Work Text:
By 1985, Albus Dumbledore had seen Cassiopeia Black on one occasion in the past twenty-five years, when she had recently appeared in the Wizengamot to announce her assumption of power over the Black family and her alleged return to life itself. That had been a chaotic occasion full of shouting, not a few curses, and hurled accusations, so that Albus had been occupied very substantially with preventing a riot from breaking out. Afterward he had only been grateful that Cassiopeia had immediately turned representing the Black family to the body back over to her brother’s daughter-in-law, and not bothered appearing in public again. It was less disturbing to the peace.
Now, standing to greet her on her entrance to his office, he somewhat regretted his lack of recent experience. He was reasonably certain this was really the original Cassiopeia Black, as he had been the one forced to verify the matter for the Wizengamot. That did not really make her any more comprehensible to him; nor more predictable in general; and anyone might change a great deal in more than two decades.
She came through the door a ghost or image of herself in 1960 at the time of her alleged death, in high-necked, long-sleeved black robes and a black lace veil pinned to the barely-discernible shape of a crown braid over her head. There was only one layer of gauze covering her face, so that she was not too hard to make out, frowning just slightly about the office before she turned to face him directly.
“Good day,” Albus said carefully and with distaste, “Lady Cassiopeia.” He would not dignify her with the title ‘Lord’ any more than he would Tom, but unfortunately her rank in society meant other courtesies were due anyway – and it would not do to seriously offend her under the circumstances, no matter her atrocities.
The truth was that he had very few cards to play under the circumstances, and none of them would be swiftly effective. A long struggle would be as good as a loss, here.
“Good day, Albus,” said Cassiopeia calmly, “And I hope you will return to calling me Cassiopeia. Certainly there was little standing on courtesy in our last mutual circumstances.”
Albus hadn’t especially wanted to remember being grudgingly and involuntarily acquainted with Cassiopeia Black, budding Master of the Dark Arts and newly prolific murderer, in the context of the very limited social circle of acknowledged homosexuals in magical Britain of the thirties. “Certainly,” he said as affably as he could manage, and gestured her over to a pair of armchairs by the office hearth. “Please sit down – would you prefer tea or coffee? (Lemon drop)?”
“Thank you.” It meant very little that Cassiopeia actually took one as she sat down; she was unlikely to fear simple poisoning. “Whichever you would prefer will be fine. My congratulation on the appointment, by the way, as I didn’t have a chance to say it before,” she said, tipping her head to the greater part of the Headmaster’s office.
She had vanished several years before Albus had been so promoted. “I thank you – of all of my offices, I value that of Headmaster of Hogwarts the most.” He tried to smile as he called upon the kitchens for tea and then sat down.
Tom had always been brilliant, but impatient and driven largely by his fears, and significant gaps in both his understanding and his interest. Albus had never truly feared him, only the damage he might do to innocents and the country itself before he inevitably brought upon himself his own downfall. It was raw power and a cheap sort of cunning for political maneuver that had brought him mastery of Britain’s Dark Arts society--
And, of course, the disappearance of Cassiopeia Black at her family’s hands some years beforehand. The student had never come close to equaling the master.
Cassiopeia was everything Tom was not: patient, thoughtful, and relatively fearless. Certainly she understood that there were worse fates to inflict than death. The only real advantage Albus had was the well-known fact that Cassiopeia’s talents did not lie in direct combat; but with her newly-acquired social rank, they hardly needed to. Directly fighting Cassiopeia would be reputationally suicidal.
“Well, then,” said Cassiopeia, once the tea service had arrived and he had courteously filled her cup. She added milk to her tea and brought it under the veil to sip with gentle, courteous movements, wide gray eyes flickering up to his face.
He thought for a moment she meant to force him to raise their subject, but then she set the cup down and said, “On the subject of Harry Potter. I will plainly admit we have no clear legal claim to him, but then, neither do you. I assume this is why you arranged for him to remain as far from notice of the Wizarding World as possible. Should an actual custodial lawsuit occur, nearly every likely candidate would be terrible for him. It is therefore in our best interests – and the child’s – that we settle this behind closed doors so that keeping him safe does not become a matter of military force against the Ministry’s agents.”
Albus had indeed gone over the list of distant magical relations long ago, before going to Privet Drive; and again after Minerva’s reservations; and now and then again in the meantime, when he thought of the whole affair. He misliked his findings each time: Death Eater sympathizers and actual Death Eaters, habitual murderers of suspected squibs, and only one or two who were simply disreputably poor and would neither fight hard for the honor, nor receive it. Further, because all of the claims were quite bad, owing to the distance of their relationships, it was hard to predict who would actually win and make any plan.
And, of course, Cassiopeia saying it in such terms was another warning, because if the Blacks were willing to escalate to military force to keep Harry Potter in their household, even against a court order, Dumbledore certainly could not win. He might defend against them if it was the other way, but the magic of the Blacks’ strongholds was a matter of misty legends and great awe, fortified by centuries of their ancestors’ will and the shedding of sacrificial blood as well as each generation’s innovations.
Yet. “You cannot think I would agree you were suitable,” said Albus, and trying to sound reasonable, hoping to find that part of Cassiopeia that still tried to be reasonable, “Sirius may be Harry’s godfather, but he also is his parents’ murderer. He helped an attempt to murder him, too.”
“At that, he did not,” said Cassiopeia, astoundingly. “I am not going to try to prove this magically because we both know that I could manufacture any possible evidence I might present. Investigate the matter later yourself; but really what I want you to is consider the story I tell you, and whether it seems more or less likely to you than what you presently have reconstructed.”
When Albus, stupefied out of a response, made no objection, she went on. “Sirius, like his friends, knew that Tom was targeting the Potters, and that a spy placed close to them was leaking information. Lily and James wanted to use him as Secret Keeper, but he knew also that he was an obvious choice, and that ‘willing’ relinquishment of information under the Fidelius can be... a fuzzy conceptual limit, particularly when your enemies include the cousins who raised you from infancy. They agreed to present a double bluff, and break the first Fidelius and recast it, and they chose to trust Peter Pettigrew as the true Secret Keeper.
“Unfortunately, Pettigrew was the spy, and passed the information to Voldemort immediately upon the second Fidelius’s performance. The rest, you know, including that Sirius, once seeing Harry safely with Hagrid, went after Pettigrew, lost in fury and grief, with the intention only of killing him.” Cassiopeia hesitated. “Sirius says that, in order to keep Remus Lupin company during full moons, all of them had become Animagi, and Peter was a rat; he transformed, cutting a finger off, and escaped in the confusion of the duel. I have not been able to verify that, but Sirius is an Animagus. I was able to verify the two Fidelius Charms, certainly.”
“That is a quite incredible tale,” said Albus, and took a mouthful of tea to consider it. There were aspects of it that might be tested. He could interview Remus Lupin. He could ask to see Sirius transform. He also had performed the first Fidelius, and might be able to trace its breaking early. It was possible that Cassiopeia would have planted parts of that evidence, but – Albus thought he could determine if Remus’s memories had been tampered with, and she would not have had access to traces of his own magic the way she might have interfered with the house’s site in Godric’s Hollow.
“So incredible that I deemed presenting it to the Wizengamot to be pointless,” agreed Cassiopeia dryly. “You will want time to investigate that matter, so I will ask you for no immediate judgment. I wanted, also, to present you with two memories, to explain Sirius’s... impulsive... actions. One is what Sirius saw in Privet Drive; the other is Harry last night, in our house. Again, we both know I might have manufactured them myself, falsely. But, as I assume you met Lily Potter’s relatives before giving them custody of an infant, I ask that you consider what treatment you believe they would give her magical son.”
With that, she took two small vials from her robe’s breast pocket, full of the shining substance of thoughts. “If you have no further questions for me, I shall take my leave until you have had some time to think,” she said, and rose from her chair.
Sirius, at this time, was avoiding worrying about Aunt Cassie’s meeting with Dumbledore by finding another, pettier thing to worry about instead. He had chosen the children’s books in Grimmauld Place as a really excellent candidate because if he wanted to sulk quietly, he could sort through them; if he wanted to be distracted, he choose something suitable-ish to read to Harry; and if he wanted to fight with somebody there were several excellent candidates, for example:
“Why are three quarters of the children’s books in this household about killing people?” he said to Bellatrix, when she glanced through the open door of the disused nursery and found him sitting on the floor by the bookshelf. He was sure Bellatrix would take him up on any argument he wanted to have, because she was the other escaped convict, and just as stir crazy as him.
“That’s an exaggeration! It’s half at most, Sirius,” she said, and came through the door to sit next to him.
He had a confusing jolt of feelings over that, gratitude to see her, and familiarity with the pose from the nursery setting, and rage and disgust all at once. Instead of thinking about it, he flipped open the book in his hands. “This technically isn’t about killing people, fine. It’s about the stag chase. But the deer talk.”
“Animals always talk in children’s books,” said Bellatrix. She leaned close over his shoulder. He inhaled the smell of her perfume and hair oil, and had to use Occlumency to stifle his instinctive reaction. “Just because it happens to be about hunting—” She reached into his lap to turn the page. “Oh,” she said. “Hm. Never mind. This is about muggle hunting, isn’t it.”
“You read this to me as a child,” Sirius pointed out.
“Did I? I don’t remember. Stop having hysterics, Sirius,” said Bellatrix, happily, because he had been worried she would simply fold after all. “Put it in the discards pile and get rid of it.”
“What’s the point?” said Sirius, gesturing at the stuffed shelves in front of him, although he did, in fact, drop the “stag” chase book into the discard pile. “We might as well just lock the door and burn everything in here. It’s all – pureblood lunacy.”
“Surely the toys aren’t so bad,” said Bellatrix, now amused.
“There’s a play executioner’s set with a doll that really bleeds and screams.”
“Well, children are meant to practice adult activities—” said Bellatrix, and he jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow. “Oof! Look, I’m sure Andromeda has been collecting normal children’s books for Dora, but she’s six years older than Harry and she’s an advanced reader, whereas he has apparently received no education whatsoever. There’s no reason Andromeda would have been looking at these.”
“Yes, but Draco is the same age,” said Sirius. “Or almost – he’s just turned five, and Harry will in July.”
“Yes, well, were you expecting Narcissa to object to muggle hunting picture books? Because if you were—”
“That,” said Sirius through clenched teeth. “That is my point, actually.”
Bellatrix sighed, but, either encouragingly or frustratingly, didn’t argue for a moment. Wanting something to do, Sirius picked up the next book from the shelf, read the title, and sighed. Discarding it unopened, he tried the next, which appeared at least superficially to be an innocent title about visiting the pet shop, and began leafing through it.
“It isn’t that I don’t see your point, especially with Aunt Cassie’s politics,” said Bellatrix, who generally acted as though any possible change of heart was for pragmatic purposes. “But picking a fight with Narcissa about what she’s allowed to read to her son will do no one any good. Sort them out, get rid of these ones with Aunt Cassie’s permission, and Narcissa’s not likely committed enough to go and replace the whole collection. She’s not trying to indoctrinate him against the family’s politics, not at this age, she’s just picking up what’s there.”
“It alarms me when you give me good advice on these subjects,” said Sirius, gritting his teeth again. Not having found anything awful in the pet shop book, he put it into the much smaller ‘keep’ pile and took another book. “I wonder what I’m missing.”
“I suppose I can tell you to stop being a squeamish idiot if you’d rather shout at me, but it’s not as though I’m trying to indoctrinate Harry Potter into the joys of muggle hunting, either. Bloody stupid thing to do when we’re trying to avoid Albus Dumbledore poking his nose in as it is.”
Sirius turned the page and sighed: this particular book, about building a house, had just diverted into the muggle sacrifice component of the protection spells. He discarded it.
“You’ve been very reasonable about the prophesied child that killed the Dark Lord being here,” he said, looking at the cover of the next one, a richly illustrated water color of a potioneer’s workshop with each vial and bottle on the shelf labeled legibly: snake scales, foxglove, holy, and baby’s bones. No.
Bellatrix let out a huffy sigh. “I told him so,” she said under her breath, and as appendix to this remarkable comment or to try to rush him past it, “The prophecy was probably filled when he met his downfall before, and it’s not as if I’m going to hold a grudge for vengeance against a baby.”
“That’s it, is it?” This one, about a lost unicorn foal, looked mostly normal.
“I was Aunt Cassie’s apprentice first, anyway.” Bellatrix was still close against his shoulder, and he felt her shrug as she said it, like that decided the whole thing.
Sirius gave up, again, figuring out Bellatrix: he’d never done it before and wouldn’t now. He took the unicorn book, and the handful of other books to keep, and rose with them in his arm to bring down to the children’s playroom. “We’d better get rid of those now or Narcissa will just put them back,” he said, glancing at the stack on the floor.
“The elves, more likely, but yes.” Bellatrix shrugged, and flipped a hand at the discard pile casually, which vanished out of sight.
Sirius decided that being paranoid about Bellatrix returning to Voldemort took too much energy to be additionally paranoid about her restoring traumatizing children’s books to the shelves, and turned to go.
Downstairs in the playroom, he found Dora trying to teach Harry about draughts, half-supervised by an exhausted-looking Andromeda. Harry didn’t really seem to be following her, but Dora was still patiently re-explaining the difference between allowed and disallowed moves, so that was probably fine. Draco was at the table with them, but coloring instead of playing.
“Found some more books, Andy,” said Sirius, and pretended not to see the way Andy snapped to alertness and put a hand over her wand at another adult’s voice. “Hi Dora, Harry, Draco.” In Latin, which the children didn’t understand, he said, “Normal ones, this time,” to which Andromeda winced, and nodded.
“Hi Uncle Sirius,” said Dora, making her move. “Okay, Harry, now it’s your turn!”
“Want some help picking, Harry?” said Sirius brightly. He pretended not to see the way Harry took a moment to remember ‘Harry’ was him – as opposed to ‘freak,’ which seemed to be the main way Petunia Dursley had addressed her four year-old orphaned nephew – and shied slightly when Sirius came over to take a seat at the table. Instead, Sirius stooped and cupped his hands to whisper, loudly, “I bet we can beat her together, what do you think?”
Harry giggled and didn’t answer verbally. Sirius made a show of squinting thoughtfully at the board. “Which one should we move next?” he asked Harry, who – thank Merlin – pointed after a slight pause. Sirius made a legal move with Harry’s selected piece.
“No fair,” said Dora, not at all seriously. “You’re ganging up on me.” She glanced at Draco, who had looked up from his picture twice, but not come any closer. “Draco, will you be on my side?”
“No,” said Draco immediately.
Dora sighed and slumped back in her chair. Her short hair shot out from her head and flopped down her back to exaggerate the motion, and faded from its current bright blue to a gradually darkening gray. “My cousins don’t like me,” she said to the ceiling, stifling an obvious smile. “Oh, no! What will I do?”
It was nice to see Dora happier, anyway.
Harry made a slight movement beside Sirius. Sirius glanced at him, slightly concerned: they had already found out that playing pretend could upset Harry, who didn’t seem to have any experience of it, very easily. But he was surprised when Harry whispered, “I like you.”
“Really?” said Dora, bounding back upright in her chair and grinning at him Sirius held his breath. “Do you want to be on my team?”
“...Okay,” said Harry, and got up to shuffle around the table.
“Great! We’ll beat Sirius together,” said Dora, grinning at Sirius, who made a face back at his ten year-old cousin.
“Will you be on my side, Draco?” said Sirius. “It seems I’ve been abandoned.”
Draco seemed to be considering it, but at that moment the door opened again, and Aunt Cassie came in.
This time, Sirius was the one who stiffened, while Dora got up from the game, grinning, and went to hug her, and Draco and Harry watched with varying curiosity. “Hello, Dora,” said Aunt Cassie, Lord of the House, and hugged her great-grandniece unhesitatingly and with no offense shown at Dora’s childish rush.
It was a good thing that Aunt Cassie didn’t emphasize her position, so the children weren’t aware of her power of life and death over everyone in the family. Sirius knew that. It was just that it scared Sirius half to death to watch them not know. Harry and Draco, less so – even the Blacks wouldn’t seriously punish a four- or five-year old – but Dora was starting Hogwarts this year. Dora was old enough to be treated as responsible.
“Hello, everyone,” said Aunt Cassie, glancing about the room after she released Dora. “Andy, for the love of Arthur’s tomb, go lie down before you fall asleep here. Sirius – come here a minute?” she said, and Sirius abandoned the draughts game with a swallow.
“How did it go?” he said carefully, in Latin again, and seating himself by Aunt Cassie on the couch Andy had just abandoned.
“Well,” said Aunt Cassie, expression cool and controlled again, “We’ll have to see. But there’s no bad news yet.”
As it was with Bellatrix; as it was with Aunt Cassie herself. And that would have to be enough.