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Chapter Text

Lord Arcturus Black III did not walk through the Ministry of Magic.

He advanced.

Stone floors frosted beneath every step he took, a thin skin of ice webbing outward with precise, lethal beauty. His magic was not uncontrolled—it was unleashed with intent. The aurors lining the atrium stiffened but did not intervene.

No one intercepted a Black who was moving with purpose.

It had been only days since the fall of Voldemort. Only days since the wizarding world had dared to believe itself safe again. And now, as Arcturus Black crossed the Ministry with winter in his wake, every witch and wizard present felt a much older fear awaken.

The kind with a family name.

The doors to the Wizengamot chamber burst open without being touched.

Minister Millicent Bagnold stopped mid-sentence, her voice catching in her throat as Arcturus strode inside.

The seal of the House of Black ignited above the High Gallery—old magic, sovereign and unchallenged.

Arcturus seated himself.

The chamber waited.

He surveyed the room with glacial calm.

Then his gaze locked with Albus Dumbledore.

And for the first time in decades—

Dumbledore felt something dangerously close to unease.

“I am here,” Arcturus said softly, “because my heir has been abducted, my grandson framed, and my House illegally stripped of its blood.”

The chamber erupted.

Banging of staffs.

Shouted objections.

Arcturus lifted one finger.

The ice storm sharpened.

Silence obeyed.

“You have imprisoned Sirius Black without trial,” Arcturus continued. “You have permitted the escape of the true traitor. And you have allowed a child of my blood—two Ancient Houses’ blood—to be stolen.”

His gaze turned deliberately back to Dumbledore.

“You placed Hadrian James Potter-Black with Muggles without reading the wills, which you sealed,” Arcturus said. “You kidnapped him from his rightful guardians by deception. You claimed protection while stripping him of legacy, magic, and kin.”

Dumbledore opened his mouth.

Arcturus did not permit him to speak.

Several Lords went pale.

Arcturus turned to the assembling aurors.

“I am invoking my rights as Patriarch of the House of Black. Sirius Orion Black will be granted a trial within forty-eight hours.  And Harry Potter will be returned to Black custody by sundown.”

At last, Barty Crouch Sr. rose, trembling with controlled outrage.

“He confessed—!”

Arcturus’ aura slammed into him like a wall of ice.

“The tales of your incompetence do not interest me,” Arcturus said quietly. 

Crouch sat down, shaking.

Dumbledore stood now. “You risk destabilising the fragile peace—”

Arcturus turned on him fully.

“You risk extinction if you touch one more Black child.”

“I further move that Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore be charged for the unlawful removal of Hadrian James Potter from his rightful bloodline.” The silence was immediate and gratifying. “With the Patriarch of the Most Noble House of Gryffindor fallen—may James Charlus Potter rest in the embrace of Lady Hecate—and with the boy’s grandmother being my cousin, Lady Dorea Potter of the House of Black, there is no ambiguity in the matter of guardianship.” His gaze cut like frost. “That duty falls to me until Sirius Orion Black is freed from his wrongful confinement.”

"May Mother Magic have mercy upon my enemies, for I have none"

Later, in the quiet of Blackmoor’s inner chambers, Arcturus’ wife, Melania Macmillan-Black, rested her forehead against his chest.

“How many lives did you destroy today?” she asked gently.

Arcturus closed his eyes.

“Only the ones that deserved it.”

He pressed a kiss into her silver-streaked hair.

“And tomorrow, my love, we begin rebuilding the world.”

Chapter Text

The chamber doors slammed open again.

And Sirius Black was dragged inside.

He was thinner than memory. Chains bit into scarred wrists. His hair hung tangled around a hollowed face. His prison greys hung loose on a body that had been starved without mercy.

But when his eyes lifted—grey, sharp, unbroken—every whisper in the chamber died.

At the High Gallery, Arcturus Black III did not stand.

He waited.

Across the chamber, Albus Dumbledore rose instantly.

“This man is dangerous,” he said calmly. “Unstable. A known traitor to the Light.”

Arcturus did not look at him.

“Then prove it.”

The trial did not unfold like the public ones.

There were no speeches for the people. No posturing for the papers.

Only truth—dragged out of hiding.

Auror testimony fractured within minutes. Timelines failed to align. Wand signatures contradicted official reports. The street where twelve were said to have died was reconstructed in memory—again and again—until the illusion collapsed under its own weight.

Then came the final blow.

The confession that had never been properly questioned.

The wand that had never been tested.

The spell that had never been forensically traced.

The evidence that had never been allowed to speak.

A single truth rose from the wreckage of lies: Sirius had never betrayed the Potters.

The traitor had vanished.

And the world had been too eager for a monster.

A clerk stepped forward at last, voice shaking as she read an addendum no one had expected to hear spoken aloud:

“By emergency vote of the Winzengamot’ confirmation of identity falsification… the Order of Merlin, First Class, previously awarded posthumously to Peter Pettigrew, is hereby revoked.”

The chamber did not erupt.

It broke.

Whispers crashed into shouts. Shouts into spells. Members rose from their seats, some in fury, some in horror, some in dawning realisation that they had built their justice on a corpse that was not dead.

Above it all, Dumbledore stood slowly.

“This changes nothing,” he said evenly. “Sirius was reckless. Violent. Unfit to raise a child.”

At that, Arcturus finally turned.

“Your authority ends where my House begins, Chief Warlock.”

The golden scales above the chamber flared.

Ancient magic stirred.

The verdict rang clear as spellfire:

Innocent.

The word did not echo.

It ended something.

Sirius dropped to his knees.

Not in weakness.

In release.

The chains shattered from his wrists.

And for the first time in over a week, he breathed as a free man.

Dumbledore’s staff struck the floor once.

“By ancient decree and Wizengamot confirmation, Sirius Orion Black is restored to full standing. His name is cleansed. His heirship retained.”

Arcturus rose at last.

“And the child is returned to me.”

They went to Privet Drive before the day was over.

The wards were weak.

Cheap.

Fear-based.

They did not fight a Black retrieval.

The door opened to shouting. To excuses. To protests that died the moment Arcturus crossed the threshold and glared them into submission.

Harry was found in the cupboard under the stairs.

Too quiet.

Too still.

Seated in a soiled diaper meant he hadn't been changed or cared for in a long time. His arms were thin. His cheeks hollowed just enough to matter. There were faint pressure bruises at his wrists where someone had hauled him too harshly, too often.

He did not cry.

He only stared.

Sirius fell to his knees again—but this time it was in front of a child.

“Prongslet,” he whispered, voice breaking into something barely human.

For a second, Harry did not move.

Then the child reached out with clumsy precision and grabbed a fistful of his prison-stiff sleeve.

“Pa’foo.”

The sound shattered what was left of the room.

The Dursleys were stunned, bound, and left for the aurors in silence.

No one cared what they said.

Blackmoore’s gates opened at dusk.

The ancestral home of the House of Black received them not with grandeur, but with recognition.

Melania met them at the entrance without a word. She took Harry gently, efficiently, already calling for healers, for baths, for feeding charms that worked slowly rather than shocking a starved body.

Sirius stood in the doorway like a man who did not believe walls would remain real for long.

Arcturus placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You are home.”

That night, Sirius slept on the floor beside Harry’s cradle with one hand resting against the side of it, as if the child might vanish if he let go.

Harry slept without nightmares for the first time since the Potters fell.

And in the deepest warded heart of Blackmoore, three ancient Houses—Black and Potter-Gryffindor all—quietly reclaimed their heir.

Chapter Text

Sirius came awake with a ragged breath that hurt his chest.

For a few stunned heartbeats, he expected to see wet stone and iron bars, to hear the distant, soul-deep screaming of Azkaban. Instead, his gaze found carved wood overhead, dark panels traced with familiar runes. The air was warm. The mattress was soft. Wards hummed quietly in the walls like a heartbeat.

Not a cell.

Blackmoore.

The knowledge didn’t comfort so much as orient him.

Memory hit a second later.

James is gone.

Lily too.

The cottage. The flash of green. The ruin where a home had been. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe past it. He forced himself to roll his head to the side.

A crib waited in the corner.

That was what finally tore him fully into the present.

Harry.

His godson. His duty. The one thing he had been meant to protect, and failed.

He stared for a long second, numb. He could still feel the phantom weight of Hagrid taking Harry from his arms, hear his own voice telling the half-giant to take the bike, he’d catch Pettigrew—

Pettigrew.

The thought tasted like acid.

The anger that came with the name was immediate and vicious, the same fury that had nearly swallowed him whole on that street, that had driven him to Azkaban’s gates. He strangled it at the source. There was a baby in the room. His baby, now.

A small, fretful noise came from the crib.

The rage vanished under something much more urgent.

He was on his feet and moving before he remembered the stiffness in his limbs.

Harry wriggled on the thin mattress, face scrunched, lashes clumped with tears. When those bright green eyes opened, Sirius’ heart tripped. Lily’s eyes, in James’ face.

“Hey, pup,” Sirius said softly, voice still rough from disuse.

“Pa’foo,” Harry breathed, the name mangled by baby tongue. For a moment, his whole face lit up. Then reality caught up, and he dissolved into sobs. “Pa’foo! Pa’foo!”

Sirius scooped him up and held on, one hand supporting Harry’s head, the other wrapped almost too tightly around his small back. The child’s weight was wrong—too light, too easy to lift. Another problem for another hour. Right now, there was a warm baby tucked against his chest, and that was all that mattered.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured into Harry’s hair, breathing in powder and potions and something that was just Harry. “I’ve got you, pup. I’m here. I’m not letting you go again, I swear it.”

The sobs eased into shuddery sniffs. Harry’s fists bunched in the rough fabric of his borrowed robes.

“Mum,” Harry hiccupped. “Mummy. Mummy.”

Sirius shut his eyes for a moment. Grief clawed up his throat.

“I know,” he said quietly. “She’s not here. But I am. And I’m not going anywhere.”

James, if you’re watching, he thought fiercely, you listen to me—I will not leave him again.

“And some of us,” a calm, amused voice said from the doorway, “have no intention of being forgotten either.”

Sirius turned.

Lady Melania Black stood framed in the doorway as if she had just stepped out of an old portrait. Day robes already on, hair charmed into impeccable order, she looked every inch the Matriarch of an Ancient House who had already decided how today would go and was merely allowing reality to catch up.

Harry twisted to look at her, tears forgotten for the moment.

“Pa’foo?” he checked uncertainly, glancing between them.

Sirius kissed his forehead, very carefully avoiding the raised scar. “That one,” he said, “is your great-grandmother.”

He straightened as much as he could with an armful of toddler. “Goo mo'ning, Gamma.”

Melania’s expression softened as she crossed the room. She kissed Sirius on the cheek, then slid her arms around Harry with smooth practice and took his weight before Sirius could protest. Harry flailed for a second, then settled when he realised he had not been abandoned, just redistributed.

“And a very good morning to you,” she told him. “Little… darling, I think. Since your cousin insists on ‘pup’.”

“That one’s taken,” Sirius muttered, but there was a faint ghost of a smile with it.

“Yes, yes, territorial as usual,” she said mildly. “Now. You.” She aimed a look at Sirius that brooked no argument. “Wash. Dress. Your grandfather is waiting.”

She shifted Harry easily onto her hip and headed for the door, already talking nonsense in a fluent stream. Harry replied just as seriously in baby gibberish.

The room felt too still once they were gone.

Sirius scrubbed his hands over his face, willing the last of the fog away, then went to find the wardrobe. Someone had seen to it; neat stacks of robes with Black colours waiting, robes charmed to fit. He shrugged into the first set he grabbed. Thinking about his old clothes—jeans, jacket, the life he’d had before Azkaban—made his throat tight, so he didn’t.

He knew the way to the small morning parlour by heart. The corridors of Blackmoore were woven into his bones even after years away.

The parlour was exactly as he remembered: light and quiet, charmed windows letting in gentle morning sun, blues and soft golds instead of the heavier tones of the formal rooms. Melania had always insisted that the day should start somewhere that didn’t feel like a mausoleum.

Harry spotted him before anyone else.

“Pa’foo!” he crowed, brandishing a spoon with dangerous enthusiasm. He was strapped into a high chair that had definitely not been used since Sirius was that size.

“Morning, menace.” Sirius dropped a noisy kiss on the boy’s forehead, which earned him a delighted squeal.

Melania offered her cheek with expectation; he leaned down to brush it quickly.

“Good morning, Grandmother.”

He then inclined his head toward the far end of the table.

“Grandfather.”

Lord Arcturus Black sat at the head, a book open to his right, the Daily Prophet spread on his left. The lines around his mouth were set deep. Sirius’ eyes flicked down to the headline.

SIRIUS BLACK EXONERATED?
GRYFFINDOR HEIR CLAIMED BY HOUSE BLACK

His stomach twisted. As though Harry were some prize trophy the Blacks had snatched up.

Arcturus folded the paper closed without comment.

“Sit,” he said.

Sirius took the chair at his right.

For a moment, there was only the clink of cutlery, Harry’s soft babbling, and Melania coaxing porridge into him with strategic patience.

“Tell me, Sirius,” Arcturus said eventually, as if they were discussing the weather, “do you know why Orion and I did not drag you back from the Potters by your ear the moment you left Grimmauld?”

Sirius blinked, taken off guard. “No.”

Arcturus arched a brow. “The woman you insisted upon calling ‘Mum’—Dorea Potter. Do you recall her maiden name?”

“I know she was a Black,” Sirius said, confused at the direction this was going. The family tapestry was burned into his brain; there had been days as a child when he’d stood in front of it just to remind himself who counted as home.

“She was more than ‘a Black’,” Arcturus said. “She was my cousin. The same Blood as mine. The moment you staggered onto her doorstep, looking like something the Muggles had dragged in, she sent word. Your father flooed me the instant you left Grimmauld. We knew exactly where you were going.”

Sirius stared at him. “You… planned it?”

“Of course we planned it,” Melania put in dryly. “We are Blacks, not idiots.”

Arcturus continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Dorea and I agreed you would stay with her. Under my authority. Under protection. With someone who actually remembered the meaning of the word ‘family’.”

The fight at Grimmauld rose in Sirius’ mind, sharper now: Walburga’s shrieking, his father’s flat gaze, Regulus hiding, the rush through the door. He had thought, all this time, that he’d torn himself free entirely on his own.

“The first lesson,” Arcturus said quietly. “Say it.”

Harry banged his spoon against the tray and giggled as porridge flew. Sirius glanced at him, then back at his grandfather.

“Family first,” he said slowly. 

Melania nodded once. “The only motto that matters.”

“‘Toujours Pur’ has its uses,” Arcturus said. “But anyone who dares use it as an excuse to raise a hand against our own has forgotten what it was meant to protect.”

Sirius exhaled, some knot inside him loosening in a way he hadn’t realised it could. “So that’s why you let me stay with the Potters,” he said, half to himself. “Because Mum was one of us.”

“Because she behaved like it,” Melania corrected. “Walburga…” She waved an elegant hand. “Was an unfortunate experiment.”

Sirius barked a startled laugh. It was the first real laugh he’d managed since Azkaban.

Harry seized the pause to squeal and demand another bite. Melania turned back to him with fond exasperation, cleaning his face.

“Lesson two,” Arcturus said.

Sirius’ voice was steadier now. “No mercy for those who harm the House.”

“And three.”

“Patience.” He grimaced. “Declare an enemy once, then take your time. Plan properly. Execute when it hurts most. No half measures.”

A faint, savage satisfaction touched Arcturus’ mouth. “Excellent. We will be putting all three to immediate use.”

Sirius felt his shoulders tense. “What are we doing?”

Arcturus’ gaze slid to Harry, then Melania, then back to his heir.

“We call the House to order,” he said. “Properly. For the first time in far too long.”

Sirius went cold.

A Gathering.

Chapter Text

Arcturus had not felt this old in years. It was the day before the gathering. He sat very still in the green parlour, hands resting on his knees, and let his magic shiver around him while he digested what Kreacher had just said.

Regulus. The locket. A promise.

Why now? Why bring it here, after all this time?

Kreacher’s cracked voice still rang in his ears:

“Master Regulus told Kreacher—destroy the necklace. And if Kreacher cannot, take it to the Great Master. Only if the Great Master swears to destroy it.”

Arcturus tasted the shape of the vow before he spoke it.

“I swear,” he said slowly, letting every word sink into the room, “on my magic as Patriarch of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, that this necklace will be destroyed.”

The air tightened. Kreacher’s magic brushed his, clinging like burrs to cloth; the oath settled around his core, heavy and irrevocable.

Beside him, Melania drew in a sharp breath. As his bonded partner, the promise clipped neatly into her own magic as well. Their lives were now tied to the fate of one object.

Wonderful.

Questions battered at his mind. What had Regulus stolen? Why couldn’t Kreacher unmake it? What kind of artefact could stand against elf magic, twist it, endure it?

What had killed his grandson in a cave no one had ever found?

“Bring it here, Kreacher,” Arcturus said, holding out his hand.

The elf clutched the thing to his chest, knuckles white. “Kreacher tried, Master,” he croaked. “Kreacher tried to destroy it. Kreacher fails. Kreacher lives to serve—”

Arcturus reached out and took the locket.

The moment it touched his skin, his aura flared in instinctive rejection.

No.

“Melania,” he said, voice suddenly very cold, “take the boy and go to the safe house.”

She stiffened. “Arcturus, what—”

“Now.” He tightened his grip on the locket, forcing the magic in it not to leak into his. “Harry doesn’t stay under the same roof as this. Fetch Sirius on your way out and tell him to come to me.”

He made himself look away from the necklace long enough to meet her eyes.

Melania’s lashes glittered with unshed tears for a heartbeat; then she blinked them away, composed as ever. They had been taking tea together, as they always did—an unspoken rule through war and grief and politics: one hour each afternoon that belonged to no one but them. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d sent her away from that table.

The last had been the night he’d raised Blackmoore’s war wards, when word reached them that You-Know-Who had gone after Gryffindor’s Keep.

“I will see you at dinner,” she said quietly.

They both knew she would not come back until she had a Patronus and an elf informing her that it was safe. That was the bargain in the words.

She leaned down, brushed a soft kiss against his cheek, and swept out. Moments later, he felt the wards ripple as she crossed them with Harry in her arms. Another shift as the safe house accepted them. Then, a clean severing as she took full control of those wards for herself.

Only then did he allow himself to move.

Sirius arrived at a run, still half in the habit of the Auror he had been before Azkaban and the trial.

“What’s happened? Grandmother said to get to you, and that she and Harry were going to a safe house and—”

He stopped dead two steps into the room.

The black magic hanging in the air wasn’t subtle. It prickled over Sirius’ skin like oil on water.

“The House of Black,” Arcturus said, “is still at war. It never stopped. We were only fighting on one front at a time.”

Sirius swallowed, eyes flicking from his grandfather to the locket in his hand, to Kreacher on the floor. He forced himself not to snap, not to grab, not to demand.

“Tell me what happened,” he said instead, very carefully.

“Wait,” Arcturus replied.

Sirius bit down on his temper and stayed where he was. The silence stretched. Arcturus kept his attention on the house’s wards and the foul object in his hand, ignoring Kreacher’s soft whimpers. He did not move until he felt Melania and Harry settle firmly under the separate layer of Black protection miles away.

Only then did he speak.

“Kreacher,” he said, “by my magic as Patriarch, you are forbidden to speak of Master Regulus’ last instructions to anyone but myself and Sirius Orion Black. You will return to Walburga and behave as you always have done. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Black,” Kreacher rasped.

Sirius muttered something unflattering under his breath. Arcturus ignored it. There would be time later for family arguments; right now, there was work to do.

“Tippy,” Arcturus called.

A small elf appeared at once, immaculate in a linen wrap. “Master?”

“Fetch Cassiopeia and Lucretia,” Arcturus said. “Tell them it is House business. They will come.”

Tippy vanished.

Sirius made a disbelieving noise. “Great-Aunt Cassie? She barely leaves her lab. And Aunt Lucretia is probably in some ridiculous foreign ruin with Uncle Iggy.”

“Exactly,” Arcturus said. “They were not on the front lines of this war. Their magic is clean of it. And whatever else they may be, they are Black. They’ll come.”

Cassiopeia arrived first, appearing with the soft crack of elf travel. Her robes might once have been dark violet; now they were splashed with potion stains, one sleeve singed, the hem questionable. Her hair, however, was swept into a precise knot. Arcturus had always taken that as a sign that, under the chaos, Cassie knew exactly what she was doing.

She said nothing at first, just took in the room, Sirius, and the way Arcturus was holding his hand. Her gaze narrowed when she saw the locket.

Lucretia arrived seconds later with a flare of irritation.

“Father,” she said, hands on her hips, “House business? Iggy nearly burnt himself in excitement. You haven’t called it that since—”

She broke off as she saw the locket.

The air around Sirius went taut. “Where,” he asked quietly, “did that come from?”

From across the room, the thing felt like rot. Old, hungry, wrong. His magic rebelled against it.

“Kreacher brought it,” Arcturus said. “He failed to destroy it as Regulus ordered and has passed the duty to me.”

Sirius’ jaw worked. “And where,” he demanded, patience fraying, “did Regulus get it?”

Most days, Arcturus appreciated his grandson’s absolute refusal to tolerate anything foul. Today, staring at an object that should not exist, he wondered if that instinctive response to black magic was exactly what their line had been shaped for.

“Regulus,” Arcturus said, steadying his voice, “removed it from some place Voldemort thought it safe. He gave it to Kreacher with orders to unmake it, and if that failed, to bring it here. Which he has now done.”

Cassiopeia stepped closer, eyes intent. “That,” she said, “is Salazar Slytherin’s locket.”

Her fingers twitched, but she did not reach for it. “What has been done to it?”

“Something beyond a curse,” Arcturus said. “This is not simply dark. It’s… wrong. Deeply.”

Lucretia’s mouth thinned. “Bad enough to drag us out under the House seal?”

“Worse,” Arcturus replied. He turned to Sirius. “Do you remember the promise our ancestors gave to the people and to Lady Magic herself to settle on this land?”

Sirius blinked at the sideways question, then answered automatically. “The exact year’s gone, but the story says the first Black here had impressed and pleased Lady Magic to the point that she herself blessed the Blackmoore lands, hence our family line and magic still stand strong.”

“And why,” Arcturus asked, “did She give him a child at all?”

The temperature seemed to drop by a degree.

“To guard the balance of magic,” Sirius said, the words old and familiar on his tongue.

“Exactly,” Arcturus said. “Come.”

They moved through Blackmoore in silence, down the outer steps and along the path that led north. The air had that damp chill of early December; the grounds slept under a thin frost. Responsibilities tugged at the edge of Arcturus’ mind—Bellatrix’s disownment still weighing on his core, the mess with Pollux and Walburga, the Longbottom reparations—but this, he knew with a surety that went deeper than thought, came first.

The Black Circle waited where it always had.

Lanterns flared to life at a flick of his wand, light pooling over stone and grass but never quite crossing the invisible line that marked the circle’s boundary. Snow and dead leaves lay all around; inside, the ground was bare and untouched.

The heart of the circle held the altar, a disc of dark, glass-smooth stone veined with gold. Standing stones ringed it—seven granite pillars evenly spaced, each two strides apart. Four taller ones marked the cardinal points: amethyst at north, onyx at south, moonstone west, amber east.

Arcturus stepped over the edge of the circle, feeling the old wards register his presence. He walked to the altar and set the locket down in its centre.

“Grandfather?” Sirius stayed carefully outside the boundary, eyes on the locket. “Do you have any idea what that is, other than ‘bad’?”

“I have suspicions,” Arcturus said. “Nothing I care to speak into the air before it’s gone.”

He took his place behind the amethyst.

“East,” he said. “Take the amber pillar.”

Sirius crossed the line, the circle welcoming him with a ripple of approval that brushed his senses. Whatever else he was, he was Black. He stepped up to the eastern stone and laid his hand on it.

“Cassie, south. Lucretia, west.”

Once they were in position, the space between them tightened—not in a choking way, but like a bowstring pulled true. Arcturus felt the old power underfoot stir, recognisable as family.

“Mother Magic, Lady Hecate,” Arcturus said, voice carrying easily in the quiet, “we call on You now. Your children have found something that should not have been made. We would see it undone.”

The ritual was long and unforgiving.

Magic snarled back at them, thrashing against the wards as they drew it out of the locket and hurled it, piece by piece, where it could not find a foothold. Sweat soaked their collars. Stone bit into knees when they sank down. Cassiopeia’s hair fell out of its careful bun. Sirius’s hands bled where he gripped the pillar too tightly.

They did not stop.

By the time the last thread of foul magic tore free and burned away into nothing, the sky above the circle had gone from grey to black. The locket lay on the altar, dull and empty, nothing more than old gold and a memory.

Sirius let out a harsh, exhausted breath and slumped back on his heels.

“So that,” he said hoarsely, “is what we were fighting.”

Arcturus looked at the dead necklace, at his family, at the Circle itself.

“No,” he said quietly. “That was only one piece, one part.”

The next day, when Melania and Harry were safely home, and the house had calmed enough to pretend at normality, Arcturus went to his study.

He opened the old black book that only a Patriarch could touch, dipped his quill, and turned to the page marked for enemies of the House and the balance they kept.

On a clean line beneath the last entry, he wrote:

Tom Marvolo Riddle, styling himself “Lord Voldemort”
engaged in forbidden workings against life and magic
First marked: December 9, 1979
Stripped of body: October 31, 1981
Last tether cleansed: November 20, 1981

He let the ink sink into the page.

Then he closed the book and rested his hand on its cover, feeling the House wards acknowledge the record.

One war had ended.

Another—their oldest—continued.

Chapter Text

He couldn’t remember one ever being held in his lifetime.

The Black family convened beneath Blackmoore in a room that felt like the inside of an old wand box—dark, close, and lined with power.

The table down the centre was a single slab of polished stone, runes carved deep into its surface and along the walls around it. Sirius had been told as a boy never to touch them. Today, they glowed in response to Arcturus’s presence at the head of the table.

Melania sat on his left, her position unchallenged. Sirius took the chair on his right.

The rest of the line filled in like a living tapestry.

Walburga glared down the length of the table, complaining under her breath about the summons, about “blood-traitor disgrace”, about poor, precious Regulus. Sirius let the sound wash over him and focused on the seat across, where Andromeda was talking quietly with Ted, their fingers just barely touching.

Dora, all wild hair and sharp eyes, sat between them, kicking her heels under her chair. The moment Walburga’s eyes landed on her, the girl’s nose morphed into a pig snout. Sirius had to bite down hard on his lip to keep from grinning.

Alphard slid around the table to sit next to Dora within minutes, launching into animated tales of foreign wards and cursed tombs. Cedrella settled near Andromeda, questions already lined up about Ted’s family, his work, and his shields.

Callidora sat stiffly, hands white-knuckled in her lap. Narcissa held herself as if carved from marble, her face stony. Cygnus looked ten years older than Sirius remembered.

It wasn’t pretty.

It was real.

Arcturus’ quiet clearing of his throat silenced the room more effectively than any spell.

“Bellatrix,” he said, voice carrying easily to every corner, “has abandoned the House.”

There was a collective intake of breath.

Pollux’ and Walburga’s reactions were immediate—a hiss, a snarl. Cygnus’ shoulders sagged. Callidora made a soft, wounded sound.

“I stepped away when Orion died,” Arcturus went on. “Too far. Too long. I let grief excuse negligence. That ends now.”

He looked to Sirius. Underneath the surface words, something older passed between them: Are you ready?

Sirius nodded once.

They had tested his sensitivity the previous night, deliberately and methodically. One by one, Arcturus had brought various magical objects into a dampened circle: some inert, some bright with wild magic, some humming with light, some steady grey, some thrumming with darker currents. Then one that radiated a wrongness that made Sirius’s teeth ache.

Black magic had a taste. He could name it now.

Those same wards were laid beneath this room, layered into the floor and furniture. Nothing cast within the circle could harm a Black by blood. Runes embedded in the table would enforce truth when called; others would do worse.

Arcturus rested his right hand on the stone. “In case anyone is unclear,” he said pleasantly. “Sirius is my heir.”

Walburga’s control snapped. “You cannot be serious,” she spat. “He was raised away from us. He is Potter-soft. He is not—”

“He was raised by my sister,” Cassiopeia cut in sharply. “Which is more than can be said for whatever you were doing when you weren’t screaming at him.”

“At least I produced children,” Pollux said, chin lifting. “The true measure of a Black.”

“Cousins,” Arcturus said in a tone that made the runes under his hand flare. “Not today.”

He turned to Andromeda. “Have you started on the lessons with Dora?”

Andromeda’s mouth quirked. “Lesson one?”

Dora sat up straight. “Family first,” she recited. “I’m still deciding which of you is worth the trouble. I like Cousin Sirius, of course, ‘cause he’s a dog. And so far, Uncle Alphard has cool stories.”

A few reluctant chuckles slipped free. The tension eased by a fraction.

Melania’s attention flicked to Sirius, eyes narrowing with interested curiosity. “And why,” she asked, deceptively mild, “does my great-granddaughter insist on calling you a dog, hm?”

Sirius winced. “Er.”

Arcturus pressed his fingers more firmly into the rune beneath his palm. It pulsed.

“Answer honestly, Sirius.”

“Animagus,” Sirius muttered. “Unregistered. I turn into a… dog.”

“A very large, very black dog,” Dora added helpfully.

“A Grim,” Sirius sighed. “Technically.”

The reaction rolled down the table—gasps, oaths, a few muttered prayers.

Dora, of course, brightened. “Oh, the one from the picture! That was you? Can you show them?”

“In a moment,” Arcturus said. “First, a reminder. A Grim is not just a story to frighten Muggleborns. It is a magical creature. Death’s hound, if you like that sort of poetry. An Animagus who takes such a form gets pieces of what that creature is.”

Sirius kept his eyes on the table. “I met him,” he said, quieter than before.

Alphard’s voice gentled. “Met who?”

“Death,” Sirius said. “At Godric’s Hollow. When I went back, before Hagrid. He was there. Watching.”

The room held its breath.

Arcturus’ hand landed briefly over his, warm and solid, then withdrew.

“Whether or not you put stock in legends,” he said, “one thing remains constant: a Grim does not sit comfortably in the presence of black magic.” His gaze slid down the table and did not bother to hide what he was thinking. “Which makes him useful tonight.”

He looked back at Dora. “Lesson two?”

She swallowed, then answered firmly. “No mercy for those who hurt the family.”

“No mercy,” Arcturus agreed. “Even if they share your name.”

He nodded to Sirius. “Now.”

Padfoot hit the table in a ripple of shadow and muscle, claws scraping stone. The world tasted different in this shape—sharper, louder, edged with scents and magic rather than words.

He padded along the centre.

Dora was a crackle of wild magic and mischief. He huffed a greeting into her hair. Melania and Arcturus smelled steady and familiar, their magic old but balanced. Cedrella, Andromeda: light threaded with steel. Alphard: grey with a wild spark.

He moved on.

Callidora: dark, but clean. Cygnus: the same. Narcissa: carefully contained, her core shaded but not corrupt.

Then—

Walburga.

Pollux.

The air thickened around them. Their cores stank of something burned and turned inward on itself. He forced himself to push past the first revulsion and look deeper.

There it was.

A slick, tar-like strand wound through their magic. Black, the same taste as the objects Arcturus had tested him with.

Sirius growled low in his chest, then changed back before instinct could overrule purpose. His hands shook as he slapped his palm onto the truth rune.

“Did you potion my father into marrying you?” he asked Walburga.

Her lips twisted. The magic stole the lie and left only the truth.

“Yes.”

“Was it your scheme?” Sirius asked Pollux.

“Yes,” Pollux said, without shame. “It was the logical solution. The title should have been mine. Failing that, my line will hold it.”

Melania made a broken sound somewhere to Sirius’s left. Arcturus’s hand dug into the edge of the table hard enough that the stone creaked.

“You tampered with the Heir of the House,” Arcturus said, voice very, very soft. “With my son.”

“And with me,” Sirius said. His throat felt raw. “And with Harry, whether you understood that or not.”

He drew a breath, forced his voice into the formal cadence he’d hated but had trained in as a boy.

“Bellatrix, daughter of Cygnus, has bound herself to a foreign madman and raised a wand against our kin—Frank and Alice Longbottom, our own blood. Walburga, daughter of Pollux, has coerced the Heir of the House into marriage and used violence against his children. Pollux, son of Cygnus, has conspired to unseat the Patriarch and twist the succession to his whim.” He lifted his chin. “I name them all traitors to the House of Black in word and deed. What say you, House of Black?”

Voices answered him, one by one, then as a rising wave.

“Aye.”

Even Cygnus’ voice was there, rough with pain.

Arcturus let the echo die away before he reached for the twin runes that represented Walburga and Pollux. His fingers did not shake.

He pressed them both.

There was a flash, a wrenching pull in the wards, and then the seats that had held Pollux and Walburga were empty. Their ties to Blackmoore’s heartstone recoiled in the back of Arcturus’ mind like snapped cords.

He swallowed once.

“We will see to the ritual severing,” he said, more to the room than to any one person. “For tonight, they are out. That is enough.”

The silence that followed was raw.

Callidora broke first, a choked sob she tried and failed to smother. Lucretia pulled her close. Alphard’s jaw was locked tight. Narcissa stared straight ahead, the slightest tremor in her fingers.

Cygnus let out a breath that sounded like relief and grief tangled together. “Andromeda?” he asked quietly. “Will she…?”

Cassiopeia snorted. “She was never out,” she said. “You can burn as many tapestries as you like; unless the Patriarch or Heir speaks the rite, the magic doesn’t care. That girl’s been ours the whole time.”

Andromeda’s eyes flashed, surprised and bright.

Sirius, still standing, let his gaze travel the length of the table.

“What happens now,” he said, “is that we stop pretending we haven’t been broken. Voldemort turned half the country into butchers and cowards in the name of ‘purity’. Grindelwald, before him, did the same from the opposite end. Dumbledore let them do it as long as he could steer the story.”

He felt every eye on him and kept going.

“We’re Blacks. We are supposed to hold the balance. We’ve done a piss-poor job of it, frankly. So we start again. Family first. No mercy for those who tear at us from within. No blind obedience to anyone outside this House—be they Death Eater, Minister, or Chief Warlock.”

He met Narcissa’s gaze briefly; her chin lifted, and she did not look away.

“We have work to do,” he finished simply.

Arcturus glanced at Melania. She smiled, fierce and proud.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We do.”

Chapter Text

The Longbottom house still tasted of spent curses.

Not ordinary fire, not cooking smoke, but the faint acrid sting that hung in the air after too many dark spells had been cast in the same space. Cleaning charms had been layered over every wall, every scrap of fabric. It hadn’t helped. The echo of it clung to the stone like a bad memory.

Augusta Longbottom stood in the doorway of what used to be Frank’s study and looked at the broken desk where Neville’s first toys had once been lined up in proud, messy rows.

The crib in the corner was empty.

The whole house felt hollow.

A place that should have been full of a baby’s wails and tired, loving arguments about feeding schedules now sat in a silence that rang.

They had brought Frank and Alice home from St Mungo’s three days earlier.

Alive, the Healers had said.

Augusta wasn’t sure the word applied anymore.

St Mungo’s had opened a new ward for them and the others like them, tucked away behind layers of soundproofing and privacy charms. Ward Forty-Nine, for “curse-induced mental collapse”. It sounded clinical. Neat. As if you could file away agony with a number.

Frank lay curled on his side, fingers spasming against the sheets, eyes tracking things that weren’t there. Alice sat upright, shoulders rigid, a charred line along where her hair had been cut away. Her whole world seemed to have contracted to the scrap of gum wrapper she crinkled and smoothed and crinkled again between shaking fingers.

Augusta had put herself between their beds.

She hadn’t reached for either of them.

If she touched her son and his eyes slid past her without recognition, she knew something inside her would not survive it.

“The curse exposure was sustained,” the Healer had said in his careful, professional voice. “They alternated the Cruciatus between them. For hours. They will not… return to what they were.”

Azkaban, Augusta thought distantly, had nothing to do with justice. There was no cell, no Dementor, no sentence that could balance the ledger for what had been done here.

That night, back in the quiet house that no longer fit around her shoulders, she watched muted flashes of celebratory fireworks through the windowpanes as the wizarding world cheered the fall of the Dark Lord. Victory. Peace. The Boy-Who-Lived.

She took out a glass, poured firewhisky, and left it untouched on the mantle.

Her hands shook around the head of her cane.

Not from grief.

From the effort it took not to burn the world down in answer.

Three days after the Lestranges were sentenced, an owl came.

No Ministry seal. No pomp. Just heavy parchment and a crest pressed into the wax in silver: the Black constellation, stark and unmistakable.

She almost sent it straight to the fire.

Instead, she broke the seal and read.

Once.

A second time.

Then she rose, reached for her cloak, and called for her elf.

Blackmoore greeted her in silence.

The doors opened as she approached, old magic noting her presence and choosing to admit her. Inside, torches burned not the usual gold but a muted, mourning silver. House Black did not host celebrations; it recorded events and tallied costs.

Arcturus Black stood waiting at the far end of the entrance hall. He had not taken his formal seat. He stood as a man, not as a throne.

“You’ve buried your line,” he said without preamble as she approached.

“They still breathe,” Augusta answered. “That is the cruelty of it.”

They held each other’s gaze for a long moment—two old Houses, two older survivors.

Then she planted the tip of her cane firmly on the stone between them.

“I did not come to beg,” she said. “The Ministry has already paraded its justice for the public.”

Her voice hardened.

“I came to claim what is owed.”

Behind Arcturus, the air thickened. With a low grind of stone-on-stone, the great Black account mirrors dropped from the high ceiling into view. Silvered surfaces flared with bloodfire as they woke properly.

A gesture from Arcturus, and the records for Lestrange unrolled in the air: family tree, marriage contracts, vault inventories, properties, old oaths. Lines of script showing how often restitution clauses had been conveniently left unsigned in the confusion of war.

“Their heirs are condemned,” Arcturus said. “Their name struck from courtesy. Their lands are forfeit. Their vaults are currently… ownerless.”

Augusta lifted her chin.

“They did not attack a neutral House,” she said. “They went after Longbottom. They tried to erase my line. By every ancient precedent, what they gathered by magic and contract answers now to the blood they tried to cut.”

Magic listened.

It wasn’t a feeling so much as a pressure in the bones, a sense of something vast turning its attention their way and weighing the request against its own, older rules.

The Lestrange sigils cracked on the hovering records, then shattered. The vault markers flared, wavered, and slid—obedient as coins on a counting board—until they settled under the Longbottom crest.

Gold and land and protections shifted allegiance in a breath.

Augusta didn’t feel triumphant.

She felt the precise click of a lock turning on a door that needed to be closed.

“You should despise us,” Arcturus said quietly. “Her magic comes from our branch.”

Augusta’s jaw trembled once before she mastered it.

“I do,” she said honestly. “I hate that a child of Black drew that wand on my son.”

Then she straightened fully.

“But I hate the system that let her believe she had the right even more.”

Her free hand lifted, and she laid her palm flat against the Black sigil carved into the hall’s main pillar.

“House Longbottom will walk with House Black,” she said. “Against Ministry convenience. Against Dumbledore’s meddling. Against whatever world thinks certain families can be sacrificed for the story.”

Arcturus inclined his head, then drew his wand. She mirrored him.

The magic of the oath flowed cleanly between them—no warmth, no sentiment, but a steady, mutually agreed line of steel.

Two Houses, bound not by ambition or marriage.

By shared loss sharpened into purpose.

Up in the nursery wing of Blackmoore, away from vaults and vows and adult bargains, a small boy slept in a cot that hummed quietly with protective runes—Harry Potter-Black, Gryffindor heir, curled around a soft toy dog.

In the crib recently added beside him, another baby shifted restlessly in his sleep, fists clenched, expression drawn. Neville Longbottom whimpered, caught in dreams his young mind had no words for.

Without waking, Harry turned toward the sound, one little hand flopping out and brushing the edge of Neville’s blanket.

The old House magic running through the stone took note.

The cradles scraped closer by a few inches, guided by an enchantment that didn’t care for prophecy or headlines, only for alignment.

Two children with nearly the same ending written for them.

Two families who had decided they would not accept it.

—

Publicly, the story that followed was much neater.

Within days, the Daily Prophet ran three short notices: Pollux and Walburga Black, dead of “core failure due to long-term contact with unstable magic”; Bellatrix Lestrange, suffering “severe and permanent damage” in Azkaban. The war-weary public skimmed, nodded at the idea of dark magic turning on its own, and moved on. People were tired.

Albus Dumbledore was not.

He stood in the Wizengamot not a week later, leaning on his staff with the exact amount of sadness that looked good in a sketch.

“In light of these… multiple tragedies,” he said gravely, “we must consider whether the Black household is truly the right environment for the child who survived You-Know-Who’s attack. Perhaps a more neutral, wholesome guardianship would better serve his future.”

The implication was clear. The press heard it.

By evening, there were editorials.

Would Harry Potter be raised as a symbol of hope, or steeped in old prejudices? Would the Blacks mould him into a leader… or a weapon?

Melania read every line over breakfast.

Then folded the paper, set her teacup down with great care, and began to write.

The “private family picnic” she arranged a week later in a small park on the outskirts of Diagon Alley was, on paper, nothing of note. A few respected old names, a handful of children, a winter sun charm to keep the worst of the chill off.

Augusta arrived with Neville in a good wool coat, hovering close but not hovering enough to smother him. Callidora and Cygnus had helped convince her; Black wards in the open, they argued, were better than Ministry indifference behind closed doors.

Andromeda brought Dora, Ted, was a few steps behind them, politely fading back whenever he spotted a camera. Narcissa Malfoy made an appearance with young Draco in perfectly pressed robes, leaving him “in the company of his cousins” with the air of someone granting a favour.

Sirius came last, and Harry perched comfortably on his hip. The boy looked healthier already—rounder in the cheeks, less shadowed about the eyes, the scar on his forehead softened slightly by careful salves.

A few reporters just happened to choose that park for their lunch break.

The photographs practically composed themselves.

Three toddlers, boots muddy, shrieking with laughter as Dora shifted her nose into a pig’s snout, then a bird’s beak, then back again. Neville clapped as Draco tried to copy her expression. Harry tumbling backwards into the grass and giggled as Sirius pulled him upright.

Melania kneeling to brush dirt from Harry’s sleeves, Augusta and Callidora sharing a bench, both women looking worn but steadier than they had in the Wizengamot galleries.

When one braver journalist approached, quill at the ready, Melania produced a handkerchief as if from nowhere.

“This ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ title you all insist upon using,” she said, voice wobbling just enough, “is a cruelty. To my great-grandson, and to every family who lost someone that night. Must we label him with our grief every time we speak of him?”

She dabbed at the corner of one eye.

“And to hear Professor Dumbledore speak of it as if it were some grand tale while ignoring Lily…” Her mouth trembled. “If anyone brought that monster down, it was her. Lily Potter had more force in her heart than he will ever understand. If the world needs a name to pin its miracle on, it should start with hers.”

Two days later, the *Prophet*’s front page read:

LILY POTTER: THE WITCH WHO STOPPED YOU-KNOW-WHO?

From that week onward, “Boy-Who-Lived” began to vanish from print, a phrase quietly retired.

The Blacks, inconveniently for Dumbledore’s narrative, shifted in the public mind from “dangerous influence” to “ancient, eccentric, formidable, but respectable.”

Later, when Blackmoore had settled into a new kind of routine and the wards no longer felt quite so raw, Arcturus called Cassiopeia and Alphard to a smaller parlour off his study.

Cassie arrived ten minutes late, ink on her fingers and smoke still clinging faintly to her sleeves. Alphard came on time, of course, with an air of patient curiosity.

“You needed us?” Cassie said, dropping into an armchair. “I was in the middle of something that might explode if I left it too long.”

“If the house is still standing, it can wait,” Arcturus said dryly.

He slid a slim folder across the table. Inside, exact line drawings of Harry’s scar—front, side, and an enlarged sketch where the jagged lightning resolved into something older and more deliberate.

Cassiopeia’s eyes sharpened. Alphard leaned in.

“That’s not just a scar,” Cassie murmured. “That’s sowilo. Or very close to it.”

“Sun, success, life,” Alphard said, turning the page. “Wild magic, bound to a very particular intent. That’s not any of our standard protections.”

“I want to know what Lily did,” Arcturus said. “Specifically. Not Dumbledore’s honeyed version. The truth.”

Cassiopeia sat back slowly. Some of the usual impatience bled out of her posture.

“You’re not planning to make Harry… do it again,” she said flatly.

“No.” Arcturus’ gaze drifted, just for a second, upward—toward the nursery floors where Harry slept, often gravitating toward whichever of the other boys was staying the night. “I want to understand what’s already wrapped around him. And what price has already been paid so we don’t pretend it was cheap.”

Cassie blew air out through her nose. “We’ll need the Potter grimoires. Anything Dorea wrote about Lily’s control. Anything we can salvage from the notes Lily Potter left behind. And possibly a headache draught on standby.”

Alphard’s mouth curved faintly. “And perhaps a look at what Dumbledore’s been publishing on ‘sacrificial protection’ and ‘the power of love’. If only to see which bits he stole and which he invented.”

“I don’t care what he calls it,” Arcturus said. “I want to see where the ritual actually sits in the old frameworks. Names can be painted on later.”

The two of them exchanged a look that promised obsessive research, questionable experiments, and, possibly, results.

Cassiopeia was already reaching for parchment. Alphard began listing sources under his breath, ticking them off on his fingers.

Outside, the Blackmoore wards pulsed quietly, curled now around four distinct cores: Arcturus and Melania, the steady anchor of an old bond; Sirius, sharp and restless but finally aligned; and the brighter, newer flare that was Harry, intertwined with the softer points that were Neville and Draco whenever they were within reach.

Black.

Potter.

Gryffindor.

Longbottom.

Lines that once ran in parallel now beginning, carefully, deliberately, to braid.

Arcturus wrapped both hands around his teacup and let the warmth sink into fingers still stiff from ritual work and oaths.

The war that the Prophet liked to name was over.

The one his family had been given at its founding—the duty to guard balance, not sides—was very much alive.

For the first time in a long while, he felt not just responsibility, but a thin, genuine thread of satisfaction.

They had survived.

Now, finally, they could start to shape what that survival meant.

Chapter Text

By the summer of 1982, all three ancient Houses were forced to admit a frankly humiliating truth:

War had been easier than this.

“This” being three magically volatile one-year-olds, born within weeks of each other, who refused to obey either gravity or decorum.

High in the sunlit west wing of Blackmoore, three blankets had been laid in a careful circle on the floor. On those blankets sat:

Harry Potter

Draco Malfoy

Neville Longbottom

None of them could quite walk.

All of them could cause magical disturbances.

Every adult in the room was pretending not to be quietly terrified.

---

Harry was the first to crack the mystery of forward motion.

It began with a determined grunt, a wobbling push from one knee, and a dignified collapse into a cushion. This did not discourage him. It merely convinced him he was onto something.

Draco copied him exactly seven seconds later.

He did not crawl so much as slide, as if the floor existed solely to inconvenience him and he would tolerate it only for as long as necessary.

Neville, determined to keep up, attempted the same manoeuvre.

Neville rolled sideways, bumped into a chair leg, and burst into shocked tears as if the world had betrayed him personally.

Harry turned.

Draco turned.

Both stared at the offended third baby.

Harry giggled.

Draco frowned, offended on principle.

Neville’s wail climbed in pitch.

Within moments, all three had joined in—a small orchestra of misery.

Across the room, Sirius buried his face in his hands.

Lucius closed his eyes and inhaled like a man preparing for battle.

Augusta said something under her breath about carpets and the fragility of her nerves.

---

Their first real quarrel began, as such things do, over a single toy.

It was an enchanted rattle shaped like a silver Snitch, hovering a few inches above the nearest blanket.

Harry reached for it and missed.

Draco reached for it and caught Harry’s sleeve instead.

Neville, overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment, flung himself forward and headbutted the rattle.

The toy shot upwards, whirling in tight circles above their heads.

Harry shrieked with laughter.

Draco gasped, outrage personified in miniature.

Neville clapped once and toppled backwards, stunned by his own enthusiasm.

The adults intervened at once. Babies were gathered. The errant rattle was confiscated.

Three betrayed faces turned toward their elders in perfect, wounded synchrony.

And then, as one, they began to cry.

Sirius was the first to fold.

“For Merlin’s sake,” he groaned, “give it back.”

Lucius evaluated the noise level like a battlefield commander assessing casualties.

“…Fine.”

The rattle was returned under strict supervision.

No lesson at all was learned.

---

That summer, an agreement was struck that would quietly reshape three Houses.

The boys would not be divided.

They would rotate together between Blackmoore, Malfoy Manor, and Longbottom Hall. Three nurseries. One shared childhood.

At Blackmoore, the nursery ceilings were enchanted with shifting constellations that dimmed when the boys slept and brightened when they woke. House wards hummed through the stone, already attuned to small magical signatures, responding to distress before any human ear could hear a cry.

At Malfoy Manor, the cribs floated just off the floor and rearranged themselves at the slightest whimper. Lucius refused to accept “nursery chaos”; if there must be screaming, it would at least be symmetrically placed.

At Longbottom Hall, the nursery had more greenery than furniture. Vines coiled around bedposts. Potted shrubs flanked the windows. The plants leaned in when Neville fussed and spread soft leaves over all three boys when they slept, as if the Hall itself had adopted them.

---

Accidental magic became a daily sport.

Harry sneezed once and turned the bath water into liquid gold. It took an hour to convince him not to drink it.

Draco hiccupped, and every rattle in the room began spinning in perfect synchrony—and refused to stop until he fell asleep.

Neville laughed too hard at dinner one night, and the gravy lifted in a shining brown cloud, then rained back down in slow motion over the table like abstract art.

No one could reliably trace the source of each pulse.

What everyone noticed, however, was this:

They happened most often when all three were together.

“Individually manageable,” a Healer said, very cautiously, after an incident involving sparkles, a bookshelf, and no lasting harm.

Sirius snorted. “Together? They’re a magical catastrophe with sticky hands.”

No one argued.

---

They learned to stand the same week.

Harry let go of the table first and immediately pitched into Draco.

Draco braced for exactly one outraged second before staggering into Neville.

Neville absorbed both of them, sat down hard, and stared at his own knees in grave offence.

By the end of the week, all three could:

Stand for three heartbeats.

Fall in three different dramatic styles.

Get up again without a flicker of hesitation.

The adults watched from a careful distance, clinging to the illusion that this was development, not the opening move of some long campaign.

---

Their first “conversation” took place at Blackmoore during a rainy afternoon.

Harry announced, “Ba.”

Draco replied, “Da.”

Neville contributed, “Ma!”

They all stopped, blinked at one another.

Then erupted into rolling, delighted babble that meant exactly nothing to anyone else in the room.

From that day forward, they talked often.

It wasn’t language yet, but it was absolutely communication.

Whatever plans were being made, the adults were quite sure they did not want to know.

---

One evening, after endless crawling, splashing, and repeated attempts to test gravity, all three simply… stopped.

Harry rolled onto his side on the blanket.

Draco’s hand, abandoned mid-gesture, snagged in Harry’s sleeve.

Neville fell asleep with his fist locked around the corner of Draco’s blanket as if he had no intention of letting go.

No one moved them.

For a few quiet minutes, three Houses looked at three small boys and allowed themselves to believe in the possibility of peace.

---

Malfoy Manor, for all its charm, was not built to withstand toddlers.

It was ancient, spotless, and unnervingly precise—every painting perfectly aligned, every bannister polished, every stone in its proper place.

It was absolutely not designed for three magical one-year-olds and one very unfortunate peacock.

The bird in question was a pristine, enchanted white creature imported at significant expense from a location Lucius refused to discuss. It had a habit of screaming at sunrise. Lucius tolerated it because it was rare, intimidating, and went well with the marble.

Sirius hated it on principle.

On a bright afternoon in the side garden, the peacock made a fatal mistake.

It screamed directly at the children.

Harry was occupied, chewing on a silver hairpin he was absolutely not supposed to have.

Draco sat with all the gravity of a tiny lord, patting the grass like he’d personally commissioned it.

Neville was earnestly trying to eat a daisy.

Lucius, nearby, drank tea with unhurried grace.

Sirius had been firmly instructed not to touch anything expensive.

The garden was calm.

Then the peacock let out a full, shattering screech at eye level.

Harry flinched, the hairpin flying from his hand.

Draco inhaled sharply, affronted that anything dared be louder than him.

Neville burst into tears so wholeheartedly that the roses trembled.

The peacock, offended by their reaction, spread its tail in a blinding fan of enchanted white light.

Lucius lowered his teacup an inch. “Do not antagonise the children,” he advised.

The peacock screamed again.

The wards did the rest.

Harry hiccupped, and every statue in the garden briefly glowed in the eyes.

Draco slapped his small hands into the blanket, and the grass under the bird’s feet hardened to glass.

Neville’s crying spiked into a panicked wail, and something old and protective in the layered Malfoy and Black wards flared awake.

They did not particularly care that the “threat” was feathered.

The air around the peacock shimmered.

With a loud pop and a rain of silver sparks, the bird vanished.

Feathers drifted down over the garden like snow.

Neville hiccupped into confused silence.

Draco stared, wide-eyed.

Harry clapped.

Lucius placed his teacup very carefully on the saucer.

“That peacock,” he said, in a tone usually reserved for catastrophic Ministry memos, “cost more than most villages.”

Sirius didn’t bother to hide his grin. “Fitting end,” he said. “It lived obnoxiously and died dramatically.”

Draco pointed solemnly at the empty space. “’ Pa…gon’,” he declared.

Harry tried to catch the falling feathers.

Neville grabbed one, laughed so hard he toppled over again.

Later that night, the manor’s magic recorded in its internal ledger:

> *Unscheduled avian displacement.*
> Cause: *infant ward reaction*.

Lucius sealed the entry.

Draco tried to applaud it.

Harry tried to eat the parchment.

Neville tried to hug it.

---

By the time the boys turned six, the adults reached a new conclusion:

They were not raising babies anymore.

They were raising opinions.

Harry no longer just walked; he launched. Every corridor was a racetrack, every piece of furniture a potential obstacle to vault. He somehow stayed upright right up until the moment a fall would be most dramatic.

Draco moved like he’d practised entering rooms. Back straight, hands sometimes clasped behind him, the floor merely a surface that was fortunate to host him.

Neville walked in constant negotiation with gravity. Some days, he moved confidently. Other days, he lost three arguments in a row with a perfectly innocent rug.

Speech followed with the same lack of moderation.

Harry narrated his life.

Draco corrected everyone else’s.

Neville asked questions about everything that breathed, grew, or glowed.

Dinner at any of the three estates became less a meal and more a symposium with interruptions.

“You’re holding the fork wrong,” Draco informed Harry one evening.

Harry, without breaking eye contact, immediately swapped hands.

Neville frowned thoughtfully at his own fork. “Do they mind?” he asked Augusta. “Being held?”

She excused herself for a moment.

---

By seven, someone—no one later admitted who—suggested formal etiquette lessons.

At Blackmoore, three matching chairs and three matching teacups were arranged in a neat row.

A very hopeful tutor faced three very restless boys.

“Posture,” she prompted gently.

Draco snapped upright so fast his chair almost tipped.

Harry slouched further in open defiance.

Neville attempted to mimic Draco and slid gracefully off his seat.

“We remain still while seated,” the tutor tried again.

At that precise instant, Harry’s teacup rose six inches into the air, Draco’s spoon began tapping an ominous march against his saucer, and the legs of Neville’s chair very politely sank into the floor.

The tutor lasted until lunch.

---

Their games shifted with them.

The chaos of crawling turned into constructed disorder: blanket forts that devoured entire corridors, elaborate “dragon traps” that caught exactly nothing, invisible borders that only Draco acknowledged but everyone used.

Harry climbed anything tall enough to be dangerous.

Draco drafted rules for every game and bent them whenever they stopped favouring him.

Neville left a trail of content plant life wherever he went. Flowers turned their heads to follow him. Grass thickened under his feet. Once, a hedge subtly rearranged itself to give him a clearer path.

They fought, of course.

“You cheated,” Harry complained after one particularly complicated game.

“I won creatively,” Draco replied.

Neville tried to step between them, tripped, and toppled into both. The argument ended under a tangle of limbs and reluctant laughter.

From an upper balcony at Malfoy Manor, Sirius leaned on the railing beside Lucius and watched the three boys tearing up the gardens.

“They’re going to be impossible,” Sirius said affectionately.

“They already are,” Lucius murmured.

Below them, Neville ran straight into a hedge. It responded by blooming in a rush of tiny white flowers around him. He laughed, delighted.

Lucius’ mouth tightened. “…That one,” he conceded, “is going to cause trouble no one expects.”

---

Birthdays blurred together by tradition.

Draco’s in early June.

Neville’s at the end of July.

Harry’s the following day.

Three parties softened into one sprawling celebration that rotated Houses, with three cakes, three sets of presents, and one garden that never entirely recovered.

For their seventh year together, Harry received a training broom he was strictly forbidden to use unattended. Draco unwrapped a stack of miniature spellbooks with titles longer than his arm. Neville opened a rooftop garden kit and handled the seedlings with reverent care.

By midday, Harry had flown too fast, crashed into a rosebush, and emerged laughing. Draco had reorganised the gift table by size and perceived importance. Neville had coaxed three stubborn vines into blooming sideways.

They ended the evening sprawled in the grass, frosting on their sleeves, heads close together, the sky above them charmed clear.

---

It was not long after that another invitation arrived.

This one did not bear a Black seal or ancient runes. Instead, the parchment was wrapped in cheerful red ink and far too many exclamation marks.

It was addressed to:

Harry Potter

and, in smaller writing beneath,

Neville Longbottom

Draco Malfoy’s name was nowhere on the page.

Harry did not see the problem at first.

Draco did.

Neville went quiet.

Sirius’ mouth flattened as he read it a second time.

Far away at the Burrow, Molly Weasley bustled happily about her kitchen, unaware that a very small, very important line had just been drawn.

---

Harry had seen the Weasley name before in passing. Arthur sat quietly in the Wizengamot, voting more often with his conscience than with any block. The family was large. Loud. Warm, from what little Harry knew.

Ron Weasley, though, knew Harry only from whispers and Chocolate Frog cards.

“The Harry Potter,” Ron said for the third time that morning, pacing a groove into the Burrow’s kitchen floor. “He’s actually coming here.”

Ginny peered around a table leg, eyes wide. “The Boy-Who-Lived,” she breathed.

Ron puffed up a little. “Fred and George say if your best friend’s famous, people remember you too.”

Molly, stirring three pots at once, smiled. “We invited him because he’s a little boy your age,” she said. “Not because of all that nonsense.”

Ron barely heard her. In his mind, he saw crowded corridors, people pointing—*That’s Ron Weasley, he’s Harry Potter’s best mate*.

Ginny, younger and quieter, built a different picture: not a boy, but a story made flesh. A prince from all the tales, stepping out of the pages into her family’s patch of countryside.

She practised his name attached with hers under her breath until it felt special. 'Lady Ginevra Potter'

---

Harry and Neville arrived not by Floo, but by Black Portkey.

Sirius knelt in front of them before they left Blackmoore. “If you don’t like it,” he said, serious in a way Harry recognised, “we leave. No speeches. No apologies. Just say the word.”

Harry nodded. “If Neville doesn’t like it, we leave too.”

“Obviously,” Sirius said, like there had never been another option.

When the Portkey released them in the Weasley’s crooked front yard, wards brushed over them—lighter, thinner than Black wards, but solid enough. The unseen magic Blackmoore had wrapped around Harry and Neville as a matter of course came with them, humming quietly.

The Burrow fell silent.

Ron stopped mid-step.

Ginny forgot to breathe.

Harry, who had spent his entire life under the eyes of powerful adults, found being stared at by strangers somehow worse.

He edged unconsciously closer to Neville.

Ginny made a tiny sound. “H–Harry Potter…”

Harry winced. “Just Harry,” he said.

Ron surged forward with a wide, excited grin. “Hi! I’m Ron! You’re Harry Potter!”

Harry blinked. “I’m Harry,” he repeated.

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Ron replied, laughing, a touch too loud. “Wait till Fred and George—this is going to be brilliant.”

Neville shifted, hands tucked in his sleeves.

Ginny hovered at the edge, smiling too hard whenever Harry glanced her way.

At first, it was only awkward.

Someone suggested toy brooms. Ron grabbed one and pulled Harry towards the centre of the yard.

“You should go first,” he said eagerly. “Show us what you can do.”

Harry hesitated. “Why doesn't Neville go first?”

Ron waved a hand. “Yeah, he can go after, that’s fine.”

Neville’s cheeks went pink.

Harry’s shoulders tightened.

He flew. He played. He laughed when he was supposed to. But a thin line drew in his chest that hadn’t been there before.

It snapped under an apple tree with a plate of cake balanced on his knees.

“So,” Ron asked, as if they were continuing a conversation Harry hadn’t been present for, “is it true you’ve got a huge vault of gold? Fred says Potter vaults are enormous.”

Harry’s fork stopped.

Neville froze.

Ginny leaned closer without meaning to.

“Because if we’re best friends,” Ron barreled on, “that’d be brilliant, wouldn’t it?”

The yard seemed to go very quiet.

Harry stood up.

He did it slowly, carefully, the way Arcturus had taught him to move when his magic was too close to the surface.

“We’re not best friends,” he said, voice calm. “We’re barely anything. I already have best friends.”

Ron stared. “What?”

Harry reached down and took Neville’s hand. Neville gripped back, hard.

“You didn’t even ask his name properly,” Harry said.

Ron’s ears flushed scarlet.

“You didn’t invite Draco at all.”

Ron opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“You didn’t invite us because you wanted us,” Harry went on. He tapped his own scar with one finger. “You invited a story.”

Molly bustled over, alarmed. “Now, Harry dear, I’m sure that’s not what Ron meant—”

Harry looked at her, and in that moment, he looked very little like a child. “I know he didn’t mean to be cruel,” he said. “But I won’t be anyone’s prize.”

Ginny burst into tears.

Ron stood under the apple tree, colour draining from his face, feeling something important slip through his fingers without quite understanding what it was.

Sirius’ hand closed around Harry’s shoulder.

The Portkey flared.

The Burrow vanished.

---

That night, back at Blackmoore, the three of them built a fort that took every blanket in the nursery and half the pillows in the house.

They fell asleep tangled together inside it.

Harry in the middle.

Draco on one side, pressed close out of what he would later insist was practicality.

Neville on the other, warm and solid.

When Harry finished telling them about the Burrow, Draco lay very still for a long moment.

“Then I don’t like him,” Draco said.

Neville nodded into Harry’s shoulder. “Me either.”

Harry exhaled and finally, properly relaxed.

“That,” he said, eyes drifting shut, “is good enough for me.”

Outside the fort, just beyond the reach of the boys’ makeshift kingdom, old House magic curled around them like a promise.

The world could wait.

Chapter Text

September 9, 1988

Seven years after the war, the world had finally begun to breathe again.

Not evenly. Not fairly. But it was breathing.

The House of Black stood steadier now than it had in decades. The blood-war had scarred everything it touched, yet the city beyond Blackmoore’s gates was slowly finding its way back into routine: shop windows repaired, shattered families stitched into fragile new shapes, old grudges dusted off and repackaged as politics.

Arcturus Black had no intention of allowing the world to forget what had truly happened.

With Sirius at his side, he continued to press for muggleborn protections in the Wizengamot—real ones, written into binding law, shielded from “temporary policy shifts” and “public sentiment.” It was slow work. Slower still under the newly crowned Minister, Cornelius Fudge, whose greatest talent was mistaking cowardice for balance.

Still, Arcturus pushed.

Elsewhere, Cedrella was winning battles the Ministry never saw coming.

With the backing of the Dverger nation and Gringotts authority, she spearheaded inheritance testing for Muggleborns—voluntary, precise, and legally protected. Many hesitated at first, wary of hidden costs. That fear eased when Ted Tonks stepped forward and underwent testing himself.

The results reshaped public opinion overnight.

Ted descended from the extinct Cattermole family—an old line whose magic had long since dissolved into wild background currents. Though there was no vault to reclaim and no living rituals to restore, the truth of it shifted something essential: the idea that Muggleborns did not come from nowhere. Some were welcomed back into families thought destroyed by the war. Others returned as inconvenient truths to “respectable” Houses who had conveniently forgotten old indiscretions.

Arcturus, privately, found tremendous satisfaction in that.

The Black tapestry had never worked harder.

It kept perfect account.

It was particularly useful when Cygnus finally divorced Druella.

The scandal had simmered for years beneath polite society—infidelities, quiet humiliations, whispered speculation. Once Pollux and Walburga fell, Druella lost her last real shield. Cygnus wasted no time once freed of political restraint.

Druella, furious and bitter, attempted to drag the Black name through the Prophet by claiming all three of her daughters as hers alone—spinning a story of falsified lineage, forged paternity, corrupted tapestries.

The idea that a Rosier could overpower ancient Black runic magic would have been laughable if the accusations hadn’t reached the press.

Melania dismantled the rumours with surgical precision.

Andromeda and Bellatrix shared unmistakable Black traits; Narcissa matched neither of the men Druella tried to bring into existence. It took three days for the story to collapse. The Prophet issued a stiff retraction. Druella disappeared entirely from any respectable circle.

Cygnus, at last unburdened, returned to society with quiet relief.

He resumed tea with Oliver Longbottom.

Sometimes their grandsons came too.

Augusta never fully trusted the family that had raised the woman who destroyed her son’s mind—but Callidora’s frank description of Bellatrix’s disownment cooled something sharp and dangerous inside her. It was not forgiveness.

It was acknowledgement.

Slowly, carefully, the old alliances rebuilt themselves.

Melania and Andromeda guided it gently. Through garden dinners. Through shared afternoons. Through the three little boys who, with startling inevitability, became the heart of everything.

Harry.

Draco.

Neville.

Three Houses. One orbit.

Which brought Arcturus back—again—to Sirius.

It was becoming increasingly clear that Sirius Black was immune to orchestration.

Eligible. Handsome. Brilliant. Loyal. The heir to one of the most powerful Houses in Britain.

And utterly uninterested in being married.

Andromeda had tried.

Cedrella had tried.

Melania had tried.

Now, it was Arcturus’s turn.

The trouble, he was discovering, was that forcing a man to date was significantly harder than dismantling laws.

And he had enough outstanding problems without worrying about the extinction of his own bloodline.

Alice and Frank still slept behind soundproof wards.

The ritual circles in Harry’s old nursery still resisted full interpretation.

And the dark fractures left behind by Voldemort had proven far more persistent than the Ministry wanted to admit.

He was beginning to feel his age.

Eighty-five, and still building instead of resting.

But the future could not be left unattended.

Harry—his Harry—was the Heir to Gryffindor.

Sirius was the last Black of his generation.

The line had to continue.

And it would.

Whether Sirius liked it or not.

“Grandpa!”

Arcturus barely had time to look up from his desk before a black-haired blur blasted through the office doors.

“We’re going to the Wizen-gah-mot today!” Harry announced triumphantly.

Arcturus smiled despite himself.

At seven, Harry was lightning in human form—quick feet, quicker thoughts, and a laugh that stunned rooms into life. Neville and Draco were rarely far behind him these days.

“Are you prepared for such a distinguished outing?” Arcturus asked, opening his arms.

Harry launched into the hug instantly. “Grandma laid out my itchy robes and told me not to make faces because there’s a curse that sticks your face like that forever.”

A dangerous lie. Extremely effective.

“Wise woman,” Arcturus murmured. Then he leaned in. “And I have a task for you today.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “A real mission?”

“Possibly the most important one yet,” Arcturus said gravely.

Harry’s first Wizengamot session felt enormous.

He sat between Sirius and Arcturus in the Black box with his feet swinging far above the floor. Neville peeked at him from the Longbottom section with wide-eyed excitement. Draco, restricted to observation this time, had promised dramatic boredom later.

The debate was about Hogwarts holidays.

Harry did not care.

He was on a mission.

He scanned the room carefully until his eyes landed on a pretty witch near Lady Bones.

Mission target acquired.

Harry did not know:

About Barty Crouch’s execution.

About the Black Book.

About the fire that should not have burned the way it did.

What Harry did know was this:

His dad needed a new mum.

A good one.

A pretty one.

A smart one.

Like his first mum had been.

So when the Wizengamot session ended, and the witch left her box, Harry grabbed Neville.

“Secret mission time,” he whispered.

They followed her across the Ministry.

Down corridors.

Into the Creature Department.

Until she turned suddenly and found two small boys crouched behind a desk.

Instead of yelling—

She smiled.

“Do you boys want to see a baby drake?”

“Yes,” they said in perfect unison.

Sirius nearly tore the wing apart looking for them.

Arcturus arrived moments behind him.

They found Harry and Neville sitting cross-legged on the floor while a tiny drake climbed up the witch’s forearm.

Harry beamed.

Neville whispered, “She’s perfect.”

Sirius… did not look away.

Years later, Harry would insist this was the exact moment everything changed— and that he absolutely deserved partial credit.

----

Sirius did not fall in love with explosions.

It irritated almost everyone.

He did not burn fast or loud or recklessly as the world expected a Black heir to do. If anything, Sirius loved the way he fought—by watching first. Waiting. Taking measure. Letting instinct sharpen before action.

So when he stood frozen just beyond the doorway of a quiet Creature Department office, watching a small red-gold drake crawl comfortably up a witch’s arm while Harry and Neville sat cross-legged at her feet in open worship—

His first instinct was not desire.

It was… stillness.

Isla Marrvy, now McKinnon, looked up and met his eyes.

She didn’t flinch.

Didn’t freeze.

Didn’t fawn.

She merely smiled—calm, bright, and utterly unimpressed with the storm of reputations he carried behind his name.

“You must be Sirius Black,” she said lightly. “Your son has impeccable kidnapping skills.”

Harry spun. “Dad! I found you a new mum!”

Neville nodded solemnly. “She’s got dragons.”

Sirius choked.

Isla laughed.

Not a polite laugh.

A real one.

Warm. Surprised. Unafraid.

And Sirius Black, who had faced Dark Lords and dementors without blinking, felt something shift in his chest in a way no curse had ever managed.

Later—much later, when Harry was safely returned to Blackmoore with a lecture from Melania that would be discussed for weeks, and Neville had been wrapped in Augusta’s fierce relief—

Sirius found himself walking back through the Ministry corridor where Isla worked.

He told himself it was courtesy.

He told himself it was gratitude.

He was lying.

She was standing at her desk, recording notes into a living ledger that fluttered its pages eagerly beneath her quill. Her sleeves were rolled up. Her hair was half-pinned, half-forgotten. There was a faint scorch mark on one cuff.

She glanced up. “Ah. Dragon thief’s father.”

“I prefer rescuer,” he said.

She studied him for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

“Sit,” she said, pointing at a chair. Not a request. Not a command either. Just… expectation.

He sat.

They did not flirt.

Not yet.

They spoke of creatures.

Of post-war containment.

Of how many things the Ministry pretended not to see.

She spoke like someone who had learned how the world worked and refused to soften for it.

He listened like someone who had been waiting for exactly that kind of voice.

When he stood to leave, it felt unfinished in a way that had nothing to do with conversation.

“You’ll be back,” she said casually, not looking up from her parchment.

Sirius smiled without realising it.

“Is that a threat?”

“No,” she replied. “An observation.”

That night, at Blackmoore, Melania noticed.

She always noticed.

“You met someone,” she said lightly over tea.

Sirius froze.

“I met a witch with a dragon.”

Melania smiled.

Slow. Knowing. Inevitable.

Outside, deep in the heart of Blackmoore’s wards, three boys slept tangled together in prophetic peace—unaware that through very quiet choices, very slow glances, and one extremely determined six-year-old’s “mission,”

The future had shifted.

Not with thunder.

But with fire kept deliberately contained.

Chapter Text

In the Muggle world, Hermione Granger was considered unusual.

Brilliant.
Polite.
Beautiful in a quiet, composed way that made teachers breathe easier and classmates instinctively lower their voices around her.

But not strange.

Not magical.

She lived in a grand Ashford townhouse tucked between old stone buildings and neat gardens that bloomed in perfect seasonal symmetry. The neighbours knew her as Lady Hermione Granger, daughter of Duke and Duchess of Ashford, educated at one of England’s most discreet private institutions.

None of them knew she was standing on the fault line between two worlds.

Hermione herself did not know it either.

Not yet.

The first time it happened, Hermione was eight and furious.

A girl in her class had called her “too clever for friends” and laughed when Hermione’s eyes stung.

Hermione clenched her fists under the desk and wished, hard, that something—anything—would make her stop.

The ink bottle on the other girl’s desk exploded.

Not a little spill.

A spectacular, ceiling-high, perfect black fountain that drenched the girl, the table, the walls, and the teacher.

Hermione’s desk was untouched.

Everyone stared.

She stared at the ink.

Her heart raced.

She said nothing.

After that, there were… incidents.

A book leaping from a high shelf into her hands before she fell. Glasses rattling whenever she was frightened.

The time she found herself on the roof garden with absolutely no idea how she’d climbed three locked flights of staircases.

Her parents didn’t yell. They were too worried.

“Stress,” doctors said.

“Imagination.”

“Burnout,” whispered a school counsellor, as if Hermione were a tired forty-year-old corporate lawyer and not a child.

Hermione learned to hide it.

She grew more careful with her emotions.

More disciplined.

But the world kept bending around her.

Hermione Granger received her Hogwarts letter at precisely eight minutes past ten on the 19th of September, the morning of her eleventh birthday.

It arrived through the open drawing-room window of the Ashford townhouse, an owl fluttering onto the polished breakfast table between the teacups and the neatly folded morning paper as if it had always belonged there.

Hermione stared at it.

Cream parchment. Green ink. A crest she had never seen before.

Her parents stared too.

For a very long moment, no one spoke.

Then Hermione reached forward with careful fingers and lifted the envelope.

“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” she read slowly.

Lady Ashford laughed.

Lord Ashford rose from his chair so abruptly that it scraped loudly across the floor.

“That,” he said hoarsely, “is a mighty fine joke.”

Hermione’s heart began to race.

The moment she opened the letter, everything that had never quite made sense in her life finally aligned.

Hermione read every word. Twice. Then looked up, eyes wide and shining—not with fear.

With relief.

“It explains everything,” she whispered. “The ink. The roof. The—everything.”

Her father opened his mouth, closed it, then said, very calmly, “We are not making any decisions until we know what this is.”

As if summoned by the words, someone knocked politely at their front door.

The woman waiting in the foyer looked like she had been carved out of discipline and wrapped in tartan.

“Good morning,” she said. “I am Professor Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts.”

She sat in their polished drawing room and—because she was who she was—asked for nothing, touched nothing, and commanded the entire space by existing in it.

Lady Ashford clutched her teacup. “This letter—surely this is a mistake. We are… not part of any such… society.”

McGonagall’s eyes warmed slightly.

“With respect, my lady,” she said, “magic does not much care for whether families believe in it. It arrives regardless.”

She turned to Hermione.

“You have noticed it, haven’t you?”

Hermione met her gaze. “Things happen when I’m upset. Or when I want something very badly.”

“Exactly,” McGonagall said gently. “You are a witch, Miss Granger. And Hogwarts is the school that will teach you how not to accidentally explode any more ink bottles.”

Hermione’s cheeks flushed. “You heard about that?”

“A very thorough school nurse wrote a very confused letter,” McGonagall replied dryly. “We tend to monitor such things.”

She sat in their drawing room and explained magic as if she were discussing mathematics.

Calmly. Clearly. Patiently.

Hermione listened in absolute stillness.

Her parents asked careful, frightened questions.

“Is she in danger?”
“Is she sick?”
“Can this be stopped?”

McGonagall answered honestly.

“No.”
“No.”
“And not without harming her.”

Lord Ashford cleared his throat. “Is it… safe?”

“As safe as any place that teaches children to wield power,” McGonagall replied honestly. “Safer than leaving her untrained.”

Hermione looked at her parents, then back at McGonagall.

“What happens now?”

“You visit Diagon Alley,” McGonagall said. “You’ll need a wand. Robes. Books.”

Her parents took her shopping the very next day.

The bricks moving to reveal Diagon Alley stole Hermione’s breath.

It was everything she had ever wanted stories to be.

Shops leaning against one another like friendly conspirators. Owls. Cauldrons. Robes brushing past. Children staring back at her in awe or curiosity. Magic not as a secret, but as a public, normal, living thing. Floating books. Brass instruments singing to themselves. Robes that shimmered when she touched them. Creatures staring back at her with unsettling intelligence.

Hermione’s fingers itched to touch every book in sight.

Diagon Alley overwhelmed her in the best possible way.

The white stone bank, Gringotts, loomed above them, just as Professor McGonagall had described. The first place to go.

Hermione straightened her spine.

She was an Ashford, after all.

Noble girls did not gape in public.

Inside Gringotts, under high ceilings and watchful eyes, her parents spoke quietly with a goblin at the main desk to inquire about changing money into wizarding currency. 

The goblin’s gaze snapped to Hermione.

He stared.

Not rudely.

Assessing.

“Name?” he asked.

“Hermione Granger,” she said.

Something shifted.

“Granger,” he repeated, tasting the word like metal. “Very well. A standard inheritance and bloodline verification, then.”

Hermione’s parents were led with her to a private chamber below the main hall. The air was cooler here. Older. Runes traced the walls in lines that made Hermione’s fingertips tingle just looking at them.

A shallow silver bowl waited on a carved pedestal.

“One drop of blood,” the Dverger Archivist said.

Hermione did not hesitate.

The cut was quick. The blood fell. The surface rippled.

And the world changed.

The runes exploded into light.

Not candlelight.

Not sunlight.

A deep, clear, silver-white that hummed like music.

Lord Ashford stepped forward. “What does that mean?”

The Archivist’s voice had gained an edge of formal respect.

“It means, my lord, that your daughter is not merely a witch. She is of wizarding Ancient blood.”

Lines of text appeared in the air—names, dates, seals.

One name blazed brighter than the rest.

“Dagworth-Granger,” the Archivist read. “Extinct on record. Rediscovered… now.”

He turned to Hermione.

“By right of blood, you are Lady Hermione Dagworth-Granger.”

Hermione stared at the glowing name.

Dagworth-Granger.

It fit in her mouth like something that had been waiting for her.

“My name is Granger,” she said quietly, clinging to the familiar.

“In the Muggle world, it may remain so,” the Archivist said. “Names are… contextual. But in ours, your full styles are now clear.”

The runes above the bowl re-ignited again—stronger.

Brighter.

Sharper.

And then they twisted, reforming into a sigil Hermione had never seen before but recognised as deeply as her own heartbeat.

A diadem.

A raven.

A name.

The Dverger Archivist bowed.

Not politely.

Reverently.

“The Founders’ lines are thought dormant,” he said softly. “But the Dverger nation remembers its allies. Ravenclaw stood with us when others did not.”

And then the air itself seemed to speak:

“Lady Ravenclaw.”

The world tilted sideways.

He looked Hermione in the eye.

“For that, Lady Ravenclaw, we are bound to you by ancient friendship.”

Hermione’s throat felt tight.

“I’m just Hermione,” she whispered.

“For now,” he nodded, pleased. “But you will need both halves of your name, sooner than you think, and we will make sure you are prepared for it.”

“The Houses train their heirs in sunlight,” the eldest Dverger said quietly. “We train ours in stone and memory.”

Hermione’s hand trembled.

Not with fear.

With the weight of suddenly having a past older than history books.

When Hermione stepped back into Diagon Alley, her entire life had changed.

McGonagall asked gently if everything had gone smoothly.

Hermione nodded.

She did not speak of her titles.

Not yet.

That year became her quiet preparation.

By day, she was still Hermione Granger.

By night, beneath Gringotts, she learned:

• Wizengamot structure
• Political correspondence
• Ancient magical theory
• Shield work
• Spell construction
• Defensive strategies taught only to noble heirs
• Because Ravenclaw had once been a friend.

And the Dvergers did not abandon their friends.

One year later, on the night before the 1st of September, 1991, Hermione sat at her desk.

Her Hogwarts letter lay open.

Her wand rested beside it.

And hidden beneath them both was a small, heavy card bearing two names:

Lady Hermione Dagworth-Granger
Lady Ravenclaw

Tomorrow, she would attend Hogwarts.

No one there would know who she truly was.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

For three boys raised under ancestral roofs and heavy legacies, the approach of Hogwarts felt less like the beginning of school and more like the opening of a gate that had always been visible in the distance.

They had been moving toward it their entire lives.

Black Manor 

The great windows of the west wing stood open to a bright August morning. Sunlight spilled over old stone and ancient tapestries, catching on floating motes of dust that shimmered softly with residual protective magic.

Harry Potter sat cross-legged on the floor, painstakingly teaching a miniature dragon figurine how to “fly properly,” which mostly involved launching it into the air and hoping it didn’t crash into anything valuable.

Across the room, Sirius Black leaned against the doorframe, nursing a mug of coffee and watching Harry with fond amusement.

“You do know,” he said lazily, “that real dragons do not, in fact, take instruction.”

Harry squinted at the toy, which promptly burst into harmless glittery sparks.

“…This one listens.”

Sirius laughed.

The owl arrived a heartbeat later.

It was a massive tawny thing that swept in through the open window with imperial confidence and dropped a thick cream envelope directly into Harry’s lap before taking off again without waiting for acknowledgement.

Harry stared at it.

Slowly, something quiet and electric moved through his chest.

He did not shout.
He did not jump.

He simply looked up at Sirius.

“That’s it, isn’t it?”

Sirius’ grin was sharp and soft all at once. “That’s it, Cub.”

Harry broke the seal with steady fingers.

The green ink shimmered pleasantly.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

Dear Mr Harry James Potter,
We are pleased to inform you—

Harry didn’t finish the letter aloud. He didn’t have to. The words were already echoing in his blood.

Sirius sank down beside him and slung an arm around his shoulders.

“You ready?”

Harry nodded.

“Yes.”

Not scared.
Not unsure.

Just ready.

Malfoy Manor 

At the same exact hour, in a perfectly symmetrical breakfast room bathed in pale gold light, Draco Malfoy sat at the long dining table with a stack of history books open beside his plate.

He was highlighting something with ferocious focus when the owl struck the window with a sharp tap.

Draco looked up slowly.

The owl strutted inside on impossibly delicate feet and dropped the envelope in front of him with theatrical flair.

Draco did not touch it immediately.

He straightened his napkin first.

Then he opened the letter.

His eyes flew over the words with practised speed.

Hogwarts.

He did not smile.

He lifted his head calmly and met the gaze of Lucius Malfoy, who sat at the head of the table with his cane resting precisely against his chair.

“September first,” Draco said evenly. “Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.”

Lucius inclined his head once.

“Of course.”

Draco shut the letter neatly and only then allowed the smallest, sharpest spark of victory to light his eyes.

Lucius’ mouth twitched.

Longbottom Hall 

At Longbottom Hall, the letter arrived far less dramatically.

The owl got tangled in ivy.

Twice.

By the time it finally freed itself and dropped the envelope onto the garden table, Neville Longbottom had already noticed it and was watching with deep concern.

“It’s stuck,” he muttered.

The owl glared at him indignantly and flapped away.

Neville picked up the envelope like it might bite.

Inside the house, Augusta Longbottom was arranging vials of potion ingredients when he walked in slowly.

Gran looked up.

“Well?”

Neville swallowed and handed her the letter.

She read it.

Once.

Then again.

Then a third time.

Her lips trembled.

She did not cry.

She pulled Neville into a fierce, sudden hug.

“My brave boy,” she whispered. “Your parents would be so proud.”

Neville’s eyes burned.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised.

She drew back and smiled.

“We both know you will.”

That evening, at Black Manor, the three boys gathered in the sunlit drawing room they had grown up in.

Harry came down first.

Draco followed moments later, flooing in crisp travelling robes.

Neville came last, slightly out of breath from hurrying.

For a second, all three just stared at one another.

Then—

“You got it,” Harry said.

Draco nodded. Neville nodded.

Silence stretched.

Draco spoke first. “I will be in Slytherin.”

Harry snorted. “We’ll see.”

Neville barely whispered, “I just hope I don’t mess it up.”

Harry stepped forward and clapped a hand on Neville’s shoulder.

“You won’t.”

Draco nodded once.

That settled it.

The weeks that followed were filled with:

Robe fittings

Book orders

Wand polishing

Trunks that somehow never stayed properly closed

At Black Manor, Sirius and Harry argued over what counted as “necessary supplies” until half the sitting room was filled with questionable items.

At Malfoy Manor, Draco tested quills for ink consistency with alarming seriousness.

At Longbottom Hall, Neville accidentally overwatered fourteen magical plants in excitement and apologised to every single one.

None of them slept much in the final week.

The night before September first, the three boys gathered one last time beneath the oak tree at Black Manor.

The air smelled like late summer.

Harry lay back on the grass and stared at the stars.

“Tomorrow, everything changes.”

Draco folded his hands behind his head. “Good. I like change.”

Neville hesitated. “What if it’s… hard?”

Harry turned his head toward him.

“Then we handle it.”

Together.

Draco added quietly, “Like everything else.”

The oak leaves rustled softly above them.

Somewhere far away, across the same sky, a girl with a raven sigil hidden in her trunk stretched her fingers nervously over her wand for the first time.

Neither side knew how close their paths already were.

Chapter Text

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was never quiet.

On the morning of September first, it was a living storm of steam, voices, owls, trunks, drifting robes and nervous laughter. Parents clung to children. Children pretended not to notice. The scarlet engine waited at the platform like something alive and impatient.

At the far end of the platform, Harry Potter stood between Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom, one hand wrapped around his trunk handle, the other loose at his side.

Sirius crouched in front of Harry, adjusting his collar for the third unnecessary time.

“You write,” he said. “You eat. You sleep. You don’t do anything stupid involving dragons, cursed staircases, or mysterious voices in walls.”

Harry grinned. “That’s very specific.”

Across the platform, Lucius Malfoy stood like a pale statue of composure as Draco loaded his own trunk.

“Observation before reaction,” Lucius said quietly. “Always.”

Draco inclined his head.

A little distance away, Augusta Longbottom held Neville’s shoulders in a grip that was half-steel, half-tremble.

“Bravery does not mean loudness,” she told him. “It means standing even when you’re shaking.”

Neville nodded hard. “Yes, Gran.”

A little apart from the crowds, a girl with neatly braided hair and a carefully held trunk adjusted the strap of her carry-bag for the third time.

Hermione Granger blended in perfectly.

Which was the point.

Hidden beneath her textbooks and neatly pressed robes, wrapped in layers of protective charms deeper than Hogwarts would ever imagine, lay a second identity that no one here knew.

She took a breath.

One year late.

One year prepared.

Now… here.

Before she could overthink it, someone bumped into her shoulder.

“Oof—sorry—sorry—”

The girl who nearly knocked her over had the same dark hair, the same school robes, and an accent that made Hermione’s curiosity spark instantly.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going,” the girl admitted with a crooked smile. Another girl spoke from behind her, “First time?”

Hermione nodded. “I’m Hermione.”

The second girl’s face lit up. “Padma. Padma Patil. That’s my twin,” she muttered to Hermione. “Parvati Patil. Same face. Entirely opposite personality.”

Hermione laughed softly, surprised at how easy it felt.

Parvati blew a dramatic kiss in Padma’s direction and twirled away in a flash of bracelets and confidence.

Hermione smiled faintly. “She seems… expressive.”

“That’s one word for it. Wanna sit together?”

Hermione nodded in agreement. They turned together toward the train.

The whistle shrieked.

Mothers hugged harder. Fathers cleared their throats. Hands tightened on shoulders.

Harry met Sirius’s eyes one last time.

“I’ll be back.”

Sirius’ voice was steady. “I know.”

And then the children boarded.

Harry, Draco, and Neville took the first mostly-empty compartment they found. Draco immediately claimed the window. Neville carefully stacked his sweets. Harry dropped into the seat opposite, watching the blur of red steam outside.

A moment later, the door slid open again.

Padma stood there with effortless ease. “Can we join you?”

Behind her, Hermione hovered half a step back.

Harry shook his head. “Come in.”

They sat.

Something settled instantly.

Not loudly.

Not magically.

Just… naturally.

As the train pulled away from the platform, conversation threaded together in easy layers.

Padma talked about magical festivals in India and her enormous extended family.

Neville listened like every word mattered.

Draco asked sharp, precise questions about wand cores and library access.

Hermione answered without showing off—quick, clean responses, layered with depth.

Harry mostly watched.

And noticed.

By the time the snack trolley arrived, they were already sharing pumpkin pasties and comparing tutors.

“My gran says Hogwarts greenhouses are sacred,” Neville said seriously. “She says if I kill even one plant, I’ll be disowned.”

Padma snorted. “That’s extreme.”

Draco lifted an eyebrow. “Depends on the plant.”

Hermione laughed.

Harry felt something warm slide quietly into place inside his chest.

This was what right felt like.

At one of the station stops, Parvati passed their compartment, peering in with theatrical curiosity.

“Padmaaa,” she sing-songed. “You’ve already collected a squad?”

Padma groaned. “Go read some magazines or something.”

Parvati winked and vanished down the corridor in a swirl of bangles.

Hermione tilted her head. “She’s very… confident.”

Padma sighed. “That’s the polite version.”

As the train slowed and twilight crept in through the windows, conversation finally drifted into a quieter kind of excitement.

Padma leaned forward. “Are you scared?”

Neville opened his mouth.

Harry answered first. “No.”

Draco smirked. “Prepared.”

Hermione folded her hands in her lap. “Curious.”

Padma grinned. “Excellent. I was hoping for dramatic.”

The train curved.

And then—

Outside the windows, mountains climbed toward the sky. The lake glimmered black beneath a cloak of mist. Above it all, Hogwarts rose.

Neville swallowed.

Padma went quiet.

Draco’s gaze sharpened.

Harry simply breathed.

This was it.

They followed the rest of the first-years down to the boats. Lanterns bobbed. Water rippled. The castle grew larger with every stroke forward.

Hermione felt the magic of it down to her bones.

The boats cut through the dark water in slow, steady lines, lantern light trembling across the surface of the lake like scattered stars.

For the first time since the train ride began, no one in their little group was talking.

Harry Potter sat at the front of their boat, hands resting loosely at his sides, eyes fixed on the silhouette of Hogwarts rising higher with every gentle splash of the oars.

Beside him, Draco Malfoy sat unnaturally still, posture perfect, eyes sharp with anticipation rather than fear.

Neville Longbottom clutched the edge of the boat like it might suddenly decide to escape without him.

Across from them, Hermione Granger watched the castle with quiet awe, her reflection flickering in the water as if two versions of her existed at once.

And between Hermione and Neville, Padma Patil leaned forward eagerly.

“That’s… not subtle,” she whispered.

Harry smiled faintly. “I don’t think it’s meant to be.”

The boats touched shore.

And the first-years stepped into history.

Chapter Text

Inside the Entrance Hall, torches flared to life as if in greeting. The stone floor thrummed faintly beneath their shoes—not ominous, not threatening.

Aware.

At the front stood Minerva McGonagall, her tartan robes crisp, her gaze sweeping over the students with sharp approval and sharper expectation.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” she said. “Before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be Sorted into your Houses. The Sorting Hat will determine where each of you belongs.”

Neville’s grip tightened on his sleeves.

Padma straightened.

Draco looked almost pleased.

Harry felt… nothing at all.

Not fear.

Not excitement.

Just a quiet certainty that whatever happened next would not break what already existed.

The doors opened.

And the Great Hall breathed.

Four long tables gleamed beneath floating candles. Above them, the enchanted ceiling reflected a velvet-black sky freckled with stars. The older students whispered and leaned forward as the first-years entered in a nervous cluster.

Harry felt it immediately.

Not attention.

Recognition.

The castle did not stare at his scar.

It listened to his heartbeat.

Hermione felt it too — a strange warmth, like stepping into a room that already knew her name.

Padma let out a low, impressed whistle before remembering she was supposed to be quiet.

McGonagall placed the Sorting Hat onto a wooden stool. The brim slit open.

And the Hat began to sing.

A long song.
About founders and choices.
About courage and wit.
About loyalty and ambition.

By the time it finished, the hall was silent.

“Let us begin,” McGonagall said.

The first from their group was Hermione

“Granger, Hermione.”

The hall quieted.

With curiosity.

Hermione sat straight-backed on the stool. The Hat slipped down over her eyes.

It did not speak aloud for a long time.

Inside, her mind moved like a library at midnight—silent, vast, layered with hidden corridors even she had not yet explored.

“Ah,” the Hat murmured finally, voice threaded with intrigue. “So much knowledge… not borrowed, not hoarded… earned.”

The pause stretched.

“Sharp mind. Quiet will. A builder of foundations rather than towers…”

Then—

“RAVENCLAW!”

The Ravenclaw table cheered wildly.

Hermione stepped down with measured calm, but the faint brightness in her eyes betrayed how much the word had mattered.

Harry felt something warm settle deep in his chest.

“Longbottom, Neville.”

Neville nearly tripped on the way to the stool.

The Hat slipped low over his eyes.

It stayed there.

Long enough for Neville’s heart to start pounding audibly.

“Plenty of courage in you,” the Hat muttered. “More than you think. You’ll need it where you’re going…”

Then, firm as a final bell:

“GRYFFINDOR!”

The Gryffindor table roared.

Neville blinked in shock, then flushed bright red as he hurried toward them. Several students clapped him on the back as he passed.

Harry exhaled.

Good.

“Malfoy, Draco.”

The stir at his name was immediate.

Draco moved as if the world belonged to him. When the Hat slipped over his pale hair, it paused only a second.

“SLYTHERIN!”

The Slytherin table burst into applause.

Draco removed the Hat with cool dignity and cast one brief glance back at Harry and Neville.

Not triumph.

Promise.

“Patil, Padma.”

Padma walked forward without hesitation and dropped onto the stool. The Hat barely touched her head before—

“RAVENCLAW!”

The Ravenclaw table erupted. Padma’s grin was unmistakably satisfied as she took her place next to Hermione.

Hermione grinned widely.

"Parvati Patil"

Parvati skipped to the stool and sat without much fanfare. The hat was 3 inches above her head before—

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Parvati whooped dramatically as Padma groaned into her hands.

“Potter, Harry.”

The hall held its breath.

Not in hunger.

In awe.

Harry moved forward without hesitation.

The Hat settled over his eyes, and the world went quiet.

“Ah,” the Hat said softly. “Strategy. Discipline. Fire held in steel. You could do great good… or great damage.”

Harry did not argue.

“Not Slytherin,” the Hat murmured thoughtfully. “Not your way.”

After a moment’s judgment

“GRYFFINDOR!”

The hall exploded.

Harry removed the Hat and met Neville’s stunned grin as he slid into the bench beside him.

Across the Hall, Draco watched with cool approval.

From Ravenclaw, Hermione’s hands were already clapping.

Five scattered across three Houses.

And yet—Still one.

Chapter Text

Food appeared in a golden rush.

Harry barely tasted the pumpkin juice, with everyone around him wanting to talk with him.

Draco discussed House dynamics with quiet interest.

Neville listened more than he spoke.

Hermione and Padma whispered furiously about everything at once.

Somewhere between pudding and the final goblet of water, Hogwarts fully woke.

The magic felt brighter.

Sharper.

As if something long-dormant had finally stretched.

In the Entrance Hall, later, they stood awkwardly between staircases that led in different directions.

“No dying,” Padma said cheerfully.

“Try not to disgrace yourselves,” Draco added.

Neville swallowed. “See you tomorrow?”

Harry smiled. “Always.”

Hermione nodded once, steady and certain.

And so they separated for the night

In contrast, Ravenclaw Tower was hushed and thoughtful.

Hermione Granger sat cross-legged on her bed, already organising her books by subject, while Padma Patil lounged backwards across her own mattress dramatically.

“I give it three days before someone gets lost and ends up crying in a linen closet,” Padma declared.

Hermione smiled. “That someone will not be us.”

Padma grinned. “No. We’re far too intelligent.”

From the other side of the room came laughter as older Ravenclaws welcomed them with riddles, logic puzzles, and far too much midnight cocoa.

That night, as Hermione lay beneath blue-draped curtains listening to unfamiliar breathing around her, she stared at the ceiling and whispered:

“So this is Hogwarts,” and Hogwarts responded with a pulse of magic towards Hermione, making her smile and close her eyes.

The spiral staircase into Gryffindor Tower felt like it climbed forever.

By the time Harry Potter reached the top, his legs ached, and his excitement buzzed so loudly it refused to settle. The common room exploded into colour—scarlet sofas, roaring fireplaces, and too many excited first-years talking all at once.

The Gryffindor common room was loud, warm, and already chaotic by the time Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom were ushered inside.

Firelight danced across scarlet cushions. Older students laughed loudly from the staircases. Somewhere, someone had already spilt butterbeer.

A familiar red-haired boy immediately appeared in front of Harry.

“I’m Ron Weasley,” he said quickly, eyes bright with excitement and something sharper beneath it. “You’re Harry Potter.”

Harry did not return the enthusiasm. “Harry is fine.”

Ron grinned anyway. “Brilliant. We’ll be in the same dorm. You hear Malfoy got sorted into Slytherin?”

Harry stiffened at the name.

Neville said quietly, “Draco is nice.”

Ron scoffed loudly. “He’s a Slytherin. They’re all slimy. Dark magic, pureblood rubbish, the lot of them.”

Harry’s jaw tightened.

That night in the boys’ dorm, trunks burst open, and chaos followed.

Seamus Finnigan blew up a match

Dean Thomas laughed and helped put it out

Ron Weasley would not stop talking about how unfair it was that Harry hadn’t been put in Slytherin, “where he obviously belonged”

“You’d have been brilliant in Gryffindor, though,” Ron added quickly. “The House of Heroes.”

Harry’s voice was flat. “My friends are in other Houses.”

Ron didn’t like that answer.

Not at all.

Chapter Text

The next morning, the Great Hall glowed with golden light and clattering plates.

The instant Harry stepped inside, his eyes went to the Slytherin table.

Draco Malfoy sat exactly where Harry expected him to—back straight, expression composed, already watching the room like a chessboard.

Draco met Harry’s gaze and gave a faint nod.

Harry turned naturally toward him.

And was immediately yanked backwards.

Ron had grabbed the back of Harry’s robes.

“Oi—where do you think you’re going?” Ron snapped.

Harry pulled free. “To sit with my brother.”

Ron’s face twisted. “So what? He’s a Slytherin!”

Draco was watching now.

So was Neville Longbottom, standing frozen between tables.

Harry’s voice cut sharply and coldly. “Let go of me.”

Ron scoffed. “You don’t want your reputation ruined on the first day, do you? Sitting with dark wizards and—”

Harry shoved Ron’s arm off him.

“My reputation isn’t yours to manage.”

The Hall went quiet around them.

Ron flushed bright red. “You think he actually cares about you? He’s after your fame and vaults—everyone knows that about Malfoys.”

Draco’s eyes went to ice.

Neville stepped forward. “That’s not true!”

Harry did not raise his voice.

Which somehow made it worse.

“Say another word about my family,” he said quietly, “and we will have a problem.”

Ron glared at him.

“Fine,” Ron snapped. “Go sit with your precious snake.”

Harry didn’t look back as he crossed the Hall.

Draco shifted to make space.

Neville followed instantly.

Across the room, at the Ravenclaw table, Hermione Granger had seen everything.

She did not miss the way Harry’s hands barely shook when he picked up his fork.

At the Ravenclaw table, Padma Patil leaned close to Hermione.

“Your Gryffindor friend just made an enemy.”

Hermione’s lips pressed together. “He is not my Grffindor, and the way it looks like he already had one.”

At the neighbouring Hufflepuff table, students watched Harry with open curiosity.

Hermione wasn’t watching Harry’s scar.

She was watching his eyes.

Focused. Controlled. Angry — but not reckless.

Harry, Draco, and Neville explored together.

Ron explored loudly with Seamus and Dean.

They discovered:

A shortcut behind an illusory wall that Draco immediately memorised

A moving stair that changed direction when Neville politely asked

A sentient portrait that refused to talk to Ron at all

Harry laughed for the first time since breakfast when Draco bowed sarcastically to it.

Potions were Gryffindor with Slytherin.

The dungeon was cold. Snape was colder.

Severus Snape stalked between tables like a predator.

Harry worked quietly.

Draco worked flawlessly.

Ron worked loudly and badly.

His potion turned purple.

Snape sneered. “Ten points from Gryffindor for Weasley’s inability to read.”

Draco’s cauldron produced a perfect result.

Snape paused.

“…Acceptable,” he muttered.

Harry met Draco’s eyes briefly.

No words.

Just shared satisfaction.

Charms — Ravenclaw was paired with Hufflepuff.

In Charms, Hermione’s feather lifted smoothly.

They met again by accident near the Entrance Hall.

Harry with Draco and Neville.

Ron with Seamus and Dean.

For one long moment, they just stared at each other.

Ron broke it. “Still hanging with snakes, Potter?”

Harry didn’t even look at him. “Still shouting instead of thinking, Weasley?”

Draco smirked.

Neville stood firmer than he ever had before.

Hermione arrived moments later with Padma and stopped beside Harry without hesitation.

And just like that, the school learned something important:

Harry Potter had chosen.

And Ron Weasley was not on his side.

Chapter Text

The castle had been decorated in shades of burnt gold and pumpkin-orange.

Floating lanterns drifted through the corridors. Enchanted bats fluttered lazily beneath the ceiling. The scent of spiced bread and roasting apples clung to the air.

It was Halloween.

And none of the five were attending the feast.

Harry did not announce the anniversary.

He never had to.

Draco simply noticed the way Harry went quiet as the sun began to set. Neville felt it the moment his chest tightened without reason. Hermione read it in the way Harry’s control sharpened into something brittle.

Hermione hadn’t known at first.

Then Padma told her.

And that was the end of the celebration.

They gathered not in the Great Hall, but in an unused classroom on the seventh floor that Draco had discovered behind a tapestry two days earlier. It was dim, quiet, wrapped in old stone and candlelight.

No ghosts.

No laughter.

No reminders of war masquerading as a holiday.

Just five children sitting in a loose circle on the floor.

No one tried to comfort Harry.

No one made it dramatic.

They simply stayed.

Harry stared at the candle flame until it steadied inside his chest.

Draco leaned back against the wall, arms folded, watching the door.

Neville sat beside Harry silently, solid and unyielding.

Padma whispered stories of festivals in India and of funeral rites where ashes were floated in rivers for the dead.

Hermione listened.

And remembered.

When the last of the candles burned down, they parted quietly.

Draco and Neville headed back toward the dungeons and Gryffindor Tower

Harry returned to his dorm with a tension in his shoulders that had nothing to do with fear.

None of them noticed the echoes of panic beginning to ripple through the lower corridors.

None of them heard the teachers shouting.

None of them knew about the troll.

Hermione had only meant to return a book.

The library corridors were nearly empty with half the school at the feast. The echo of distant laughter drifted faintly through the stone.

She turned a corner near the girls’ lavatory.

And walked straight into terror.

The troll was enormous.

Its club scraped against the stone, dragging sparks from the floor. Its breath stank of rot and wet earth. Its tiny eyes locked onto the smallest moving thing in the corridor.

Hermione froze.

Not because she panicked.

Because her brain took exactly half a second to calculate the distance to the nearest cover.

It was not enough.

The troll roared.

The sound slammed through the corridor like a physical blow.

Hermione ran.

Harry felt it before he heard it.

That snap in the magic of the corridors — the same instinct he had trusted his entire life.

He did not ask.

He ran.

Neville heard Harry move and followed instantly.

Draco didn’t hesitate either.

Padma screamed Harry’s name from the stairs.

He didn’t stop.

They took the corner at full speed and found chaos.

A stone club coming down.

A flash of blue light as Hermione threw up a reflexive shield that shattered on impact.

Harry moved without thinking.

A full, layered barrier flared from his wand and slammed into the troll’s strike, redirecting the blow into the wall.

Stone exploded.

Neville’s charm snapped into place a heartbeat later, stacking defence on defence until the air felt solid.

Draco’s hex took the troll’s footing out from beneath it.

The creature crashed to one knee, confused and furious.

Hermione did not scream or panic.

She lifted her wand and fired with terrifying precision, cast a cutting curse.

Together, the four of them dropped it.

Silence followed.

Heavy.

Breathing echoed in the wrecked corridor.

Hermione’s hands were shaking now.

Not from fear.

From adrenaline.

It was not spoken aloud.

It didn’t need to be.

The magic decided it.

Hermione felt it settle into her bones — a binding, ancient, quiet thing.

Harry felt it snap into place like the click of a lock he hadn’t known was open.

Their eyes met.

No tears.

No hysterics.

Just mutual awareness.

Something irreversible had happened.

Footsteps thundered.

Torches flared.

Minerva McGonagall arrived first, eyes blazing as she took in the ruined wall, the unconscious troll, the four children standing amid the wreckage.

“Explain yourselves.”

Harry opened his mouth.

Draco spoke first.

“She was trapped.”

Neville added quietly, “We stopped it.”

Hermione said nothing at all.

McGonagall’s gaze sharpened.

Then softened — just slightly.

“Ten points,” she said finally, voice tight with restraint, “to each of you. For reckless bravery bordering on foolishness.”

Harry understood what she didn’t finish saying.

You could have died.

They were ushered back through quiet corridors as the feast ended far away.

No cheers.

No announcements.

No recognition.

Just four shaken children walking in step.

Padma waited at the top of the stairs, pale with terror.

She threw her arms around Hermione without hesitation.

“You promised you wouldn’t wander alone.”

Hermione exhaled slowly. “I lied.”

Padma huffed a weak laugh through tears.

That night, Harry didn’t sleep.

He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands.

Draco remained awake in the dungeons, staring at the ceiling.

Neville whispered apologies to his pillow.

Hermione sat at her desk long after her dorm fell silent.

And for the first time since discovering who she truly was beneath the Granger name, she acknowledged a truth that had nothing to do with blood or title:

Harry Potter had chosen her.

Not because of destiny.

But because she had been there.

Chapter Text

Morning came to Hogwarts the way it always did—bright, restless, and entirely unconcerned with what had nearly gone wrong the night before. Sunlight poured through tall windows, owls swooped overhead, and the Great Hall filled with the ordinary noise of students arguing over toast and spilling pumpkin juice.

For Harry Potter, the day felt slightly out of step with itself.

He woke before his alarm, staring up at the red-and-gold canopy of his bed with the strange sense that his body had decided something had changed long before his mind caught up. For a few seconds, fragments of the night before surfaced uninvited—stone shattering, heavy breath, a flash of movement that had been too close to going wrong. Then the dorm settled back into stillness.

Across the room, Neville Longbottom was already awake, sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands folded neatly in his lap. He looked up when Harry moved.

“You too?” Neville asked softly.

Harry nodded. “Couldn’t sleep properly after that.”

They didn’t say what that meant. They didn’t need to.

A moment later, Ron Weasley rolled over in his bed and groaned. “Why are you two up already? It’s barely morning.”

Harry didn’t answer at first. Ron squinted at them, irritated.

“You’re acting weird,” Ron muttered. “Did I miss something last night?”

Harry met his eyes calmly. “You were at the feast.”

Ron’s mouth tightened. “Yeah? So?”

“So nothing,” Harry said.

Ron didn’t push it—but the look he gave Harry wasn’t friendly.

In Ravenclaw Tower, Hermione Granger sat at her desk, tying her hair back with steady fingers. There was no tremor in her hands, no visible sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened. That, strangely enough, unsettled Padma Patil, who was stretched dramatically across her bed, watching the process.

“You nearly got crushed by a mountain-sized creature with a club,” Padma said. “You should at least look slightly shaken.”

Hermione tested the knot in her hair. “I was in danger. I left the danger. The sequence is complete. I don’t see the purpose of shaking after.”

Padma stared at her a moment, then sighed. “You’re terrifying.”

Hermione’s lips curved faintly. “You adore me.”

“Unfortunately.”

They got ready for class like any other morning.

In the Slytherin dormitories, Draco Malfoy was fully dressed before the others were even awake. One of the boys mentioned the troll in an offhand, excited whisper.

Draco paused only long enough to say, “Clearly,” before leaving the room.

Breakfast was loud, bright, and filled with the clatter of cutlery and careless laughter. Harry entered the Great Hall with Neville, scanning the room without meaning to. His eyes found Draco at the Slytherin table almost instantly. Draco noticed him, too. Their gazes met for half a second—brief, unreadable, familiar.

Harry took a step toward him without thinking.

Ron’s hand snapped around the back of his robe.

“Not again,” Ron snapped under his breath. “You’re seriously going to keep doing this?”

Harry pulled his arm free, slow and controlled. “Keep your hands off me.”

A nearby conversation faltered. Neville shifted closer to Harry without a word.

Ron scoffed. “You’re obsessed with that Slytherin.”

Harry’s voice dropped, low and firm. “And you’re obsessed with things that aren’t your concern.”

Across the Hall, Draco watched without reacting. At the Ravenclaw table, Hermione noticed the tension instantly—not the raised voices, but the rigid set of Harry’s shoulders. Padma leaned toward her.

“They’re never going to get along, are they?”

Hermione took a quiet sip of juice. “No.”

They didn’t arrange to meet after breakfast.

They simply did.

It happened near the wide marble staircase where half the castle funnelled through at once. Draco arrived first, standing with his hands loosely at his sides. Then Harry and Neville came from the opposite corridor. A few seconds later, Padma and Hermione joined from another passage entirely.

There was no embarrassment in it. No dramatic greeting.

Padma broke the silence lightly. “Well. Surviving something terrible really does improve attendance.”

Harry blinked. “We were not supposed to be surviving anything.”

Hermione gave him a calm look. “We absolutely were.”

Draco’s mouth twitched despite himself. Neville let out a quiet, nervous laugh. The moment loosened.

They headed off to class.

Potions was, as expected, miserable.

Severus Snape did not mention the troll even once. He did, however, single out Neville within minutes and snapped that his potion had the consistency of swamp water. Five points vanished from Gryffindor without ceremony.

Draco’s potion turned out flawless. Harry’s matched it. Ron's did not. Ron blamed the ingredients. Snape blamed Ron. Nothing changed.

In Charms and Herbology, the rhythm was entirely different. Filius Flitwick praised Hermione’s control with genuine delight, while Pomona Sprout watched Neville work with plants as if she were quietly impressed by something she couldn’t yet explain.

By evening, the castle had begun to shift its attention—not in any dramatic way, just in pauses and glances.

Five names cropped up together more often in passing conversation. Not because of fame, but because students had started to notice the pattern: Harry didn’t drift alone, Draco didn’t play to the Slytherin gallery, Neville stood steadier than anyone expected, Hermione wasn’t isolated, and Padma somehow moved easily through all of them like a thread that never tangled.

At sunset, they sat together on the stone steps of the courtyard, watching the sky darken.

Padma swung her feet lazily. “Tomorrow should be boring.”

Neville nodded with heartfelt agreement. “I’d really like that.”

Draco said, “It won’t be.”

Harry didn’t answer. He glanced sideways at Hermione. She met his eyes for the briefest moment, neither heavy nor meaningful—just steady.

For now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

The first real sign that Hogwarts had settled into a routine came not with the ringing of bells or the steady rhythm of classes, but with the owls.

They swept into the Great Hall in a rush of feathers and parchment one morning, bumping into one another as they dropped letters, parcels, and the occasional screeching package onto unsuspecting students. The room brightened instantly with shouts, laughter, and the tearing of envelopes.

Harry Potter felt an owl land neatly in front of him and recognised the handwriting before he even picked up the letter.

Sirius’ handwriting slanted sharply across the parchment.

He unfolded it slowly.

Cub,
You alive? Try not to set the castle on fire. Eat properly. Don’t let any professor with a beard poke around your head. Write back.
—Padfoot

Harry snorted softly under his breath.

Across the table, Neville Longbottom received a thick envelope that nearly knocked over his pumpkin juice. He opened it with careful fingers, reading silently as his shoulders slowly loosened.

Gran had reminded him to sleep enough, to stand straight, to remember that fear did not make him weak — and that his parents would have been proud of him for simply being there.

At the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy broke the seal of his own letter with a practised flick and scanned it with cool efficiency. He didn’t share what it said, but the faint tightening and release of his jaw told Harry all he needed to know.

Then Harry noticed Hermione fumbling with her letters.

Two owls had arrived for her.

One bore the neat, elegant hand of her parents.

The other was from Gringotts.

Hermione stared at the second one for half a second too long before slipping it discreetly into her bag unopened. She opened her parents’ letter instead. Whatever it said made her blink a little faster, then smile in that small, restrained way she had.

Padma leaned over immediately. “Good news?”

“Yes,” Hermione said. “They’re already planning what they’ll redecorate when I come home for Christmas. As if I’ve been gone for years.”

Padma grinned. “That’s what they do. Overreact. Mine sent inter-House gossip with my toothpaste.”

Hermione laughed quietly.

Harry watched her laugh.

He hadn’t realised until that moment that she didn’t do it often in large ways — it was always contained, like she decided how much joy to permit at once. Something about that made his chest feel oddly warm.

They met near the marble staircase later, entirely by accident and not at all by accident.

Draco was complaining about staircases rearranging themselves without notice. Neville was trying to convince Padma that apologising to a moving suit of armour had seemed reasonable at the time. Hermione and Harry fell into step beside each other without comment.

“You didn’t open the second letter,” Harry said quietly.

Hermione tilted her head slightly. “You noticed.”

Harry shrugged. “It looked… heavy.”

She considered that, then nodded once. “It is. I’ll read it later. When I have space for it.”

“That’s fair,” he said.

They walked a little farther in silence.

Then Hermione said, “Your guardian writes like he expects the world to be ridiculous.”

Harry smiled. “That’s because it usually is.”

She hesitated. “Is he… kind?”

Harry answered without thinking. “To me? Always.”

Her steps slowed for half a second.

“I’m glad,” she said. And she meant it.

—

Harry's first meeting with Albus Dumbledore came that afternoon.

Harry had been called to his office under the pleasantly vague pretence of “a check-in.” He arrived on time, prepared for half-questions and half-answers, and found instead a cup of tea waiting and the Headmaster smiling at him like this was all perfectly ordinary.

They spoke about classes first. About the troll — but only in the way adults spoke about danger once it had already been neutralised. Then, carefully, effortlessly, the conversation shifted.

“Fame can be lonely, Harry,” Dumbledore said mildly.

Harry stared into his tea. “I’m not lonely.”

“Many boys your age find comfort in easy friendships,” Dumbledore continued. “Ron Weasley, for instance — earnest, loyal, from a warm family. He looks up to you.”

Harry looked up sharply. “He doesn’t like my friends.”

Dumbledore’s smile did not falter. “Sometimes misunderstandings must be corrected by patience.”

Harry’s voice was calm, but something iron-hard sat beneath it. “Sometimes misunderstandings are exactly what people mean.”

Dumbledore studied him for a long moment.

“Do keep an open mind,” the Headmaster said gently.

Harry stood. “I always do, sir. Just not when someone tells me who I should open it to.”

He left with his hands steady and his jaw tight.

—

By dinner, Ron had clearly heard about the meeting.

Harry was halfway through his meal when Ron leaned across the table and said with forced casualness, “So. Dumbledore talked to you.”

Harry did not look up. “Yes.”

“What did he say?” Ron pressed.

Harry finally lifted his gaze. “That I should be patient with people who insult my friends.”

Ron flushed red. “He means Malfoy.”

Harry stood up slowly. “He means you.”

The Hall quieted just enough to notice.

Neville pushed his chair back and stood with him without being asked.

Harry didn’t wait for a response. He left the table.

—

Hermione found him in the courtyard just before sunset, sitting on the low stone ledge where they so often ended up by accident.

“Padma said Ron nearly exploded,” she said mildly.

Harry exhaled. “That tracks.”

She sat beside him. Close, but not quite touching. “Dumbledore?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “That also tracks.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Hermione said very softly, “You don’t have to rearrange your life to fit a suggestion.”

Harry turned to look at her fully now. “You’re very good at saying the right things.”

She hesitated. “I’m better at noticing when people bend when they shouldn’t.”

He studied her face — composed, watchful, honest.

“You don’t bend much,” he said.

Hermione gave a faint, almost-smile. “Neither do you.”

Their eyes held for a second longer than necessary.

Neither of them looked away first.

—

Later that evening, as the five gathered again near the edge of the courtyard, letters were compared, not by content but by weight.

Neville’s was thick and anxious.

Padma’s was messy and chaotic.

Draco’s was precise.

Harry’s was irreverent.

Hermione’s — the second one — remained tucked safely in her bag.

“Tomorrow,” she said quietly, when Harry raised an eyebrow.

Harry nodded without question.

Draco didn’t ask.

Neville smiled weakly.

And for reasons none of them could fully explain yet, that small, unspoken trust felt more significant than any official alliance Hogwarts might one day care to name.

Chapter Text

It began, as most things with them did, quietly.

Harry found the empty classroom by accident, slipping inside only because the corridor outside had grown too loud with post-dinner energy. He had barely taken two steps in when he realised he wasn’t alone.

At the far desk, bent over parchment with methodical focus, sat Hermione Granger. Her quill moved steadily. A narrow column of books hovered beside her chair in neat suspension.

She noticed him immediately. “You can come in. You look like you’re trying to disappear without actually leaving.”

He smiled faintly and sat across from her. For a moment, they worked in silence, the kind that felt companionable rather than empty.

“My shield keeps collapsing on the third layer,” he said eventually. “It’s like it doesn’t want to hold its shape.”

She leaned forward without hesitation. “Show me.”

He cast it slowly, deliberately. She watched the angles of his wrist, the timing of his breath, the moment his magic folded inward instead of outward.

“There,” she said quietly. “You’re bracing instead of projecting. You’re fighting your own structure.”

He adjusted. Recast.

The shield locked cleanly into place.

He stared. “That felt… easier.”

“Because it was,” she said simply.

Their eyes met. The moment wasn’t charged with anything dramatic — just mutual, quiet satisfaction.

It became a pattern after that. Studying together. Sometimes joined by Padma Patil, sometimes by Neville Longbottom, with a question he was initially embarrassed to ask. Even Draco Malfoy began lingering nearby more often than he admitted.

It was during one of those evenings that Draco finally interrupted.

“You’re anchoring the stabilising runes incorrectly.”

She turned without defensiveness. “Which sequence?”

“The third,” he said. “You’re locking it to static resistance. It should adjust to fluctuation.”

She studied the page again, then looked up slowly. “You’re right.”

Harry blinked. “That was fast.”

“I correct mistakes quickly,” she replied. “Especially when they’re real.”

Draco’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly. “Most people argue first.”

“Most people are more interested in winning than being right.”

For a moment, he simply studied her.

Then he nodded once.

From that night on, when she spoke about theory, he didn’t interrupt — he contributed.

Neville’s quiet victory came two days later, in the greenhouse, when the class was struggling with shrieking seedlings that snapped at fingers and screamed like banshees when mishandled. He didn’t rush. He didn’t flinch. He spoke softly to the roots as he transferred the plant, steady as stone.

By the time he finished, his seedling had gone silent.

Professor Sprout paused at his side.

“That,” she said with gentle surprise, “was beautifully done.”

His ears went red. He didn’t tell anyone at lunch.

They all noticed anyway.

The whispers began not with drama, but with pattern.

Harry and Hermione are studying together.
Draco listening instead of sneering.
Neville growing steadier.
Padma everywhere at once.

At lunch one day, Padma leaned in and murmured, “You two are officially being discussed.”

Harry nearly dropped his fork. “By whom?”

“Everyone.”

Hermione adjusted her sleeve calmly. “People invent stories when they don’t understand what they’re seeing.”

Harry glanced at her. “Do we?”

She considered. “Enough for now.”

That evening, the five gathered on the stone steps of the courtyard, and Hermione finally reached into her bag and removed the second letter she’d been carrying for days.

“I think I should read it now,” she said quietly.

No one pressured her.

She broke the seal.

The parchment within bore Gringotts script — precise, formal, and unmistakably ancient.

She read silently at first. Then aloud, her voice steady.

“To Lady Hermione Dagworth-Granger, Lady Ravenclaw ”

They all took a sharp inhale as the name settled into the air without grandeur — just fact.

“The Dverger Nation affirms its standing treaty of alliance and protection. Said alliance extends in knowledge, in resource, and in ancient obligation.”

Padma stilled beside her.

Harry didn’t interrupt.

“Your titles remain sealed at your discretion. No public declaration has been made. No summons has been issued. This is your right.”

She lowered the parchment slightly.

“Should you ever invoke Ravenclaw by name, the old doors will answer.”

Silence followed.

Not heavy.

Not afraid.

Just aware.

She folded the letter. “…That’s all that matters, really.”

Draco exhaled slowly. “You’ve been sitting on a political time bomb.”

“I’ve been sitting on myself,” she corrected gently. “The rest is optional.”

Neville nodded gravely, as if this made perfect sense.

Padma leaned back dramatically. “Right. So one of us is ancient nobility, and no one even noticed. Typical.”

She slipped the letter back into her bag.

Harry didn’t ask what she planned to do with the information.

She trusted that he wouldn’t.

The next afternoon, Ron tried to shatter the now-visible pattern.

He waited until Harry was alone in the courtyard, then strode up as if he had every right to be there.

“You’d look less suspicious if you didn’t follow Granger everywhere,” he said sharply.

Harry turned slowly. “You’d look smarter if you didn’t assume I follow anyone.”

Ron scoffed. “Everyone sees it. She’s using you for attention.”

Harry’s eyes cooled. “You don’t get to talk about her.”

Ron flushed. “Why? Because she’s your—”

Draco appeared behind Harry without a sound.

Neville stepped in from the side.

Hermione and Padma approached together from the walkway.

Ron found himself very suddenly alone in front of five people who had never once questioned their own alignment.

He backed off without another word.

That evening, as the sky turned violet over the towers, they sat together again.

No planning.
No strategy.
No ceremony.

Just presence.

And somewhere deep beneath the castle — in the stones that remembered the Founders and wars and vows written on living stone — a sealed name was slowly awakening.

Tracked.
Unspoken.
Waiting.

Chapter Text

Flying lessons were announced on a grey Thursday morning, and by lunch, the entire school buzzed with varying degrees of excitement and terror.

Neville and Hermione went pale at the notice.

Padma declared it “romantically dangerous.”

Draco looked smug before they even reached the field.

And Harry felt the familiar, quiet pull in his chest that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with instinct.

They gathered on the grassy training field beneath a sky stretched thin with clouds. The wind teased at their robes. A neat line of brooms lay at their feet.

“Everyone stands beside a broomstick,” barked Rolanda Hooch. “When I blow my whistle, you kick off hard. On my command.”

Harry didn’t look at Draco.

Draco didn’t look at Harry.

They both looked at the sky.

“Up!”

Harry’s broom leapt into his hand at once.

So did Draco’s.

A second later, so did Neville’s — wobbling wildly in his grip as his eyes widened in pure shock.

Hermione's did not move.

She frowned at it, then again, quietly but firmly repeated, “Up.”

The broom jerked, skidded, then settled neatly into her palm.

Padma stared. “Right. So you’re just good at everything.”

Hermione blinked. “That was not elegant.”

Padma laughed. “That was terrifying.”

Hooch’s whistle shrilled.

And suddenly, the ground vanished.

Harry kicked off without thinking.

The broom responded like it had been waiting for him.

Air rushed past his ears, clean and cold. The world dropped away beneath him.

The familiar, perfect alignment of balance and intention snapped into place like he had simply stepped into himself.

Draco shot upward beside him.

Their eyes met across the distance, and they both smirked at each other.

No hostility.

No showmanship.

Just a challenge.

They climbed higher — fast, sharp arcs through open sky, robes snapping in the wind. Students below shrieked in panic and awe.

Neville, somewhere halfway between the clouds and catastrophe, discovered to his absolute horror that he wasn’t falling.

He was hovering.

Perfectly straight.

Perfectly balanced.

“I’M DOING IT,” he yelled in disbelief.

Hermione clapped once before remembering she was supposed to be worried.

Ron, still struggling to mount his broom properly, watched all of it with his face burning red.

“Of course they’re good at it,” he muttered loudly. “Malfoy cheating somehow and Potter showing off like always.”

Harry looped clean through the air and landed lightly beside Draco in the grass.

Draco dismounted with equal precision.

They exchanged one brief look.

Even.

Ron’s temper snapped.

“You don’t have to fly like that,” he snapped at Harry. “You think it makes everyone like you more?”

Harry turned slowly. “I don’t fly for you.”

Draco’s mouth curved faintly.

Neville landed a second later with far less grace but far more pride.

“I didn’t fall,” he breathed. “I didn’t even wobble.”

Hermione stepped forward. “You were great.”

Neville went bright red.

That evening, Hogwarts felt… different.

The corridors echoed more softly. The air shimmered faintly with leftover magic and adrenaline. And for Hermione, something else entirely waited near the Ravenclaw Tower.

She felt her before she saw her.

A cool presence. Old. Familiar in a way that had nothing to do with memory.

Helena Ravenclaw drifted through the stone wall as effortlessly as mist. Her silver-blue form shimmered softly in the torchlight, her long hair floating as if beneath water.

Hermione first felt the cold before she realised she wasn’t alone.

Ravenclaw Tower was quiet at that hour, the corridor dim with floating torchlight and the distant murmur of studying voices. Padma had gone ahead to the common room. Hermione lingered behind for no reason she could name.

Then the temperature dropped.

A pale figure drifted out of the far wall without sound, silver-blue and distant as moonlight on glass. Her expression was unreadable, her posture elegant and severe, her presence heavy with centuries of regret.

Helena Ravenclaw did not greet her.

She simply looked at her.

Hermione stopped walking.

For several long seconds, neither of them spoke. The silence was not awkward. It was measured.

“You walk as if you are always calculating the cost of every step,” Helena said at last.

Hermione’s breath caught softly. “I usually am.”

Helena studied her more closely now. Not appraising. Recognising.

“The blood remembers,” Helena said quietly. “Even when the name is hidden.”

Hermione swallowed. “I didn’t know how to speak to you.”

Helena’s mouth curved—not into a smile, but into something far smaller and far sadder. “Neither did I.”

The torchlight flickered through her translucent form.

“You do not seek what was lost,” Helena continued. “You seek what still exists. That alone makes you… different.”

Hermione hesitated. “Is that… approval?”

Helena regarded her coolly. “It is not disapproval.”

Hermione swallowed. “I didn’t know if you would want—”

“Want?” Helena interrupted. “Child. I have waited centuries to meet someone who wears that name without hunger.”

Hermione didn’t speak.

For Helena Ravenclaw, that was immense.

A distant echo of laughter drifted from the stairwell below—the sounds of living students, of Padma’s voice, of Harry somewhere in the castle.

Helena’s gaze shifted toward it briefly.

“You are not alone,” she said. Not warmly. Not gently. But truthfully.

Then, without farewell or drama, she drifted backwards into the stone and vanished.

Hermione stood there for several seconds after the cold left the air.

Her chest felt strangely steady.

Not comforted.

Acknowledged.

They found the others near the moving staircases not long after — Harry and Draco arguing about altitude control, Neville animatedly reenacting his hover, Padma declaring it all extremely cinematic.

A translucent figure drifted by with a ruffled collar and an apologetic bow.

“Good evening,” said Nearly Headless Nick, beaming at Harry. “Splendid flying, my boy!”

From the opposite corridor came a deep, cold silence as The Bloody Baron passed through a wall, his chains rattling faintly. Even Draco went quiet at that.

A moment later, warm laughter echoed as The Fat Friar floated through two second-years and apologised profusely to both.

Padma leaned toward Hermione. “Your family ghost is terrifyingly impressive, by the way.”

Helena inclined her head graciously before drifting back through the stone.

Hermione watched her go with something quiet and steady in her chest.

Later, as the five sat on the low courtyard wall beneath a sky still streaked with fading daylight, Harry glanced at Hermione.

Hermione answered honestly. “I didn’t know how to explain her.”

Draco said coolly, “She approves of you.”

Hermione smiled faintly. “She always did.”

Neville swung his legs happily. “I flew.”

“You flew,” Padma confirmed.

Ron passed them on the path below without stopping, his face dark.

No one called after him.

Chapter Text

The castle felt particularly alive that afternoon.

Not in a dangerous way. Not in a mysterious, shifting-staircase kind of way. Just… chatty. As if the walls themselves were in a good mood.

A second-year shrieked when Nearly Headless Nick drifted through him near the Charms corridor, apologising profusely as usual.

The Fat Friar was floating upside-down near the Hufflepuff basement, handing out unsolicited advice about kindness and pudding. Even the corridor near the dungeons grew quiet for a moment as the chains of the Bloody Baron echoed past, pale students flattening themselves politely against the walls.

And through all of it, three boys walked shoulder to shoulder like they had always belonged that way.

Harry kicked at a small stone as he walked, sending it skittering ahead of them. Draco stepped over it without breaking stride. Neville nearly tripped over it and apologised to the floor.

“You’d think,” Draco was saying, “after all the training we’ve survived together, you’d have learned how to walk without declaring war on gravity.”

Neville flushed. “I wasn’t declaring war. I was negotiating poorly.”

Harry snorted.

They reached the wide window overlooking the grounds and leaned against the stone ledge in the familiar way they always seemed to find.

“You flew differently yesterday,” Neville said suddenly, looking at Harry.

Harry blinked. “Different how?”

“Like you weren’t thinking about it at all,” Neville said. “It just… happened.”

Draco huffed quietly. “That’s his problem. He never thinks when he should and always thinks when he shouldn’t.”

Harry’s mouth curved faintly. “You say that like you don’t trust me.”

Draco glanced at him sidelong. “I trust you with my life. I don’t trust you with rules.”

Neville nodded solemnly. “That feels correct.”

Harry laughed under his breath, the sound easy and unguarded.

For a moment, they simply stood there — not Gryffindor, not Slytherin, not anything except three boys who had grown up side by side long before Houses had tried to separate them.

Draco broke the quiet. “When we’re old and terrifying, I expect us to be blamed for everything impressive that ever happens.”

Harry tilted his head. “Only impressive things?”

Neville smiled softly. “We’ll take credit and apologise at the same time.”

“That,” Draco said, “is exactly how scandals are born.”

Not far away, near the soft-blue light of the Ravenclaw windows, two girls had claimed the far end of a cushioned bench as if it were sacred territory.

Padma lay on her back across it, hands folded behind her head. “So,” she announced, “between almost dying, having a secret vault, and being casually revered by a tragic house ghost, your first month at Hogwarts has been aggressively dramatic.”

Hermione adjusted her sleeves with exaggerated calm. “I have had one conversation with Helena.”

“Helena Ravenclaw,” Padma stressed. “Your ghost ancestor. That alone is enough to make this dramatic.”

Hermione gave a tiny, reluctant smile. “She doesn’t like drama.”

Padma turned her head and studied Hermione seriously for a moment. “Do you?”

Hermione opened her mouth to answer quickly — then stopped.

“I think,” she said slowly, “I like control. Drama is usually what happens when control slips.”

Padma hummed thoughtfully. “That explains a lot about you.”

Hermione tilted her head. “And what does it say about you?”

“That I run straight toward the slipping part with excellent shoes,” Padma replied lightly.

They both laughed.

After a moment, Padma added more quietly, “You’re… different with them. With Harry especially.”

Hermione’s fingers paused at the edge of her robe. “Different how?”

“Softer,” Padma said gently. “Not weaker. Just… less braced.”

Hermione didn’t deny it.

“I don’t feel like I have to be ahead of him,” she said at last. “Or prepared for him. He just… is.”

Padma smiled slowly. “That sounded suspiciously important.”

Hermione pretended to be very busy watching a cloud out the window.

They met again in the courtyard just before dinner, as if pulled by the same quiet thread that always reunited them without planning.

Draco arrived first with Harry and Neville.

Padma dragged a very distracted Hermione behind her by the wrist.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Neville said brightly, “The Friar tried to give me a biscuit.”

Harry blinked. “Did you take it?”

Neville nodded. “It was good.”

Draco sighed. “Of course, you would befriend the one ghost who still feeds people.”

Padma waved dismissively. “Helena doesn’t feed people. She just judges them in silence. It’s deeply aspirational.”

Hermione hid a smile.

They sat on the low stone wall together, shoulders brushing, robes tangled, feet dangling above the grass.

Harry glanced sideways at Hermione. “You okay today?”

She considered. Then nodded. “Yes. I actually am.”

He accepted that without question.

Draco leaned back on his hands, looking up at the sky. “This was… a good day.”

Neville beamed. “It really was.”

Padma stretched dramatically. “I demand more of these. With less attempted doom.”

And as the last of the daylight faded and the ghosts drifted lazily through the arches above them, the five of them stayed exactly where they were — not because destiny demanded it, not because the world required it, but because, for once, being still together felt like enough.

Chapter Text

Spring arrived without ceremony at Hogwarts.

One day, the windows were rimmed with frost, and the next, sunlight spilled across the stone corridors as if the castle had simply decided it was tired of winter. The lake softened. The grounds turned green again. Even the ghosts seemed lighter, drifting lazily instead of with their usual solemn patrols.

For the five of them, it meant longer evenings outside, fewer rushed meals, and the slow, invisible shift from new to settled.

They sat beneath the old beech tree at the edge of the courtyard that afternoon, books scattered between them.

Harry lay on his back in the grass, staring up through the branches. Draco leaned against the trunk with one knee drawn up, polishing his wand with idle precision. Neville was carefully transplanting a tiny struggling sprout into a better patch of soil near the roots.

Padma and Hermione sat together on the stone ledge nearby.

At first glance, nothing seemed different.

At second glance, everything did.

Hermione’s hair, once tied back with simple ribbons, was now braided and woven with subtle intent rather than convenience. Padma’s was styled just as carefully, adorned with fine threads of gold enchanted to strengthen rather than decorate.

It wasn’t vanity.

It was power.

Neville glanced up. “You both look… very shiny today.”

Padma grinned. “That’s Mother Magic, darling.”

Harry turned his head. “Mother, what now?”

Hermione hesitated for half a second — then decided not to pretend this was casual knowledge.

“In old witchcraft tradition,” she explained, “a woman’s magic is anchored in her hair. It’s why cutting it without consent is considered… deeply invasive. The style matters. The intention matters.”

Draco’s polishing slowed. “You’re activating lineage channels. You're bringing back old traditions”

Hermione blinked, then nodded. “Yes.”

Padma added lightly, “And also because it makes people very nervous, which is entertaining.”

Harry studied them both for a moment. “You look… taller.”

Padma laughed. “That’s posture.”

Hermione added quietly, “And confidence.”

Neville looked between them in awe. “I just moved a plant.”

Draco said dryly, “And we’re all very proud of you.”

The shift wasn’t only in how they walked.

It was in how Padma and Hermione spoke now — slower, deliberate, polished without being cold. They no longer fidgeted when professors looked their way. They no longer shrank into themselves when older students glanced over.

People noticed.

By May, the whispers in the corridors weren’t about Harry anymore.

They were about Ravenclaw.

About two first-year girls who moved like they belonged to a different rhythm of the castle.

About how Professors paused when Hermione spoke.

About how Padma oddly never seemed lost anymore.

And about how Harry Potter… wasn’t involved in any of it.

The incident happened on a Tuesday.

And it had nothing to do with Harry.

It started in the Charms corridor, where an experimental charm project set by Flitwick went catastrophically wrong. A first-year Ravenclaw lost control of a layered spell meant to enhance sound clarity. Instead, it fractured the corridor itself.

Stone warped.

Air screamed.

And five students were thrown violently into a collapsing magical pocket between walls.

By the time alarms rang and professors rushed in, the corridor had sealed itself into a crystalline echo of frozen debris and fractured enchantment.

Five students were missing.

None of them were Harry.

Inside the rupture, time folded strangely.

Spells rebounded.

Magic twisted.

And at the centre of it stood Hermione and Padma, facing the distorted structure that pulsed like a wounded heart.

One of the trapped older students panicked and cast blindly.

The spell ricocheted.

Hermione moved without thinking.

Her shield did not look like the ones she had been taught in class.

It unfolded outward, elegant and precise, layered with a quiet authority that made the wild magic slow and then… obey.

Padma stepped beside her and mirrored the motion.

The rupture stabilized.

The screaming air dropped into strained silence.

When Flitwick, McGonagall, and three other professors finally broke through, they found five shaken students standing inside a perfectly contained magical shell — and two first-years holding the structure together as if they had always known how.

The Great Hall buzzed that night.

Not with celebration.

With shock.

With a story.

With names.

Padma Patil.

Hermione Granger.

And nowhere in the retelling was the name Harry Potter spoken.

At the head of the Hall, Dumbledore listened.

And frowned.

Not in anger.

In… disruption.

This was not how the pattern usually worked.

Harry heard about it only after dinner.

He was in the courtyard with Draco and Neville when Padma sprinted toward them, breathless and glowing with leftover adrenaline.

“We broke a corridor,” she announced.

Harry bolted upright. “You did what?”

Hermione followed more slowly, hair slightly dishevelled, robes torn at the sleeve, expression calm in the way of someone who had already processed the danger and moved on.

“We fixed it, too,” she said.

Harry crossed the distance to her in three steps. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I helped keep everyone safe”, she replied.

He exhaled slowly. Relief came second to something sharper.

“You didn’t even call me.”

Hermione studied his face, then said gently, “For once, you weren’t the solution.”

Draco smirked. “You look offended.”

Neville tilted his head. “I think he’s offended for the wrong reason.”

Harry huffed. “I’m glad you’re safe. I’m just… unused to being unnecessary.”

Hermione met his eyes. “You were never unnecessary. You just weren’t required this time.”

And somehow, that bothered him more than any danger would have.

Up in the Headmaster’s office, the mood was colder.

Dumbledore paced slowly in front of the window, fingers steepled.

“Two first-years,” he murmured. “Holding an unstable corridor breach without guidance.”

McGonagall’s voice was controlled. “With remarkable discipline.”

“And no involvement from Mr Potter,” Dumbledore added.

“That,” she said evenly, “is not a flaw.”

He did not answer.

The year rushed toward its end after that.

Exams came and went.

Neville passed Herbology with quiet excellence.

Draco placed near the top of his class.

Padma charmed her way into every professor’s reluctant admiration.

Hermione aced nearly everything — not with show, but with inevitability.

Harry passed cleanly. Calmly. Without spectacle.

On the final evening before the train ride home, the five of them sat together on the Astronomy steps, looking out at the grounds glowing with twilight.

Padma leaned back on her elbows. “First year done.”

Neville smiled softly. “We survived.”

Draco said, “Barely.”

Harry glanced at Hermione. “You changed this year.”

She met his gaze, steady and unafraid. “So did you.”

He considered that.

Then smiled.

Chapter Text

The Hogwarts Express moved like a long red heartbeat through the countryside, carrying with it the slow exhale of the school year finally ending.

Harry sat with the window open, summer wind tugging at his sleeve as fields and sky blurred together. Draco occupied the far corner with the Daily Prophet folded just enough to reveal he was reading the political columns and pretending not to. Neville handed out Chocolate Frogs with the solemn generosity of someone marking a personal victory over the year.

Across from them, Padma sat beside Hermione, both girls had their hair up and precise, even in the privacy of the train compartment.

Their hair was perfectly pinned in traditional updos—smooth, high at the crown, not a single loose strand in sight, even in the privacy of their train compartment. No braids. No combs. No casual touch.

Public space meant contained power.

“You’ll be bored by the ceremony,” Padma said lightly, adjusting the fall of Hermione’s sleeve rather than her hair. “There will be too many speeches and at least three unnecessary family feuds.”

Hermione smiled faintly. “You say that as if you don’t live for it.”

“I live for controlled chaos,” Padma corrected. “Not long-winded uncles.”

Harry watched them with quiet fascination. “So this ball… that’s really happening?”

Padma’s eyes lit with unapologetic pride. “My parents are hosting a full Coming-Out Ball. Two daughters returning to society after their Hogwarts year.”

She glanced at Hermione with open affection.

“And one rediscovered English noble girl making her formal debut.”

Hermione lowered her gaze slightly at that—not in shame, but in awareness. “As Lady Dagworth-Granger. Only that.”

Draco looked up then. “Still hidden,” he said.

Hermione inclined her head. “Still hidden.”

No one said the other name.

Neville shifted nervously. “Do I have to bow to people?”

Padma grinned. “ Continuously.”

Neville looked stricken.

Home felt different for all of them.

Harry returned to Black Manor, where Sirius listened in relaxed silence as Harry spoke about the corridor rupture, the flying, and the way the girls had changed how people looked at Ravenclaw.

“Good,” Sirius said at last. “They’re learning the world doesn’t revolve around Griffindor and Slytherin.”

Draco’s summer passed in crisp political rhythms—dinners with visiting families, quiet Ministry gossip, letters precise and oddly domestic in tone. Mother says the Patil ball will be wonderful. I suspect she is excited to meet the girls.

Neville’s world stayed green. His grandmother walked the gardens with him at dusk, pride unspoken but steady in every correction of his posture and praise of his growing skill.

Padma crossed oceans.

Hermione crossed worlds.

By day, Hermione was just a girl in the quiet countryside with her parents. By night, she entered vaulted stone halls beneath Gringotts, where ancient names were spoken properly, fully.

Her hair was always tied, unless in the privacy of her own house, she fed the hair her magic —slow, private, precise rituals performed alone in silence.

Power was not displayed.

It was held.

And all summer, no one outside their circle knew that “Dagworth-Granger” rested atop a name far older still.

The wizarding world shifted quietly that summer.

There were no riots. No coups.

Just movement.

Old families reappearing in the margins of papers. Gringotts' sovereignty was mentioned more frequently. Words like verification, bloodline reclamation, and founder-era charters were slipping back into political vocabulary.

And then, toward the end of July, the invitations began to arrive.

Heavy parchment. Gold seals. Ancestral crests.

At the centre of it all:

Lady Hermione Dagworth-Granger.

Not Ravenclaw. Not yet

Only the name the world was permitted to see.

Padma’s family estate rose like living starlight from the land—wide terraces, lotus-filled pools, and floating lanterns suspended on enchanted filaments. Guests arrived in formal processions, layers of silk and velvet and magic moving like tides through the courtyard.

It was not a school celebration.

It was society.

Padma and her twin Parvati stood at the front of the receiving dais, perfect opposites even in finery—Padma composed and razor-sharp, Parvati radiant and dramatic.

Between them stood Hermione.

Her robes were dark ivory, threaded with ancient silver. Her posture was immaculate. Her hair was bound in a flawless high updo with a single ancestral comb marking her family line.

No loose strands. Only contained authority.

When her name was announced— “Lady Hermione Dagworth-Granger.”

The room quieted.

Not in shock.

In calculation.

Harry watched from the edge of the ballroom beside Draco and Neville, acutely aware that this was an arena he did not yet fully belong to.

Neville whispered, “She looks… untouchable.”

Harry shook his head slightly. “No. She looks like she’s standing exactly where she chose to stand.”

Hermione’s eyes lifted and found them immediately.

Just for a moment, her expression softened.

The hall never saw it.

They did.

Later, after the ball and away from the dance floor and hidden behind tall marble screens in a private family terrace, Padma reached up and finally undid Hermione’s hair.

The moment the pins came free, the tension left her shoulders like a held breath escaping.

Hermione exhaled slowly.

“This,” Padma said softly as she began to braid, “is the real debut.”

Hermione closed her eyes. “Thank you.”

No one else was allowed to see that version.

Not yet.

From the upper balcony, Dumbledore observed the debut ball with quiet, narrowing eyes.

The girl from the train. The heir unveiled.

The world was reshaping itself outside the path he preferred.

Again. And again.

Without Harry Potter at the centre.

Later that night, the five of them gathered on a quiet terrace overlooking moonlit gardens.

Harry leaned against the rail. “That was… a lot.”

Padma collapsed into a chair. “That was restrained.”

Neville looked stunned. “I met three diplomats and someone who tried to bet on my future.”

Draco smirked. “Did you win?”

“No.”

Hermione stood beside Harry, her hair once again perfectly bound but still casual, her public self restored.

“It feels strange,” she admitted. “Being known now.”

Harry looked at her steadily. “You were never unknown to us.”

For a second, her composure almost cracked. Almost.

The world had noticed them.

Chapter Text

The second-year train ride felt different, though none of them could have said why.

Not heavier. Not darker.

Just… steadier.

The five of them shared their usual compartment, sprawled in familiar patterns that had long since stopped feeling new. Harry had claimed the window again, Draco had the corner seat with a book he wasn’t actually reading, Neville hovered protectively over a box that chirped softly from inside, and across from them, Hermione and Padma sat shoulder to shoulder, sorting through new timetables.

The girls looked the same as they always did—hair neatly arranged, posture precise, movements careful only in the way that came from long habit. None of the boys commented on it. They had all grown up watching mothers, aunts, and cousins move the same way. It wasn’t mysterious. It was simply normal.

Neville finally broke the quiet. “Gran sent Trevor with me this year. She said plants behave better if I’m not lonely.”

“Fair,” Padma said. “I behave better with supervision, too.”

Hermione peered at her schedule. “We still have Charms and Transfiguration together.”

Draco snorted. “The universe remains grossly unfair.”

Harry smiled faintly and leaned his head back against the glass. The countryside slipped past in long, quiet streaks of green.

Hogwarts greeted them without ceremony.

No strange tension. No immediate danger. Just the familiar rhythm of candles, stone, staircases, and hundreds of voices settling back into place.

The first week passed cleanly. Too cleanly.

It was Hermione who noticed the difference first—not in fear, but in texture. The castle sounded different at night. Not louder. Not quieter.

Just… listening.

She felt it most clearly two evenings into term, as she climbed the last stretch of stairs alone toward Ravenclaw Tower. The corridor was empty when the temperature shifted.

She stopped.

Not in alarm.

In recognition.

A pale figure drifted into view from the wall beside her, silver-blue and composed, her expression distant and carrying centuries like a second skin.

Helena Ravenclaw.

“You felt the seam,” Helena said quietly.

Hermione inclined her head. “Yes.”

They walked together, Helena gliding, Hermione matching her pace without hurry.

“The castle is not disturbed,” Helena said. “It is… unsettled. There is a difference.”

Hermione’s fingers tightened slightly around her books. “By what?”

“By memory,” Helena answered. “Hogwarts remembers more than it teaches.”

They stopped in a narrow alcove tucked between two unused classrooms.

“You are beginning to touch Ravenclaw workings,” Helena continued. “Not spells. Not charms. Structure. Permission. Pattern.”

Hermione hesitated. “You mean… I don’t have to force it?”

“No Ravenclaw ever did,” Helena said. “We persuaded reality. We did not strike it.”

Hermione lifted her wand slowly.

The magic gathered—not fast, not violently. It simply… assembled itself.

Cleaner than anything she had cast before.

Helena watched with careful eyes.

“You listen,” she said. “That is why the castle listens back.”

Hermione swallowed. “You didn’t.”

Helena’s gaze drifted away. “No. I took. And what is taken always takes something in return.”

They stood in silence for a moment that stretched thin with history.

Then Helena said, “You will not become me.”

It was not a warning.

It was a judgment.

And an approval.

-----------

The first student was found petrified in early October.

A Hufflepuff second-year.

Alive.

Frozen.

No one heard screaming. No one saw the attack.

Only the aftermath.

The school reacted with controlled efficiency. Professors moved swiftly. The corridors were watched more closely. But there were no public accusations. No hysterics.

And one thing was immediately obvious.

The adults were disturbed more than the students.

At dinner that night, the whispers were careful rather than wild.

“It wasn’t a curse.”
“She didn’t collapse.”
“Her eyes—someone said her eyes—”

They gathered later in their usual empty classroom.

Neville’s hands shook faintly. “It didn’t feel like magic.”

Draco leaned against the desk, jaw tight. “It felt intentional.”

Padma crossed her arms. “So it’s either very old… or very smart.”

Harry didn’t speak.

Hermione did.

“It’s moving through the structure of the castle,” she said. “Not against it. That’s why no one hears it coming.”

Draco looked sharply at her. “And how exactly would you know that?”

“Because the stones feel wrong afterwards,” she replied. “Like something passed through that had the right to be there.”

Silence followed that.

Harry finally spoke. “Can you follow it?”

She met his eyes. “Not yet.”

Padma tilted her head. “But eventually.”

Hermione nodded.

“Yes.”

Elsewhere in the castle, Albus Dumbledore stood before the staff table that night with a familiar unease tightening behind his eyes.

The first attack had come.

And still—Harry Potter remained untouched by the narrative.

No summons.
No visions.
No reaction.

The story was moving forward without him at its centre.

That night, as Hermione returned alone once more toward her Tower, Helena appeared again beside her without warning.

“It has begun,” Helena said.

Hermione didn’t ask what.

“I will teach you how to hear it without being heard,” Helena continued. “But only when you are ready to listen without answering.”

Hermione met her gaze steadily. “I’m ready.”

Helena’s expression softened—just a fraction.

“Then the waiting ends.”

Chapter Text

The second attack happened three days later.

A Ravenclaw this time.

A third-year found rigid at the foot of the north stairwell, eyes glassy and unfocused, books scattered at unnatural angles across the stone. The screaming started late—only after someone realised the body wasn’t broken.

Just… paused.

The school erupted into chaos.

Students moved faster through the corridors. Professors began appearing where they had no reason to be. The portraits whispered constantly now—low, anxious murmurs slipping through frames and stone alike.

And still, no one knew anything

That fact alone unsettled the staff far more than they allowed to show.

Hermione felt the disturbance before she heard about the attack.

A pressure in the air.

A dull, dragging sensation along the edge of her magic, like a low sound you hear only after you stop listening for it.

She found Helena that evening without meaning to. Or perhaps Helena found her.

The corridor near the abandoned Arithmancy classroom was empty except for torchlight and the steady sound of Hermione’s breathing. The temperature dropped softly—not sharply, not in warning.

Helena Ravenclaw emerged from the stone beside the last sconce.

“You felt it sooner this time,” Helena said.

Hermione nodded. “It moved differently.”

“How?”

Hermione hesitated. “Closer to the surface. Like it wanted to be noticed.”

Helena did not respond.

So Hermione kept going.

“It passes through the castle like it belongs here,” she said. “Not like a trespasser. Like… inheritance.”

Helena’s eyes sharpened slightly. “And what do heirs inherit first?”

Hermione frowned. “Not power.”

“Then what?”

She thought of the way the stone felt wrong after each attack. The walls did not resist.

“Access,” Hermione said slowly.

Helena inclined her head once.

No confirmation.

No denial.

Later that night, alone in the Tower, Hermione stood at the window instead of studying. She didn’t cast anything. She didn’t search.

She listened.

The third attack came before the week was out.

A Slytherin.

The silence this time was worse than the fear.

By morning, the school had divided itself into quiet camps—those who whispered accusation and those who watched the castle itself with growing distrust.

At breakfast, the tension finally snapped.

Ron Weasley pushed back from the Gryffindor table so hard his bench scraped loudly against the floor.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he said sharply. “Two attacks after years of nothing—now suddenly Potter’s here and—”

The Hall went still.

Harry didn’t move.

Draco stood first.

Neville stood beside him.

Padma and Hermione rose from the Ravenclaw table in the same motion.

Ron faltered under the sudden weight of attention. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did,” Draco said coolly.

Harry finally turned.

“You don’t get to turn fear into excuses,” he said quietly. “Especially when you know where I was.”

Ron flushed. “You could have an accomplice!”

Neville’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “You don’t get to call him that.”

The teachers intervened before anything truly broke—but the damage had already settled.

Ron’s words did not spread.

They were remembered.

By evening, Albus Dumbledore finally called Harry to his office.

Not urgently.

Deliberately.

Tea appeared. Gentle questions followed.

“How are you feeling, my boy?”

Harry answered politely.

“Have you noticed anything… unusual?”

Harry met his eyes evenly. “Yes.”

Dumbledore waited.

Harry continued. “You’re waiting for me to be involved. And I’m not.”

The silence that followed was sharpened by surprise.

“There are other paths through danger,” Harry added. “You taught me that yourself.”

Dumbledore smiled.

It did not reach his eyes.

That same night, Helena found Hermione again.

Not in a corridor this time.

In the Tower.

She stood near the bookshelves as though she had never left them.

“You are listening outward,” Helena said. “Now listen inward.”

Hermione swallowed. “I don’t know what that means.”

Helena stepped closer.

“What part of you flinches first when the castle is afraid?”

Hermione closed her eyes.

Not her hands.

Not her magic.

Her name.

She opened her eyes again slowly.

Helena watched her with unreadable intensity.

“You will not be told what hunts this place,” Helena said at last. “Not by me. Not by the dead. Not by its victims.”

“Then how will I know?”

“You will know when the fear sounds… familiar.”

Hermione’s breath caught slightly.

Helena drifted backwards into the shelves and vanished without another word.

Later, when the five gathered once more in their quiet classroom, Hermione told them only this:

“It isn’t random.”

Draco leaned forward. “Is it aiming?”

“Yes.”

“At what?”

Hermione hesitated.

“Not who,” she said. “A What”

Harry met her gaze.

“And what would that be?”

She answered truthfully:

“Something the castle remembers better than it wants to.”

Silence fell around that.

Not fear.

Anticipation.

And somewhere deep beneath their feet—far below stairs and ghosts and forgotten chambers—stone shifted against stone.

Not awake.

Not asleep.

Listening.

Chapter Text

By the time the fourth student was found, Fear had learned how to walk without drawing attention.

No screaming echoed through the corridors this time. No staircases jerked into chaos. The news travelled instead in low voices and unfinished sentences, carried by students who had learned that panic only fed what they did not understand.

A second Slytherin.
Petrified near the greenhouse doors.
Early morning.
Alive.

The castle did not feel angry afterwards.

It felt… arranged.

Hermione noticed first during Transfiguration.

Not the attack—the spacing.

She sat with her quill paused above parchment as Professor McGonagall demonstrated avian bone restructuring on the front dais. The class listened. The spellwork shimmered.

Hermione looked at the windows.

At a distance between the greenhouse and the north stairwell.
At a distance between the stairwell and the Arithmancy corridor.
At the time between one attack and the next.

Her breath caught quietly.

Beside her, Padma tilted her head. “You’ve gone very still.”

“I’m counting,” Hermione whispered.

Padma did not ask what.

They met that evening in the quiet classroom that had gradually become their anchor.

Harry leaned back in his chair, eyes fixed on the ceiling as if he were trying to map the castle from memory.

Draco had a circle of parchment in front of him filled with sharp, precise notes.

Neville sat with his hands folded tightly to keep from fidgeting.

Hermione laid out her observation without dramatics.

“It’s not striking randomly,” she said. “It’s moving in a loop. A very old one.”

Draco looked up immediately. “A patrol route?”

“Not exactly. It’s not watching for people. It’s watching for… conditions.”

Neville swallowed. “Like what?”

Hermione hesitated. “Alignment. Stillness. Moments where the castle’s attention is elsewhere.”

Harry lowered his gaze from the ceiling to her face. “So it chooses when, not who.”

“Yes.”

Padma crossed her arms. “That’s worse.”

Draco nodded faintly. “Much worse.”

Harry was quiet for a long moment. “And you think it’s learning.”

Hermione met his eyes. “I think it always knew.”

Silence settled.

Not heavy.

Focused.

That night, Hermione did not seek Helena.

Helena came to her.

The meeting place was different this time — not a corridor, not an alcove, but the very edge of the Ravenclaw Tower where the stone curved inward like a listening shell.

“You have drawn a shape,” Helena said.

Hermione did not pretend otherwise. “Yes.”

“And now you will want to name it.”

Hermione’s lips parted.

Then closed again.

“Yes,” she admitted.

Helena drifted closer, the air cooling gently as she did.

“Names feel like answers,” Helena said. “They are often only doors.”

“To what?” Hermione asked.

“To the wrong room.”

Hermione frowned. “So I shouldn’t name it?”

“You should not cling to the first name that recognises you,” Helena corrected.

Hermione’s fingers curled lightly into her sleeve. “It feels ancient.”

“So does regret,” Helena said.

Silence fell between them, long and intentional.

Then Helena asked quietly, “When something moves through a home without being challenged… what does that mean?”

Hermione thought of the way the castle had not resisted.
The way the stone had not rejected.
The way the fear felt permitted.

“It means,” she said slowly, “the home believes it still belongs.”

Helena inclined her head once.

“You are listening correctly now.”

And with that, she vanished again, leaving behind no answers—only the certainty that Hermione was circling the truth instead of charging at it.

Ron did not come to dinner that night.

Or the next.

By the end of the week, his seat at the Gryffindor table had become a quiet absence no one commented on directly. Conversations moved around it like water around a stone.

He did not approach Harry again.

He did not approach any of them.

Fear had not made him reckless.

It had made him alone.

In the Headmaster’s office, Albus Dumbledore stood before the Pensieve without activating it.

Four attacks.

No visions.
No lightning scars.
No dramatic revelations.

And Harry Potter was calm, observant and untouched by the narrative that he had tried to shape for him.

The realisation settled coldly:

This would not be solved the old way.

And for the first time in decades, Dumbledore did not know where to stand to see the future clearly.

The fifth attack came at the end of the week.

A first-year.

Not from any of the old Houses’ rivalries.
Not connected to any obvious history.
Found near the library.

Too close to Hermione’s map for coincidence now.

The school moved into near-silence after that.

Professors doubled patrols. Ghosts were asked to report disturbances. The staircases were manually locked into safer rotations.

None of it stopped the feeling that the thing in the walls was simply… waiting for the castle to look away again.

That evening, when they gathered, Neville spoke first.

“It’s getting closer to you.”

Hermione did not deny it.

Draco folded his arms. “Is that by accident?”

“No,” Hermione said quietly.

Harry leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “Then why hasn’t it touched her?”

Hermione met his eyes steadily.

“Because,” she said, “it hasn’t decided I’m an intruder yet.”

Padma’s voice was soft. “And when it does?”

Hermione didn’t answer immediately.

Helena’s words echoed silently in her mind.

Homes do not attack what they still believe belongs.

“It will stop circling,” she said at last. “And choose.”

The five of them sat with that truth—no panic, no false courage.

Just readiness.

And somewhere beneath the castle, deep where no alias had ever been spoken aloud, something ancient completed another slow, patient turn through remembered stone.