks it’ll go the way Malfoys like things to go. Which is to say, tidy.” She made a face she didn’t let many people see.

Daphne blew into her hands. “Poor Hagrid.”

A crunch of feet on the frosted path. Eda didn’t turn her head, but the hair on her arms prickled. She felt, more than saw, Granger draw up short within earshot, Potter just behind her. They’d come through from the greenhouses; there was soil on Granger’s sleeve.

“Excuse me,” Granger said, a little too loudly, chin up like a dare. “What did you just say?”

Eda kept her face calm. „Uhm.. like I‘d tell you lot.”

Granger’s mouth tightened. “Well, Hagrid wrote—he…” She swallowed and looked like she wanted to punch a wall for being the sort that cries. “They’re going to… it’s not fair!”

Potter’s eyes were hot and furious again in the cold air. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He looked at Eda like she had personally sharpened the axe. Eda stared back, bland and bored on purpose. He flinched first and pushed past with Granger, the sound of their boots scraping in time.

“Subtle,” Daphne muttered, when they were gone.

“Gryffindors,” Eda said. “Subtle’s not in the handbook.”

Her stomach wouldn’t settle. It wasn’t the Hippogriff. It was the steady drum of her own theory that beat along with everything else: Lupin and her father, the same year, the too-neat line someone had drawn and told everyone to admire. She’d started tracking the lunar calendar in the back of her notes and had caught Lupin’s tired eyes again and again, his absences lining up with the sky whether or not anyone else noticed. She watched him in class the way one watches someone on a chessboard, not for the big moves but the tells—the way his jaw tightened at certain words (secret, trust), the way he looked when someone praised James Potter in front of him (fondness, old grief), the way his hands stilled when anyone said Fidelius like they’d learned it in a book and didn’t know its proper weight.

She needed proof. Anyone clever could drown in a theory. How do you prove who held a secret twelve years ago when the magic was designed not to be pulled back up? She wrote questions in her journal and crossed out half of them. She watched, and thought, and came up against the same walls.

The match everyone actually wanted to see wasn’t Slytherin’s loss. It was Gryffindor v Ravenclaw, round two for a boy with a broom he wasn’t supposed to have. Word spread sideways through the castle: McGonagall had given Potter his Firebolt back. Anonymous gift at Christmas. Confiscated, taken apart, put back together. Cleared. Returned.

Eda didn’t care for broom brands, but she cared for puzzles and for people who kept turning up where the puzzles were. She meant to avoid the cold. Then Draco asked—begged, really—in his most put-upon drawl, and that, more than the Firebolt, made her say, “Fine.” He wouldn’t tell her why he wanted her there. “Just come,” he’d said, annoyed he had to ask. “It’ll be worth it.”

Worth it how? She found out.

They climbed the stands in a storm of scarves and flags. Eda pulled her hood low, glad of the crowd. She had no intention of being the only Black anyone could pick out. The wind cut, even with charms. She kept her hands in her sleeves and let the noise pour over her like rain.

Potter came out to a cheer that pressed in on bone. Even Eda felt it. The Firebolt gleamed like it had been polished by angels and he moved with it like the thing had read his mind. Cho Chang looked ready for a fight; she had a good seat on her broom and better sense in her eyes.

The whistle blew. It was impossible not to watch. Eda’s stomach did an odd shift when she realised she was leaning forward like everyone else. The Firebolt listened to Potter the way a hand listens to a thought. He went from hover to vertical to nowhere in the time it took the rest of them to blink. McGonagall clutched her tartan; Madam Hooch looked like she was going to bite someone; the Weasley twins lived for this.

Eda tore her eyes away for a second, annoyed with herself for giving in to any of it, and saw it across the far side of the pitch—down by the boundary, away from the crush of students, where the stands threw long shadows.

A dog. Huge. Black. Still as a statue in the snow.

Her throat went tight. She dragged her scarf higher, instinctively, and sank a little lower in her seat. It wasn’t looking up at the stands. It was watching the match. Watching Harry. That was worse.

She turned back. She didn’t look again.

Sometime in the second half the temperature of the crowd changed. The noise went sharper, frightened. A ripple passed through the Ravenclaw end—the sort of ripple you get when people say Dementors all at once.

Eda snapped her head down to the pitch. Four tall, black-robed shapes had appeared near the goalposts, loping onto the grass. The breath sucked out of the people around her. Her chest clenched. It was the train again—the light going thin, the skin at her wrists feeling too cold—but the air didn’t actually drop, not this time. The shapes moved wrong. Their silhouettes were… off.

Potter didn’t hesitate. He banked his broom, wheeled, and streaked towards them. It was reckless, stupid, and exactly what a Gryffindor would do. Then the silver burst out of his wand, bright and certain, charging the pitch with light. It wasn’t a mist or a wisp; it was an animal—antlers and all—pounding across the grass to meet the black shapes. The crowd gasped; the stag bowled through them and the figures crumpled in a mess of limbs and cheap fabric.

The stands broke into two noises at once: awe and laughter. The “Dementors” turned out to be Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Marcus Flint under dark robes. McGonagall looked like her soul had tried to leave her body and was now asking to be let back in. Madam Hooch blew her whistle so hard it sounded like she was trying to punish the wood. Detentions were barked. Points deducted. Draco tried to look dignified from inside a heap of polyester and failed.

Eda didn’t laugh with the rest. She watched Lupin on the staff row instead. He’d gone very still when the silver had burst from Potter’s wand, his mouth tightening, the sort of look you wear when a memory stands up and you tell it to sit down. Dumbledore clapped the boy’s shoulder when he landed. Snape looked ready to write up a list of new rules. Lupin—Lupin looked proud and sad in the same breath, and Eda didn’t know what to do with that.

Gryffindor won. Of course they did. The stands emptied in a riot of scarves and hoarse voices and people telling the story five different ways before they’d reached the steps. Eda followed the flow down, kept her head low, ignored Draco’s muttering about unfairness and referees with favourites and the very poor quality of modern jokes.

She glanced, once, towards the far boundary. The snow there was trampled by boots; no black shape stood at the edge anymore.

She watched Lupin harder the week after. In Defence he was hoarse and pale from cold but steady in his lessons, precise with wandwork, patient with thick questions. Twice he rubbed the heel of his hand absent-mindedly along his jaw where the pale scar cut it. When someone in the back row parroted something shaky about Fidelius from a badly written book, Lupin corrected them with a sentence short enough to keep everyone from remembering it wrong and moved on. He never looked at Eda longer than he had to. She decided not to think about why that stung.

Her journal filled with circles and arrows and things that weren’t proofs. She needed something that wasn’t a feeling. She had a theory that fitted in her head like a stone fits in a hand, and the sight of the dog by the pitch kept throwing the weight of it against her ribs. She’d stopped calling it coincidence in ink. In her mind she still did, on bad days.

She found Harry on a Tuesday night when the corridors had emptied and the castle hummed low like it was tired. Curfew had nearly rung itself in. She’d been back from the library and old habits had made her take the third-floor route, the one with the long run of unlit portraits that never snitched because they were asleep. His footsteps were ahead of her—soft, quick, angry.

“Potter,” she said, before he could do the disappearing act again.

He stopped. Just like that. Turned. He looked as wired as she felt. The lamplight failed halfway down the corridor; beyond it, the dark made shapes of nothing. No Weasley. No Granger. No witnesses.

“What,” he said flatly.

She lifted her chin. “You’ve been looking at me like you’ve got something to say.”

His jaw worked. “Do you know what he did?”

She kept her face very still.

“My parents,” he said, voice too loud for the hour and for the walls. “Do you know what your father did to them? To everyone? Twelve Muggles. Peter Pettigrew. A street blown apart. And he laughed.” His hands were fists at his sides. “He laughed. And now he’s breaking into dormitories with a knife. He was the Keeper. He told on them willingly! He’s a murderer.”

Eda let him say it. All of it, the way bad weather runs out of rain if you let it. She didn’t look at his fists. She didn’t look at the window where frost made patterns like maps. She looked at his face and saw thirteen years of adults telling one story the same way because it made the world simpler, like a bed with tight corners.

When he ran out of words and breath both, she said, quiet enough that the sentence wouldn’t be heard by anyone but him, “You believe everything an adult tells you, don’t you?”

He flinched like she’d slapped him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” she said evenly, “you’ve taken the story the Ministry handed you and decided it must be the whole truth. No questions asked. No room for anything else.”

His fists tightened. “What else could it be? He was their Secret Keeper. He told Voldemort where they were. That’s not a story—that’s a fact.”

“Is it?” Her tone sharpened, but she kept her voice quiet. “Were you there? Did you hear him say it? Or have you just repeated what people want you to believe?”

Harry flushed, furious. “Everyone knows what happened—”

“Everyone knows what they’ve been told,” she cut in. “There’s a difference.”

His mouth opened, but she pressed on, softer now: “You’re angry. I get it. You want someone to blame. But what if you’re pointing at the wrong person?”

He stared at her, stunned for a beat, then demanded “Then who? Who else could it have been?”

Eda met his eyes. “Your father had more than one friend.”

Harry blinked again.

“They weren’t just him and my father. There were four of them. You’ve got one of them teaching you right now.” She watched the confusion flicker across his face, but didn’t give him the whole answer. “Tell me, Harry—has he been around for you all your life? Writing, checking in, making sure you were alright?”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “That’s—no, but—he’s—Professor Lupin’s good. He’s nothing like—”

“You don’t know that,” she said flatly. “You’ve known him for what, a few months? You think that cancels out the twelve years he wasn’t there?”

Harry’s voice cracked. “Don’t talk about him like that. He’s—he’s decent. He helps me. He’s not a traitor.”

“You don’t know who’s a traitor,” Eda said calmly, though her stomach knotted. “You’ve only been told what they want you to believe!“

For a moment they just stared at each other, the silence thick as the stone around them. Then the sound of prefects echoed from further down the corridor, breaking it.

Eda’s mouth twitched into the faintest smile. “Curfew. Better run before they catch you.”

Harry didn’t move right away. He looked like he wanted to keep fighting, but he had nothing left to throw at her. Finally, with a shake of his head, he turned and stalked off, footsteps hard against the flagstones.

When she finally moved, her legs felt jittery. In her dormitory she sat on the edge of her bed until the sting at the back of her eyes went away by itself. She opened her journal and didn’t write anything. There wasn’t a sentence that would behave.

Outside, the moon dragged itself up the sky and the lake breathed frost. Somewhere beyond the pitch, in whatever shadow it liked best, a black dog settled its weight and kept its watch, and no one noticed the thin grey shape that crossed a sill to keep out of the cold.

Chapter Text

The trick, when you’re half-starved and colder than the stone under your feet, was to keep moving. Sirius knew that. The dog part of him knew it even better: paws down, nose low, tail a line behind him. But tonight he wasn’t only a dog. He was a man creeping along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, ribs sharp against his shirt, eyes fixed on the castle lit up against the snow.

Hogwarts looked like a story he’d been written out of. Windows spilled gold into the night, the air sang with the sound of laughter carried on the wind. It cut through him worse than the chill, those echoes. Every light reminded him of what he’d lost— he didn’t dwell on it. It was too hurtful.

Harry was easy to spot these days, even from the shadows. That mop of hair was James’s legacy, untameable, unmistakable. The boy stood like his father too, shoulders braced as if he expected the world to push him. It had. Too many times already.

The girl—his girl—was harder. Sirius thought he’d seen her once, back in December. Steam and chaos on the platform, Aurors with their hands tight on their wands. A green cloak, hood trimmed with fur. Her head turned for half a second, and something inside him jolted. But the fog swallowed her up before he could be sure. He’d convinced himself afterward it was just wishful thinking. But it haunted him anyway.

Time had taken her away from him. Infants didn’t stay infants while you rotted. Azkaban made memories brittle and left you clutching the same few scraps until your knuckles bled. He hated that the last true image of her he carried was a squalling baby, fists clenched, grey eyes wide and new.

It was Regulus all over again—Sirius remembering his brother as a boy chasing after him, then opening his eyes years later to find him already dead, a stranger who had worn his name.

The Firebolt had been the easy decision. He’d seen Harry’s Nimbus crash into the Whomping Willow, splintered beyond saving. James would’ve raised hell about it and bought him another the same night. Sirius had no vault to dip into, no name he could safely sign to a letter. But he could send the boy the best broom in the world. Anonymous, yes. But right. A broom James would have wanted his son to fly.

For Eda, he had nothing. Nothing but guilt.

He’d seen a necklace once in a shop window, simple silver with a star dangling from the chain. Not gaudy, not ostentatious like half the Black heirlooms he hated. Just… delicate. It had made him stop walking, just for a second. He imagined slipping it into a box, imagined her opening it at Christmas. And then the thought soured. She was thirteen. What did he know about her tastes? About what she loved? Did she like books? Quidditch? Cats? Dogs? He didn’t even know her favourite colour.

What sort of father bought jewellery because he couldn’t think of anything else? It felt cheap. Cowardly. He’d walked away and left the necklace in the window, furious with himself.

Tonight, though, the plan was simple. Wormtail.

Sirius had picked up the trail weeks ago: a rat too long-lived, too clever, too conveniently placed at Harry’s side. The truth was a gnawing thing, sharper than hunger, worse than cold. Peter Pettigrew was alive, scuttling under a boy’s pillow, grinning in his sleep while Sirius’s name stayed rotting on the Prophet’s front page.

He found the password list by sheer chance. A scrap of parchment trampled in a corridor, ink smudged by nervous fingers. He turned it over in his hands and nearly laughed out loud. Gryffindors. Brave enough to duel trolls, careless enough to write down the one secret that mattered.

“Thank you, you idiot,” he muttered, folding it and tucking it into his pocket.

The Fat Lady huffed at him when he gave the word, but she let him through.

The common room looked almost the same as it had when he was a boy. Smoke, wool, ink-stained tables. The sofa that threw you if you sat on the wrong side. For a moment Sirius stood in the doorway, letting memory choke him. He could almost hear James laughing, Remus groaning at their homework, Peter wheedling for another butterbeer.

And now? James dead. Remus a stranger. Peter the rat had betrayed them all. And his godson is asleep somewhere above.

And maybe—maybe—his daughter too.

His eyes went to the girls’ staircase, and his chest tightened. He remembered trying to climb those steps as a cocky teenager, only to have them flatten underfoot and send him sliding back into the common room. He’d laughed then. Tonight it made him furious. A wall between him and the chance to see his daughter’s face.

He stood there too long, glaring at the steps as if they might relent out of pity. Of course they didn’t. He forced himself to move.

The boys’ dormitories smelled the same. Dust and parchment, damp cloaks hung too close to the fire. He crept through the room, knife steady in his hand. He knew which bed was Harry’s before he saw it, the hair giving him away in the moonlight. For a heartbeat Sirius wanted nothing more than to kneel there and watch him breathe. But this wasn’t the night for sentiment.

He moved on. The next bed—the Weasley boy. Red hair, blankets twisted. And under the pillow, the faintest lump. Sirius’s blood went cold.

There.

He slid the knife into the curtain, breath tight in his chest. Just one move, one strike, and it would be done—twelve years of waiting, of rotting, of knowing the truth while the world called him a murderer.

The boy stirred.

Sirius froze. Weasley mumbled something in his sleep, shifted, clutched at the lump under his pillow. A tail slipped out into the dark. Sirius lunged, caught fur for a second—then Peter writhed free, slick as oil, and vanished under the bed.

The dormitory erupted. Weasley shrieked. Curtains tore. Boys sat bolt upright, shouting. Sirius’s fingers itched for one more chance, but it was gone.

He bolted. Down the stairs, shadows snapping at his heels. A prefect blundered into him; Sirius shoved him aside with the flat of his blade. Voices shouted behind him, portraits cursed, and he slipped out into the corridor like smoke.

Crookshanks met him halfway down the stairwell, eyes gleaming. The cat twitched its tail as if to say we nearly had him. Sirius gave him a rough pat. “Next time,” he whispered, and meant it.

He didn’t linger. By the time he reached the grounds, the cold had sunk its teeth back into him. His body ached. The dog inside him wanted out—warmth, simplicity, the comfort of a four-legged pace. He let it take over, running the perimeter of the pitch until thought gave way to instinct.

The trail of Wormtail slipped away that night. But Sirius had patience now, patience Azkaban had carved into his bones. He would try again. He would wait under windows and listen to passwords and trust the cat with half the work. He would keep watching for Harry on his broom, for his girl, for a rat too cowardly to keep running.

Chapter Text

History of Magic was the best class for daydreaming. Not the pleasant sort, where you drifted into half-sleep and imagined something nice. No, History of Magic was for the kind of daydreams that spun like tangled string in your head until you couldn’t tell which end you’d started with. Professor Binns droned on about a goblin rebellion from three centuries ago, quill squeaking across the blackboard in tiny loops. Most of the class fought to keep their eyes open.

Eda wasn’t listening.

Her parchment was full of German words, but not about goblins. She wrote in neat, small letters, so from behind it would look like she was taking notes. But every line was another question, another theory, another circle she couldn’t stop tracing.

If Moony was the real Secret Keeper, then what?

She tapped her quill against the parchment, staring at the ink until it blurred. If Lupin had been the one hiding James and Lily, then he was the one who had betrayed them. Not her father. It explained too much. Lupin was clever, quiet, trusted. He’d been in the right place to pass the information along. And now here he was, teaching at Hogwarts, just when Sirius Black escaped Azkaban.

Eda’s lips twitched. She didn’t believe in coincidences, not anymore.

But if Lupin had been the Keeper, if he had sold out the Potters—why would Father break into Gryffindor Tower? She wrote the question, large, underlined it twice.

February 6th. Everyone still whispered about it, though they lowered their voices when she passed. Sirius Black slashing up a bedcurtain, a knife in his hand, only Ron Weasley’s screams keeping anyone from getting murdered that night.

That was the story. That was what had happened.

But Eda didn’t believe it. She didn’t want to.

She remembered what Daphne had said a few days later, voice pitched low as they’d passed in the corridor: It was Longbottom’s fault. He left the password lying about.

If Neville Longbottom had dropped the parchment, anyone could have picked it up. Anyone at all.

Lupin, maybe. Probably.

Eda’s quill scratched faster. What if he had found it, used Polyjuice, slipped into the tower disguised as Sirius? If Lupin wanted to deepen the lie—that Sirius was a madman after Harry—what better way than to stage it? To terrify the school, to make the Ministry’s warnings echo even louder?

But where‘d he get Fathers hair for the potion?She questioned.

Her eyes narrowed on the ink. What if it really had been her father?

That question gnawed at her worse than all the others. If it was him, why had he gone to Weasley’s bed? Everyone said he’d mixed them up—that in the dark, red and black hair could look the same. But Eda didn’t buy it. Not for a second.

Weasley’s hair was too bright, too obviously ref even in the dark. Harry’s was messy and dark. You couldn’t mistake them.

So if it was her father… why Weasley?

Eda drew a line across her parchment and wrote it again:

What did my father want with Ronald Weasley?

The quill dug too hard, leaving a groove in the parchment.

Binns was still droning. Someone yawned loudly. Daphne nudged her under the desk. “Are you writing a novel?” she whispered.

Eda blinked down at the crowded parchment, then gave Daphne a thin smile. “Something like that.”

That night, in her dormitory, she opened her journal. Kreacher had pressed it flat for her once, smoothing the spine until it shut with a whisper. She tucked herself against the headboard, curtains drawn, and copied everything from her notes onto the clean page.

She tapped the quill against her lip.

If it was Lupin disguised as him—then it’s to frame him further. But if it was Father himself, then Ron Weasley matters. He must. But where would he get Fathers hair? Was there a spell that didn’t require it? Did he have it stored from years ago, perhaps?

She closed the book with a frustrated snap.

The theories wouldn’t let her sleep. By morning, she had decided.

If she couldn’t ask Professor Lupin himself—not when he looked at her like poison— or her Father for obvious reasons— then she would have to find answers elsewhere.

And that meant watching Ron Weasley.

It wasn’t difficult to follow him. Ron wasn’t subtle. He was loud, careless with his words, always dragging behind or rushing ahead of his friends. He and Potter and Granger moved through the castle like they owned it, always in the middle of the corridor, never worrying about shadows at the edges.

Eda was good at shadowing.

She started after Care of Magical creatures the next day, hanging back until the Gryffindors filed out, then trailing them at a distance. She listened. Ron was arguing with Granger, voice bouncing off the stone.

“…I told you, Crookshanks has it out for him! Look at Scabbers, he’s skin and bone—”

“Scabbers is old,” Granger shot back. “Crookshanks is just a cat. You can’t expect him to understand—”

“Don’t you dare blame him! He was fine before your stupid cat started chasing him! I’ve had him twelve years and he’s never been like this. He shakes at night. Shakes! I’ve started sleeping with him under the covers so Crookshanks can’t get to him.”

Harry trudged between them, jaw set, as if he’d heard the same fight a dozen times before.

Eda’s eyes narrowed.

She didn’t react. Not outwardly. She kept her head bent and followed them past the suits of armour.

But the words lodged in her skull like a thorn.

Over the next few days, she trailed him again and again.

In Charms, Ron muttered under his breath when his feather only smoked instead of floating.

At lunch, he stuffed his mouth full and talked with his cheeks bulging, Granger glaring at him the whole time.

In the courtyard, he tried to hex Malfoy after another jibe about Harry fainting at Quidditch, only to have it backfire and singe his sleeve.

And always, Scabbers. Perched on his shoulder, or trembling in his pocket, or sleeping in his hands while Ron argued with Granger.

Eda found herself wishing he‘d finally say something useful or do anything suspicious. Instead here he was— whining about his pet rat.

“Why are you staring at the Gryffindors again?” Daphne asked one afternoon at lunch.

Eda blinked and turned back to the Slytherin table. “I wasn’t.”

“You were.” Daphne stabbed a piece of roast parsnip with her fork. “Honestly, you look like you’re trying to hex them with your eyes. Which one is it? Potter?”

Eda smirked faintly. “What if it was?”

Daphne rolled her eyes. “Please. He’s unbearable. I’d rather stare at Nott.”

That pulled a grin out of Eda. “Still hung up on Nott, are you? Did he even look at you today?”

Daphne’s cheeks flushed pink. “Shut up.”

Pansy leaned across the table, smirking. “If anyone’s going to catch Nott’s eye, it won’t be you two. He’s too busy scribbling notes for Vector.”

Draco cut in with a snort. “You’re all wasting your time. Notts are about as interesting as goblin law.”

The girls giggled. Eda didn’t. Her mind was elsewhere, on the red hair at the far end of the Gryffindor table.

That night, lying awake under her covers, the words came back to her.

„I’ve had him twelve years.“

She stared into the dark, heart thudding. Twelve years. Do rats even live that long?

The question nagged until dawn.

The next day, she slipped into the library under the pretence of revising. Madam Pince barely glanced at her. Eda made for the stacks, scanning spines until she found the right section. Rodents. Care of Magical Pets. Creature Lifespans.

She flipped through a dusty volume, finger dragging down the page.

„Average lifespan: three years. Some breeds: five. Rare exceptions, magical mutations—but never twelve. Never.“ she murmured to herself as she read.

Her stomach dropped.

She shut the book quietly, slid it back into place, and walked out with her head high.

That night, she wrote one new word in her journal, circling it three times: Rat

She didn’t know what it meant. Not yet. But she knew this much; It was unlikely that Professor Lupin had disguised himself as her Father just to scare Ronald Weasley, of all people. 

Meaning— no matter how much it hurt her heart— It was probably her Father, but whoever it was, he hadn’t gone for Weasley by mistake.

Weasley mattered. Didn’t he? As obnoxious as the boy was. 

And Eda was going to find out why

Chapter Text

April crept in with damp hems and ink-stained fingers. The lawns turned from iron to mud; the draughts in the corridors lost their teeth but not their habits. Everyone looked a bit frayed, like jumpers washed one time too many. Exam timetables went up. The library filled. So did Eda’s head.

History of Magic should’ve been easy to ignore, but her thoughts were louder than Binns. She kept circling the same knot the past week: if Lupin—Moony—had been the real Secret Keeper, then why the break-in at the Gryffindor tower? And if it truly had been her father in there, why Weasley’s bed?

Polyjuice was the obvious disguise, but it needed hair. Would Lupin have had any of her father’s? From when? From where? The thought tasted sentimental and she pushed it away. What else could make one man into another? Glamers could rub edges, not bones. Disillusionment made you blur, not change. Metamorphmagi were born, not made.

None of it sat right without proof. And Madam Pince guarded said proof like a dragon.

Fine. If the school wouldn’t give her what she needed, the family might.

That evening, Eda ducked into the disused tapestry corridor where the torches smoked and the paintings snored in their frames.

“Kreacher,” she said softly.

He arrived with a quiet crack, scowl already set, and then remembered himself and bowed, knobbly nose nearly to stone. “Little Mistress calls.”

“She does,” Eda said. “Two things. First, I need books. Not school copies.” She took a breath. The request made something in her chest prickle—it sounded like the kind of thing Wal— she refused to think the name would have crowed over. “From Grandmother’s stash. The hidden one. Disguises, glamours, illegal transfigurations. Anything on Polyjuice that isn’t in Moste Potente Potions. Anything the Ministry would pretend doesn’t exist if asked.”

Kreacher’s scowl turned bright with a nasty sort of pride. “Old mistress kept books for truths the Ministry is too stupid to write. Kreacher knows where.”

“Good. Second—go to the Animagus registry at the Ministry and check for four names.” She handed him the folded scrap. “Sirius Black. James Potter. Peter Pettigrew. Remus Lupin.”

He read each silently, mouth twisting at all four. “Blood-traitors,” he muttered. “Kreacher looks.”

“One more thing,” Eda said, before he could vanish. “Have there been attempts on any of our properties? Black properties.” She kept her voice level. “Has my father tried to get into Grimmauld or his old flat?”

Kreacher blinked. He shook his head, ears flapping. “No wards snapped. No doors cried. Kreacher would know. No one came.”

“Alright,” she said. “Bring the books first. Registry after. And—” she caught his eye.

Kreacher’s chest puffed, mean satisfaction smoothing into something like devotion. “Kreacher serves only the Black that remains.”

“Good. Go, then.”

He vanished.

Eda stood a moment in the quiet and pressed her fist, small and hard, against the pocket where the folded photograph rested. Four boys by a lake. Names scrawled on the back like a joke that would always make sense.

Moony. Wormtail. Padfoot. Prongs.

She put the photo away before it could start looking like proof. It wasn’t. Not yet.

The next morning she stuck with her usual shadow— Ron Weasley. He made noise wherever he went, the kind that hid useful scraps inside nonsense.

After Charms he lumbered past with Harry and Hermione, complaining about something that—thank Merlin—had nothing to do with his old rat Scabbers.

“…and Percy’s on about revision schedules again,” Ron groaned. “He’s drawn up a rota for the whole dormitory. Hasn’t asked anyone, just pinned it up like we’re his troops. Says we’ve to turn out the lamps at ten on the dot and he’s confiscated Fred and George’s Dungbombs, which obviously means we’re all doomed—”

“Maybe it’ll help you pass something for once,” Hermione said primly.

Ron pulled a face. “And chess club have asked me to ‘coach’ first-years. Which is code for ‘sit with Dennis Creevey while he weeps over his bishop.’ I swear, if I have to explain what a fork is one more time—”

Harry made a half-sound that might have been a laugh. “Could be worse.”

“Oh, it is,” Ron said. “Mum’s owl came this morning. She’s started sending Easter eggs already. ‘Just to keep your strength up for study, Ronnie-wonnie.’ If she calls me that again, I’m jumping off the Astronomy Tower.”

“Don’t,” said Hermione without looking up from her timetable, “you’d only have to retake the fall.”

Harry laughed properly then, and for a second some of the pinch in his face loosened. Eda watched them go, oddly grateful the conversation had been irredeemably boring, then annoyed with herself for feeling anything about Weasleys’ family jokes.

Kreacher returned the following afternoon with a stack that could have gotten Eda expelled twice.

He didn’t arrive in the corridor, though. He appeared neatly in her dormitory between Daphne’s bed and the wardrobe, because he knew when the room would be empty and because he knew better than to swagger past Pince with contraband. A whisper-crack, and he was there, arms full of cracked leather and wards that snapped like stale sugar as he lowered the pile onto Eda’s quilt.

“Books,” he croaked, pleased with his own cleverness. “Old mistress hid them in the bottom of the linen chest under the winter runners, where no one good looks.”

Eda sat cross-legged and ran her finger along the spines, reading titles Madam Pince would faint over. Faces Borrowed and Stolen. On the Veiling of Flesh. An Unauthorised Catalogue of Human Transfiguration. One had no title at all, just a sigil pressed into the leather that looked like a hand and a face trying to pass through each other.

“And the registry?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” Kreacher said, sour. “Clerks were sniffing.”

“Fine.” She paused. “And the houses?”

He shook his head again. “No Black doors opened for bad Black hands.” His tone implied that if they had, the doors would have bitten.

“Right.” She meant that to feel like relief. It didn’t. “Thank you. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Kreacher tells no one.” he said, and vanished with a put-upon sniff that meant he wanted to be thanked again.

He would be, later. For now, she opened Faces Borrowed and Stolen and let the air of the past fall out. It smelled faintly of camphor and old dust and something medicinal. The chapter headings were brisk, uninterested in morality. Temporary Glamours: Duration and Deception. Borrowed Bones: Limits of Human Transfiguration. Polyjuice: On Acquisition of the Necessary Trace. A footnote—hair, nail, skin—any living fragment; potency declines with age—made her underline twice and write: So he couldn’t have kept any from years ago. She didn’t like how that made her feel. She turned the page.

Another section: Impressions and Echoes. A half-legal charm that let you lay the “feel” of a person over yourself if you’d been near them enough, a kind of glamour that fooled strangers in a crowd but not friends. Nothing that would get you past people who knew a face from a widely spread poster.

She read until the candles burned low and Daphne’s voice floated in from the stairs, laughing with Pansy about some first year falling flat on their face. Eda shut the book and slid the lot under her bed with the rest of the things she wasn’t strictly allowed to own.

That night, sleep kept its distance. She lay awake with the photograph under her pillow and let the names turn over in the dark.

Padfoot. Prongs. Wormtail. Moony.

Kreacher was back the next evening, grinning like a gargoyle with a secret.

“No such names in the registry,” he announced, delighted. “Your father, Blood Traitor Potter, the fat-boy, the wolf—none registered. If they were beasts, they were naughty beasts.” He seemed to relish the phrase.

Eda exhaled, slow. “So they could have done it off the records.”

“Kreacher thinks little Mistress‘ Father liked to learn things in dark rooms and call it brilliance,” he said. “The others would have followed.” He spat the last two words like gristle.

Eda’s eyes went to the edge of the quilt, to the place where the photograph lay hidden. Four boys; one small, shoulders in, smile trying too hard. Wormtail.

“Alright,” she said. “That’s all. For now.”

Kreacher puffed up. “Kreacher can do other things for Mistress!”

She hesitated, then the thought she’d been warding off since Yule pushed through. “Yes, well— there is something you could do.” she said, voice low. “Put together a basket. Soap. A washcloth. Toothbrush and paste. Fresh clothes—my father’s old ones maybe. Socks. A jumper. Leave it at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where the trees thin by the path to Hagrid’s hut, just after midnight. Don’t be obvious. If you see… anyone, you go home.”

Kreacher’s mouth twisted like she’d asked him to polish silver with mud. “For the bloo-,” he said, almost a whine, and then stilled because her face had gone cold. He swallowed. “For little Mistress’ father,” he corrected grudgingly.

“For my father,” Eda said. “Go.”

He went.

She sat very still for a long time after, pulse a little wild at her throat. It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t even sense. It was empathy, empathy for the only important thing in life- her blood.

She blew out the candle and let the dark sit in the room with her like a secret you had to carry without dropping.

Back in the corridors, Hogwarts kept its grind. Draco treated exam season like a personal stage for suffering.

“Snape expects us to brew with our eyes shut.” he groaned one afternoon, tossing himself into a chair in the common room with the full weight of tragedy. “And McGonagall is marking us like criminals.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Pansy said, fluffing a cushion. “Criminals get less homework.”

Daphne leaned over her Arithmancy chart and whispered, “You look tired.”

“I am,” Eda said. It wasn’t untrue. She shifted her quill and drew the next neat column, numbers lining up like soldiers who knew what they were for. Numbers didn’t lie unless you asked them very nicely.

After class the next day, she caught Blaise’s elbow as they drifted into the corridor, and linked.

“Question,” she said, tone mildly amused.

“Again?” he said, amused. “It’s starting to feel like friendship.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” she said. “so, can a werewolf tell if an animal is an animagus animal, not a normal one?”

Blaise’s eyes sharpened. “Smell,” he said after a beat. “They hunt by it. Magic has a… tang. You can’t wash that off. They’d know something’s odd. Whether they’d care—depends on the wolf. And the animal. Why‘d you ask, Black?“

“No reason,” Eda said, which was the oldest lie at Hogwarts.

They walked into their next class, Defence against the Dark Arts. Lupin was sorting essays, head down, sleeves rolled. He didn’t look up until they were all seated at their desks. When he did, his eyes brushed Eda’s for a fraction, curious and tired and something else she refused to name. She sat and took out her quill like she hadn’t spent the last week building a case against him in the court of her own head.

He had them practicing non-verbal shields. Eda was good at them; she liked magic that required stillness and aim. Lupin moved through the room, quiet corrections, a pleased, brief “yes” when someone managed it. When he stopped near her table, his hand flicked, wordless, and the jinx he cast slid off her shield like rain off oil.

“Good,” he said neutrally. Eda didn’t acknowledge the „praise“.

When the class was dismissed, Blaise said much too loudly as they packed away, “All this talk of wolves has got me thinking—would you know a man in a dog-suit if he trotted past you?”

“Grow up,” Eda told him, rolling her eyes.

Lupin’s quill paused for a heartbeat over the teachers desk. Then he went on writing as if he hadn’t heard anything at all. Eda didn’t look at him as she left. Her mouth had gone dry anyway.

The basket went out that night. Kreacher reported back with an offended sniff and a list of things Eda hadn’t asked for but was grateful he’d thought of anyway: a razor, a small tin of salve that had belonged to Regulus, two oatcakes wrapped in cloth.

“No one saw,” he said. “Kreacher hid the basket by the old stump where the roots make a mouth. If the—” he checked himself, “—if he is sniffing round, he will find.”

“Good,” Eda said. She wanted to say thank you; the words got stuck. “Don’t go back. Not for a few days.”

“Kreacher goes when Mistress say.” he said primly, and popped away before she could see the soft flicker in his eyes at ‚Mistress‘.

She slept badly again and woke from a not-quite-dream of a black shape sniffing at a wicker lid, hands shaking, soap slipping. She told herself she was being stupid and then told herself she wasn’t.

The following morning in the corridors outside the classrooms, Ron was in full, ordinary form. “Percy’s started calling himself ‘Head Boy Percy’ in the mirror,” he told Harry and Hermione with tragic sincerity, “and I swear to Merlin he actually salutes. I walked in on it. I’m going to tell Mum he’s lost his mind.”

“Don’t,” Hermione said without looking up. “She’ll only knit him a medal.”

Harry smiled and took a sip of water from his bottle. Eda watched the three of them from afar, barely hearing what they’re saying over the chatter of the other students and felt— for a second— dizzy with how much simpler life would be if she were the sort of person who could linger with her friends and complain about siblings and revising without all this weight on her shoulders.

That afternoon, when the rain started up again and everyone squealed about hair and parchment, Eda took the Veiling of Flesh to the back corner of the common room and read about glamour-work until the pages made her eyes itch. Most glamours were theatre tricks: they held until someone looked directly; they failed under rain; they made you think of the person rather than see them. Good for a crowd, not for a dormitory. There was a subchapter on impressions—laying the air of a person over your own features if you’d spent enough hours breathing theirs. It sounded like the kind of magic that wasn’t illegal because no one with any sense bothered to outlaw it.

She shut the book and sighed.

She turned the words over in her mind, one after the other, like stones you warm with your hand until they start to feel like yours.

What if Wormtail- Peter Pettigrew— was still alive? But where would he be, he couldn’t possibly be Scabbers. That’s too much of a coincidence, there have been loads of those lately and they all served to make Eda suspicious and utterly confused.

She then remembered the Aurors that patrolled her home during the Yule-break talking about a finger being the only thing left of Pettigrew. Eda asked herself if missing limbs would manifest in someones animagus form. She made a note to ask McGonagall the next time she’d see her.

Some other day later though, Professor Lupin had the class practicing shields again. At the end, while the others wedged themselves into the doorway like sheep, he said, “Miss Black,” as if he’d only just remembered she had a name.

She stayed by his desk. He held out her last essay between two fingers. “You’re very thorough,” he said, that same faint smile that looked like it came from some other life.

“So you said last time,” Eda replied, polite as a needle.

He inclined his head. “You should keep being so. It will do you more good than… almost anything else.”

She thought, wildly, of soap and a washcloth tucked into wicker. “Is that advice,” she asked, “or warning?”

He looked at her properly then, a long, small study that didn’t feel like a teacher’s at all. “Both,” he said finally “take it how you like.”

She took the parchment and left without looking back.

Minutes later in the corridor, Blaise fell in at her shoulder as if propelled by instinct. “He was awfully prejudice, don’t you think?.”

“Merlin— let him. Who cares, we all know he won’t return next year” Eda said.

In the night rain scoured the windows clean and the wind made the castle hum. Eda lay awake and let the humming settle in her bones.

Chapter Text

Harry didn’t sleep that night.

Even when he closed his eyes, the corridor came back; the dark, the flicker of torchlight on stone, Eda Black standing there with her chin lifted and that maddening calm look on her face. Her clear voice in his head like it was still echoing down the wall:

“You believe everything an adult tells you, don’t you?”

It itched. That was the only word for it. Like grit under his skin.

He had shouted, hadn’t he? About Sirius. About the street blown apart, about his parents dead, about the laughing. About the dormitory and Ron’s bed and the knife. He’d let it all out like he wanted to knock her flat with words. And she had just stood there. Quiet. Still. Not like Malfoy, who wanted a fight. Not like Snape, who wanted to watch him squirm.

She hadn’t even denied it. She had just asked him questions.

And the worst part was—he didn’t have answers.

He dragged himself down to breakfast the next morning, eyes burning. Ron was in full swing about Crookshanks again.

“…he nearly had him, Harry, I saw! Leapt right onto the table—Scabbers was shaking for an hour afterwards—”

Hermione huffed, “He wouldn’t have to if you kept Scabbers in a cage like you’re supposed to.”

Harry dropped onto the bench and stared at his porridge until it blurred. He couldn’t stop hearing her voice. “Were you there? Did you hear him say it? Or have you just repeated what people want you to believe?”

“Alright, Harry?” Ron asked, mouth half-full.

“Fine,” Harry muttered, stabbing at the porridge.

He wasn’t fine. He didn’t feel fine all day.

In Transfiguration, he caught sight of her across the room. She sat with Greengrass, neat posture, quill scratching steadily as McGonagall droned about human-to-animal reversal spells. She didn’t glance at him once, but Harry found himself glaring anyway, daring her to look.

She didn’t.

The quill kept moving, deliberate, like she was writing something that wasn’t notes at all.

By lunchtime he’d convinced himself it was just a trick. She was Sirius Black’s daughter. Of course she’d defend him. Of course she’d try to confuse him. She was Slytherin, wasn’t she? It was practically written in their textbooks: Never trust a Slytherin.

And yet.

That night, lying in bed while Seamus snored, Harry turned over the words again.

“Tell me, Harry—has he been around for you all your life? Writing, checking in, making sure you were alright?”

She had meant Lupin. She hadn’t said it outright, but she had.

Harry frowned at the ceiling. Lupin had been good to him, though. Taught him the Patronus, stopped Snape from humiliating him too badly, kind in ways that didn’t feel fake. Lupin wasn’t like Lockhart or Quirrell. He was… decent.

But he hadn’t been there all those years.

That was true.

Over the next week Harry kept catching himself staring at her. In the Great Hall, at breakfast, she sat two tables away with the Slytherins, her hair catching the light when she bent to say something to Greengrass. In Potions she was always neat, always steady, never sloppy the way some of the others were. Snape didn’t pick on her the way he picked on Harry—if anything, he seemed to leave her alone entirely, like she was part of the furniture.

Sometimes she smirked when Malfoy made one of his jabs at Harry, but it was never loud. She wasn’t like most people. She just… watched.

And when Harry risked a glance, more often than not she wasn’t watching him at all. She was somewhere else, in her head, scribbling notes like she was working out a problem no one else could see.

It made him itch even worse.

Ron noticed first.

“You keep staring at her,” he said one afternoon in the common room, where Hermione was buried under books and Harry was supposed to be revising for Potions. “Why? She’s mental. Everyone knows that. You don’t fancy her, do you- oh Harry!“

“I don’t,” Harry said quickly, then, “I mean—she’s Black’s daughter.” he said for the hundredth time to remind himself.

“Exactly.” Ron slammed his book shut. “She’s probably plotting how to break him into the castle again. You heard what he did to my bed.”

Harry’s stomach twisted. He hadn’t told them about the corridor. Not yet.

“Maybe.“ he said, eyes on the fire.

Hermione finally looked up, suspicious. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing,” Harry said, too fast “forget it.”

But he couldn’t forget it.

In Defence Against the Dark Arts the next week, Lupin was back from another one of his absences. He looked paler than usual, but smiled as he explained the day’s lesson. Harry found himself studying him, too intently. The way his hands moved, the tired set of his shoulders.

Could it be him?

Could Lupin have been the real Secret Keeper?

Harry hated that he even thought it. He hated that Eda Black had planted that seed. But now, every time Lupin smiled at him or leaned over to correct Neville’s wand grip, Harry’s brain whispered, Where were you for twelve years?

And yet… he liked Lupin. He trusted him. Didn’t he?

When class ended, Harry lingered, just for a moment.

“Good work today, Harry,” Lupin said gently.

Harry nodded stiffly, throat tight, and hurried out.

The weeks blurred.

Rain on the windows. Quidditch practices he had to throw himself into just to feel steady. Ron and Hermione bickering endlessly about Scabbers and Crookshanks until Harry wanted to hex them both quiet. The looming dread of Buckbeak’s hearing—Hagrid’s face when he talked about it.

And always, Eda.

Across the Hall, head bent over a book. In the courtyard, walking with Daphne Greengrass, her laugh quick and sharp like she was making fun of something only they knew. Once in the library, her back to him as she flipped through a heavy old book, Kreacher appearing at her elbow for a second before vanishing again.

Harry didn’t even know how she got away with using a house-elf like that. But then again, she was a Black. Probably got away with anything.

March slipped into April.

Harry couldn’t stop thinking about the corridor. About the way she’d looked at him. Calm. Too calm. Not smug like Malfoy, not cruel like Snape. Just… certain. Like she’d seen something he hadn’t.

He wanted to hate her. He really did. It would have been easier.

But every time Lupin looked at him kindly, Harry heard her voice: “You don’t know who’s a traitor. You’ve only been told what they want you to believe.”

He lasted until the second week of April before it spilled out.

They were in the common room, Ron sprawled in an armchair with Scabbers curled in his lap, Hermione surrounded by books. The fire crackled low.

“I need to tell you something,” Harry said suddenly.

Ron looked up. “What?”

Harry hesitated. The words felt dangerous, like saying them would make them more real. “I talked to Eda Black. After curfew. A few weeks ago.”

Ron sat bolt upright. “Are you mad? She’s his daughter!”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “Harry—”

“Yes I know!” Harry swallowed. “She said maybe we’re pointing at the wrong person. That… maybe Sirius isn’t—”

Ron’s face went red. “Oh, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. She’s messing with your head, Harry! That’s what Slytherins do!”

“I know!” Harry snapped. “I know. But she—she didn’t sound like Malfoy. She wasn’t taunting me. She just… said it. Like she believed it.”

Hermione chewed her lip. “What exactly did she say?”

Harry repeated it, halting, embarrassed. The words sounded even more dangerous out loud.

Hermione frowned deeply. “It’s strange. But she could just be repeating what her family told her.”

“She lives with the Malfoys,” Ron said furiously. “Of course she’s full of rubbish. Honestly, Harry, you can’t believe a word out of her mouth.”

“I don’t,” Harry said, but the lie tasted sour. “I just… can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Then stop,” Ron said flatly.

Hermione sighed. “She might not be lying on purpose. But she’s still dangerous, Harry. Stay away from her.”

Harry nodded, though his chest felt tight.

Upstairs, lying in bed, he stared at the hangings and heard her voice all over again.

“Everyone knows what they’ve been told. There’s a difference.”

The days dragged on, full of exams and Quidditch and Hagrid’s misery over Buckbeak. When Harry unfolded the Marauder’s Map, his eyes kept snagging on the flourish at the top—Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. Four names written like a joke he wasn’t in on.

He didn’t know who they were. He didn’t know what they meant. He only knew that once he noticed them, he saw them everywhere—and it made the castle feel full of conversations he’d missed.

And by the end of April, Harry had convinced himself of two things:

1. Lupin was a good man. He had to be. He was.
2. Eda Black knew something she wasn’t saying.

And no matter how many times Ron told him she was poison, or how many times Hermione told him to ignore her, Harry couldn’t.

Because every time he looked across the Hall and saw her bent over her books, calm and steady, he remembered the way she’d said it.

Not smug. Not cruel.

Just certain.

And it kept him awake, long after the castle had gone quiet

Chapter Text

The castle had gone sour with parchment. Ink-smudges and half-chewed quills littered the library tables, students crouched like refugees among their own notes. Even the air seemed thinner, sucked away by the collective panic of end-of-year exams.

Eda sat with her books in an ordered row, the only neat space left in a room that looked like chaos had been graded and handed back. Daphne was across from her, head bent low over a pile of Charms essays, blonde hair curtaining her pale face. She groaned.

“Why does Flitwick want twelve inches on the theory of Switching Spells? I can barely write three.”

Eda adjusted her quill, deliberate. “Because he wants to see who can write, and who can only whine.”

Daphne narrowed her eyes. “That’s not helpful.”

“It was never meant to be.”

Draco slid into the seat beside Eda with all the subtlety of a crashing chandelier. His satchel thumped the floor, spilling textbooks. “You’d think the professors could have postponed exams after the Cup fiasco.”

Eda didn’t look up from her notes. “Merlin, not again. The world doesn’t revolve around Quidditch.”

He gasped as though she’d hexed him. “Excuse me? Gryffindor practically cheated their way to the Cup with that Firebolt. No one—no one—could outfly me unless they had broomstick foul play involved.”

“Perhaps they simply outflew you?“ Eda said mildly.

Draco scowled. “It was cheating, and everyone knows it. The Cup should be declared null and void.” He sat back in his chair, sulky. “Still—at least the stupid hippogriff is finally getting what it deserves. Father says the Committee will carry out the execution next month. Poetic justice, don’t you think?”

Daphne winced, but Eda only turned another page of parchment. “Poetic,” she echoed, her tone flat as pressed flowers.

For a while, only the scratch of quills and the occasional sigh filled the library. Eda kept her writing precise, margins straight as soldiers. But when Professor Binns’ exam came up in conversation, her patience cracked.

“They’ll ask about goblin rebellions again,” Theo Nott muttered from a few seats down. “They always do.”

Eda said it without thinking: “Same circus, different clowns.”

The words slipped out, sharp and familiar in her mouth.

Daphne looked up, frowning. “What’s a circus?”

Eda blinked, pen hovering mid-air. “It’s…a saying. Means nothing’s changed, just the faces.”

Theodore smirked. “Never heard that one before.”

“That’s probably because you’re illiterate,” Eda said defensively, flicking her quill back to the page. “forget it.”

And they did.

The corridors after curfew belonged to her. The silence was heavier than in daylight, pressing against her shoes with every step. Moonlight fell in shards through stained glass, green and gold against the flagstones.

Eda moved with care. Her footsteps were near soundless, her cloak tight around her shoulders. Every shadow seemed to shift with purpose, but she didn’t flinch. If she found her father—if he was even here—he wouldn’t want a daughter who jumped at her own echo.

She slipped past the Charms corridor, pausing when a suit of armor rattled faintly. Peeves wasn’t near; good. She climbed a stairwell two at a time, then froze when a cat’s hiss cut the air. Mrs Norris slunk from the corner, eyes gleaming like coins. Eda’s hand twitched toward her wand, but she drew back, whispering instead, “Shoo.”

The cat blinked, tail twitching, then padded off as though insulted.

She continued, slower. Somewhere deep in the castle, a clock tolled eleven.

Up in Gryffindor Tower, Harry Potter couldn’t sleep. The dormitory buzzed with snores; Ron sprawled diagonally across his bed, muttering in dreams. Harry lay on his back with the Marauder’s Map open across his knees.

He traced the dots with a finger, following names he half-knew. Flitwick in his office, McGonagall pacing near the staff wing. Peeves drifting like an ink stain.

Then his eyes caught it.

Eda Black.

She was moving swiftly, slipping past staircases that should have been sealed by now. His stomach twisted. What was she doing?

He hesitated only a moment before he shoved back the blankets. The Map slid into his pocket, and the Invisibility Cloak—his father’s cloak—swirled over his shoulders like liquid moonlight.

He should have gone back to bed. He knew that. But the moment he’d spotted Eda Black’s dot roaming the castle on the Marauder’s Map, curiosity had pinned him like a hex.

So here he was, tailing her under the Invisibility Cloak, the Map clutched in his hand, nerves tight as piano wire.

She moved fast for someone sneaking. Her steps were quick, confident, like she owned the shadows. He had to hurry to keep up, and that was his mistake.

His foot caught the hem of the Cloak. Before he could yank it free, the fabric twisted round his ankle, his balance lurched—

—and he pitched forward, arms flailing, the world flipping upside down.

He hit the ground with a smack, nose-first into the flagstones, pain bursting bright behind his eyes. The Cloak slid half off his shoulders, pooling like liquid silver. The Map flew from his hand, skittering across the courtyard stones until it came to rest neatly by her boots.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

When he blinked the stars out of his eyes, she was already bending down, grey eyes cool and unreadable, lifting the parchment between two fingers.

Harry scrambled to his knees, face hot. “That’s mine!”

She ignored him. The Map unfurled in her hands, its ink shimmering to life in the moonlight. Corridors, staircases, dots marked with names—every secret sprawled open for her to see.

Panic thundered in his chest. She can’t have that. She can’t even look at it.

“Give it back!” he snapped, reaching for it.

She turned it slightly out of reach, expression giving nothing away. Her eyes lingered on the corner, and Harry’s stomach flipped when the familiar words curled into view: [Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs are proud to present…?]

Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask.

But she only folded the parchment half shut, gaze cutting to him like a knife. “Where did you get it?”

“It’s mine.” he said quickly. His voice cracked.

She raised an eyebrow like she didn’t believe a word of it. And honestly, who would? He could practically feel the lie hanging in the air.

“This wasn’t made by you.” she stated flatly and snorted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Harry shot back, heat crawling up his neck. “It’s mine. Give it back.”

She slipped it behind her back, as casual as if it already belonged to her. His panic sharpened into anger.

“I’ll tell McGonagall you’re out past curfew.”

Her lips curved, slow. That look made his stomach drop faster than a broom in a nosedive.

“We’ll both be in trouble!“ he added desperately.

For a heartbeat, he thought maybe that would make her hesitate. Then she spoke, soft and deliberate: “Or I will tell everyone you use your invisibility cloak to spy on girls in the showers.”

Harry went scarlet so fast his ears rang. “I—WHAT? I don’t—!”

His words tangled, useless. She didn’t care if it was true. She knew people would believe it.

And then her eyes flicked down to the Map again, widening with sudden realization. His stomach clenched.

“You used this,” she breathed. “To sneak into Hogsmeade.“ she just knew he did and now had proof.

Harry’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. His silence was answer enough.

Her gasp was exaggerated, theatrical. “The Boy Who Lived, breaking rules for butterbeer!” She pressed a hand to her chest, grin curling at the edges. “Oh, this is even better.”

His panic doubled. “No—”

“Yes.” She slid the Map neatly into her sleeve. “The Map, three days a week. And the Cloak.”

Harry gaped. “The Cloak too? You’re mad!”

She only smiled, sharp as broken glass.

He wanted to fight, to snatch both back, to storm straight to McGonagall and take the punishment. But the image rose, vivid as a Howler: whispers in every corridor about Harry Potter peeking at girls, or worse, McGonagall’s face when she found out about Hogsmeade.

His fists clenched. He’d lost. Again.

She stepped past him, cloak swirling, her voice light with triumph. “Pleasure doing business with you, Potter.”

He stood there, still kneeling on the flagstones, cheeks blazing, Cloak bunched in his fists.

He’d just been blackmailed. By a Slytherin. By a Black.

And worst of all—part of him almost admired how easily she’d done it.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Eda woke with something sharp and secret lodged under her ribs. Not fear, not anger. Something lighter.

She pressed her fingers into her pillow as if that could hide the grin threatening to break out. The Map was folded neatly in her satchel, pulsing with possibility. The Cloak lay buried deep beneath her trunk lid. Both had been Harry’s the night before.

All day she tried to smother the feeling, to appear as she always did: composed, aloof, unimpressed. But her insides hummed like wires sparking.

In History of Magic, she stared at the Map under her desk instead of Binns’ chalk dust. Names drifted lazily across the parchment, teachers pacing, Peeves bouncing, Harry hunched in Gryffindor Tower. The Map had never gone blank after she’d snatched it from him. Which meant it was always on. She traced the curling ink with her fingertip, wondering: could it be hidden? Would anyone else be able to see its secrets if they grabbed it from her hands? Probably.

The thought made her pulse quicken. She folded it tightly and kept her palm flat on her satchel. No one would take it.

At lunch, Draco whined about the stupid Firebolt again like it had cost him his life, Daphne muttered about exams, and Pansy moaned about failing Transfiguration. Eda let their voices wash over her. She was too busy thinking about the way Potter fell yesterday and how she made him give her the map. It was almost enough to make her laugh out loud.

For once, she wasn’t holding a prophet headline about wizards and witches too scared to be out at night because of him. She wasn’t holding half-mangled keepsakes Kreacher had scrounged up. She was holding proof. Proof that her father had been clever, that he’d made something great with his friends. Proof that she could be clever, too.

In the evening, she could barely choke down dinner. Her foot tapped under the table restlessly, and Daphne frowned at her.

“Are you all right?”

“Perfectly,” Eda said, smiling sharp. She gowned at the staff table, where Professor Lupin was conversing with another professor of again. Good thing he stared less and less at Eda nowadays.

Later at night, she waited until the dorm was silent. She slid from her bed, pulling the invisibility cloak over her shoulders. The fabric rippled cold down her arms. It fit her like it was made for her.

The map, still glowing faintly with its crawling dots, guided her steps through the castle. Filch patrolled the entrance hall, Mrs Norris trotted at his side. She slipped past unseen, giddy with power.

The Forbidden Forest loomed ahead, black and whispering.

Eda tightened her grip on the parchment, her pulse a drumbeat in her ears. Somewhere out there, maybe, was the man who’d made it. The man who had been more than a headline. For the first time, she might see him. Talk to him.

She stepped beneath the trees, the cloak brushing the undergrowth, the map clutched to her chest.

She felt like a girl with a purpose, holding something of her father’s in her hands.

The front doors opened easily under careful hands. Outside, the night was a different sort of quiet, wider, with fewer places for sound to collide. The grounds shone in places where they held the moon. Wind lifted the cloak and set it gently down again.

She glanced at the lower edge of the map. It showed the grounds in a hand that had clearly liked drawing them: the greenhouses scrawled like tidy teeth, the gamekeeper’s hut a squat square with a chimney smudge, the edge of the Forest sketched as a warning and an invitation. The ink only went so far. Past the first ranks of trees, the parchment was a white mouth waiting to swallow names.

Rubeus Hagrid was a motionless square. Fang had given up pacing and was a patient lump. No Sirius Black anywhere the damn map.

Eda lifted her gaze. The Forest stood where it always did: not forbidding so much as extremely confident it would still be there tomorrow. She moved toward it, and her pulse did the sort of thing hearts do when they’ve decided to be useful.

She kept the map flat against her stomach with one hand.

The Forest accepted her into its first layer without comment. It smelled like wet earth and dark leaves and the metallic, sleeping tang of water. Twigs marked her passage.

She did not call Father. The word was too soft and too large. She did not call Sirius. Just in case someone was here who should not be seeing her searching for him. She said, very quietly, “Padfoot” and the trees did not answer. A branch above her shook and pretended it was wind.

She walked. Not far—she wasn’t idiotic—and not deep—she wasn’t suicidal—but far enough that castle light became a memory and Hagrid’s chimney smoke lost its shape. The fizz in her chest steadied itself into something like purpose. She had the map, the cloak and her own good sense.

At a trickle of water coming from a tree above, she crouched and saw a hand like print without a thumb. A paw. Bigger than it should be for a regular sized dog. Maybe another animal? She wasn’t the best at differentiating paws of different animals.

She didn’t touch it. She looked until her eyes tried to make more prints out of moss and then forced herself to look away.

The slytherin girl did not stay long enough for her courage to become stupidity. That was a line she knew how to see.

On the way back to the castle the map warmed under her palm. She couldn’t help it; she slid it out an inch, enough to see the castle reappear along the top edge, the great black lake like a patient bruise to the side. Names moved properly. No Sirius Black, or Padfoot. Of course not. And yet her mouth made a small, traitorous curve.

At the edge of the grounds she paused to look back. The Forest looked exactly like it always did when you were about to tell someone you hadn’t gone in. It was very polite in that way.

She ghosted across the grass, testing how fast she could move without the cloak sulking and showing her ankles. The doors welcomed her home as if they hadn’t noticed she’d left.

When she slipped back into the dormitory, the lake clinked against glass and the girls slept as if there were no forests and no men with wanted posters for faces. She put the cloak down very carefully on the bed and sat with the map in her lap for a moment longer than necessary.

“You’re impossible” she told it, not unkindly. Though she knew she meant her father.

It slid under the edge of her mattress where her palm could find it in the dark. She lay down flat and stared at shadows on the canopy where the fabric gathered. Her heart made a sound in her throat.

For the first time in a long while, when she closed her eyes, the pictures behind them weren’t made of other people’s fear. They were made of cold air and wet leaves and a print where something had been.

Somewhere between one breath and the next she laughed, once, very quietly, because she couldn’t help it.

She’d held something brilliant of his in her hands, and it had not burned her.

But it did saddened her to not have found her father straight away- she wanted try again tomorrow and, if necessary, the next night before giving the cloak and map back to Potter, that idiot who tripped over his own feet.

Chapter Text

This was the second day she kept the map and Potter’s invisibility cloak tucked where she wanted them—folded flatter than common secrets in the serpent-clasped pouch at her hip. The map’s ink was beginning to feel familiar under her fingertips, the way a good chessboard grows pleasantly warm under the palm of a player who knows she is winning.

She had a plan for the afternoon, and it tasted like dust and thumbed vellum.

Eda disliked the Hogwarts library on principle. Not because it was inadequate—Madam Pince’s stacks were proudly excessive—but because Eda preferred to have Kreacher bring her books from home. The House of Black collected knowledge the way fire collects oxygen: greedily, invisibly, with the satisfaction of lighting a room without opening the shutters. Still, today the library held something she needed and the family shelves most likely did not. She wanted the library’s Latin dictionary.

She took the first bay to the left and let her feet carry her along the Latin shelf. The spines nodded at her in a chorus of patient browns: Cassell’s Latin Dictionary; Lewis & Short; a thinner grammar with a split hinge that showed the stitchings. She drew out Cassell’s because it was the heaviest and would make the cleanest sound on the table. She liked that small thunder.

The day’s last grey light fell through the high windows, catching dust motes like seeds released into cold air. Eda chose a table that faced the corridor. She wanted to see who passed.

She opened the dictionary on its middle and wrote the first entry in her notebook:

Remus — proper noun. Brother of Romulus, suckled by the she-wolf (lupa). See: Lupercal, Lupercalia, lupa.

remus — noun, masculine. oar.

Her pen paused; her mouth tightened, amused. An oar. It would be an oar, wouldn’t it? A thing for propelling other people’s boats.

She turned a page.

lupus — noun, masculine. wolf.

lupa — noun, feminine. she-wolf; colloq. prostitute.

lupinus — adjective. of a wolf, wolfish. Also, a plant.

lupanar — noun, neuter. brothel.

Lupercal — cave where the twins were nursed by the she-wolf.

Eda’s pen moved quickly, the nib whispering. She wrote more than she needed so she would have to underline something later and feel productive. She made a column:

Lupin — Professor Remus Lupin.

— lupus / lupinus → wolf.

— lupanar (indelicate; but useful).

— Remus (twin; killed by brother; boundary law).

— remus (oar: navigates others’ waters; ferryman?)

— moon ⇒ boggart (confirmed).

Eda knew werewolves were usually made and assumed Lupin had been bitten at some point in his early life- but.. why did his name match his fate? Was it perhaps planned by— his parents? Was he born a werewolf? That wasn’t possible was it? Perhaps it was coincidence… a very strange one. Did his name really foreshadow such a life changing event in his life? 

A shadow crossed her page; she raised her eyes without moving her head. Madam Pince glided by and pretended not to read Eda’s notes upside down. Pince’s gaze snagged on the word lupanar and juddered. Eda closed the notebook without a sound, like a guillotine brought down with a satin cord.

In the corridor beyond, the flow of students thinned to teachers’ robes and stragglers. Eda saw Professor Lupin go past as if the castle had been thinking of him and then scrolled him into the scene. He carried his shabby case in his left hand. His gait had a tired courtesy to it. He looked into the library the way a man looks at a warm room he doesn’t live in.

His eyes met Eda’s briefly. He smiled; it was an apologetic little thing, as if he had bumped her elbow in a queue and was sorry for it.

She let her face remain politely blank and lowered her eyes to the dictionary again until he went on.

If she had been at home, Kreacher would have been clucking by her shoulder with a tray and marmalade toast and would have asked, very carefully, what conclusion little Mistress was pleased to draw so that he might draw it before her. Here, there was only the smell of paper and cloth bindings and the heavy silence that libraries pretend is peace. Eda preferred the hum of a house.

She closed Cassell’s and replaced it exactly where it had been—edge aligned with the shelf front, spine upright, because the library punished sloppiness with squeaking—

She returned the book the way she had found it and left the library like a thief who has put everything back but has still taken something with her. Pince watched her, attempting to decide whether the something was worth an accusation.

Night fell with the usual theatre. Eda did not eat much at dinner, which made Draco scowl and nudge the roasted potatoes toward her in a way that said ‚eat something or I shall have to tell Mother‘. She rolled a potato back, and he caught it with his fork.

When Eda rose, Draco touched her sleeve. “Where you off to?”

“I am doing research.” she said, correctly.

“About?” he asked, drawing the word out.

“Men in threadbare robes.” she said, and enjoyed the way his eyebrows drew together. “Write me if Pansy pretends to be interested in your opinion on anything.”

He made a face at her and ate the potato.

Back in the dormitory, Eda washed her hands slowly—two full minutes of hot water, watching steam curl off her fingers like questions—then she sat on her bed and opened the serpent clasp. The pouch obliged her palm with its neat, wrong physics, yielding up more volume than it could possibly hold in sight. The cloak came first, slick as a whisper; then the map, which she tapped with her wand and greeted with the necessary rudeness. The ink bloomed.

Students scattered themselves across the parchment like spilled pepper. Prefects prowled, teachers traced habitual circuits, Filch hunched like a knot moving around its own rope. Eda watched the dot labeled Remus J. Lupin for a full minute. It wavered near his office, then settled. She looked for a dot that read Sirius Black and did not see it. She did not expect to; the map lied about some things and told truths about others. She had learned this quickly. Men do the same.

She dressed for quiet, not glamour: boots with soft soles; a dark mid-weight cloak with a hood to wear under the invisibility cloak so her hair wouldn’t be a nuisance; her satchel belted flat; the notebook with its tight black hand slipped into the pouch beside the cloak. Kreacher would have insisted on an apple; he was not here. She took a toffee from the serpent’s second compartment anyway because the shape of taking something felt like permission.

The corridors had emptied themselves down into the dormitories. The castle’s old breath creaked in the staircases. Eda stepped under the cloak and became a rumor walking.

She moved without hurry. Peeves ricocheted down a stairwell humming a off-key hymn to mischief and pelted a suit of armor with chalk; the chalk passed a foot from Eda’s nose with a small whoof of dust that made her eyes sting. She did not sneeze. She would rather have stopped her heart.

Beyond the main doors, the air had the taste of iron filings: cold, raw, almost clean. She crossed the lawn like a shadow that had lost its owner. The Forbidden Forest held itself like a curtain at the edge of a stage, all black fringes and stolen lights.

The cloak hid her from the castle; the trees were less easily fooled. The Forest has its own ways of inventorying those who pass. Eda kept to a line of beeches and then dropped down into a shallow draw where the wind ran quietly toward the lake. 

She did not call out. She had promised herself she would say nothing first. It all felt like a game.

Silence fattened. Then a blacker shape unstitched itself from the roots of a fallen tree and became a man.

He was gaunt the way a good dog grows gaunt when it has asked itself to keep moving for too long: light, precise, with more command than meat. His hair was the sort of dark that takes on the color of whatever sky it stands under. He had shaved badly or not recently; on him it looked like a choice. The basket she had sent was tucked behind him, half emptied in an orderly way that suggested he had been raised to be both greedy and grateful and had never quite decided which to pretend.

He saw nothing at first. Then he stilled, and the part of his face that knew things flicked toward the space she occupied without occupying it.

“Father?“ she said, and pulled away the cloak hiding her.

Chapter Text

Sirius froze when he saw her step out from under the cloak. For a heartbeat he didn’t breathe. She looked so much like—

He swallowed hard, voice cracking before it found itself.

“Eda.”

Her lips trembled into a smile “Father.”

He let out a sound that was half a laugh, half disbelief. He rubbed at his face as though the sight might vanish if he looked away. “Merlin’s beard… I never thought—I thought—” He stopped, shaking his head. His eyes ran over her as though memorising every detail. “Look at you. You’ve grown… you’re taller than I imagined.”

She shifted under the weight of his stare, but her smile held. “You look better than I expected. I had Kreacher leave you the basket.”

Sirius gave a rough chuckle. “That was you- and Kreacher?” He shook his head again. “But you—you’re here. Seeking me out. Why?”

„Because I know you’re innocent, Father.” she said softly and suddenly felt like she was five years old again and staring at an old portrait of him her grandmother had hidden in the attic. 

He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, trying to steady himself. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for someone—anyone—to think I might not have done it. And from my daughter? Thank you, Peridot.”

Her brows twitched “Peridot?”

Sirius’s mouth softened “Your birthstone. For August. Your mum loved that green stone. Said it was bright but sharp, like it knew how to cut glass. She wanted it to follow you your whole life.”

Eda swallowed and clutched her notebook closer, as if to hide how the words landed.

Then Sirius seemed to remember himself. “Tell me everything. What House are you in?”

“Slytherin.” she said simply.

He huffed a short laugh. „You are? Well I knew it wasn’t Gryffindor, but- doesn’t matter, you’re brilliant. Your uncle would be proud of you, Peridot- see, your house matches your birthstone isn’t that lovely?” he said and forced himself to see past his wounded Gryffindor pride. She could be in any House and he’d be proud of her for it. Eda briefly wondered if he meant uncle Regulus.

“Do you have friends? You’re not… alone, are you?” he asked cautiously, knowing his reputation has to inevitably affect her in some way, shape or form.

“Uh- Yes, I do. I‘m dorm mates with Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Pakinson, they’re my friends- and cousin Draco, he’s more like an annoying brother than a friend.”

Sirius’s gaze darkened for a moment, then flicked to the Cloak draped over her arm. “You’ve got James’ cloak- though it’s Harry’s now, right? Are you friends with him, too?”

Eda hesitated. “Not exactly. We spoke here and there, we even played chess once. And.. I uh- I took the cloak from him. Blackmailed him fair and square!” she said the last bit like she fished for approval.

He barked a laugh, warm and astonished. “That’s my girl.” Then his voice lowered. “But… you talked to him? He’s—he’s all right?”

“He’s fine,” Eda said “I think?” a bit unbothered.

Sirius’s eyes closed briefly, pain written plain across his face. He muttered something under his breath before opening them again, sharper now. “And you—you said you believe I’m innocent. Why- surely you’ve not been blind to what everyone says about me?”

Eda drew in a breath. “Because I know who the real villain is. It’s Professor Lupin.”

Sirius blinked, startled. “What?”

“He’s a werewolf. I figured it out. I mean— his boggart is the moon, he’s gone sick every full moon, and even his name—Remus Lupin—it’s practically a laugh in the face, it means wolf in Latin. You must have switched with him as the secret keeper- I know all about the Fidelius charm. He’s the one who betrayed everyone, who killed the muggles and he probably also ate Peter Pettigrew and left only his finger. He framed you to cover himself. It makes so much sense I do not know how anyone was fooled by that werewolf. But—” she flipped open her notebook, words tumbling out in a rush, “—I must admit, the only other hole in my theory is February sixth, when you supposedly broke into Gryffindor and slashed the curtains. I can’t explain that bit yet, but the rest fits. He’s a dangerous werewolf and—”

“Eda.” Sirius’s voice cut across hers and interrupted her rambling, firm but not unkind. He stepped forward, hands half-raised as if he wanted to hold her shoulders but wasn’t sure if he had the right. “Listen to me. You think I’m here for Moony?”

She faltered. “I… aren’t you?”

Sirius let out a short, incredulous laugh, dragging his hand through his filthy hair. “No. It’s not him. Not Remus. You’ve got it wrong, love.” He looked straight at her, pleading for her to hear him. “Moony had nothing to do with this. He’s a good man. He was our friend. He’d die before he betrayed James and Lily.”

Eda blinked rapidly. “But—he’s a werewolf!”

“And so what?” Sirius shot back. “That doesn’t make him a traitor. Don’t let prejudice blind you, Peridot you’re better than that. He was one of the best of us. Don’t you dare put this on him.”

She pressed her lips tight, disappointment clear. “Then who did you switch with- you did switch, right?”

Sirius’s face hardened. His voice went rough with old fury. “Yes. With Peter Pettigrew. Wormtail. He’s the one. That snivelling little rat cut off his own finger and blew a street apart to make it look like I killed him. Dozens of Muggles dead in a second. And everyone believed it because he pointed the finger at me first.” He clenched his fists. “Twelve years I rotted for his crime.”

Eda stared. “Pettigrew… alive?” Her stomach turned. “He hasn’t—don’t tell me—he hasn’t been hiding as Weasleys pet all these years? That’s why you were in Gryffindor tower! I did speculate it but I- his motive was weaker than Lupins.”

Sirius met her disgust with the same look. “I saw him in the Prophet, in a picture of the Weasleys in Egypt. Same rat, missing a little limb. I knew him at once.”

Eda’s face twisted. “That’s revolting.” She shook her head, already calculating. “But then you can’t kill him. He must be caught, shown to Dumbledore. He’ll clear you. That’s justice. We’re Blacks, Father—no one frames us and gets away with it.”

Sirius let out a startled laugh that had no humour in it. “You sound like my mother.”

Eda’s eyes narrowed, uncertain if it was insult or not. “I can fix this. I could- I could buy the rat off Weasley and cage him.”

Her hand tightened on her notebook. “Then we’ll trap him in front of Dumbledore. He won’t be able to deny it. You’ll be free. You will be, right?“

He didn’t answer, „Right?“ Eda asked again. 

After a minute of silence her father sighed and stroked her hair away from her face „I‘m not sure it’s that easy, Peri-”

Eda interrupted him, almost upset „But it should be! You didn’t even get a trial- I am sure if we present Pettigrew to the ministry they‘ll have to give you a do-over trial.” 

Sirius huffed out a laugh, bitter and low. He rubbed his jaw, eyes narrowing at memories he didn’t want to relive. “Even if Peter’s dragged in front of them, they’ll twist it, spin it, call it something else. They won’t want to admit they locked me up without proof.”

Eda bit her lip, then blurted, “Uncle Lucius could help, surely. He has ties with the Ministry, he could lean on the right people.”

Sirius blinked, as if she’d just spoken Parseltongue. “Lucius Malfoy—Cissy’s husband? How in Merlin’s name would you know him that well to ask him for help?”

Eda gave a short, awkward chuckle, confused by his tone. “Well… after you were imprisoned I went to Grandmama Walburga first. Then she died, and I went to live with the Malfoys. And I’ve been there ever since.”

Sirius stared at her, expression darkening. His voice was rough when he finally spoke. “I never said you were to go to her. Never. I would have never wanted you with my mother. And Lucius bloody Malfoy—” He broke off, pacing a step, hands knotted in his hair. “No, no. That’s not what I wanted.”

Eda’s brows drew together. “Did you have someone else then? In writing?”

“Andromeda,” Sirius snapped before he could stop himself. “your Aunt Andromeda. She should have taken you in. Not Narcissa and Lucius.”

Eda stiffened. She knew the name—Andromeda had always been the shame of the family, the selfish one who ran off with a Muggle-born and never looked back. Narcissa had raised her to believe that. And though Eda didn’t voice it, the distrust flickered in her eyes.

“Well…” she said carefully, “I ended up with Aunt Narcissa instead. She’s really lovely. I like it there with them- and like I said, Draco is like my brother now.“

Sirius pressed his lips together. He clearly wanted to argue but stopped himself, forcing a tight smile. “If you say so.”

Silence stretched, heavy with the weight of things neither of them trusted enough to say.

Then Eda broke it “You could go into hiding, maybe. If you’re so opposed to the idea of a trial. I could tell Kreacher to prepare the French estate. No one would look for you there.”

Sirius shook his head, though his eyes softened at her determination. “No, Peridot. I’m not hiding. Not anymore. I’ve done enough of that to last ten lifetimes.” He smiled faintly at her, reaching to squeeze her shoulder. “But I like how you think. Always planning, always ready with another way out.”

She tilted her chin “Well, someone has to.”

He laughed quietly “That’s my girl.” Then he grew serious again. “We’ll talk again soon, I promise. But it’s too late for you to be out here in the Forest tonight. If anyone spotted you—” He shook his head, firm. “No. Go back, before someone notices.”

Eda hesitated, reluctant to leave now that she had finally found him.

Sirius’s voice gentled “One more thing. Be kind to Harry. He deserves it. Give him the Map and the Cloak back—they were James’s, and Harry’s the one they belong to now. And when the time’s right… tell him. Tell him the truth. About me. About Peter. About what really happened.”

He searched her face, desperate that she understand “Promise me you’ll try.”

She nodded dutifully „I promise to try, Father. But uhm- what about Professor Lupin. Don’t you think he‘ll recognise Pettigrew as Scabbers?” 

Her father sighed again „Don’t worry for now, the year isn’t over yet. We‘ll figure something out.“ 

And with that they went separate ways. For now.

Chapter Text

Eda had given his cloak and the map back—reluctantly—the next morning before class. She cornered him outside the loo and held out a bag.

“Here. I’m giving them back,” she said in the tone of someone with a teacher at her shoulder.

“And I’d like to… apologise, for blackmailing you. It was… wrong of me to take advantage of you like that.” She could not resist adding how easy he’d been to blackmail in the first place.

Harry looked surprised, then rolled his green eyes at the last bit. He checked the bag’s contents, cleared his throat, and looked up. “Thanks, Black?”

The black-haired girl nodded; her ponytail bounced. Hands clasped behind her back, she said, “I’m genuine. I regret being so… unfriendly to you.”

“Are you now. Why?” he shot back—sharper than necessary. Eda decided not to bite.

“Yes. I am. I realised my mistake and apologised. Forgive me now; that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

His eyebrows climbed. A scoff. “You want me to just forgive you? You blackmailed me into giving you my father’s cloak! It’s the last thing I have of him—”

“No it isn’t, don’t be dramatic,” she cut in. “You’ve a load more than an Invisibility Cloak from your father, Potter.” Didn’t he remember the galleons and the estates? He was the last Potter. Eda thought of her cousin Draco—how he always came away from Potter irritable—and, for once, understood. “Besides—I apologised. Be reasonable enough to accept my olive branch.” The last words snapped despite her efforts.

Harry breathed through his nose, unclenched his fist. “Fine. I accept your apology. You’re forgiven—unlike your father.”

Eda’s smile vanished. “What does that mean?”

He grinned, for once the cocky kind. “Didn’t you hear? They’re going to give him the Dementor’s Kiss. It’s all over the Prophet.”

Her face would have paled if it weren’t already pale. She had not heard. She’d stopped reading the Prophet, and banned it in her presence. The news shocked and scared her. She masked it before her eyes could gloss, and her father’s words did not echo in her head as she said, very levelly, “If you had a father—which, I’ll remind you, you don’t—you’d know how insensitive that was, you pig.”

She turned and stormed off to class.

Her walk involved moving fast enough to clip a pair of second-years with her shoulder while looking as if she were simply in a hurry to be magnificent elsewhere. By the time she hit the dungeon corridor her face was cool again and her ponytail sat straight. She tugged the ribbon once, as if resetting herself.

Forgiven, unlike your father.

Potters words lodged like a fishbone. It wasn’t malice; it was ignorance. Ignorance was harder to hex.

She slid into her seat as Snape rapped the slate with his knuckle. The air smelt of chalk and pickled roots, which helped. Feelings could be sorted like ingredients: like to like; each in its jar; nothing spilling.

“Miss Black,” Snape said without looking up, “if you could focus your attention on doxy venom rather than drilling holes in your desk with your gaze, it would be… novel. Page two-forty. You will all be called for your practicals.”

“Yes, Professor.” she and several others replied.

Her quill moved on its own. Heat doxy venom; add willow-bark tincture after the first simmer; strain through brass (never iron); bottle in amber glass. Her hand wrote; her head tallied a different list. They were going to ask the Kiss for Sirius. With the Minister leaning on the Governors and a castle full of gossip, the wheels would clatter cheerfully. Only speed mattered now. Pettigrew was the hinge. Not Lupin—Sirius had been insulted she’d even thought it. “I’m not here for Moony,” he’d said, with that flare of hurt that made him briefly twenty again. “I’m here for the rat.” The finger. The street. The Animagus trick. The Egypt photo. The Daily Prophet’s bright lie.

Evidence. Proof. Leverage. Eda Euphemia Black did not cry in corridors; she set traps.

“Remember, students,” Snape drawled at the end, eyes flicking like knives. “Practical at four. Don’t be late. The cauldron won’t brew itself—and neither will I.”

She inclined her head and packed up. She wrote “four o’clock” neatly in her timetable, then turned the page and drew a small rat in the margin, complete with a missing toe.

By lunch the castle was peppermint and panic. Exam season made sweet-eaters of them all; lemon drops on every table; a quiet barter in candied ginger. Eda threaded to her usual seat and allowed herself to be bracketed, as always, by Draco’s elbows and Daphne’s judgements.

“You look troubled.” Draco observed, polishing his spoon with his sleeve.

“I spoke with a boy who thinks printing presses absolve you of thought,” Eda replied, cutting her potato into mathematically exact cubes.

“Who—Potter?” Blaise asked, not looking up from the pencilled Arithmancy grid he’d balanced on an upturned goblet. “He’s decent in a crisis.”

“He is a walking crisis,” Daphne said “I’m fairly sure he doesn’t wash his hair.”

“Leave some shreds of mystery in the world, Greengrass,” Pansy said “If you tell us that, what will we speculate about?”

Crabbe and Goyle applied themselves to their plates with the rumbling focus of small avalanches. They nodded as if they knew the topic, which was oddly sweet.

Eda gave them a sanitised version—that a polite apology for “running into him” had been answered with a braying announcement about the Kiss. The table hissed in chorus. She felt faintly guilty about the lie, but could not find a better-sounding truth. They ate her words anyway.

“Idiot,” Pansy declared “absolute idiot.”

Draco scowled. “And this is why I’ve always said he’s a menace. He’s got a talent for martyrdom and a face that makes everyone go soft. It’s appalling.”

Why do you care about his face? Eda thought.

“Draco—we get it, he’s all you ever think about.” Daphne said, rolling her eyes.

“Eat your greens.” Eda added, to shut them both up.

Draco opened his mouth to perform outrage and thought better of it “The Prophet’s been dreadful.” he muttered, quieter.

Eda nodded and changed the topic. “Fudge is wobbly as blancmange, and when the Minister wobbles everyone falls on their faces trying to balance.”

They looked uncertain about the metaphor but nodded along.

“My mother,” Draco brightened “says if Dementors get too long a leash they’ll eat the hand that holds it.”

“Now that’s a good metaphor.” Pansy said.

Eda let the chatter wash and file itself. Chatter was useful; you could lay a plan atop it and no one noticed the lines. She took a bite of roast carrot and asked, as if idly “When are the corridors emptiest?”

“Between double Potions and double Transfiguration,” Blaise said “half the school is late to one or both; the rest are pretending they need the loo.”

“After supper.” Daphne said. “Prefects are alert then. They wish to be seen.”

“Three in the afternoon,” Pansy decided. “Everyone’s pretending to revise.”

“Common rooms are empty during dinner,” Goyle rumbled, to everyone’s surprise.

She did her practical at four with the cool competence Snape had eviscerated them towards. The antidote turned the right amber; the steam smelt thinly of willow and old pennies; Snape’s mouth twitched like a man refusing to sneeze. He made a tiny mark on his clipboard. Praise, in his dialect.

She left her cauldron drying and re-tied her ribbon. Dinner came and went in a red-gold daze. She ate enough to keep her hands steady and excused herself with a hand to her temple.

“Headache?” Daphne asked, sympathy sharpened by curiosity.

“Hospital Wing.” Eda said.

“I could use a vial of Pepperup.” Pansy sighed. “If Binns says ‘epochal shift’ again I’ll become a violent person.”

Eda nodded and went.

The Hospital Wing was quiet in the disinfected, well-kept way Pomfrey liked. The matron bustled from behind a screen the instant Eda’s shoe hit tile.

“Miss Black,” Pomfrey said, hands at her waist, tone brisk with orders. “you look pale.”

“I’m always pale.” Eda said—startled to hear Narcissa in her mouth. “But I do have a headache—Pepperup, if you please.”

Pomfrey studied her for a pulse-long moment, decided Eda wasn’t going to topple decoratively, and handed over a small green-capped vial. “One sip now, one before you sleep. And you don’t brew your own calming draughts the week of exams; I can always tell when students think they’re clever. It interacts with stress.”

“I’d never,” Eda lied, taking a performing sip. The mint burned away the last grit of Potter. “Thank you.”

“You will go straight back to your common room,” Pomfrey said, as if reciting the castle’s veins, “and you will not wander.”

“Of course.” Eda said, and slipped a second vial into the front compartment of her pouch while Pomfrey’s back was turned. The serpent clasp was warm under her fingers. Kreacher had polished it that morning, muttering about “Miss Black’s errands” in a tone that suggested approval.

She took the long way out—past a certain stretch of seventh-floor corridor—and stopped in a window niche to wait. The castle’s sounds stacked themselves: dinner laughter, the occasional owl, the distant harangue of a portrait. The light was the ash-rose of late May, soft enough to lie.

A few days later, in the last week of May, she left History „with a headache” and wandered the empty halls with a mission.

She had no Cloak. No Map. She had eyes and ears—and an agreement with the gossiping world of oil and canvas. Not all portraits helped; most demanded payment, and Eda had learned not to promise what she couldn’t pay. But a spindle-thin lady with a ruff like a storm cloud had agreed that, if the Slytherin girl ever wanted to know when Gryffindor’s password changed, she would sing the new one to her violets. In return, Eda had gotten Kreacher to swap the lady’s cracked frame for gilded oak. Three days’ work and enough elbow-grease to strip a troll—and the effect had been astonishing. People who are looked at look back kindly.

Sure enough, the ruffed lady drifted past in another frame and pretended to water a pot. She hummed nonsense to throw off eavesdroppers, then slid into the hissed syllables.

“Flib-ber-ti-gi-bbet,” she sang, too bright. “Flibbertigibbet.”

Eda smiled without showing it. Sir Cadogan’s brief tenure had made silly passwords fashionable; the Fat Lady had kept the habit, favouring ridiculous words with too many b’s and g’s on the theory bad spellers made bad burglars. Eda mouthed the syllables twice, tasting their weight. It wasn’t pure deduction, but close: one Renaissance nonsense word on Mondays, something operatic on Saturdays; three likely candidates tonight. Flibbertigibbet had been second. Gossip did the rest.

She watched the corridor two more minutes. No one passed who wasn’t headed to pudding. It would be empty upstairs. She tucked her hair behind her ears, set her face in the blank, pleasant look she used when prefects were about, and walked.

The Fat Lady, restored to her post after her famous fright, glanced up and pursed her lips. “You’re not one of mine,” she said at once. “Password?”

Eda tipped her head a fraction, professional to professional. “Flibbertigibbet.”

“Correct.” the Fat Lady said, surprised into good cheer “Off you go.”

The portrait swung open. Warmth breathed across Eda’s face. She stepped in.

Red and sun-warm: fat armchairs, a fire that crackled as if it were being paid. Banners had been taken down for exams, lending the room a bare look, like a head with shorter hair. Knitting on a footstool. A steaming teacup forgotten. Only movement: a ginger cat on a sofa back, tail thudding as if disagreeing in dreams.

Crookshanks opened one gold eye, regarding her with the flat assessment only cats and headmistresses manage.

“Granger’s cat.” she murmured.

He yawned—alarming teeth—and rearranged himself into an opinionless ginger lump. His tail flicked an I-see-you metronome.

Eda moved. Up the stairs, past a noticeboard begging for Madam Pince’s missing atlas, along a corridor that smelt of boy and broom polish. She kept her step light and economical. She had rehearsed this in her head so often it had smoothed the edges off fear.

The third-year boys’ dorm was simple: five beds; trunks with threadbare straps; mismatched socks despairing under one bed; a hand-me-down broom-polishing kit. Potter’s side had the careful untidiness of someone who’d had to make his things look like they belonged to someone else for too long. She looked away. This wasn’t about him.

Ron Weasley’s trunk was a battered thing with initials hand-poked into the leather. Spare quills sat on top. The lid didn’t quite shut. Boys with five brothers didn’t bother collapsing the universe into neatness.

“Hello, traitor.” Eda murmured to the trunk, and lifted the lid.

Paper and peppermint and mouse-dropped oats. A tangle of Chudley Cannons socks; a sweater with a hole in the elbow. Below, a crate the size of a small cake—Scabbers’s wicker cage, door tied with an old shoe-lace. Either the catch was broken or the lace was a talisman against Crookshanks. The cage was empty. Against the bottom lay a chewed seed-cup and, tellingly, a greasy feather that did not belong to any rat. Eda touched it with her wand; a thin pink line lit along the quill—cat scent. Crookshanks had been here, of course.

If Wormtail wasn’t in the cage, then—she crouched. Under the bed: a dented cricket tin. Inside: a plug of suet and flaxseed. She smiled. Weasley had been too wary of Crookshanks to leave the feed in plain sight—but boys were two parts lazy to one part cunning. A fallen trail of seed whispered toward a sagging bit of skirting board.

“There.” she breathed.

She had brought a trap, of course. Not a Muggle spring—she didn’t trust those—but a little wirework cage Kreacher had scavenged from the back of an old cabinet, the sort St Mungo’s used for doxy swarms. He’d polished it, muttering about “proper ironwork.” Eda had lined it with an old handkerchief and threaded the latch with a hair of green ribbon. It sat folded in the back compartment of her pouch. She tapped the serpent clasp and slipped the wire out. It unfolded with a neat click, like an idea.

From the front compartment she drew a twist of parchment with something more persuasive than seeds. Kreacher had rolled his eyes, declared Miss Black would be the death of him, and produced, with ceremony, a sliver of smoked sprat from a kitchen cache. “Naughty, naughty.” he’d muttered, wrapping it in greaseproof as if packing lunch for a wicked child.

Eda set the cage by the skirting board, tucked the sprat inside, and tapped the door. The latch primed itself with a delicate click; another tap silenced it. She placed three seeds in a line to the entrance, because even Animagi liked to pretend they had free will. Then she waited, still as a needle.

Minutes have texture when you’re waiting. This one stretched, then went taut. A log shifted downstairs; a cat thumped. Eda held herself small and calm and thought of Sirius’s face when she handed him a fact no one could deny.

A whisk; a whisper. A nose pushed into the world.

Greyish, ragged, with the hunched, resentful look of small survivors. One ear nicked. One toe gone. Her heart flicked in clean, ugly triumph.

The rat sniffed the air. He ignored the seed—suspicious of the obvious—then pressed forward to the deeper smell. The sprat was an argument written in oil and salt. He shuffled into the cage as if he’d invented it.

Eda’s finger twitched. The door dropped and latched with a dear little click.

Silence. Then the rat flung himself at the wire—teeth bared, eyes black buttons of offence. Quiet about it; practised. She slid her wand along the bars and whispered a silencing charm that lay on the air like snow. The cage stilled, save for the furious tremor of paws on wire.

“I’ve got you now.” Eda whispered.

She slid the cage back into the pouch’s rear compartment. It shrank as it went, folding quietly into Kreacher’s re-enchanted pocket. The serpent clasp warmed, satisfied. Eda tied her ribbon tighter and checked the room: cage door retied, trunk lid angled exactly as she’d found it, suet tin closed. The only new thing was a faint lift in the air, as if the room had exhaled after months.

On the landing she paused. A footstep? No—wood talking to itself. She moved light down the stairs. The common room was still empty save for Crookshanks, who had claimed the sofa as his throne. He watched her go with a professional’s approval. She nodded to the Fat Lady on her way out.

“You didn’t stay long.” the portrait sniffed.

“Try not to notice me at all.” Eda said pleasantly, and slipped into the corridor.

She took the short way back. Portraits muttered; armour creaked; somewhere Peeves sang about someone’s underpants. She kept her face serene and her hand easy on the serpent clasp. At the first bank of windows she stopped and allowed herself one thought: I’ve done it.

The thought skittered down her spine like a shiver.

Later, in the courtyard, she considered her next move. She couldn’t just march to Dumbledore and hold out a cage claiming it contained the Animagus form of a man presumed dead. And she could hardly go to her father; she didn’t know where he was without the Map. Lupin? No. The man disliked Sirius, and, she was fairly sure from the looks and little comments all year, her as well. He’d call her mad—or worse, have her detained for aiding a criminal.

Her mind strayed to the French estate—another plan, another day. For now: hide the rat; keep him alive; secure a Head of House; pick witnesses who loved paperwork. She would count. She would not be stupid with revenge.

She sat very still until the bell for supper rang, and then she rose and went in with the others as if she had not altered the axis of the castle by a finger’s width.

Chapter Text

The rat would not stop moving.

Tiny claws clicked against brass as it spun in anxious circles, fur bristling, nose twitching in the candlelight. It wasn’t the mindless fidget of an animal; it was pacing. Thinking.

Eda watched it from across the desk, chin resting on one hand. The longer she looked, the clearer the shape of it became — not a pet, not a rat, not even prey.

Someone.

Peter Pettigrew.

The name fit like a splinter under the skin.

Every possibility she’d tried to talk herself into — that she was mistaken, that coincidence had teeth — had crumbled by midnight. There were too many facts, too many patterns aligning. A rat that old should have died years ago. A rat missing one toe. A rat that flinched when she whispered the name Sirius as though it had been burned.

Her quill lay abandoned on the parchment beside her. Every chessboard in her mind pointed to the same conclusion: she couldn’t keep this secret alone.

But who would believe her?

She imagined Dumbledore’s expression: mild, kind, unshakably patient, and impossible to read.

Snape’s: cold disdain.

Even Lupin — especially Lupin — would hear the accusation and punish her for it, dismiss her.

That left McGonagall.

Of all the professors, she was the least likely to be charmed and the most likely to do something. But she was also the one who had seen Sirius dragged away in chains. Who had called him murderer and meant it.

Eda’s fingers tightened around the bars of the cage. “You’ll make me sound mad,” she whispered to the rat. “You know that, don’t you?”

It only stared, eyes like black beads, too alert to be innocent.

She stood so abruptly that the chair legs screeched against stone. “Fine. Let’s see how mad I sound.”

By dawn, the dungeons were grey with cold. Eda wrapped the cage in her cloak and slipped out while the other girls still slept. Her boots struck the flagstones softly as she climbed. Every shadow along the corridor seemed to lean toward her, curious.

McGonagall’s office door was half open when she reached it. A faint scratch of quill on parchment came from inside. Eda hesitated — long enough to think of walking away — then knocked once.

“Come in,” came the brisk reply.

Eda stepped over the threshold. The room was neat to the point of severity: stacks of parchment, a kettle steaming gently on the hearth, and the faint scent of morning tea. McGonagall looked up, spectacles glinting, eyebrows already raised.

“Miss Black. You are aware that breakfast has not yet started?”

“Yes, Professor.” Eda’s voice sounded thinner than she wanted. “I need to speak with you. It’s important.”

McGonagall set her quill down, folding her hands on the desk. “Is someone hurt?”

Why would she assume that? Eda thought.

“No. Not yet.”

She placed the covered cage on the polished wood. “But they could be. I think there’s something dangerous in the castle.”

The older witch’s eyes flicked to the cloak, then back to Eda’s face. “Dangerous.”

“Yes, Professor. A rat.”

McGonagall blinked, clearly fighting the urge to sigh. “A rat.”

“It isn’t what it looks like,” Eda pressed on. “It’s a man. An unregistered Animagus.”

That did it — the professor’s composure sharpened, interest edging out irritation. “That is a very serious accusation, Miss Black. Explain.”

So she did. Quickly, but not carelessly: the unnatural age, the missing toe, the borrowed cage charm that showed traces of human aura. Each detail laid out like evidence in a trial. She didn’t embellish; she didn’t dare. When she finished, her throat felt raw.

McGonagall regarded her in silence. The tick of the clock on the mantel filled the space between them.

At last, she said, “You’re suggesting this animal is—?”

“Peter Pettigrew,” Eda said softly. “The man everyone thinks my father killed.”

The words landed like a stone dropped in still water.

McGonagall’s eyes narrowed — not in disbelief, but in calculation. “You realise what you are implying, Miss Black. That the man your father allegedly murdered has been alive all this time.”

“Yes,” Eda said, trying not to roll her eyes “That’s exactly what I’m implying.”

The professor’s mouth thinned “There are… other explanations. Polyjuice. A curse. Even a shared Animagus form—”

“No,” Eda said, steady now. “It’s him. You can prove it. Please. Just use Homenum Revelio.”

For a long moment, McGonagall didn’t move. Then she drew her wand, not abruptly but with the slow precision of someone performing an autopsy on a belief. She flicked the cloak aside. The rat cowered in the cage.

“Very well,” she said quietly. “But you will understand that if this is a fabrication—”

“It isn’t.” The student insisted.

McGonagall’s wand tip hovered over the bars.

“Homenum Revelio.”

A faint shimmer, golden and fragile, spread over the cage. It clung to the creature’s outline for a heartbeat—then another—refusing to fade.

Eda watched the colour drain from McGonagall’s face.

The professor’s wand wavered. “No… that can’t—” She stepped closer, whispered the spell again. The glow pulsed, unmistakable now, a human presence folded inside something small enough to fit in her palm.

The sound that escaped McGonagall wasn’t disbelief. It was dread.

“Oh, Merlin,” she breathed. Her eyes stayed fixed on the cage, as if blinking might undo it. “He’s—he’s human.”

Eda didn’t move. “You see it.”

McGonagall didn’t answer. Her lips moved soundlessly once, twice, before her voice found shape again. “All this time… in a school… with children.” Her hand went to her temple, then dropped again. “It’s impossible.”

“It’s not,” Eda whispered “It’s Peter Pettigrew.”

The professor’s head snapped up, gaze cutting sharp as a blade. “If you are right, Miss Black—if—then this man has been living under false form, evading the Ministry, possibly in league with—”

“With my father?” Eda finished. “You think they could be working together?”

McGonagall’s silence was answer enough. She looked almost ashamed of the thought, but she didn’t deny it.

Eda swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth. “Then test that, too. Bring the Aurors. I don’t care. But if he’s alive, it means my father didn’t kill him. That’s fact, not theory. And if one thing they said about that night was wrong, then maybe everything else was, too.”

That landed. She saw it in the slight flinch of McGonagall’s eyelids, the flicker of memory tightening her features.

Eda pressed on, careful now. “I’m not asking you to believe my father’s innocent. I’m asking you to believe that someone else in this cage is guilty. For being unregistered. For hiding for twelve years. For sitting at the Weasley breakfast table while everyone thought he was dead.”

McGonagall’s wand lowered by an inch. Her jaw worked, but no words came out. The room felt smaller, heavy with the sound of the rat’s soft, terrified breathing.

At last, the professor spoke, voice low and precise. “If this is truly Peter Pettigrew… he has committed multiple crimes. The Ministry will need to be notified. But you will not speak of this to anyone else. Do you understand me, Miss Black?”

“Yes, Professor.”

McGonagall nodded once, more to herself than to Eda. Then, almost reluctantly, she flicked her wand again. “Stasis.”

The rat froze mid-twitch, surrounded by a faint blue sheen.

When she turned back, her expression had hardened into something close to command. “You will accompany me to the Headmaster. Say nothing unless asked.”

Eda inclined her head. “Yes, Professor.”

They left the office together, McGonagall carrying the suspended cage in front of her like a cursed relic. The corridors were quiet; dawn hadn’t yet reached the higher windows. Their footsteps echoed in the stillness.

Halfway up the staircase, Eda risked a glance at her companion. The professor’s face was set, but her eyes… her eyes looked decades older.

“You believed the reports,” Eda said before she could stop herself. “Twelve years ago. About him.”

McGonagall’s reply was faint, almost to herself. “Everyone did.”

Eda hesitated. “And now?”

The older woman’s mouth tightened. “Now I’m reminded how often we see only what we’re told to see.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

At the base of the stone gargoyle, McGonagall paused. She adjusted her grip on the cage as if it weighed far more than it should. The faint glow of the Revelio spell still clung to the rat’s shape, stubborn as truth.

She turned to Eda, voice taut but level. “If you are mistaken, this will not end kindly for you. But if you are not…” She trailed off, searching the younger girl’s face. “Then the world is about to become very complicated.”

Eda nodded once, she didn‘t know why but she felt slightly queazy, like she needed to drink a tall glass of water to feel better.

For the first time that morning, a flash of something like grim respect crossed McGonagall’s features. Then she faced the gargoyle.

“Fizzing Whizzbee,” she said, and the stone leapt aside.

The spiral staircase began to move, slow and deliberate, carrying them upward toward the light.

Eda kept her eyes fixed on the cage, on the faint pulse of gold that marked a living lie. For the first time since she could remember, she wasn’t sure if she was more afraid of being right or of what would happen if she was.

Chapter Text

The staircase carried them upward in silence.

Eda could hear the faint hum of the castle waking below, the clatter of a few portraits whispering as they passed. McGonagall stood rigid beside her, every line of her posture betraying thought too fast to show on her face.

When the steps stilled, the griffin-shaped door swung aside.

Dumbledore’s office was washed in the thin gold of early morning. Steam curled from a pot of tea; silver instruments clicked and whirred, measuring secrets no one had asked them to. Fawkes watched from his perch, feathers the colour of new fire.

“Minerva,” the Headmaster said warmly, though the light in his eyes sharpened when he saw her expression. “And Miss Black. You’re both up rather early.”

McGonagall did not waste a breath on courtesy.

“Albus, there is something you must see.”

Her voice was too calm; that alone made the room hold still.

She set the small blue-lit sphere on his desk. Inside, the rat hung motionless, tail frozen mid-curl.

“I performed Homenum Revelio,” she said. “The charm confirmed human presence.”

Dumbledore’s brows lifted by the smallest degree. “In a rat?”

“Yes.” Her tone was brittle. “Miss Black brought it to my attention.”

Eda clasped her hands behind her back so he wouldn’t see them shake. Dumbledore turned to her, that disarming gentleness settling on his features like an old habit.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you could tell me how you came to this conclusion.”

Eda swallowed. “I noticed inconsistencies, sir. The animal’s age. A missing toe. And…” She hesitated. “I’ve studied enough Animagus theory to recognise suppression wards when I test for them.”

Something flickered in his gaze — approval, maybe surprise. “And whom do you believe hides beneath this form?”

“Peter Pettigrew.”

The name fell into the quiet like a pebble into deep water. Even the portraits stopped pretending to sleep.

Dumbledore’s eyes did not widen, but they cooled, considering.

“An accusation with history behind it,” he said softly. “Minerva?”

McGonagall’s jaw worked once before she answered. “The spell was clear, Albus. There is a man in that body.”

He nodded slowly, drew his wand, and murmured, “Finite Incantatem.”

The blue shimmer dissolved. The rat dropped onto the desk with a small thud and immediately tried to bolt. Dumbledore’s hand flicked; an invisible ward shimmered around it like glass. The creature froze, mid-scrabble.

For a moment, the only sound was the whirr of silver instruments.

Then Dumbledore sighed, almost regretfully.

“Specialis Revelio.”

Light flared — gold, then white — outlining the tiny body with the unmistakable silhouette of a man curled in on himself. The magic thinned, wavered, and held.

McGonagall’s breath caught. “Sweet Merlin…”

Eda’s stomach dropped. She had been right, and she hated how terrifying that felt.

Dumbledore’s expression turned grave. “So it seems.”

He lowered his wand, studying the trembling animal as though the past itself had chosen that moment to crawl onto his desk.

“Miss Black,” he said quietly, “you understand what this suggests?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice steadied under his scrutiny. “It suggests that Peter Pettigrew wasn’t murdered. That means my father didn’t kill him. And if that part of the story was false, others could be as well.” She took a breath. “But even if you believe none of that, he’s still an unregistered Animagus who’s been hiding among students. That alone deserves the Ministry’s attention.”

McGonagall’s eyes flicked toward her, startled by the calmness in her tone. Dumbledore regarded Eda for a long moment, then inclined his head slightly, as though she had passed some invisible test.

“You’re correct,” he said. “Whatever else this proves or does not prove, it cannot be

He raised his wand again. “Let us end the pretence.”

The spell he chose was older than the Ministry’s registry: “Homorphus Charm.” The words left his mouth like a command carved into air.

The transformation was not graceful.

The rat convulsed, twisting, bones snapping outward. Fur retracted; limbs lengthened with a sickening elasticity. When the light cleared, a man crouched where the cage had been — pale, balding, his clothes hanging in tatters.

Peter Pettigrew gasped, eyes darting from face to face. When they met McGonagall’s, he froze.

Chapter Text

The courtroom smelled of cold stone and parchment dust—an old, heavy smell that clung to the back of Eda’s throat. She sat on one of the benches reserved for witnesses and family, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on the chain-ringed chair at the centre of the pit. They’d removed the shackles for this hearing—symbolic courtesy, someone had called it—but the metal still glittered faintly in the blue-white light that floated above the dais.

August slipped away; it is the week before the World Quidditch Cup. Outside, London steamed with heat, but down here the air was damp and cool, a subterranean reminder that wizarding justice preferred its truths under lock and key.

So much had changed since late spring that Eda sometimes caught herself looking for the seams. The castle had gone quiet after Pettigrew’s arrest; whispers first, then headlines, then silence heavy enough to bruise. McGonagall’s letters had been formal, Dumbledore’s brief. The Ministry’s summer had been an endless procession of hearings, depositions, and bureaucratic confusion: what to do with a dead man who wasn’t dead, what to do with the one who’d been blamed.

And what to do with her.

She had testified once already—narrowly, carefully, keeping her voice even when describing the cage and the spells and the look on McGonagall’s face. After that, the adults had taken over. The Wizengamot liked tidy narratives; hers was too sharp at the edges.

Now the proceedings had slowed to the pace of old magic. Pettigrew was alive and in custody, awaiting formal sentencing for concealment, illegal Animagus transformation, and conspiracy. Sirius Black—no, her father—was under provisional house arrest at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, the property restored to him by an unpleasant combination of blood-line law and Lucius Malfoy’s quiet lobbying.

She had visited five times.

Each visit had felt like stepping into a house that remembered it was supposed to be haunted. The curtains still breathed dust, the portraits still muttered, but there was light now, faint and human. Sirius had looked better each time—less ghost, more man. The first day she’d arrived he had flinched at the sound of her voice; by the fifth, he had managed a smile that didn’t look painful.

“You’ve grown into a proper Black,” he’d said once, eyes bright with something she couldn’t name. “Clever enough to undo all our mistakes.”
She hadn’t known how to answer, so she’d offered Kreacher’s tea and changed the subject.

Now she sat beneath the tall benches of the Wizengamot, waiting for the morning’s routine hearings to end. Bureaucracy first, truth later. Wizards in plum robes murmured to one another, quills scratching across rolls of parchment. The enchanted torches crackled in measured rhythm.

Eda tried to listen—really tried—but the droning voices blurred together: fines, sanctions, an appeal from a man who’d illegally bred fire crabs in Devon. The steady monotony of legal language dulled everything. Her thoughts slipped backward, toward Grimmauld Place again.

The memory came in fragments: the creak of stairboards, the soft hiss of old gas lamps, the smell of polish and burnt sugar. Sirius moving through the hall like someone reacquainting himself with gravity. He’d shown her the family tapestry once, fingers brushing the charred edge where his name had been burned out. “Can’t put it back,” he’d said quietly, “but I suppose you’ve proved the embroidery wrong.”

She had smiled then—careful, small—and changed the subject again.

A sharp rap of a gavel jolted her back to the present. “Next case,” called a witch with violet plumes in her hat. “Matter Seventeen: Review of House-Arrest Provisions for the Defendant Sirius Orion Black.”

The courtroom shifted. Quills stilled. Even the torches seemed to lean closer.

Eda’s pulse stumbled. On the bench directly ahead, her father rose from his seat between two Aurors. The plain black robes suited him badly; he was too thin for them, though less skeletal than he’d been in May. His hair hung to his shoulders, clean now, streaked with the first hints of silver. His face had filled out just enough that the sharpness looked deliberate again, not hollow.

When he turned slightly, she caught his profile and felt the strange double-vision she always did: the man the newspapers had shown her all her life, and the one who had brewed her tea at Grimmauld Place, both occupying the same skin.

He looked ahead, calm, but she could see the tremor in his hand where it rested on the rail.

Across the pit sat Remus Lupin. He looked out of place in the formal courtroom, threadbare robes pressed and mended for the occasion, expression solemn. He had attended every hearing, quietly, at the back, but today he’d been called forward as a witness for character reference. He nodded once at Sirius, almost imperceptibly. Sirius’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile.

Eda let herself breathe again.

Up in the gallery, she noticed movement—Arthur Weasley, seated among the Ministry observers, head tilted as he scanned the benches. His gaze found her by accident; she saw the flicker of recognition, the polite confusion turning into understanding. He didn’t look away. She met his eyes briefly, then looked down, pretending to straighten the papers in her lap.

The chairwitch cleared her throat. “Proceedings of the Wizengamot for the eighteenth of August, concerning the provisional release and continued monitoring of Sirius Orion Black. Chief Warlock Dumbledore presiding.”

Dumbledore looked older than he had at Hogwarts, though the summer light caught his silver beard with something almost forgiving. He raised one hand, and the room quieted at once.

“This hearing,” he said, “concerns the conditions of Mr Black’s temporary liberty pending the formal use of the Truth-Recollection Charm in next week’s session. The court recognises that said charm, when applied under supervision, constitutes irrefutable evidence of witnessed memory. Today, however, we are to determine whether Mr Black may remain under supervised freedom until that time.”

His voice filled the room like music folded into law—calm, precise, impossible to argue with.

Eda tuned out the first exchanges—Ministry advocates citing precedent, Dumbledore asking mild questions. She’d read the transcripts before; she knew the dance. Her father had been exonerated in every practical sense since Pettigrew’s capture, but bureaucracy demanded ritual. The Ministry needed to be seen deliberating, even when the outcome was obvious.

Still, part of her listened for tone, for subtext. The way one wizard muttered “Black’s money talks louder than justice.” The way another whispered back, “Malfoy’s hand’s in this.”

She wanted to turn around and tell them it wasn’t money that had freed him. It was truth, and a little girl with the wrong surname who had refused to stop asking questions. But she didn’t move.

Her mind drifted again—to the visits.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Sirius had said the first time, sitting stiffly in the drawing-room chair like a man expecting shackles to appear at any second.
“I wanted to,” she’d answered.
He’d looked at her then, really looked, and said, “You sound like her.”
He hadn’t said who her was, but she’d known.

The second visit had been easier. He’d told her stories about the old house—how the doxies had once infested the curtains, how his mother’s portrait yelled at Kreacher to make sure non of them were in Sirius's 'unruly' hair. She’d laughed; he’d looked startled by the sound.

By the fifth visit, they’d learned the quiet language of people rebuilding something fragile: small jokes, longer silences, an occasional question left unanswered. It wasn’t comfort, not yet, but it was beginning to resemble it.

A voice cut through the courtroom again, sharp and formal: “Mr Black has cooperated fully with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. His wand remains impounded. There have been no infractions of his parole. Auror Shacklebolt reports weekly visits confirming compliance.”

Dumbledore nodded. “And the Department’s recommendation?”

“Continuation of house arrest until the final memory review, with limited release for the Quidditch World Cup under supervision.”

A murmur swept the benches. Dumbledore lifted his hand once more; the sound died immediately.

“Very well. Does the court object?”

No one spoke. Even the quills paused.

Eda exhaled slowly. It was happening—the first official recognition that her father could exist outside of prison, outside of the walls of Grimmauld Place. It wasn’t freedom, not yet, but it was sunlight.

Her eyes flicked to him again. Sirius had turned slightly in his seat, just enough to find her in the row behind him. For an instant, the years fell away. The faintest smile crossed his face—real, this time, not the brittle one from their visits. She felt something hot rise behind her eyes and forced herself to blink it away before anyone noticed.

Dumbledore’s voice broke the moment. “The court therefore decrees: Sirius Orion Black shall remain under the conditions of house arrest at his ancestral residence until such time as the Truth-Recollection Charm may be performed before this body. He is granted temporary leave to attend the International Quidditch World Cup under Auror escort. So ordered.”

The gavel struck once, echoing off the stone walls.

Applause was forbidden, but the faint sigh that passed through the spectators sounded dangerously like it. The Aurors at Sirius’s side relaxed by degrees. McGonagall, seated two rows up, allowed herself a small nod that might have been approval.

Eda let her hands unclench in her lap. The tension left her fingers in little tremors. For the first time all summer, she felt something close to safety.

The next hearing would be the real one—the use of the Truth-Recollection Charm, a spell older than the Ministry itself, designed to draw an unbroken chain of memory from the subject’s mind and project it for the court to witness. Fool-proof, the papers called it. Terrifying, Dumbledore had said. She wondered what it would feel like to watch someone else’s memories spill into the air like smoke and light.

Her father was speaking now, quietly, formally, thanking the court for the opportunity to clear his name at last. The voice carried differently than it had in the papers’ descriptions: rougher, steadier, real. She found herself memorising it, just in case the next hearing ended badly.

When the session adjourned, benches scraped and robes swished as the Wizengamot filed out in orderly disarray. Eda stayed seated, waiting for the aisle to clear. Across the pit, Remus Lupin met her gaze and gave a small, weary nod—the kind shared by people who had both lost and found too much in the same summer. She didn't return it.

Sirius was already being led toward the side door reserved for defendants on conditional release. As he passed, he glanced up again, and for a heartbeat their eyes met through the haze of wand-light and dust. He didn’t speak, but the look said everything: We’re almost there.

Then he was gone, swallowed by the corridor and the Aurors and the machinery of justice that was finally, painfully, turning the right way.

Eda sat for another minute, listening to the quiet, until Arthur Weasley rose from the observer’s bench. He hesitated, as though debating whether to approach, then simply tipped his head to her in acknowledgment—half-polite, half-grateful. She returned the gesture before gathering her papers and following the crowd out into the Ministry corridors.

The air outside the courtroom was warmer, smelling faintly of ink and charmed polish. She adjusted her robe, squared her shoulders, and stepped into the light.

Chapter Text

The green flare of the Floo spat Eda into the Malfoy drawing room with a low whump and a rain of ash.
Marble gleamed beneath her boots; the scent of polish and char lingered. Behind her, Lucius stepped neatly from the fireplace, already brushing a non-existent speck from his sleeve, and Narcissa followed with effortless poise, the cool blue of her robes untouched by soot.

The hush of the manor settled around them. After the Ministry’s echoing corridors, it felt like stepping into a museum of good taste and worse secrets.

Lucius removed his gloves with deliberate care. “A farce,” he said, as though announcing a weather report. “A theatre of self-congratulation thinly disguised as law.”

“Nevertheless,” Narcissa replied smoothly, “the right outcome was reached. That’s what matters.”
Her tone was mild, but her eyes flicked to Eda — a silent measure of approval.

Lucius gave the faintest nod in her direction. “You handled yourself well. Quiet composure unnerves politicians far more than defiance.”

“Thank you,” Eda said automatically.

He was already leaving the room, calling for tea and correspondence before she’d finished. Narcissa touched Eda’s shoulder lightly — a fleeting warmth in a cold place.

“You should rest. The hearing took all morning.”

“I’m all right,” Eda said.

Her aunt gave a small, knowing smile. “Rest anyway.”
Then she swept after her husband, heels clicking against marble.

The room seemed to exhale once they were gone. Outside, the Wiltshire afternoon leaned toward dusk, the windows filled with storm-coloured light.

Eda crossed to one of the chairs and sank down, the stiffness of the courtroom still in her spine. For a moment she let her head tip back and stared at the ceiling — frescoes of serpents and constellations twisting through plaster — until her eyes blurred.

The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that made thought louder.
Sirius’s name still hung in her head, tangled with the official phrasing of the verdict. Granted leave to attend the International Quidditch World Cup… A legal sentence that sounded like a sentence of a different kind.

She was still turning it over when a voice said lazily, “You look awful.”

Draco was sprawled across the long sofa like he owned gravity, Quidditch Today open across his knees. His hair was slightly too long, his tie half undone, the picture of a boy performing nonchalance to perfection.

“Thank you for the warm welcome,” Eda said without looking at him.

“You’re covered in ash. Very fashionable.”

“Shut up.”

He flipped a page. “So, did they clap or cry when they let your father out?”

“They didn’t let him out,” she said evenly. “They allowed him to attend the Cup.”

Draco looked up then, eyebrows raised. “You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about Ministry decrees.”

He whistled low. “Merlin’s pants. Your father at the World Cup. That’s going to send the Prophet into a fit. ‘Convict Enjoys Quidditch in Style.’ They’ll print it twice just for the drama.”

Eda smiled faintly. “I imagine they’ll survive.”

“You’ll be in the Top Box, then? Sitting next to the Minister and his idiotic bowler hat?”

“Aren’t you all coming too?” she asked.

“Technically,” he said, stretching. “Father’s on the guest list. Mother wouldn’t miss it if Merlin himself were refereeing. But it’s funnier to pretend we’re above it.”

“Of course,” she said. “Wouldn’t want to appear enthusiastic.”

“Exactly.” He smirked. “You’ll have front-page seats when the fireworks start. Try not to embarrass us.”

Eda arched a brow. “I’ll do my best not to commit any crimes in public.”

“Good. Father would never recover.”

He went back to his magazine, flicking through the pages with exaggerated disinterest. Eda studied him — her cousin, infuriating and familiar. They’d grown up under the same marble ceilings, learned the same rules of silence, and spent the summer circling each other between lessons, gossip, and the unspoken weight of everything that had changed.

Draco sighed dramatically. “I suppose your dad’s thrilled.”

“He didn’t say,” Eda answered, and that was true. Sirius had smiled at the verdict — that crooked, hesitant smile that looked like it might break if held too long — but he hadn’t said much. Joy wasn’t something he remembered how to display yet.

Draco rolled his eyes. “He’s free enough to attend Quidditch. That’s thrilled in adult language.”

Eda didn’t reply. The silence stretched, comfortable until it wasn’t. Outside, the rain had started again, soft against the glass.

Draco leaned back, hands behind his head. “I bet Father’s already planning which Ministry official he’ll pretend to like in the Top Box. Probably that idiot Crouch.”

“Probably.” Eda said with a hint of a smile.

They fell quiet again. The storm light shifted, turning everything grey-gold, and Eda found herself watching the rain slide down the windows. “Feels like August’s already gone,” she said after a moment. “Slipped away again.”

Draco glanced at her. “What?”

“Nothing. Just a phrase. ‘August slipped away like a bottle of wine.’” The words felt strange in her mouth — familiar, but without origin. “I don’t even know where I heard it.”

He made a face. “Shut up, you’ve never had wine.”

“I know,” she said, a short laugh escaping her. “That’s what’s weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“I live here. It’s catching.”

“Oi,” he protested, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

The quiet came back, gentler this time. The rain thickened, drumming softly against the panes. Somewhere down the hall, the grandfather clock struck two.

Draco stretched again. “Bet we’re the only family in Britain planning their outfits for a sporting event and a trial in the same week.”

“Efficiency,” Eda said.

“Or madness.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

He grinned. “You sound like Mother.”

“Don’t insult me.”

That earned her a laugh, quick and genuine. “Come on, Cousin. Tea’ll be ready. You can tell Mother how stoic you were while Father terrorised the Wizengamot.”

“She already knows,” Eda said dryly. But she stood anyway, smoothing the ash from her sleeve.

They left the drawing room together, footsteps echoing in the marble hall. Halfway down, she stopped and looked back at the window. The garden stretched out like a painting—hedges trimmed within an inch of their lives, fountains silvered by the rain, and beyond that the fading light over the fields.

That line came again, soft and certain: August slipped away like a bottle of wine.
It didn’t sound like her. It didn’t sound like this world. But it fit, perfectly, like something she’d always known.

“Eda?” Draco called from the doorway. “You coming or what?”

She blinked, the music dissolving. “Yeah,” she said. “Coming.”

Dinner was exactly what she found it to be every day: polite conversation, the faint clink of silverware, Narcissa asking questions about the hearing that were really comments on decorum.
Lucius discussed the Cup’s seating arrangements as though he’d organised them personally; Draco muttered under his breath until Eda kicked him beneath the table.

When the plates vanished, Narcissa poured tea and said, “You’ll need new robes for the Cup, sweetheart.”

“I’ll manage, auntie.” Eda said.

“Good girl.” Narcissa murmured, distracted, already planning fabrics in her head.

Lucius turned to Draco. “And you, behave yourself. No comments about Bulgarian mascots this year.”

Draco feigned innocence. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Eda hid a smile in her teacup.

Later, when the house had gone quiet, she sat by her bedroom window with the lamp turned low. The manor grounds were dark now, the rain eased to mist. Her hearing notes lay spread across the desk—scribbles about the truth charm, the next date, the witnesses. She’d been reading the same paragraph for ten minutes without seeing a word of it.

Her thoughts kept circling back to the courtroom. To the way Sirius had looked—almost whole again. To Dumbledore’s calm voice. To the strange finality of granted leave.

And to that lyric, still threading through her head.

August slipped away like a bottle of wine.

It wasn’t hers. It didn’t belong to any spell or poem she knew. Yet it felt like memory. Something left over from another life, bleeding through the cracks.

She shook her head, trying to dislodge it. Outside, an owl cut across the sky, wings white against the dark. Somewhere far off, the world was already building toward the Cup—colour, noise, crowds. And after that, the truth charm. The night that would either clear her father or undo him again.

She blew out the lamp. The room folded into shadow. In the dark, the line echoed once more—soft, persistent, impossible.

Then she slept.

The kitchen at Number 12 Grimmauld Place smelled faintly of tea leaves and singed toast. Sirius had declared himself “civilised enough to fry an egg” though the evidence suggested otherwise. Smoke coiled toward the cracked ceiling; a slice of bread was smouldering in the corner of the pan like a slow-burning fuse.

Eda sat at the table, propping her chin in her hand, watching the chaos unfold. Remus Lupin, long-suffering, folded the Daily Prophet with the air of a man who’d seen too much and learned too little from any of it. The front page shouted BLACK GRANTED LIMITED FREEDOM; MINISTRY ASSURES PUBLIC SAFETY.

He raised an eyebrow across the table. “Comforting, isn’t it?”

“Utterly,” Eda said “I love being considered a national threat by association.”

Sirius turned from the stove, hair a shade too long, eyes alive again. “National threats only make life interesting.”

Remus poured tea, voice mild. “Until they start boiling kettles that scream ‘Rule Britannia’ every five minutes.”

“That,” Sirius said, flicking his wand to silence the kettle, “is a design flaw, not a crime.”

The quiet that followed felt almost normal—three people orbiting the ruins of a house that was learning to breathe again.

“Escort’s due any minute,” Remus said after a moment. “The Ministry wants a photo opportunity without the cameras.”

Sirius groaned. “Two Aurors babysitting me at a Quidditch match. I suppose I should be grateful they’re not fitting me with a leash.”

“You’d chew through it,” Eda said.

He grinned, quick and sharp. “Exactly.”

A knock echoed from the hall—three brisk raps on the heavy front door. Kreacher’s muttering floated up the stairs, all dust and disdain, before the hinges creaked open.

Sirius wiped his hands on a towel. “Stay here,” he told them. “If it’s another reporter, I’ll set the record straight personally.”

Eda and Remus followed anyway. The old habits of caution hadn’t left either of them.

Two figures waited in the entrance: a tall wizard with the weary look of someone whose job involved endless paperwork, and beside him a young woman whose hair was such a violent shade of pink it practically lit the gloom.

“Morning!” she said brightly. “Wotcher, Sirius.”

He blinked. “Nymphadora?”

Her grin slipped. “Don’t call me that. It’s Tonks.”

He tilted his head, half-amused. “Since when?”

“Since forever. You must be Eda.”

Eda straightened automatically, the manners Narcissa had drilled into her rising like a reflex. “Miss Tonks.”

“Just Tonks,” the woman said, offering a hand and a large smile that didn't irk Eda the right way.

The black haired girl hesitated, then took it. Nymphadora's grip was strong, her nails chipped and her perfume smelled.. manly? Up close, her hair colour shifted—now lavender, then rose gold—as if it couldn’t decide what to be. She looked utterly unlike anyone Eda had ever been told a Black relation should look.

And there it was again, Narcissa’s voice uninvited in her head: "That’s what becomes of marrying beneath oneself."

Eda bit the thought down hard. Tonks didn’t deserve the echo.

Remus’s tone softened. “Auror Tonks. It’s been a while.”

Her face lit. “Professor Lupin! Merlin, I nearly didn’t recognise you. Haven’t aged a day!”

He coughed into his sleeve, smiling faintly. “Flattery from an Auror. I must be getting respectable.”

Her older colleague cleared his throat. “Miss Tonks, if we could proceed. The Portkey window—”

“Right, right.” She rummaged in her coat pocket and produced a dented brass kettle. “Everyone touch a bit of this. Try not to sneeze; last time someone sneezed mid-jump we ended up in Aberystwyth.”

Sirius eyed it. “Quality Ministry equipment.”

“State of the art,” Tonks said cheerfully.

Eda joined the small circle—Remus on her right, Tonks opposite, the senior Auror muttering time-spells under his breath. Sirius set a hand on the handle last.

“Ready?” Tonks said.

“As I’ll ever be,” he muttered.

“Three, two, one—”

The world twisted. Air vanished. Pressure built behind Eda’s ribs, and then she was stumbling onto damp grass under a bruised morning sky. The sound hit first—a distant, living roar of thousands. She straightened, clutching her stomach, blinking against the rush of colour below them.

The campsite sprawled for miles, tents gleaming under charmed banners, flags flashing gold and green. The stadium loomed on the horizon, huge enough to blot out clouds. Magic buzzed through the air like static.

Tonks grinned. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

Sirius took a long breath, wind tugging at his hair. “Smells better than London.”

“Most places do,” Remus said.

They followed the senior Auror down a series of warded tracks, ducking between tents. Families hurried past, children waving toy broomsticks, someone frying onions on a floating pan. The air shimmered with the heat of a thousand spells. It was chaos, and for once Eda didn’t mind.

Tonks kept up a running commentary as they walked. “Ireland’s got the leprechaun mascots; Bulgaria’s bringing the Veela. Place’ll be an inferno once they start dancing.”

Remus murmured, “You sound rather excited for official duty.”

“I’m enthusiastic, not dead.”

Remus snorted under his breath. “She’s more alive than half the Auror Office, I imagine.”

Tonks threw him a grin over her shoulder. “Careful, or I’ll report you for excessive charm.”

Remus almost smiled; Eda noticed, though she pretended not to. The way he looked at Tonks was faint, distracted, like someone glimpsing sunlight after too long indoors.

They reached a guarded staircase cut into the hill’s side. The stationed Auror saluted and opened the gate. As they climbed, the thunder of the crowd swelled, rolling through stone and bone alike.

Halfway up, Sirius slowed, one hand brushing the railing as though testing that the world was solid. Eda paused beside him. He caught her eye, smiled briefly, and kept moving.

At the top stood a curtained archway that opened onto the Top Box. Gold trim, floating lanterns, polished brass rails. The air smelled of new parchment and ozone. Eda had grown up surrounded by grandeur, but even she drew a quiet breath.

“Nice view,” Tonks said, whistling low. “Wouldn’t mind being on parole if it came with seats like these.”

Sirius shot her a look. “Parole implies I agreed with their judgement.”

“Figure of speech,” she said quickly.

Remus eased between them. “Let’s sit before someone mistakes us for the entertainment.”

They found their places: Sirius near the front, Remus beside him, Tonks leaning against the railing, her colleague checking pocket-watch spells. Eda took the seat to Sirius’s left.

For a few moments there was peace. The crowd’s roar swelled and dipped like the tide. The announcer’s voice boomed somewhere far below. Eda let herself look, really look—the stands alive with colour, banners unfurling like waves. Even her nerves couldn’t blunt it.

Then the stairwell behind them erupted with noise: laughter, chatter, too many feet. A flash of red hair, a familiar tangle of voices.

“Blimey, look at this place!”

The Weasleys spilled in—Arthur, Molly, a battalion of sons, Hermione Granger, and Harry Potter bringing up the rear with wide eyes. The air shifted from dignified to domestic in seconds.

Sirius turned, grinning like mischief itself. “There you are! Thought you’d got lost among the tents.”

Eda stared, her eyebrows furrowed in a rude way “You invited them?” 

“Course I did. This isn’t the Minister’s box; it’s the one above him- with a far better view, might I say.”

She blinked, once. “Right.”

Harry beamed at Sirius and came over for a half hug “Sirius—this is amazing! Have you seen the tents? They’re tiny on the outside but massive inside—there’s even plumbing!”

Sirius laughed, real and loud. “Proper magic, that. Wait till you see the fireworks.”

Eda leaned back, folding her arms and watching like a petulant child. The Weasleys filled every inch of the box with noise—Percy talking policy at Remus, the twins whispering schemes to Tonks to ask how far they could take it theoretically, Mrs Weasley fussing over her youngest. The hum of their normality grated and fascinated in equal measure.

When Sirius threw his head back laughing at something Harry said, Eda looked away. The sound was good. Too good. It made her throat tighten for reasons she didn’t plan to examine.

A little later the Minister’s voice thundered overhead: “Welcome, witches and wizards, to the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!” Emerald and gold fireworks exploded across the enchanted sky. The crowd answered with a single, rolling roar.

A leprechaun swarm burst from the Irish goalposts, raining glitter over the crowd. Opposite them, Veela dancers materialised in a blaze of light; half the box leaned dangerously forward before Mrs Weasley yanked her husband by the collar.

“Arthur!”

“I wasn’t—well, yes, all right, maybe a bit—”

The twins howled with laughter. Tonks was nearly doubled over. Even Sirius grinned, elbowing Remus. “Some things never change.”

“Neither does gravity,” Remus said dryly, tugging Tonks back from the rail.

Eda barely moved. The roar washed over her. She let the sound blur into one vast hum—fireworks, laughter, the rhythm of thousands of hearts beating in time. This, she realised, was what freedom looked like to her father: colour and chaos and nobody telling him to stop.

“Look!” Harry shouted suddenly, pointing. “There’s Lynch—he’s—he’s doing a Wronski Feint before the match even starts!”

“Show-off!” one of the twins yelled.

Sirius laughed so hard he nearly dropped his butterbeer. “That’s the spirit! Let’s hope he can land it!”

Eda felt herself pulled between amusement and exhaustion. Everyone was talking at once—Tonks teasing Remus about.. something, Molly fussing with snacks, Ron arguing with Hermione over the team odds. It was ordinary life, messy and loud and impossibly foreign.

The whistle sounded, and the stadium exploded into motion. Green and red blurs shot into the air; the crowd roared itself hoarse. Sirius was on his feet, shouting encouragement, his voice raw with joy.

Eda watched him—just watched—and then, when no one was looking, rose quietly from her seat in the back.

No one noticed. Not Tonks, not Remus, not the Weasleys, not even her father, his eyes fixed on the sky where a tiny gold glint flashed and vanished again. She moved down the aisle, slipped through the side arch, and into the corridor beyond.

The roar dulled to a low, distant thunder. Lanternlight flickered along the stone. She didn’t know exactly why she’d left—only that the noise had grown too large, the happiness too sharp. The air outside the box was cool and thin, and she could breathe again.

The corridor outside the Top Box smelled of stone and dust and something sweetly metallic from the fireworks above. The thunder of the crowd was muffled now, as if the world had folded a thick quilt over its heart. Eda walked without hurry, keeping to the shadows cast by the torchlight. Each step down carried her further from the laughter that had filled the air moments ago.

She reached a landing where the wards shimmered faintly—Ministry-level protections, all gold sigils and humming air. A guard in polished green robes glanced up from his post.

“Restricted tier, miss.”

“I’m on the list.” she said, and handed him the small silver badge Narcissa had pressed into her palm that morning. The engraved serpent gleamed faintly.

The guard studied it, then her face, and nodded her through. “Miss Black?”

She didn’t bother to answer as she walked in past him.

The next stair opened onto a wide terrace lined with enchanted glass, the field sprawling below in impossible colour. A few witches and wizards milled about, sipping drinks that refilled themselves. Ministry aides hovered near their superiors, taking notes even during play. At the centre of it all, exactly where she expected, stood Lucius Malfoy.

He was immaculate, as always: ivory cane, pale hair tied back, expression polished to the point of irony. Narcissa sat beside him, a study in calm elegance. And just beyond them, leaning on the rail, Draco—face alight, shouting something at the pitch below.

Eda hesitated in the doorway before slipping inside.

Lucius noticed her first. “Ah,” he said softly, with a flicker of amusement. “Our prodigal niece descends from Olympus.”

Narcissa turned, genuine warmth softening her poise. “Eda, darling. We didn’t see you arrive.”

“I was with—” she caught herself, unwilling to name Sirius here, where every ear twitched for scandal—“with the other guests.”

Draco turned, grin wide. “Finally. I was about to wager you’d fainted from boredom up there with the Gryffindors.”

She gave him a look. “You’d lose it.”

“Worth it for the drama.”

Narcissa gestured to the seat beside her. “Come, sit. You can tell us how your father is behaving.”

“Predictably,” Eda said, taking the offered chair. “He’s laughing too loudly and terrifying the Ministry escorts.”

Lucius’s mouth curved faintly. “At least he remembers how to terrify.”

Narcissa’s fan twitched once, a private reprimand. “He remembers how to live. That’s more than I expected, after—well.” She didn’t finish the sentence.

Eda said nothing. The tension between them was as constant as air—Narcissa’s guarded affection for her sister’s child, Lucius’s wary fascination with the scandal that had nearly singed their name. She had learned to move through it like weather.

Below, a cheer erupted. A Bulgarian Chaser had scored; the stands shuddered with noise. Draco leaned out over the rail, waving a miniature flag enchanted to spark red and gold. “That was brilliant! Did you see that feint?”

“Barely,” Eda said. “You’re in the way.”

“Oh, sorry.” Draco snorted, and Eda almost smiled. The commentary boomed across the pitch: “And that’s Krum diving—no, feinting—by Merlin, he’s showing off again!” The crowd answered with a wave of sound.

For a while, they simply watched. The rhythm of the match drew even Narcissa out of her composure; she clapped once when Ireland scored, startling herself. Lucius glanced over, amused. Draco was shouting encouragement to anyone who’d listen. It was the most human Eda had seen them all year.

Draco turned, oblivious. “You’re not even watching! Krum nearly unseated Lynch!”

Eda sighed. “I’m watching the same match you are, not auditioning to narrate it.”

He grinned. “You’d be good at it. Cold voice, sharp words—people love that sort of thing.”

“I’d hex the crowd halfway through,” she said.

Lucius turned slightly, eyes half on the match, half on them. “I’d rather you both watch quietly. The Minister is directly behind us.”

Eda looked over her shoulder. Cornelius Fudge sat two rows back, flanked by aides, his bowler hat enchanted with an Irish shamrock that blinked on and off like an apology. He looked absurdly pleased with himself.

Narcissa leaned toward her husband. “He’ll be unbearable after this.”

“He’s unbearable already.” Lucius murmured.

The crowd roared again; green and gold flares lit the air. For a moment, the whole world shimmered in that light—faces lifted, eyes bright. Eda looked upward and saw, far above, the glint of the Top Box railing. She could almost pick out her father’s silhouette among the figures leaning forward.

He was laughing again; she could hear it in her memory if not her ears. The sound carried across distance, an invisible thread.

Lucius’s voice pulled her back. “The papers will make quite the spectacle of this—Black and Weasley sharing a box. Dumbledore will frame it as reconciliation.”

Narcissa’s fan stilled. “Perhaps that’s what it is.”

“Perhaps,” he said, though his tone suggested otherwise.

Eda looked between them, then back at the pitch. She didn’t want to talk politics, not now, not here. The colours in the air blurred; the noise folded in and out like breathing. The match had found its rhythm—fast, dizzying, endless.

After a while, Draco tugged her sleeve. “You’re drifting. If you fall asleep, I’ll tell everyone you fainted at the sight of Veela.”

“I’d haunt you.”

“Promises, promises.”

He laughed again, turning back to the game. She watched him for a moment, the easy tilt of his shoulders, the way the light hit his pale hair, and thought: this is what ordinary looks like.

Then the noise swelled again—so sudden it seemed to shake the stands. A blur of gold, a dive, a collective gasp, and the commentator’s voice tearing through the roar: “KRUM HAS SEEN THE SNITCH!”

The stadium erupted. People leapt to their feet; the ground vibrated. Even Lucius forgot to look bored. Narcissa’s hand found his arm; Draco was practically hanging over the rail.

Eda stood too, though she wasn’t sure why—habit, contagion, the human pull of a shared moment. The Seekers plunged, two comets locked together, the Snitch flashing between them. Then came the inevitable crash and the wave of noise that followed: Bulgaria had caught it, but Ireland had already scored too high to lose.

The scoreboard blazed emerald. The crowd dissolved into cheers and curses in equal measure.

Draco groaned. “Unbelievable.”

“Mathematically inevitable.” Eda said.

He threw his flag at her; it turned into sparks before it hit.

Lucius stood, smoothing his robes. “Come, both of you. The exit will be chaos.”

Narcissa rose, elegant even in the rush. “We’ll go round the private corridor. Less spectacle.”

Eda followed them toward the stair, her ears ringing from the noise. Halfway down, she looked back once more. The Top Box was a shimmer of colour far above. Somewhere up there, Sirius would be laughing still, surrounded by people who weren’t afraid of it.

She felt the pull to go back, to see his face in that light, and didn’t know if it was affection or duty. Maybe both.

She didn’t decide until they reached the turn in the stairway where the crowd thickened, and she caught a flash of red hair slipping through—Ginny Weasley, moving quickly, eyes scanning. She had followed her- of course she had.

Eda’s hand tightened on the rail.

Chapter Text

Eda took the turn on the stair and went back the way she’d come. The noise thickened as she climbed—drums, fireworks crackling, a chant still rolling around the bowl of the stadium even though the match was over. She reached the curtained arch into the Top Box, paused long enough to school her face into something neutral, and stepped through.

Conversation hung mid-air. The Weasleys were gathering cloaks and programs; Tonks was mock-arguing with one of the twins about whether his “collectible” dragon had tried to bite her thumb; Remus was thanking Arthur for some tedious pamphlet on broom safety. For half a heartbeat the bustle thinned, like a room surprised to find it has another door.

Sirius looked up first. “Where’d you go?”

She opened her mouth.

“She was in the box below,” Ginny said, sharper than necessary from two rows back. Dozens of eyes flicked, then looked away again, as if the whole place agreed not to make a thing of it.

Eda met Ginny’s gaze once, flat and unbothered, and nodded. “Yes.”

Sirius let out a breath through his nose. “All right,” he said, the word not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh. The room resumed its noise at once, like someone had unpaused it. Tonks lobbed the toy dragon back at a twin. Molly herded people into sensible lines. Percy announced in a carrying voice that the Irish Keeper’s technique had been an exemplary model of Ministry-approved training, which pleased absolutely no one.

Eda was halfway to turning when Sirius crossed the gap. He didn’t say anything at first. He raised a hand, brushed a stray lock off her forehead—absent-minded, parental in a way that he hadn’t earned yet and she hadn’t asked for—and then leaned closer so only she could hear.

“You should’ve just said so, Peridot.”

She swallowed and kept her face still. “I didn’t want to—”

“—make a fuss,” he finished, the corner of his mouth tugging. “You never do.” He dropped his hand, stepped back, and tipped his head toward the aisle. “Come on. We’re the last lot out, and I’ve no patience for corridors full of blokes trying to sell me commemorative hats.”

They filed out, the box losing shape as people peeled off into stairwells and private doors. Outside in the corridor, the air was cooler. The hum of the crowd receded by degrees as Tonks steered them along a warded passage used by staff and the unfortunate important. The Weasleys gathered like a travelling troupe; Hermione lectured Ron about probability, which he ignored; Arthur tried to memorise the sigils embossed on the lamps; Molly produced biscuits from nowhere as if they were a matter of national security.

Eda walked with Sirius and Remus, a step behind Tonks. She caught Ginny’s side-look once—flat, unreadable, edged—but let it slide off. She had no interest in fighting with a thirteen-year-old under five Ministry wards and a torch bracket.

The tent the Ministry had assigned was bigger on the inside (as Harry had told them three times in the past two hours), though the exterior looked like a tired bit of canvas someone had lost in 1978. Inside, there were proper beds, a common room with mismatched chintz chairs, and a kitchen area already perfumed with Molly Weasley’s sense of what everyone should be eating. The ceiling showed an enchanted sky, charmed to calm.

“Shoes off” Molly announced to nobody in particular, which somehow meant everybody.

The Weasley noise folded itself into domestic shapes. Someone put a kettle on. Someone else found cards. The twins collapsed in adjoining armchairs and argued over the odds of the Cannons ever winning a match in their natural lifetimes. Percy arranged programs into a stack and aligned their edges like a man trying to impose order on God.

Sirius leaned in the doorway awhile, half in, half out, as if the threshold needed guarding. He looked content and tired and faintly unsettled by contentment, as if it might be taken away (which, Eda thought, was not paranoia but history). Remus found a chair under a reading lamp and pretended to be absorbed by the team yearbook until Tonks dropped into the seat arm, nearly spilling his tea.

“Guard’s off in fifteen,” she told him. “That means I’m technically allowed to sit down and not look terrifying.”

“You never look terrifying,” he said, deadpan.

“Liar,” she grinned. Then to Eda: “Good day?”

“It was loud.”

“Best kind,” Tonks said. “You’ll get used to it.”

Eda didn’t argue, mostly because she didn’t know whether she wanted to.

Harry drifted over to Sirius with the nightly energy of a boy who’d mainlined crowd noise. “Sirius—did you see Krum’s second dive? Only he did pull up in time, and—”

“I was there,” Sirius said, laughing. “I do have eyes.”

Harry flushed, sheepish, but didn’t stop. “Sorry. It was just—brilliant. And the tents! The taps actually turn—”

“Magic plumbing,” Sirius said gravely. “Society’s highest achievement.”

Eda watched the angle of his mouth, the light behind it. The way he angled his shoulders so they faced Harry full on. The way the muscles at the corner of his jaw relaxed when someone gave him something harmless to hold. She didn’t resent it. She only recognised it.

Ginny crossed the room, carrying cups to the table. Her expression smoothed when it passed Eda’s. Not friendly. Not apologetic. Eda shrugged inwardly. The girl could keep her private verdicts. They weren’t required reading.

They ate. Not much—sausage rolls, biscuits, the relentless tea of British survival. Conversation spun and dropped, spun and dropped, like a plate someone kept from smashing out of habit. Tonks did half a card trick, spoiled it by laughing. Percy and Molly quarrelled quietly about some phrase in his report. Remus disappeared into a chair and re-emerged with a page of notes that looked suspiciously like a shopping list. Sirius leaned against a tent pole as if he could prop the entire structure with a shoulder.

Eventually, the tent yawned towards night. People peeled off in twos and threes. The day collapsed like a spell releasing, leaving the soft hum of enchantments and a pile of boots by the flap.

Eda claimed a small corner bed in a side room lined with trunks. She lay awake on top of the covers, listening to the thrum of the campsite beyond—pops of distant Apparition, occasional laughter, the whisper of enchanted wind rippling flags. No nightmares came. Nothing dramatic. Only a light, stubborn alertness, as if morning might change its mind about arriving and she’d have to persuade it personally.

Morning arrived anyway, grey-gold and damp, dragging with it the chaos of breaking a city the size of a small country. The outer field bristled with tents collapsing into sticks, trunks buckling themselves shut, mothers counting heads with the brutality of battlefield sergeants. The air smelled of wet grass, cooking oil, and twenty different brands of polish.

The Ministry escort returned, punctual and impersonal. Tonks looked exactly as she had the night before, except her hair had decided to try an orange streak over one ear. Her colleague had exactly the same expression, which suggested that he did not possess more than one.

“Right then,” Tonks said, clapping her hands once. “If I can have the Blacks, Lupin, and—Potter.”

Harry, fussing with a strap, blinked. “Me?”

Sirius lifted a hand, guilty and unapologetic at once. “That’d be my fault.”

Eda looked at him, annoyed once more. “What did you do?”

“Invited him back,” he said. “Just for the week. Last one before school. Quiet, no journalists, nobody who thinks a decent day out has to involve a lawsuit.”

Harry’s face split into astonished joy so quickly it almost hurt to watch. “Really?”

“If you want,” Sirius said, and barely got the rest of the sentence out before the boy had flung himself in what was either an enthusiastic hug or a misjudged tackle and Sirius had to steady both of them with a bark of laughter.

Eda kept her expression blank and said, evenly, “You could’ve mentioned it to me before.”

“I am mentioning,” Sirius said, exactly as even. His eyes were soft, which did nothing to help. “We’ll make space.”

“You don’t have space,” she said automatically, then caught Remus’s half-look over Harry’s head—don’t do this here—and shut her mouth.

Harry, oblivious, was already talking about books he needed and whether there’d be time to get his owl’s talons trimmed and if Grimmauld Place had a proper bath with taps that didn’t scream. He had the buoyancy of someone to whom ordinary kindness still felt like a plot twist.

Sirius scrubbed a hand through his hair, amused and disordering both. “We’ll sort Diagon Alley. Eda?”

She switched angles without changing tone. “I already went with Auntie last week.”

“I know,” he said. “I want you to take him anyway. Kreacher can go with.”

At the elf’s name the impulse to argue died at once, having Kreacher along would ease her surely.

She exhaled. “Fine.”

Harry’s grin widened. “Thanks—”

“While we’re there,” she said, giving him a long, considering look from unruly hair to the scuffed trainers he’d decided were morally opposed to laces, “you should get a haircut as well.”

Tonks snorted, unhelpfully loud. Her colleague’s mouth twitched. Remus coughed into a fist and failed to make the sound respectable.

Harry pushed his fringe out of his eyes and looked between them, aggrieved. “It’s not that bad.”

“It is” Eda and Tonks said together, and then glanced, surprised, at each other.

“Right,” Tonks said cheerfully, pointing at the dented kettle she’d produced again. “House-arrest travel party, assemble. I’ll get you home, then we’re off the clock.”

Remus set down his mug and stepped nearer. In the watery morning light he looked tired in a way the tent’s calm could not fix, but the lines around his mouth eased when Tonks grinned at him.

“Good show,” she said lightly, as if she’d watched him play. “No incidents. That’s two in a row.”

“Let’s not jinx the third,” he said. “Thank you. For yesterday—and for today.”

Tonks rocked on her heels, hands in her pockets. The grin gentled. “Any time, Professor.”

The senior Auror cleared his throat in a tone which implied that time had been a fragile commodity for the last fifteen minutes. Tonks ignored him long enough to flick a wink at Remus—open, unbothered, not subtle at all. He went still, then smiled back with the helplessness of a man who found himself pleased by the existence of sunlight.

“See you,” she said, and Eda could not tell whether the words were aimed at him or all of them.

“Come on,” Sirius murmured to Eda, nudging her toward the Portkey circle. “Home.”

They gathered around the kettle again: Sirius’s hand on the handle, Harry’s fingers white-knuckled with happy adrenaline, Eda’s palm finding a clean bit of brass. Kreacher materialised with a crack and a mutter that would have got anyone else hexed. Tonks tapped the kettle with her wand; her colleague muttered the timing.

“Three, two, one—”

The world yanked, twisted, and set them down onto the familiar threadbare rug in Grimmauld Place’s front room. Cold London air rushed their lungs. The house took their measure in one exhalation and decided to tolerate them for another day.

Harry spun once, giddy. “This is brilliant.”

“It isn’t,” Eda said, deadpan. “But it functions.”

Sirius laughed. “Welcome home, then.”

Tonks and her colleague checked the ward seals as a matter of form. “All right,” she said, satisfied. “You’ve got us on call until midnight if something idiotic happens. Try not to make my job interesting.”

“No promises,” Sirius said.

She gave Remus one last too-long look, wiggled her fingers in a careless goodbye, and vanished with her partner in a wash of green.

The house exhaled. Somewhere in the plumbing, a pipe groaned. Kreacher stalked toward the kitchen, muttering about towels and disgrace and muddy young masters bringing shoe-filth into noble rooms. Harry trotted after him, determined to befriend a creature who had never met the concept.

Sirius leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. “You all right?” he asked, not looking at Eda when he said it.

“Yes.”

He shifted his gaze. “You don’t sound it.”

“I am,” she said, and discovered that it was almost true. “You’ve got a guest for a week and a hearing after that. I’ll organise the rest.”

“You don’t have to organise everything.”

“I know,” she said, then because it would end the discussion and because she meant it, “but I’m good at it.”

He huffed a laugh. “You are.”

She turned to the stairs. “I’ll change. Then we’ll take him to Diagon Alley. If Kreacher kills a bookseller in the interim, that’s on you.”

“I’ll write an apology card now,” he said, and let her go.

On the landing, she paused. The house was quieter than it had been in years. Not empty. Not haunted. Simply… living, in its odd, grudging way. Downstairs, Harry’s voice carried from the kitchen—excitable, grateful, unbearably earnest. Sirius answered with some nonsense about tea and jam and the dire importance of toast not being incinerated. Remus’s tread sounded in the hall, followed by the faint creak of the library door.

Eda went up another step, then another. Something small and private unknotted under her ribs. Not peace, precisely. A ceasefire. Enough.

She didn’t know what the next week would look like—Diagon Alley and the truth-spell and the shambles of packing for school, perhaps a hairdresser who didn’t flinch at boy-heroes. She didn’t know who she was supposed to be in any of it. She only knew that she would be there and that the house would hold.

On the stair above, sunlight prised its way through a dirty window and laid a thin bar of gold across the banister. Eda set her hand in it, felt its warmth, and carried it up with her.

Chapter Text

Flourish and Blotts smelled like paper, dust, and people who thought parchment was a personality trait.

Eda had wedged herself between two tall shelves in the Defence section, one hand braced against Curses and Counter-Curses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies) and the other holding her shopping list at an angle that suggested war. The list was immaculate, her sharp handwriting marching in military order. Five titles already checked off, three circled with quiet disdain.

Across the aisle, Harry Potter was reading the wrong book upside-down.

“Potter,” Eda said without looking up, “if you’re planning to master defensive magic this year, it might help to start with holding the book the right way up.”

Harry blinked and flipped it around, colour climbing his neck. “I wasn’t—”

“Reading, I gathered,” she said. “You’re holding Hexes for the Busy Healer. That’s medical.”

“Oh.” He stared at the cover. “Well, that explains the chapter on bandages.”

Eda hummed—neutral, which for her meant lethal—and slid another book free. Outside, Diagon Alley roared with life: school lists flapping, owls hooting, someone insisting they’d seen Krum buying socks. Inside, the noise dulled to paper rustle and frustrated sighs.

Flourish himself teetered on a ladder, denouncing the decline of parchment quality since 1837.

Eda stacked The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Four atop her pile. “There. Done. Let’s go.”

Harry eyed it. “Don’t you want to check for extras?”

“Why?”

“Well—Hermione says—” Is Hermione his answer for everything, Eda asked herself.

“That sentence alone should’ve warned you it was unnecessary.”

He grinned, unoffended. “You really don’t like her, do you?”

“She tries too hard.” Eda said simply.

Kreacher appeared with a crack, snatching up the books. “Mistress mustn’t strain herself. Filthy half-blood dust everywhere,” he muttered.

“Do not start,” Eda warned. “We’re in public.”

The elf’s ears twitched—his version of sulking—and vanished toward the counter.

“Come on,” she said. “Sirius said we shouldn’t dawdle.”

Harry followed, dodging a witch balancing three owls and a cauldron. “You call him Sirius now?”

“I call him whatever gets his attention quickest.”

They stepped into the sunlight. The street was a river of colour and noise. Madam Malkin’s windows shimmered with new robes; Quality Quidditch Supplies flaunted Viktor Krum’s scowl.

Eda’s gaze skimmed the crowd, chin high, stride brisk. The whispers started almost immediately.

“…that’s her, isn’t it?”
“Sirius Black’s daughter—”
“—and the Potter boy—”

Eda didn’t flinch. “You’d think they’d never seen two teenagers in daylight.”

Harry’s ears went pink. “They’re just curious. About, well… everything that happened.”

“Curious,” she repeated, tasting the word like weak tea. “That’s generous.”

He glanced sideways. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Why should it? They talk whether we breathe or not. At least this way, they’re accurate.”

“You sound like my godfather.” Eda found it annoying how he said it, 'his godfather'.

“I’m told it’s hereditary.”

They halted outside Snip & Charm — Wizarding Barbers Since 1427.

“What?” Harry asked.

“Your hair,” she said “It’s longer than my patience. You’re getting a haircut.”

“I don’t need—”

“You do,” she said firmly, steering him inside. Kreacher trailed behind.

The shop smelled of soap and ozone. Floating scissors whirred; mirrors flirted shamelessly. Eda crossed her legs in the waiting chair. “If you run, I’ll hex you bald.”

Harry sighed and surrendered to the barber’s chair. The mirror cooed, “Lovely eyes, dear, shame about the hair,” until silenced with a wand-tap.

Ten minutes later, he looked alarmingly tidy. His fringe behaved thanks to Sleekeazy's hair potion.

“Well?” he asked as they stepped outside.

Eda tilted her head. “Better.”

“Just ‘better’?”

“You look less like you were raised by wolves, thank Merlin your grandfather invented Sleekeazy.”

He stopped at his grandfathers mention, making Eda think he didn't know about it but then he laughed. “That’s probably a compliment?”

“Take it as one. People like us should look neat—”

“You think about everything like that, don’t you?”

“Someone has to.”

They merged with the crowd again. A group of younger students giggled as they passed.

Harry fell into step beside her. “What do you actually like?” he asked after a moment.

Eda gave him a sidelong look. “Why?”

“Just wondering. You don’t really talk about it.”

“Perhaps I don’t have anything worth saying.”

“I don’t believe that.”

She shot him a look that said she didn’t care whether he did or not, but she answered anyway. “Order. Quiet. For things to be where they belong.”

He smiled a little. “That tracks.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. You’re… precise.”

“Is that your polite word for controlling?”

“Depends on the day.” he winked.

Her mouth twitched. “And you? What do you like besides nearly dying every term?”

He laughed, surprised. “Flying. Quidditch. I guess freedom.”

“How Gryffindor of you.” she rolled her eyes to hide her creeping smile.

“How Slytherin of you to say that like it’s an insult.”

They reached Fortescue’s, ordered ice cream—blackcurrant-and-vanilla for her, chocolate for him—and found a spot on the low wall outside.

For a while, neither spoke. The sun glinted off spoons; the Alley buzzed with laughter and bargains.

Harry tapped his spoon against the cup. “You really don’t like crowds, do you?”

“They’re loud,” she said with a sigh. “And too many people stupidly think whispering makes them invisible.” 

He smiled. “So you’d rather stay inside, read, and let the world collapse without you.”

“If the world is going to collapse, it hardly needs my help.”

“Fair point.”

He looked like he wanted to say more but didn’t.

When she turned to hand him a napkin, he was gone.

Her hand froze mid-air. “Potter?”

No answer.

She scanned the throng, irritation rising like tidewater. “Honestly,” she muttered, standing. “He’s like a lost Crup puppy.”

Kreacher appeared, balancing yet another parcel. “Mistress has misplaced the boy?” he asked, sounding faintly hopeful.

“Temporarily,” she said. “He’ll turn up.”

He did—ten minutes later, emerging from a side alley, hair wind-tossed and an unmistakably smug expression plastered on his face.

“Where did you go?” she demanded.

“Nowhere,” he said too casually. “Just looking around.”

“Without telling me.”

“Didn’t know I needed permission.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. That grin of his—the one that made people forgive him before they knew why—was back.

“Come on,” he said, nodding toward the main street and taking her hand. “We still have to pick up owl treats.”

“Just disappear again.” she muttered, falling into step.

“You’d miss me if I did.”

“Unlikely.”

“Maybe.”

He grinned wider.

She didn’t look at him, but her lips twitched anyway and her hand remained in his.

The noise of the Alley rose around them again—an orchestra of chatter, clinking coin, and spell sparks. Eda thought it sounded like someone trying to drown in enthusiasm. Sunlight spilled from every window, turning the cobbles gold; it glinted off Harry’s glasses and the thin line of Sleekeazy still taming his hair.

He hadn’t let go of her hand, and she hadn’t told him to. It was inconveniently public but surprisingly steadying, like a charm you didn’t remember casting.

They passed a stall selling self-inking quills that boasted about their own grammar, a witch arguing over the price of puffskeins, and a toddler trying to summon his mother’s hat with a toy wand. The smell of roasted almonds drifted from somewhere nearby.

Kreacher re-appeared in the middle of their path with a crack. Several shoppers shrieked. “Owl treats and potion tonic purchased,” he rasped. 

“Good,” Eda said. “Now stop materialising in the middle of people.”

Kreacher muttered something about “ungrateful youth” and vanished again with the grace of a collapsing cupboard.

Harry laughed under his breath. “He’s cheerful.”

“That’s his happy tone.” she replied.

They reached Eeylops Owl Emporium, where the air was thick with feathers and the sharp scent of hay. Eda moved through the din with aristocratic precision, the way one would cross a battlefield one disapproved of. Harry lingered near the cages, talking softly to a snowy owl that blinked at him with tolerant intelligence.

“Is Hedwig jealous?” she asked.

“She’d hex me if she could,” he said, smiling. “But I think she knows she’s irreplaceable.”

“How sentimental.” she murmured, but her eyes softened briefly before she turned away to inspect a display of owl-tonics. The labels promised shinier feathers and improved navigation—marketing for birds with vanity issues.

When Kreacher finally wrestled the correct parcels from the shopkeeper, Eda and Harry escaped into the open air again. The crowd had thinned; the light was shifting toward the long amber of late afternoon. A street violinist played a wobbling version of the Quidditch World Cup anthem.

Harry shaded his eyes. “We’re done, right?”

“Almost.” She adjusted her grip on her bag. “Parchment from Scrivenshaft’s. Then we can go.”

He groaned theatrically. “Do you actually enjoy shopping lists?”

“You’d survive longer if you had one.”

“I’ve made it this far.”

“Pure accident” she said, but there was a thread of humour in it.

At Scrivenshaft’s, the shop smelled of ink and ambition. Rolls of parchment stacked like scrolls in a library towered over them. Harry bought the standard kind; Eda found a smaller roll of deep green vellum that caught the light like old glass. She didn’t need it but couldn’t resist running a finger along the edge.

“It's pretty.” he said.

“Functional.” she corrected automatically, but her tone lacked conviction.

He grinned. “Sure.”

Outside again, the sun was beginning to dip. The chatter of the Alley softened as families Apparated away, leaving only the hum of closing shutters and the rustle of a cooling breeze. For the first time all day, Eda exhaled.

“You really hate this, don’t you?” Harry said quietly.

“What?”

“Crowds. Noise. Everyone staring.”

She hesitated. “I don’t hate it. I just prefer when it stops.”

He nodded, understanding without prying further. They walked a while in companionable silence, past the Quidditch shop where Krum’s poster still glowered from the window and past a stand selling crystal pendants that claimed to predict heartbreak.

They found a quieter street branching from the main Alley, where the air smelled faintly of ink and cinnamon. A tea shop on the corner had its door propped open, the sound of clinking cups spilling into the street.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“I suppose I could tolerate sustenance.”

He grinned.

Inside, the tea shop was small and cluttered. Candles hovered above each table; the shelves were lined with mismatched teapots that gossiped softly when no one watched. They took a corner seat near the window. Kreacher materialised beside them with a scandalised gasp.

“Mistress is dining among strangers?”

“Yes,” Eda said crisply. “And she will continue to do so. Sit down or vanish.” He vanished.

A waitress appeared, clearly flustered by the sight of those two together, but managed to deliver menus without fainting. Harry ordered hot chocolate; Eda, after skimming the list with suspicion, chose spiced black tea.

When the drinks arrived, Eda tested hers with the careful distaste of someone who expected treachery in flavour. “It’s tolerable” she pronounced.

“That’s high praise.”

“You have low standards.”

He laughed into his cup. “You know, you’re easier to talk to than I thought.”

“That sounds like an insult.”

“It’s not. You just… I don’t know, you listen differently.”

Eda looked out the window, unwilling to meet the earnestness in his expression. “Listening is the only way to tell when someone’s lying.”

“Do you think everyone’s lying?”

“Often.”

He tilted his head. “Including me?”

She finally looked at him. “You’re terrible at it, so yes.”

He grinned. “Guess I’ll have to practise.”

“Please don’t. You’d give yourself away in the first sentence.”

Their drinks dwindled, conversation stretching between silences that didn’t quite feel awkward anymore. Eda caught herself almost relaxed—a dangerous feeling, like forgetting to hold your wand in a duel.

When they left the shop, dusk had settled. Gas lamps flickered to life along the Alley, throwing pools of golden light across the cobblestones. The air had cooled, humming with the faint trace of magic that always hung over the street after closing hours.

Harry walked beside her without speaking for a while. Then he said softly, “You know, this wasn’t so bad.”

Eda raised an eyebrow. “You mean surviving me?”

“I meant the day,” he said, still smiling. “But that too.”

“Your standards remain low.”

He only laughed, and before she could form another retort, Kreacher appeared again.

“Master awaits at the house,” the elf croaked. “He grows restless.”

“Of course he does,” Eda said. She adjusted her bag and turned toward the Leaky Cauldron.

The return to Grimmauld Place was like stepping from sunlight into a memory. The house accepted them with a groan of old wood; shadows clung to the corners as if listening. The chandelier glowed faintly green.

Sirius was waiting in the hallway, leaning against the banister with the tired grace of someone pretending he wasn’t pacing five minutes ago. “There you are,” he said. “Did the Alley survive?”

“Barely.” Eda replied.

Harry grinned. “She scared half of Flourish and Blotts into silence.”

Sirius beamed, pride disguised as mischief. “That’s my girl.”

Kreacher, appearing behind them, sniffed. “Mistress terrorises shopkeepers. Very noble family tradition.”

“Careful, Kreacher,” Sirius warned. “I might start agreeing with you.”

The elf vanished in disgust.

Sirius turned back to them. “Go on, both of you. Supper’s waiting. Molly sent half the Burrow again.”

As they moved toward the dining room, he caught Harry’s sleeve briefly. “Thanks for taking her out, kid. She doesn’t admit she needs company.”

Harry hesitated. “She’s… fine. Better company than she thinks.”

Sirius smiled faintly. “She’s my daughter.”

Eda, already halfway down the hall, pretended not to hear but the words followed her like a charm that wouldn’t fade.

Dinner passed in the peculiar warmth of that house—the clatter of plates, the distant echo of laughter from somewhere upstairs, the sense that for once nothing terrible was imminent. Afterward, Harry and Sirius disappeared into the sitting room to argue about Quidditch tactics, and Eda escaped to the landing where the portraits muttered in their sleep.

The day pressed against her like a full diary. She should have felt tired, but instead there was a hum beneath her skin, a strange alertness. Maybe it was the noise of the Alley still in her ears—or maybe it was that she’d spent an entire afternoon beside Harry Potter and hadn’t once wanted to vanish him.

She stood by the window, watching the streetlamps flicker outside. Behind her, Kreacher shuffled up with folded linens. “Master is content,” he said. “Dinner satisfied him.”

“Okay?” she said absently.

Kreacher hesitated. “Mistress seems… less irritable this evening.”

“perhaps just a coincidence.” she murmured.

The elf gave a doubtful grunt and departed once more.

Eda lingered another minute, tracing the condensation on the glass. Downstairs, Harry laughed at something Sirius said—an easy, unguarded sound that reached her like a note carried on wind. She didn’t smile, exactly, but the corner of her mouth curved as if considering the idea.

Then she turned toward her room, the quiet swallowing her footsteps.