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Chapter Text

Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix’s jet of red light, laughing at her. They were the only pair still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrivals in the Death Chamber.

"Come on, you can do better than that!" Sirius yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.

The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.

The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.

Harry released Neville, though he was unaware of doing so. He was jumping down the steps again, pulling out his wand, as Dumbledore, too, turned towards the dais.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.

Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his godfather’s wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind, then fell back into place.

Harry heard Bellatrix Lestrange’s triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing – Sirius had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second…

But Sirius did not reappear.

“SIRIUS!” Harry yelled. “SIRIUS!”

He had reached the floor, his breath coming in searing gasps.

Sirius must be just behind the curtain, he, Harry, would pull him back out…

"Harry! There’s nothing you can—" Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Remus reaching for him, but with quidditch-honed reflexes he dove around his former professor and straight through the shimmering arch after his godfather.

Black nothingness greeted him.

For a moment that’s all there was: empty darkness, like he’d leapt headfirst into a wild cave, from a bright mountain ledge straight into the deepest bowels of Earth, a place forever untouched by the sun’s shining light.

But Harry quickly became aware of two other, vastly different sensations.

The first was a terrible squeezing ache, centered over his scar. A massive snake was coiling around his head, thick muscles constricting tighter with each rapid beat of Harry’s heart. It hissed at him; he knew there were words in those sibilant whispers, but the crushing pain made it impossible to listen. He tried to scream, to beg for it to stop, but no sound escaped his throat. There was no air in here to breathe. And he knew this must be Hell, must be his punishment for leading his friends into a trap, for getting his godfather killed. He would spend eternity choking on shadows as this serpent squashed him into nothing.

Then, as suddenly as his torture had begun, it ceased. The pressure which had been building higher and higher exploded, and like a pustule being popped, a malevolent leech burst from Harry’s scar, wailing as it was sucked into oblivion. The pain vanished, and Harry felt clean for the first time in his life.

The second sensation, which had been momentarily overshadowed by the agony in his scar, greeted Harry then with a warm glow tugging gently at his heart. This connection felt like protection and loyalty and love, and Harry knew instinctively that Sirius was on the other side.

He followed it.

Walking here was an odd sensation. He couldn’t see anything, nor could he make out a single sound, his surroundings quieter than the grave as all the whispers receded. At first he seemed to step forward along a path, but as he continued the sensation changed, became less solid. He would say he was floating now, but he couldn’t feel the rest of his body, and he realized with a detached sense of fear that he still was not breathing.

But the pulsing warmth, still drumming in time with his heart, made it impossible to panic.

Light was the first thing to return to him, bathing him in shades of gray. Then sound, indistinguishable whispers that seemed to egg him onward. And then he felt his feet rhythmically colliding with a cobblestone path, his arms swinging by his sides.

The light took on a distinct shape, and Harry realized he was walking towards an arched window. He stopped in front of it, staring out past the fluttering gossamer veil which shielded it and into the muted colors of the real world—a small library or a well-appointed personal study, a room vastly different from the cavernous Death Chamber Harry had been fighting in before he jumped after his godfather.

For half a second Harry thought he was looking at himself, but the face on the other side of the veil wasn’t quite right. The nose was too long, the lips too thin, and the other boy had brown eyes instead of Harry’s bright green. It was his father, he realized with a jolt, appearing much the same as he had in Snape’s pensieve memory.

Of course it was his dad. Because that was Sirius standing in there with him looking similarly youthful and handsome, though neither boy looked nearly as carefree as they had at Hogwarts just after their OWLs.

“You sure about this, Prongs?” Sirius gestured to the simple runic array drawn in what Harry thought might actually be blood on the ground in front of them.

James chuckled, but it lacked humor. “Of course I’m sure.”

He eyed Sirius’s pale face for a moment before he reached over to grasp his friend’s shoulder in a reassuring grip. “I’m not going to let them force you into anything, Padfoot. This,” he pointed at the runes, “will protect you. You can’t betray a shield-brother.”

“But what if—”

“No!” James shook Sirius roughly. “No. This will work. You can trust our research that far, yeah?”

Sirius scrubbed his hands over his face. “He was in my house, James.”

“I know.”

“My house. My mum was bloody ecstatic. And Reg…he stared at him like he was the next coming of Merlin. And I just…What if I hadn’t been able to get away?”

“You escaped,” James swallowed audibly, “And we’re not letting them take you back, okay? I promise, no one’s ever going to force you to be that monster’s fucking slave.”

Sirius clenched his jaw, nodded once firmly, and knelt on one side of the runic circle. James knelt opposite him. They both drew their wands and held them aloft in their left hands, pointing straight up at the ceiling. They grasped each other’s forearms with their right hands, stared at each other for one long beat, then began chanting.

Harry watched as his dad and godfather swore undying loyalty to one another, a shimmering line of gold growing between them, connecting their hearts. Unseen by the two living teens, the line continued, extending out from James’s heart and shooting straight through the invisible veil to wrap around Harry.

He jumped as the pervading warmth in his chest flashed searingly hot before simmering back down into a smoldering ember.

The godparent bond between Harry and Sirius had always been too strong given their limited contact. But this extra vow would explain their deep connection. This, Harry realized, was the exact moment his link to Sirius was formed in the eyes of Fate. (Though how he was certain of this, Harry wasn’t sure.)

As the ritual concluded and Sirius and James began to clamber to their feet, Harry noticed another tie pulling at him, though this one felt like an echo of his own soul. His attention went inwards.

Somewhere out there, his soul was rousing from sleep, eyes fluttering open on a doomed morning. The whispers inside the veil grew louder, more urgent.

He could see the serpent again. And he realized he was still wrapped up in its coils, the walls which surrounded him undulating as the snake slithered in ever-continuing circles.

Harry tilted his head back, staring up and up and up. At the farthest reaches of his sight he could just make out a massive head, the snake’s fangs latched onto its own tail.

Starlit eyes gazed back at him. The jaws dropped open. The tip of its tail fell from its vast maw. The coils heaved, knocked into Harry’s back and shoved him unceremoniously through the veil.

Harry woke with a gasp, staring up at the canvas ceiling of a magical tent. Muggy air filled his lungs, cotton sheets brushed over his skin. He tried to sit up, but exhaustion immobilized him. His eyes fluttered shut, lids too heavy to hold open.

“Helena?” A soft voice called, but he couldn’t respond.

Another voice, this one male, spoke up a second later. “Let her sleep, Bell. Angel’s Bloom is too dangerous for a sixteen-year-old.”

The woman said something in reply, but Harry didn’t hear it. Sleep had already claimed him.

He gagged into the toilet again, stomach roiling and empty.

He…She…She…Fuck, it was she now. He couldn’t be Harry anymore. Harry fell through the Veil. Harry was…

Helena. She was Helena Bellona Gaunt. She was sixteen and she lived in a magical tent with her parents…

(And they’d died. She was an orphan twice over. She’d been sleeping, and they’d died. Just like Sirius. They were gone. Everybody was gone.)

Harry’s stomach rolled. He dry-heaved. Spit clear bile into the toilet. Then laid her head down on the porcelain seat and cried.

Harry’s mind drifted as he flew over the unending canopy of the Amazon Rain Forest. His parents—

Her. Her parents. She was in a girl’s body with a girl’s memories. She liked being a girl—more than she’d ever liked being a boy. Merlin damn it, this shouldn’t be her biggest crisis!

(Except it was easier, wasn’t it, to freak out over his gender fluidity. Even back in the seventies. It was easier than dead parents, and a dead godfather, and a dead future. Than being alone. No Ron. No Hermione. Everything gone…gone…gone!)

But she didn’t have to choose. She was a soul, not a body. She could be both, or neither. Or a girl. Girl felt right. And she didn’t need to feel ashamed of that choice. It was her life. Their life…

Merlin damn it! They weren’t two separate people!

—Her parents had yet to teach her apparition, and they’d failed to outfit her with an emergency portkey. Which given their profession appeared ludicrously stupid in hindsight. But then, it was easy to be wise after the event, and none of them had had any reason to think fucking Angel’s Bloom would fell both her parents.

So she’d been stranded in the middle of the Amazon with nothing but the magical tent she’d grown up in and a beat-up old Cleansweep Seven. Her parents had disappeared beneath the river. Her future was gone with the Veil. But if it was the seventies, then maybe not everything was lost. Remus, James, Lily…Sirius. They were all alive. Alive and happy and she could save them. They could all be happy together…with her.

And perhaps that was a lie she whispered to herself at night. But it was all she had to cling to.

Helena stared at the imposing metal gates guarding the entrance to Hogwarts. She could see the castle in the distance, a great expanse of stone towers nestled against the dark waters of the Black Lake. The rolling green hills of the grounds, dappled over with the purple heather of late summer, ran wild all the way up to the walls of the quidditch pitch, and still further to the looming trees of the Forbidden Forest which surrounded everything.

It was a sight at once both achingly familiar and foreign. A part of her was stunned by the majesty of Hogwarts, enchanted by its beauty as anyone with eyes would be upon first sight. Another part viewed this place as home and appreciated the magical picture without finding it overwhelming.

She sighed and rubbed at her temples in an attempt to relieve her stress headache, not for the first time bemoaning the difficulty inherent in reconciling two entire lifetimes of memories all smooshed together in one brain.

Don’t dwell on it, she told herself firmly, shaking her head. She had two weeks to get acclimated to Hogwarts before any of the other students would arrive. She could handle this.

She stared at the gate a moment longer, forced herself to count down from ten, then raised her hand and knocked.

It took fifteen minutes for Professor McGonagall to make it from her office in the castle all the way out to Helena, and another ten minutes for Helena to verify her identity to the professor’s satisfaction. Finally she was allowed through the gates, the school wards washing over her as she entered, greeting her like an old friend.

Not a blood-based identification then. That was interesting.

“This is your tutoring schedule for the next two weeks.” Professor McGonagall handed Helena a long sheet of parchment outlining her time slots for each of her pre-term classes. She was just as stern and brisk as every one of Helena’s memories of the future painted her, still dressed in dark green tartan too, so it seemed not much about the woman would change over the course of the next twenty years.

That thought should not have made Helena’s eyes prickle with emotion.

“You will note that we will be focussing primarily on charms, transfiguration and potions in the next couple of weeks. If your teachers in those subjects feel it is appropriate, we will allow you to enroll in all of your chosen courses at the start of term.”

“Professor, I know this was a condition for my transfer, but…” Helena fidgeted with the piece of parchment. “Can I ask why it’s necessary? I passed my International Wizarding Standards.”

McGonagall pursed her thin lips. “Frankly, Miss Gaunt, your results were all over the place. Yes you passed transfiguration, charms and potions, but only with an A, and NEWTs classes here at Hogwarts require better than an Acceptable for admission. However, the Headmaster seems to believe your education may have been more unconventional than most homeschooled students, and a closer look at your exam answers did appear to suggest that a lack of focus on the test-specific subject matter rather than a lack of talent was the cause of your grades. And thus the necessity for further assessment.”

Unconventional was probably the best label for Helena’s life (which was a far cry better than the Traumatic label she would give her life as Harry). Her parents were acquirers—Had been acquirers, she reminded herself harshly. They were dead. She couldn’t keep thinking about them like they were simply off somewhere on a job too dangerous to bring her along.

That kind of thing had happened often enough. Acquiring was a dubiously legal profession at best, one which had required her family to travel constantly as they tracked down rare magical objects and plants, harvesting or buying or stealing as the occasion demanded. She’d lived out of a magical tent her entire life, except when her parents deemed it too dangerous for her to remain with them. Then she’d been dropped off with one contact or another and left to wait out their absence for days or weeks at a time.

It was far too easy to pretend that was all this was now: a slightly longer stint in a safe place while she awaited their return. Like her world hadn’t shattered when she’d woken up with another lifetime of memories in her head to the sight of two golden spokes marked Bellona Farnese and Marcus Gaunt lying like broken bodies at the bottom of their family clock, her own lonely spoke pointing straight towards LOST.

“But my other subjects are fine?” She asked, forcing her mind to focus on the present.

It was too bad she hadn’t had her future memories when she sat her exams. As Harry, transfiguration, charms and potions were not her strongest subjects, but he was more formally trained in those classes than she was. She wouldn’t have stared at the examiner blankly when he’d asked her to make a pineapple tap dance if their memories had already been merged.

McGonagall smiled thinly. “Yes, Miss Gaunt, I have no compunction about enrolling you in any of your other chosen subjects. Though I do have to ask, are you sure you want to take seven NEWTs classes?”

Helena shrugged. “If it seems like too much, I can always drop one or two later, right?”

Not that she believed dropping out would be necessary. With the intensive study her parents had forced on her in runes and arithmancy (ward-breaking was oddly high on their priority list), those two classes should be a breeze. And with her future memories, she could probably pass the defense NEWT now. Which only left charms, transfiguration, potions, and care of magical creatures for her to slog through.

(She wouldn’t be touching herbology with a ten foot pole, not after the Angel’s Bloom and her parents and two months flying through the Amazon alone.)

The next two weeks at Hogwarts passed uneventfully. Professor Slughorn seemed largely disappointed in her and her general lack of potioneering skills. Once she informed him that no, she had not ever met any of her distant Gaunt relatives in the United States, descendants of one of the founders of Ilvermorny, he seemed to dismiss her entirely. Professor Flitwick was much more cheerful and encouraging, perhaps because charms had been her second-best subject as Harry and she didn’t have trouble with their lessons, but more likely because the short half-goblin was genuinely a kind and happy person.

On the last day before term, McGonagall told her she would be allowed into all of her chosen classes, though she would need a tutor until her Head of House deemed her caught up, which meant until McGonagall was satisfied. The Sorting Hat had been rather snippy when it sorted her three days after she arrived at Hogwarts.

“I’ve already placed you,” it grumbled after the barest brush over her mind, then in the next second it shouted “GRYFFINDOR!” as loudly as if they were in the Great Hall rather than McGonagall’s office. And that was that, days of worrying the magical object would out her as a time-traveler or reincarnated soul or universe hopper, or whatever it was that had happened to her, resolved within seconds.

So now here she was, sitting alone at the Gryffindor table as she waited for the rest of the student body to arrive for the Welcoming Feast. She could hear them in the distance, the dull roar of hundreds of youthful voices all trying to be heard at once as everyone jumped out of the thestral-drawn carriages and made their way towards the Great Hall.

They entered in waves, one swell of black-clad bodies after another. Helena scanned their faces with bated breath. A shock of white-blond hair headed towards the Slytherin table drew her eye. The hall dimmed. Her hand jumped to her wand. All she could see was Lucius Malfoy’s sneering face, his palm outstretched as he said, “Hand over the prophecy and no one need get hurt.” And Bellatrix’s mad laughter.

“Hi! Helena Gaunt, right?”

Helena blinked, stared at the hand thrust towards her with its bright red nails, slowly reached out to shake it, and glanced up to see who was speaking to her. Her breath caught for an entirely different reason.

“I’m Lily, the Sixth Year Gryffindor prefect. Professor McGonagall said you’d be joining our year.”

“Yeah, it’s—” Helena cleared her throat, swallowed and cleared it again. “It’s nice to meet you.”

When Lily grinned she looked just like all her pictures, all smooth copper hair and bright green eyes and perfect white teeth. But she had a dimple. That hadn’t shown up in any of the photos. And a drop of chocolate was smeared along the collar of her shirt. Ink stains on her fingers, a singe mark on her cuff.

“Oi! Evans! Stop hogging the new girl!”

Helena had been prepared to hold back tears when she met her future parents. She’d readied herself for the way emotion would clog her throat, had practiced smiling blandly in a mirror every night before bed. Somehow she had not anticipated the effervescent joy that exploded in her chest when she heard Sirius’s voice for the first time in this decade. She laughed and the brief flash of long-suffering annoyance faded from Lily’s expression, replaced with another sunny smile.

“Hold your hippogriffs, Black! Merlin forbid you ever wait five seconds for anything!” Lily rolled her eyes then proceeded to introduce the rest of the Sixth Year Gryffindors, naturally saving Sirius for last.

It was sobering for Helena to realize she recognized every single one of them. Mad-Eye Moody had shown her a picture of the original Order of the Phoenix. Dorcas Meadows, a tall, dark-skinned girl with an impressively large afro, was murdered by Voldemort personally. And Marlene McKinnnon, the auburn-haired girl to Helena’s left, was killed when Death Eaters wiped out her entire extended family. And then there was Alice Fawley, Neville’s mother who gave her round face and kind brown eyes to her son, who was tortured into insanity protecting him.

But she couldn’t let herself dwell on all that, not now when she needed to act like a normal person and not a super intense weirdo. So she smiled and shook their hands, only allowing her eyes to linger over James’ face for a second before she wrenched her gaze away. She forced herself not to snap Pettigrew’s pudgy wrist, gratefully accepted Remus’s firm grip around her fingers.

And then it was Sirius’s turn. He was practically vibrating in his chair like an overexcited puppy after being made to wait through all of the other introductions. But he calmed when she reached her hand out to him. He seized it and didn’t let go, forcing her to keep leaning towards him as he spoke.

“Helena?” A roguish grin spread across his lips as he caught and held her eyes with his own. “Definitely a face that could launch a thousand ships.”

A part of her was indignant Sirius had never taught her how to deliver a line that dramatic so smoothly, instead leaving her to flounder around in the romance department, but most of her was enthralled with the mischievous, happy light shining in this teen’s gray eyes, untouched by the shadows of the future. She’d only ever caught glimpses of this open merriment on her godfather’s face, and they were always so fleeting.

“Did you practice that in a mirror?” She asked after a beat of silence, realizing she’d start looking like a nitwit soon if she didn’t respond. “Or do you just come up with those kinds of things spur-of-the-moment?”

Sirius barked a surprised laugh.

James leaned around him, grinning broadly. “Oh definitely the mirror. You ever need to find a guy who spends more time combing his hair than all the girls in Gryffindor combined?” He jabbed his thumb in Sirius’s direction and wiggled his eyebrows.

“Oi!” Sirius turned towards James with an exaggerated scowl, tossing his hair back with a sniff and a raised chin. “I know you’re jealous of my luscious locks, Prongs, but that’s no reason to go defaming my good name to all the pretty new girls in our house,” he said, then turned back to Helena and smirked. “I only spend as much time combing my hair as all the girls in our year combined.”

“Oh, well that’s all right then. For a second there I thought you might be vain or something.”

James guffawed, slapping Sirius on the back. Lily giggled. Sirius’s entire face lit up with delight. And something in Helena clicked into place.

Coming to Hogwarts was the right decision.

Chapter Text

The sky was still dark when Helena stumbled out of bed the next morning. A quick tempus told her it was just before five o’clock, which meant she had a least an hour before any of the other girls would wake up.

Helena sat back on the edge of her bed and scrubbed her hands over her face. She took several deep breaths, but even as her heart rate slowed, the anxiety spiderwebbing through her chest grew more pronounced.

Nightmares were a familiar companion in the future, and these last few months since her parents died had seen the advent of all new horrors painting her dreams dark with terror and death. This morning was actually one of her better mornings of late. At least this time she couldn’t remember what she’d dreamed. For once the images weren’t superimposed on the backs of her eyelids. Just lingering anxiety, and she knew how to handle that.

She walked silently to her trunk and pulled out some workout clothes. She tugged her black hair into a ponytail, laced up her shoes, and slipped out of the dorm.

Nobody patrolled the hallways at this hour. Even the portraits were too deeply asleep to notice the lone student drifting through the empty stone corridors. Troublemakers were night owls after all, not early risers. It would have been nice if she’d ever discovered this fact in the future, but as Harry she fell very firmly in the troublemaker category and had had to rely on the invisibility cloak and the Marauder’s Map to sneak around instead.

Hermione had probably known, she grumbled, then immediately had to suppress the thought. And she’d been doing so well not thinking about all the friends she’d lost. Two whole days without bringing them to mind. It was a bloody record.

She stopped in front of the blank stretch of wall that marked the entrance to the Room of Requirement and closed her eyes, picturing the room they’d used for the DA with as much detail as possible—the high vaulted ceiling, the dark wood floors, the sitting area to the left with its creamy leather furniture and overstuffed shelves of defense texts, the long expanse to the right with its rows of padded dueling platforms and the steel blue dummies which were capable of fighting back as viciously as any Death Eater she’d ever met—then she started pacing.

“I need a place to practice battle magic in secret,” she whispered over and over.

A familiar door appeared when she completed her third circuit. One of the dancing trolls in the tapestry hanging on the wall opposite the entrance to the Room of Requirement waved at her as she opened the door, then went back to trying to perfect a pirouette, its pink tutu fluttering around the tree trunks it called legs.

Helena was tempted to march in and start flinging blasting hexes at the training dummies, but she restrained herself. She needed to be better than a schoolgirl. She needed to treat this like a job. She needed to be more proficient than the professionals.

Which meant learning to spell-chain. It was a skill Hogwarts didn’t touch on until the very end of Seventh Year, a skill aurors spent the majority of their three years in training honing.

The idea was simple enough. Every spell required a certain set of wand motions, even when cast non-verbally. So if one spell (like the blasting hex she still wanted to let loose) ended with an upward jab to the right, the fastest way to get off a second shot was to choose a curse with a starting motion that coincided with the previous spell’s end point.

In practice, the technique was grueling. There were standard spell-chains, which she needed to know if for no other reason than to recognize when an opponent began to use one against her; then she needed to know the standard defensive chains to break her opponent’s rhythm.

She needed to know chains from every starting position: from a dueler’s ready stance, coming up from a dive, twisting to defend her back, and so on and so forth. And then after all of that, she needed to get creative, invent her own personalized chains. She needed to be so good she could anticipate possibilities when her opponent began a chain. She needed to be so good she could improvise pieces of a chain on the fly.

It was an exhausting prospect. One thousand perfect repetitions for something to become muscle memory, three thousand for it to become instinct. Helena had calculated how long it would take her to learn a single fifteen-second chain. If she blocked off three hours for practice every single day, she could feasibly master one a week.

Just one.

The thought made her want to cry. Or throw up.

Instead she flipped open the beginners treatise on spell-chaining she’d found her very first day back at Hogwarts and picked out a third chain to master. Something for coming out of a dive, she decided. She seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time ducking and rolling during all of her past battles.

When Helena reentered her dorm at half past seven, none of the other girls were ready to head down for breakfast.

Alice and Marlene’s beds were empty. Helena could hear the faint sound of surprisingly pitch perfect singing over the pitter-patter of falling water coming from the bathroom, so she assumed both girls were showering.

Dorcas was propped up in her bed holding a book with a risqué picture of a sharply muscled man embracing a half-naked woman on the cover. She grinned when she looked up and caught Helena staring at it, then went back to reading.

Lily looked much less lively. She was sitting up in her bed, slouched over so her elbows rested on her knees, her head resting in her hands, eyes at half-mast. Her copper hair was crunched up in a wild mane around her face. A red pillow crease ran all the way from her forehead to her jaw. She squinted over at Helena with a deeply suspicious look, taking in Helena’s sweat-soaked workout clothes and flushed face.

“Merlin, you’re one of those horribly chipper morning people, aren’t you?”

Helena paused on her way to her trunk. “Er…”

Dorcas snickered and whispered sotto voce, “Don’t try to talk to Lily before she’s had her coffee.”

Lily groaned and flopped back on her bed. “God did not intend for humans to wake up this early!”

“I don’t know, the sun’s been up for over an hour.” Helena smirked, a tiny thrill rolling up her spine. These were the kinds of details no one had ever thought to share after Lily was gone.

Lily didn’t respond verbally, instead flinging her arm over her eyes and flapping her hand in Helena’s general direction.

Chuckling, Helena gathered up her toiletries, feeling very chipper indeed.

The girls trooped into the Great Hall half an hour later. Lily made a beeline for the carafe of steaming coffee at the far end of the table, plopping down next to James without seeming to realize who she was sitting next to.

His expression was almost comically delighted at this turn of events, eyes wide behind his glasses, lips slightly parted in astonishment. He immediately slouched sideways, elbow on the table propping up his head, and ran his other hand through his dark hair, messing it up even further.

“Morning, Evans!” He chirped brightly.

Lily hummed with her eyes closed, cradling her mug of coffee in both hands as she breathed in the rich aroma like it was the nectar of the gods.

The non-committal response was all the encouragement James needed, apparently, because in the next second he was off, rambling at Lily in a stream of consciousness about whatever random thoughts popped into his head. He was midway through a speech outlining the merits of initiating a prank war with the Slytherins when she cut him off.

“Potter,” she huffed, not taking her eyes off her mug, “I swear to Merlin if you don’t shut up and let me drink my coffee in peace…”

“I will if you’ll go out with me, Evans!” He singsonged, shamelessly seizing on the opening.

Lily clenched her eyes shut for a second, like she was praying for restraint, then looked over at where Helena was seated watching the byplay with fascination.

“Switch places with me, Helena? Please,” Lily asked even as she stood up and started moving towards Helena’s seat.

Helena shrugged and hopped up, not in the least opposed to chatting with James. “I’ve been reliably informed that morning people were summoned from Hell by dark wizards,” she told him as soon as she sat down.

He smirked and raised his brows, taking in her cheerful countenance. “What does that make you then?”

“The devil, probably,” Helena grinned. “I’ve been up since five.”

James laughed and pointed his fork at her. “See now when you say things like that, you make the summoning theory make a scary amount of sense.”

“Oh come off it, Prongs,” Sirius scoffed. “If she’s the devil, you’re satan’s twin, what with how early you like to schedule practices.”

James opened his mouth to retort, then closed it. He looked at her contemplatively. “Huh. Say, you any good at quidditch, Gaunt?”

Helena stared at James, conflict clouding her mind. On the one hand, flying with him was a long-held dream, the kind of fantasy that could and had produced patronuses. On the other hand, there was the desperate, clawing need to train constricting her lungs tighter and tighter with each passing day.

Her godfather died because she wasn’t good enough, because she was unprepared and a fool.

And her parents. In another world, one in which she didn’t merge with her future counterpart, she probably died that day with them. But perhaps there was another world out there where she was better prepared, where she pulled them back to safety before the magic-impervious vines of the Angel’s Bloom could drag them into the murky depths of the Amazon River.

She couldn’t fail James and Lily and their future children who were as good as her siblings. She couldn’t fail Sirius, who deserved so much better than life had given him. And Remus, who deserved a progressive world, one where he had friends fighting for his rights as a human being. And Alice, who should never know the pain that drove her to insanity. And everyone else whose lives were wrecked by Voldemort and his followers.

Knowing what was out there the way she did, it would be beyond selfish to devote time to a game.

“Pretty good,” she admitted, not quite able to curb the need to boast to her future father. “But I don’t think I’ll have time to join the team.”

James’s eager expression dropped.

“But maybe I could come out and play a couple seeker matches to help out whoever becomes your seeker, if you want,” she was halfway through offering before she even registered the decision to speak.

“Oh, you’re going to regret volunteering for that job,” Remus piped up, smiling wryly as he scooped a third serving of eggs onto his plate.

Sirius threw his arm around Remus’s shoulders and leaned against him conspiratorially. “Hush, Moony. You know it’s dangerous to get between a man and his quidditch.”

“Oi! You’re on the team too, Padfoot!”

“To my everlasting shame,” Sirius sighed, placing his hand dramatically over his heart.

“Shocking lack of team spirit, that,” James tutted. “Wouldn’t you say, Moony?”

“Yes, very shocking,” Remus agreed drolly.

Pettigrew nodded along in enthusiastic support, much to Helena’s disgust.

“You lose a bet then?” She asked Sirius. “Or did he bribe you to try out?”

“Bet,” Sirius nonchalantly admitted, leaning back on the bench with his arms crossed as he stared up at the enchanted ceiling.

James scoffed. “I bet him he couldn’t make the team. In our third year. He’s still on the team.”

“In exchange for what?” Helena laughed.

“Nothing,” James smirked. “Don’t let him fool you. Sirius secretly adores quidditch. He just won’t admit it.”

“Lies! I will have you know—”

“Ahem.” A throat clearing cut Sirius off, and they all looked up to see Professor McGonagall peering over her spectacles at them. “Gentlemen, Miss Gaunt, your schedules.”

The boys eagerly grabbed for their schedules while Helena sat back, sedately waiting for McGonagall to pass hers over. The professor would be talking to her potential tutors later today, so she knew her schedule wasn’t quite as final as everyone else’s. She still needed to note down times slots to meet with them.

James snatched Sirius’s timetable out of his hands before the other boy even had a chance to look at it, quickly comparing their schedules before declaring with a wide grin that they would be sharing every class, as if they hadn’t already known they’d picked all the same subjects.

“What about you, Moony?” Sirius asked, tugging on Remus’s arms so he could look over the werewolf’s shoulder. He whistled, long and low. “Damn, your Wednesdays and Thursdays are going to be awful. And are you really taking history? Why would you do that to yourself?”

“History’s important,” Remus muttered, snatching his timetable back.

“I don’t care how bad your schedule is, Moony,” James piped up as he leaned over to catch a glimpse of Helena’s timetable. “It can’t be as bad as Gaunt’s here. Merlin! Are you actually taking seven NEWTs?”

Helena knew her merged memories gave her an unfair advantage, but that didn’t stop the rush of pleasure she felt at James’s impressed tone.

“Wow! Seven subjects? That’s amazing! I’m only taking four.”

And the pleasant feeling was gone. Helena sincerely hoped Pettigrew would never again look at her with that awed expression in his small brown eyes again.

Sirius glanced at Pettigrew’s timetable and snorted derisively. “Really, Wormtail? You’re taking divination?”

It wasn’t a kind reaction, but even as Pettigrew blushed and shrank down in his seat, Helena found she didn’t have much sympathy for the rat, not even this still-innocent version.

“Well, looks like the three of us have potions first thing today,” she said more to break the awkward silence than anything. She looked questioningly at Remus to see if he would also be joining them and was mildly surprised when he shook his head no.

A quick tempus showed they only had twenty minutes before the start of class, so she clambered to her feet and asked if any of them would mind showing her the way to the potions lab from Gryffindor Tower.

Sirius immediately volunteered, which for some reason made James choke on his sip of tea as he burst out laughing.

Helena spared him one concerned look before shaking her head and walking out of the Great Hall with Sirius.

Chapter Text

Helena was not sure how, out of all the potential tutors in her year, she had managed to land James, Lily, and Sirius. She would have expected Remus before his two more troublesome friends, but it seemed that while the prefect outperformed them in most other classes, in the ones she actually needed help, James and Sirius were superior.

Not that Helena was complaining. She and Lily had partnered up in potions, which would make their tutoring sessions efficient if nothing else. And learning transfiguration from James was a dream nearly on par with her fantasies of flying with him—she only hoped she could somehow convince him to teach her the animagus transformation. And then there was Sirius, who she’d missed most of all, who was so effortlessly brilliant at charms it was enviable.

James jokingly attributed this skill to the plethora of grooming charms Sirius used every morning, which Sirius didn’t even try to deny. Though he did roll his eyes when James called him a pampered show dog. (Helena had a hard time containing her mirth at that one.)

Professor McGonagall met with her after classes ended for the day to let her know all three teens had agreed to tutor her, then Helena had the rest of the afternoon free. She knew she should probably work on knocking out her potions and defense against the dark arts assignments to keep it all from piling up. Instead she exited McGonagall’s office and turned straight for the shortcut leading to the seventh floor corridor that housed the Room of Requirement.

Because a solid three more hours of spell-chaining practice was just what the healer ordered. If her anxiety levels held steady, Helena was going to end up in the best shape of both her lives. Honestly. Five hours in one day was verging on insane. But she couldn’t help herself.

She was feeling a titch lightheaded when she stumbled into the Gryffindor common room later that evening. She collapsed on one of the couches and leaned her head back against the cushions, closing her eyes. Sound drifted to her, muffled and distant, like a river of molasses was blocking her ears. Her heart rate slowed, a steady thump thump thump connecting her floating mind to her fingertips, her toes, the backs of her knees, her chest beating through each long inhale and slow exhale.

She wondered if this was what being high felt like: blissful relaxation, all her anxieties locked tight behind a wall of euphoria.

Gradually the feeling faded, though it did not completely disappear, and she began to pay attention to the other occupants of the common room. Which was about when James sauntered over to pin his quidditch tryouts announcement on the notice board and realized that the first Hogsmeade weekend was only three weeks away.

He spun around, eyes searching until they landed, almost inevitably, on Lily, who was sitting at the booth table tucked up under one of the tower’s many stained glass windows.

It was like watching a speeding train hurtling straight towards a broken bridge.

“Evans! Hey, Evans!” He shouted instead of walking across the room to speak to Lily. Most of the other students paused whatever they were doing to observe him.

Lily stiffened, then very slowly raised her head. “What, Potter?” She hissed.

Despite knowing Lily still greatly disliked James at this point, that during one of her last interactions with James the previous year she’d called him an arrogant, bullying toerag, it still sent an unpleasant jolt through Helena to hear Lily say Potter so coldly.

James hesitated for a fraction of a second, just long enough for Helena to see him swallow thickly, then he seemed to rally, puffing out his chest and running his hand through his messy hair.

“Oh don’t be like that, Evans. I know you’re busy, but you can add me to your to-do list, can’t you?”

Helena sucked in a sharp breath, barely holding back the loud snort that wanted to force its way out. Because, really? That was the line he went with? It was a bloody miracle Harry was ever conceived.

Lily clearly agreed. She rolled her eyes and tried to turn her attention back to her essay. “Was there something you actually wanted, Potter? Something that wouldn’t make me physically ill to even think about?”

“Always so dramatic,” James tsked.

Lily’s eye twitched.

“I was just going to ask if you knew that the first Hogsmeade weekend is coming up soon,” he said quickly.

“I’m the one who put that notice up on the board.”

“Great! So you’re probably trying to figure out who you should go with. Wonderful company always makes things—”

“No, I won’t go with you.”

The collective eyes of the common room swung back to look at James.

“You haven’t even given me a chance to ask yet!” He exclaimed.

“I didn’t need to.”

From there the conversation devolved into something better suited to a pair of pre-schoolers, the rest of the Gryffindors watching like it was a particularly riveting pingpong match. Helena even spotted one boy accepting bets for how long the two could go back and forth.

“Get used to it,” Sirius said as he plopped down next to her, spreading his arms out along the back of the couch and surveying the common room like a king overlooking his empire. He nodded at James and Lily. “This happens at least once a week.”

“What? James gets shot down?”

Sirius let loose a great barking laugh. “I was going to say Prongs asks her out at least once a week, but yeah, I guess you could phrase it that way too.”

Helena grinned and took a moment look him over, her smile spreading wider at seeing the blatantly muggle outfit Sirius sported now that classes had concluded for the day. Jeans, sneakers, a Led Zeppelin shirt featuring a naked angel leaping exultantly above a rainbow sunset, and a black leather jacket that looked soft as butter.

“You ever go to a concert?” She asked, pointing at his shirt.

Sirius glanced down like he needed to double-check what he was wearing, then his entire face lit up. “James’s dad took both of us to the concert in Rotterdam over winter break last year.”

“Well now I’m jealous,” she said.

“You should be,” he smiled confidently, leaning towards her. “We were up on the very first row, close enough to feel the base.” He thumped his chest to emphasize how strong the vibrations had been. “And at the end, Bonham tossed his drumsticks out to the crowd…”

Sirius smirked.

“Let me guess, you caught one?”

“Yep,” he preened, absurdly proud.

Helena laughed. Usually Sirius’s behavior was every inch the intelligent canine his animagus form embodied, but right now he resembled nothing so much as a smug cat purring with satisfaction. “How in the world did you get that close?”

“Well,” he said slowly, gray eyes sparkling, “Mr. Potter had to confund a bunch of the muggles to let us slip through the crowd, and then, once we got up near the front, he accioed some joints to—ah, bribe—a group of men to let us in front of them.”

“Weed? Are you serious?” Helena squeaked, disbelieving.

“Since I was born,” he quipped.

She shoved him back an inch. “That’s a terrible joke!”

“Why’re you laughing then?”

Helena rolled her sage green eyes, but she was grinning too widely for anyone to ever believe she was truly exasperated. “You can’t actually expect me to believe Mr. Potter let you and James smoke.”

Sirius raised his brows suggestively before shaking his head. “Nah, you’re right. Ole Fleamont’s way too responsible for that. Didn’t stop him from using drugs as a bribe to get his way though.”

Helena eyed him shrewdly for a second, then said, “Let me guess, Mr. Potter’s a bigger Led Zeppelin fan than both you and James combined, isn’t he?”

“Shhhh, it’s a secret,” Sirius winked. “Strictly speaking, we were ordered not to tell anyone. Wanted to pretend he was the long-suffering father indulging his son, didn’t he? But s’long as this never gets back to Mrs. Potter…”

“What’s this about my mum?” James interrupted them, sagging into the wingback chair beside their couch. The cushions were so thick he sank down several inches, cocooned by the piles of red fluff.

“I see someone’s finally finished flirting with his pretty green-eyed girl,” Sirius drawled lazily.

James startled, then dismissed Sirius’s words with an aggravated sigh. “She just likes playing hard to get,” he said, trying and failing to look unconcerned.

As if James’s approach was some type of signal—or perhaps a magnet would be more accurate—Remus and Pettigrew drifted over, both slumping down on the oversized crimson ottoman in front of the couch. For all that they were now present though, neither boy tried to chime in to the ongoing conversation—Remus probably more because he looked as if he would fall asleep sitting up any second now rather than because he lacked an opinion.

Helena, however, figured she should try to help James out. Lack of dating experience aside (in either life), she was in the unique position of having lived her life both entirely as a boy and entirely as a girl, and that had to count for something.

“Maybe you could try not asking her out next time,” she suggested.

James stared at her, nonplussed. “Huh?”

Sirius and Pettigrew were both looking at her intently, and even Remus had perked up at her unexpected contribution.

Helena shifted uncomfortably, her knee knocking gently against Sirius’s. Her workout clothes were as muggle as Sirius’s outfit, the white shorts leaving her legs completely bare. Even through the fabric of his jeans, Sirius radiated heat. She jerked away, pressing her legs tightly together to keep from fidgeting.

“I’m just saying, you want her to like you, right?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then do something nice for her,” she stated simply. “And don’t ask for anything in return.”

James settled back, the burgeoning offense wiped clean from his face, replaced with a kind of deep contemplation more suited to a philosopher contemplating the complexity of life.

“Did Lily say something to you? In your dorm or when all of you went off to the bathroom, or—”

“No,” Helena scoffed, “It’s just a general tip about most girls: like the attention, don’t like it when you’re too pushy.”

“Huh,” Sirius muttered. She didn’t know what he had to look so pensive about, though. As far as she was aware, he’d never had any trouble with the ladies.

James leaned forward to rest his arms on his knees, recapturing her attention. “What do you mean, too pushy?”

“You asked Lily out twice in one day,” Helena deadpanned.

“Twice the opportunity for her to say yes. What’s the saying? You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take?”

“So in your scenario, she’s the keeper, and you don’t want her to catch your balls?”

One beat of dead silence. Two. Then James flushed beet red, from the tips of his ears straight down his neck. Sirius choked and burst out laughing at the same time, wheezing as he tried to draw in air. Remus’s eyes widened almost comically. Pettigrew squeaked and fell clean off the ottoman.

Helena slapped her hand over her mouth. He wasn’t her father, not really, she immediately tried to reassure herself.

It did not work.

Merlin! She couldn’t believe she’d just cracked that joke at James, of all people. And about Lily.

“That—That wasn’t what I—”

“Oh no, you can’t take it back now, Helena!” Sirius crowed. “Merlin, Prongs, your face!”

James scowled, but it was only a moment before his disgruntled expression cracked. His lips twitched, spread wider, and then he was chuckling right along with Sirius. “Mind in the broom cupboard much, Helena?”

“More like down deep in the dungeons,” Sirius corrected James gleefully. “With the snakes.”

And oh Merlin, they were still going.

Remus snickered, shaking his head, and reached into his pocket to pull out a bar of chocolate. Breaking off a piece and holding it out to Helena, he said, “Here, it’ll help with the shock.”

“Shock?”

“Well it seemed rude to call being forced to deal with these two traumatic. At least to their faces,” he said, pointing at the still laughing pair of James and Sirius, who were now trying to one-up each other for best double entendre.

Helena accepted the chocolate. The familiar dark flavor melted in her mouth, a burst of sweetness and then the lingering rich aftertaste on the back of her tongue. Just like McGonagall’s fashion choices, some things even twenty years couldn’t change.

Lupin always had a stash of this same exact brand handy during their patronus lessons. It took Ron months to discover that particular habit of their professor, for which Helena had suffered through no end of complaints about all the missed opportunities to gorge on sweets. Then, of course, Ron had made a point of stopping by during every one of Lupin’s office hours so he could snag a few bars. He’d split them with her while they stayed up late into the night talking about quidditch, their classmates, the latest mystery, their hopes and fears.

Sometimes Helena’s heart ached with so much loss it was hard to breath.

She looked at this younger Remus with his smiling hazel eyes, his face not yet scarred by his curse, and wished for one desperate second that she was sitting before the thirty-five year old man who had lost his entire pack, at least for a time.

Guilt washed over her in the next second. Missing Ron and Hermione and everyone else was fine, but the universe had granted her a chance to change the future, to help create a peaceful world for everyone she loved. And maybe it was arrogant to think she could make that big of a difference, but that prophecy orb had had her name on it, and whatever it actually said, that had to mean something.

“Sorry,” she grimaced at Remus, aware she’d been silent too long, “A friend of my dad’s used to give me that same kind of chocolate.”

Remus looked at her searchingly but thankfully chose not to comment.

James turned back to her then, his competition with Sirius concluded at some unspoken cue, and with no clear winner. “So, Gaunt—”

“Helena, please. I’ve always thought my last name sounds a bit morbid.”

“Ha! Alright, sure, Helena it is. Did you have any questions about the transfiguration reading for class tomorrow?”

“Oh, er,” she bit her lip, then admitted, “I haven’t actually started it yet.” She hadn’t started any of her written assignments either, for that matter. She didn’t know how she was going to have time to complete those and her pre-class reading. But she knew she needed to find a way to fit it all in. Her work was hardly going to get lighter moving forward, after all.

“No worries, I can save you the trouble!”

“Here we go,” Sirius muttered under his breath.

James tossed a helium jinx at him in retaliation, snickered when Sirius’s next attempt to speak came out high and squeaky, then offered to summarize the reading for Helena.

As he launched into a lecture about the history of ground transfiguration and the theory behind large-scale flooring alterations, her mind turned predictably towards spell-chaining. She’d once sat with Mad-Eye Moody for over an hour running through hypothetical scenarios. And if there was one thing the scarred ex-auror had harped on as much as Constant Vigilance!, it was to take advantage of one’s environment during a fight.

James demonstrated the wand motion, a single large swipe from left to right, the same basic motion utilized by the vast majority of cutting hexes. She pictured it, her enemy dodging or wasting time throwing up a useless shield before the very ground shifted beneath their feet.

Be creative, her book on spell-chaining had advised. Look for opportunities to disguise your intentions. Make your opponent misread your chain, and you can grab the split-second advantage you need to win.

And she had to win.

Chapter Text

The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this year was not as incompetent as Dolores Umbridge, but it was close.

“I’m sorry Professor,” James said with such an innocent look in his eye that even the simpleton before them should’ve been able to guess he was being mocked. “But I’m a bit confused. What should I do if I ever come face-to-face with a werewolf?”

“Yeah,” Sirius piped up right on his tail. “I dunno if I’ll be brave enough to look a real werewolf in the eye and try’n talk it down, sir. Do you have any other suggestions?”

“I don’t know, Padfoot, you’ve always struck me as the type mad enough to try and wrestle a werewolf into submission,” Remus murmured with a wry twist to his lips.

Helena choked and slapped a hand over her mouth to cover up her helpless giggles. She wondered if future Lupin ever read Gilderoy Lockhart’s book, Wanderings with Werewolves, wherein the fraud claimed to have done just that. Ninja style, of course—couldn’t insinuate some ferocious beast might have gotten close enough to scratch off his award-winning smile.

Professor Diddle smiled dopily, like Lockhart post-obliviation but less shiny. His eyes roved over the class without settling on a single face, almost as if he was looking through them. “No, no, no…No. Negotiation is step three. First you shield. Second, you send up sparks to alert the authorities you need help. Then you can try appealing to the human within.”

It wasn’t the worst advice ever, but considering most shields they learned at Hogwarts couldn’t withstand more than two or three hits from a werewolf thanks to the magical resistance the beings gained during the full moon, Diddle’s suggestion would be pretty close to worthless in reality.

“Now!” Diddle clapped cheerfully, apparently liked the beat and clapped it out again more slowly, a deeply thoughtful expression taking over his face. He was silent long enough for it to grow awkward, the students beginning to exchange befuddled glances, then he came back to himself, blinking rapidly. “Pair off and go practice your shields.”

He wandered back to his desk, softly clapping and bobbing his head. No one tried to tell him that he had not actually bothered to teach them a shield. Only a week into the new school year, and everyone already knew it would be pointless.

The Slytherins on the other half of the room fell into easy pairs, as did the Gryffindor girls. James and Remus partnered up, James shoving Sirius towards Pettigrew with a subtly triumphant glint in his eyes, which gave Helena the impression they must trade off who had to practice with the rat each class. And then they all paused, realizing for the first time that their numbers were no longer even.

Lily and Alice exchanged a glance, and Lily opened her mouth to offer Helena a place with them, but Sirius beat her to it.

“So, Helena, what’s the most advanced shield you can cast?” Sirius asked as they lined up across from one another, his voice dripping challenge.

Never one to back down, even when downplaying her talent might have been advisable, she tilted her chin up in her best impression of Draco Malfoy, and drawled, “I’ve been working on ferro clypeus. You ever heard of it?”

She was sure he had. More conjuration than anything, ferro clypeus was the primary physical shield employed by aurors. It created a wall of solid steel, which aside from dodging was one of the only ways to defend against the unforgivables, and unlike other physical shields, it did not require much power to cast, just a heap ton of technical skill and concentration.

Sirius whistled, low and appreciative, his eyes burning with interest. “And here I was worried this class was going to be boring,” he said, nudging Pettigrew teasingly.

Sirius wasn’t looking at him, so he didn’t see the dark anger that flashed through Pettigrew’s eyes at the casual ribbing. But Helena did, and it stirred every one of her protective instincts. The vicious dragon coiled around her heart lifted its head and peered at Wormtail with predatory intent.

You can’t have him, it hissed. He’s MINE.

Pettigrew blanched and dropped his gaze to the floor. Helena turned her attention back to Sirius.

He’d clearly picked up on the danger she’d radiated for that one fleeting second, but he didn’t appear bothered by it. If anything, he looked even more intrigued.

“I can teach it to you, if you want,” she said.

“Well if you insist,” Sirius grinned. Pettigrew stood timidly at his side, not protesting even though it looked like he wanted to.

It didn’t take long for Sirius to pick up on the spell. He couldn’t yet perform it with any speed, and the metal wall was too thin to provide reliable protection, but for thirty minutes of practice, he was almost startlingly proficient.

“Step forward when you cast,” she instructed, eying his stance critically as she so often had when coaching members of the DA. “You want to augment the power of your spell with movement from your entire body.”

Sirius nodded and squared off again, but snickering from a group of Slytherin boys standing twenty feet behind him drew Helena’s attention away from his next attempt.

She recognized Snape instantly, with his long hooked nose and greasy black hair. He was shaking his head, a familiar sour frown marring his hawkish face. Another boy, this one short and stocky with straight brown hair and icy blue eyes, said something that drew raucous laughter from the rest of the group and an eye roll from Snape.

The boy smirked and turned to stare at Lily. He flicked his wand, and a silvery spell shot across the room.

Helena acted on instinct. She’d practiced this ten thousand times over. She didn’t have to think. She threw a powerful protego over Lily and Alice, flowed smoothly into a disarming charm, then straight down into a stunner. The boy was flat on his back, his wand tossed high in the air by the time his vanishing hex impacted her shield.

Everyone stilled and turned to stare at her. Helena couldn’t bring herself to care about the attention, not after she realized what that disgusting boy had intended. “A vanishing hex?” She snarled. “What kind of sick joke is that?”

That woke the other Gryffindors up. They turned from looking at her to scowl at the boy Snape had just revived.

“You did what, Mulciber?” James growled threateningly, the muscle in his jaw jumping. “You slimy pervert.”

“Oh come on, Potter,” another one of the boys spoke up. He was tall and thickset, with dark, curly hair swept back off a sharp, cruel face. There was something familiar about him, in the lines of his nose and jaw, the thinness of his lips, but it was distorted, like an image seen in a funhouse mirror. “It was a lark. You shouldn’t get yourself worked up over one little mudblood’s honor.”

Helena had heard Draco say things like that before, but never so casually, and never with such little provocation, not even during his stint with the Inquisitorial Squad. And maybe the Voldemort supporters of the future would’ve become more bold once the conflict became less of a shadow war, but Helena wasn’t used to such brazen prejudice.

The others, however, were entirely unsurprised. Angry, but in no way taken aback. Lily’s expression tightened, but she didn’t otherwise react. The other girls glared, fingering their wands. Pettigrew shrank back. James stepped forward aggressively, Sirius right on his heels. Remus reached automatically to place a restraining hand on James’s shoulder.

“No, no, no…No!” Professor Diddle bustled over, having finally taken note of the standoff taking place in the middle of his classroom. He clapped, a more assertive beat than the one that had occupied his attention at the beginning of the period. He scrunched his face up, dissatisfied with the rhythm, tried a different pattern and nodded to himself with a bright smile.

“We are not equipped for practice duels today. Werewolves! That’s what we’re talking about,” he nodded firmly, then waved for the tall, thickset boy to face Helena. “So, Mr. Lestrange, Miss Gaunt here is an aggressive werewolf ready to rip you limb from limb—”

No one, Helena thought, should look that cheerful when talking about dismemberment. She was disturbed to note that Lestrange—Rodolphus if she was remembering the infamous brothers’ ages right—appeared to share her opinion, though if she had to guess, she would say his disgust was more for the professor’s cheer than the idea of ripping someone apart.

“—Negotiate!” Diddle gestured towards Helena with both arms spread out like a presenter on Wheel of Fortune.

Lestrange stared at Professor Diddle for one incredulous second, then turned to sneer at Helena.

“I’m not sure it’s possible for her kind to understand logic, Professor, but I can give it a try. So, werewolf,” he said, much the same way he’d said mudblood, “the Ministry, in all its wisdom, lays a hefty fine on anyone who kills a werewolf except in self-defense, so I’m going to save myself some galleons and try to negotiate with you to save your miserable life. Though if you were my relative, I’d have saved you the shame of living like this the moment you were bitten—”

“Funny,” Helena drawled, “if you were my brother, I’d have let you.”

Lestrange bristled but showed more restraint than Helena had expected when he didn’t otherwise react.

Alice, standing to Helena’s right, giggled behind her hand, which was a much better response than the slight tightening around Lestrange’s eyes.

Yes, laugh at him, Helena thought viciously, I won’t ever let him steal you away from Neville. Not this time.

“As fortune has it,” Lestrange snapped, “I don’t have any slavering beasts in my family tree. If you knew what was good for you, you’d save me the trouble of showing you mercy, and tuck your tail between your legs and slink away like the pathetic creature you really are.”

Well that wasn’t subtle at all. Also pretty shoddy recruitment for the purebloods, who had no way of knowing that she only barely qualified as one of them.

“Strangely enough,” Helena said with a strained smile, “the human within isn’t feeling much less murderous than the werewolf at the moment.”

Lestrange smirked meanly. “Dumb animals. Actions are the only language they understand.”

“You know, it’s odd, the more you talk the more enthusiastically the human within waves this giant ‘Werewolves for the Win’ banner…and yep,” Helena rolled her eyes back, pretending she was trying to peer into her own mind, “now she’s started singing a roaring rendition of Killer Queen. I don’t know what to tell you,” she smirked right back, “It seems she finds you less charming than a werewolf.”

Lestrange flushed such a dark shade of purple even Uncle Vernon would have been proud. His fingers squeezed tight on the hilt of his wand, his arm twitched back like he was barely stopping himself from cursing her.

“You little bitch,” he snarled, three steps in front of the other Slytherins.

“I suppose a werewolf is a type of dog,” Helena mused, faking indifference at the future madman’s show of aggression. “But I don’t think your word choice is the best approach if you want my inner human to resist the unbearable urge to maul you.”

“He does have a very maul-able face,” Sirius said, stepping up next to her with a cheeky grin. “Wouldn’t you say so, Moony?”

“Very maul-able,” Remus nodded sagely. “If I were a werewolf, it would definitely be the kind of face I’d want to scratch.”

Helena didn’t know how he could say that with such a straight face. None of the other marauders managed so well, all three of them cracking up at a joke no one other than Helena even caught, and she was having trouble holding back her own laughter, which only seemed to further incite Lestrange.

He lifted his arm as if to attack, but before he could act on the temptation, Professor Diddle once again saved the day, though whether this was intentional was anyone’s guess, seeing as he was currently organizing packets of sugar quills by color on his desk.

“No, no, no…no,” he said without looking away from his candy. “This is a one-on-one negotiation, kids!”

He sighed, moved the blue quills an inch to the right. “But we are out of time. So! Practice for next class. Good opening salvos are in your book…somewhere. Good day!”

And then he ambled to the classroom door and held it open for them with an absent wave of his hand.

The Slytherins filed out first, glaring over their shoulders as they went. The Gryffindors, by unspoken agreement, waited a solid minute before following them out the door.

“Well damn, Helena,” Dorcas Meadows gave an impressed whistle, “Werewolves for the win, hmmm?”

“Only every full moon…and during arm wrestling competitions…and maybe weight lifting battles,” Helena said, ticking off areas where werewolves would be superior on her fingers.

“Oh yes, lots of…animal strength, yeah?” Dorcas leered, wiggling her eyebrows.

Alice giggled. “Straight off the pages of one of your romance novels, right Dor?”

Dorcas laughed. “No, but maybe I should write one. Could title it On the Prowl or Howling at the Moon or something equally racy.”

“Ew,” Lily mock groaned. “No, if you get rich and famous writing lewd werewolf romance novels, I might have to disown you as a friend.”

“I don’t know, at least she’d be famous,” Marlene McKinnon noted with a sly smile.

“And rich,” Dorcas grinned. “Let’s not forget the part where I make a ton of money.”

Sirius chose that moment to butt in, dragging a visibly flustered Remus forward with an arm around his shoulders. “So you think werewolves are sexy, Dorcas?”

Dorcas nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes, a werewolf would make the perfect male lead: handsome, super strong, protective but with this dark secret that makes him all broody and mysterious.”

She bit her lip and shivered dramatically, then pretended to swoon, falling sideways into a giggling Alice.

Helena hung back, watching the others’ antics with a growing feeling of fondness warming her chest. She’d long known she loved these people, or at least the idea of them, but getting to know them for real was an entirely different ballgame. Even Remus and Sirius, whom she’d actually met in the future.

They were all so happy.

James though was being oddly quiet. He was frowning, hands stuffed in his pockets, brooding. The expression took Helena aback for its sheer familiarity. She’d seen it often enough in the mirror in the future. But on James it didn’t suit. He had a face built for laughing.

She almost asked if he was okay, but she wasn’t sure he would take it well coming from her. So she refrained, silently shooting him concerned glances every few seconds instead. Which was why she noticed the second his eyes darkened and his lips pulled back in something that could have been a smile if it hadn’t looked so angry.

Her eyes flickered to where he was staring, right at the back of Mulciber’s head. She watched with an almost detached sense of inevitability as a silvery spell ricocheted through the crowded entrance into the Great Hall, splattering in a sheen of sparkles against the Slytherin’s back.

His naked back.

Everyone froze, gaping in shock at the suddenly nude boy. Well, almost nude. James had thankfully not vanished the boy’s underwear, not that the pale green briefs were leaving much to the imagination.

And then the unavoidable pointing started. Someone catcalled. His friends laughed. And then it was like the floodgates had opened, the hall filled with shouts of glee. No one, aside from his small group of friends, seemed to feel a lick of sympathy for James’s victim.

Mulciber himself took nearly five full seconds to react at all, and then he screeched louder than a banshee and started trying to pull Snape’s outer robe off his shoulders.

Professor Slughorn arrived on the scene a moment later, his jowls bouncing as he jogged towards the clustered students.

“What—is—going—on—here?” He panted.

Snape immediately jabbed his finger at James.

“Potter hexed Easton’s clothes off!” He accused, though Helena knew for a fact his back had been turned at the time.

“Oi! Don’t blame me for his naked arse! Way I hear it, Mulciber’s been flinging vanishing hexes around willy nilly all day. He probably hit himself with one by accident!” James said, even as Helena spotted him surreptitiously casting a weak lumos behind his back.

“What would you know about it anyways, Snivellus?” Sirius sneered. “You don’t actually think anyone will believe your nose wasn’t busy greasing up the pages of a book when Mulciber here decided to go streaking, do you?”

Snape turned white with rage, but he didn’t get to snap back. Professor Slughorn jostled forward with a jovial laugh and wagged a thick finger between the two opposing groups.

“Now boys, let’s try to be mature about this, hmmm? Mr. Snape, did you actually see Mr. Potter fire the vanishing hex?”

“I know it was him,” Snape glared mutinously.

Slughorn shook his head in a disappointed fashion. “Be that as it may, we cannot fling accusations about with no proof. Nevertheless, Mr. Potter, your wand, if you would?”

James handed his sleek mahogany wand over without hesitation. He crossed his arms and smirked straight at Snape as Slughorn performed priori incantatum, his mouth widening into a grin of smug satisfaction when the spell turned up an innocent lumos as his most recently cast spell.

“If it wasn’t Potter, it was Black!” Snape shouted, wild eyed.

But Slughorn only sighed.

“Maybe you should check Mulciber’s wand, Professor,” James suggested slyly. “I wasn’t joking when I said he probably hexed his own clothes off by accident.”

Slughorn chuckled at the thought, somehow not seeming to catch on to James’s too-innocent vibe.

Or maybe he dislikes that lot as much as the rest of the school, Helena mused.

“Right you are, Mr. Potter! It’s always best to rule out an accident first. So Mr. Mulciber, your wand please.”

Tight lipped, Mulciber begrudgingly handed over an unusually thick wand to Slughorn’s waiting hand.

Helena couldn’t help but laugh along with the rest of the crowd when the priori incantatum turned up a vanishing hex. It was poetic, really, the way James had twisted Mulciber’s attack on Lily back against him.

The Slytherins were the only ones not laughing as they all headed into the Great Hall, James escaping any punishment Scott-free. The Slytherins and Lily.

She had laughed along with the rest of them, but once they reached the Gryffindor table she rounded on James, demanding to know if he’d done that because of her. Which James didn’t even try to deny, loudly declaring that he would always defend Lily’s honor.

“I can take care of myself!” She hissed. “I don’t need you running around using me as an excuse to act like a bully!”

“Bully? I was just returning the favor!”

“Don’t pretend you needed a reason to sink to their level!”

For a second, James looked as though he’d been slapped, then his face hardened into a scowl. “He’s a git! Why would you defend him anyways?”

Lily growled. “That—That is exactly the problem with you! Always tit-for-tat, or attacking first, even. You never just use your words!”

“Oh come on,” James rolled his eyes, “he said it himself, you can’t reason with a beast. They only understand actions. I was just giving him a taste of his own medicine!”

“Next time, don’t. Not for me,” Lily said, then shoved away from the table to sit as far away from James as possible.

“What is it with her?” James huffed. “I was trying to do something nice for her.” He turned to lock eyes with Helena, something both frustrated and imploring lurking in his gaze. “Just like you told me to.”

Helena snorted. “Not exactly what I was talking about.”

“You told me to do something nice. I defended her honor!”

“By the stars, that really wasn’t what I meant.”

He blinked at her, totally uncomprehending.

Helena sighed, not entirely sure how he’d misinterpreted her earlier advice. But then she supposed she hadn’t completely spelled it out for him. Showy gestures of affection had never occurred to her as something to warn him against, mainly because when she was a boy, the mere idea of doing such a thing had been enough to make her break out in a cold sweat.

“I meant something small,” she explained, “like holding the door for her or paying her a compliment or saving her a piece of her favorite dessert, not cursing someone’s clothes off!”

“How was I supposed to know that doing something even nicer would be wrong?”

Helena clasped her hands together in front of her lips in a praying motion, closed her eyes and took one deep inhale, and forcefully didn’t let herself think about the days when she rivaled James for sheer cluelessness.

“Let me rephrase. In what scenario is it ever a good idea to present the girl you like with a different naked boy?”

James instantly flushed crimson, his eyes widening comically behind his glasses. He twisted to stare down the table at Lily with a horrified grimace.

“She’s got you there, Prongs!” Sirius said with a great barking laugh, then reached over and dragged the plate of treacle tart between the two of them. “Here, we have to snag anything with chocolate in it early or Moony will hog it all.”

Helena turned to smile sunnily at him, before practically diving on the dessert. Merlin! Hogwarts really did make the most divine treacle tart. The fact that Remus was pouting on the other side of the table only made eating it better. She had a feeling Sirius had absolutely not been exaggerating about the werewolf hogging the treat.

She and Sirius dug in, mockingly cutting Remus off a tiny piece, much to his consternation. James wasn’t paying any attention to them though. He was busy squashing his carrots into a pureed mash, muttering reassurances about Mulciber’s general lack of appeal under his breath.

Helena wondered how long she should let him stew over that worry before she told him Lily would never be remotely interested in a slime ball like Mulciber even if he was Adonis himself.

At least another day, she decided. Just so she could listen to James wax poetic on all the Slytherin’s perceived deficiencies. It had nothing to do with her finding his fretting endearing. Nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Helena was ravenous by the time dinner rolled around.

After Defense Against the Dark Arts and lunch, she’d only had Arithmancy, which left her with a solid three and a half-hour block of time to devote to dueling practice. She was feeling pretty good about her progress, all things considered. Her shoulder was a little sore from practicing falling, and she needed to shave full seconds off her recovery time when coming up from a dive, but the footwork was starting to feel less awkward, and she could now confidently say she’ be unlikely to injure herself in a fight.

Give it another week or two and she would be ready to up the difficulty level on the training dummies to a solid five, the equivalent of a vicious if uncreative Death Eater. She hoped she would be able to max the things out at level ten, the equivalent of an international dueling champion, by the end of the year. After that she would need real, thinking opponents.

She was halfway through her third cup of pumpkin juice and second helping of bangers and mash, silently lamenting the lack of enchiladas at Hogwarts, when she clocked on to the unusually low volume in this section of the Gryffindor table.

“Where’re the boys?” she asked, blinking between Lily and Alice, who were quietly debating some article in the evening edition of the Daily Prophet, and Dorcas and Marlene, who were more happily but no more loudly spitballing ideas for Dorcas’s future money-making romance novel.

“Down in the kitchens would be my bet, probably planning their next epic prank or some such rot,” Lily said with a disinterested shrug.

Yes, that did sound like something the Marauders would do. Helena wished she’d thought to go down to the kitchens before now, come to think of it. Maybe she could teach the house elves to make enchiladas. Or Italian. She was better at cooking Italian, and it might be nice to resurrect some of her mother’s family recipes, to keep that connection to Bellona Farnese alive.

Soon, she promised herself.

Helena pointed her fork at the newspaper clutched in Alice’s hands. “Anything interesting happen since this morning?”

Alice pursed her lips in apparent approval. “Mr. Crouch—he’s the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement—he’s petitioned the Wizengamot for permission for his aurors to use the Unforgivables.”

“He wants to take the fight to the Death Eaters, use their own methods against them, so to speak,” Lily said, appearing far more uncertain than Alice, who until this moment Helena had taken to be the gentler of the two.

“Well that’s not likely to backfire on him at all,” Helena snorted, derisive with the benefit of foreknowledge.

“I guess it depends on if it’s effective,” Alice conceded reluctantly. “But as far as I’m concerned, he’s the only one in that Ministry lot with the right attitude. Whether they want to admit it or not, we’re at war, and while our people are being killed off one by one, all the Death Eaters we arrest seem to end up back on the streets the very next day!”

“But the Unforgivables?” Lily shook her head. “We might be at war, but our side’s supposed to be the good guys. We have no business sinking to their level.”

“That’s a nice idea, but if we lose because we want to keep the moral high ground, then we’ve damned everybody,” Alice said.

“Well sure, but the only Unforgivable that’d even be helpful for us is the Imperius,” Helena pointed out.

Lily squinted at Helena. “I can understand why you’d discard the Cruciatus. I can’t see how torture could ever be justified in the Wizarding World when we have access to things like Veritaserum. But if you don’t object to lethal force, what’s your issue with the Killing Curse?”

“Well it’s addictive, isn’t it? Probably not a great idea to turn our aurors into kill-happy addicts.”

Fake Moody had never counted that property of the spell as a negative, convinced as he was that only a strong-willed person could successfully cast an Avada Kedavra. He took it for granted that a strong will went hand in hand with the ability to fight against addiction. Which on reflection was probably not an attitude cultivated solely from his stint with the Death Eaters. But there was a reason that the Killing Curse, out of all of the thousands of ways to murder a person, was the only method which gained the caster an automatic prison sentence.

“The risk can’t be too bad though, or Crouch wouldn’t have proposed we use it.”

Alice talked with her hands, waving them about in the same way Neville did when he was trying to make a point or clarify one of his many questions. Helena wondered with a pang if he ever knew they shared that trait, if his grandmother had ever told him how very much he resembled his mother when he was on a roll and feeling confident.

“One of my crazier defense teachers thought it should be legal too,” Helena said almost as much to distract herself from her wayward thoughts as to continue the debate. “He thought only the most pathetic wizards would suffer addiction. Crouch can think the same all he wants, it doesn’t make him right.”

“So you don’t think the Wizengamot should approve Crouch’s request?” Alice didn’t look like she knew whether to agree now that all the many cons were laid out, or whether she should be mad.

“I don’t think it would be effective.”

“Which would make lowering our standards pointless,” Lily tacked on.

Helena nodded in agreement. If you were going to say the ends justified the means, you at least needed to make sure the final result was worthwhile.

“I know we have to win the war. But if we want a society worth living in when it’s over, we need a government that doesn’t bend its moral convictions to make things easier. And maybe that includes allowing lethal force, but it doesn’t mean we give the aurors unlimited discretion. That kind of approach is short-sighted, and it will create more problems in the end,” Lily continued passionately.

Alice scowled. “Did you know Falcon Travers was arrested last year? Caught red-handed torturing a family of muggles. He killed an auror before they managed to stun him. And then they just locked him up in a holding cell to await his lawful trial. Five days after his arrest, he escaped. Someone in the Ministry unlocked his cell in the middle of the night and let him walk right out the front door. A week later he led the Death Eater raid on Merlin’s Cove.”

“Oh, Alice…” Lily’s face twisted in sorrow. She reached out to grasp Alice’s hand.

Alice allowed the contact for a second, then pulled her fingers away, clasping her hands together in a white-knuckled fist in front of her.

“My uncle died protecting my baby cousin. Travers killed him.”

To her credit, Lily didn’t recant her earlier opinion, but she did drop the subject, moving on to more pleasant topics far more gracefully than Helena thought she’d ever be able to manage.

Helena veered outside after dinner, declining Lily’s offer to help her with her potions essay in favor of a brisk walk around the Black Lake. She made it about a mile before she came across an old favorite haunt.

The rocky outcropping contained one large slab of smooth gray stone which jutted out over the lake. After heavy storms, the water would rise to lap at the overhang’s edge. Helena had once visited hoping to celebrate the end of midterm exams only to find it completely submerged. But the water was so low now that she could drape her legs over the side and barely brush her toes along the lake’s surface.

From this spot she could see clear across the lake to the valley that marked the western horizon. Steep, mountainous hills framed the valley, holding the glowing orange sun in a verdant palm. Helena loved sunsets like this, the sun sinking to reveal a tapestry of colors, red fading to orange, pinks and purples kissing the navy blanket of twinkling stars finally visible above them. And the full moon rising at the same time, painted in warm hues instead of its usual cool light.

Poor Moony, Helena thought, sparing a brief moment to wish she could transform and run wild with the Marauders tonight. She dismissed the fantasy a second later. She was neither an animagus nor close enough to the boys for them to let her in on their biggest secret.

Still, it would be nice to revel free and thoughtless for a night.

She watched the sun until it completely disappeared then sighed and laid down on her back to gaze up at the stars, leisurely tracing the familiar constellations as she filled her lungs with the crisp autumn air in slow, measured breaths.

A twig snapped behind her, and she twisted up with her wand drawn before she even registered the steady clomp, clomp, clomp of hooves against solid stone. The sight of a bare male chest attached to a muscular horse’s body should not have been as reassuring as it was considering the somewhat violent nature of most of Helena’s past interactions with the Hogwart’s centaurs. But Helena was relaxing before she even consciously realized she knew this particular centaur.

“Firenze!” she blurted, and then immediately wanted to slap herself.

Firenze tilted his head curiously, his long blond hair sweeping over his shoulders, highlighting his blue, blue eyes. He turned those bright eyes up to the heavens for a moment, then looked at her again with an even more curious expression on his markedly younger face.

Helena had always thought of Firenze and the other centaurs as timeless beings, but he didn’t look much older than fifteen, at least by human standards.

“The stars tell of great change. Something altered,” he said. Because of course he did. Only a centaur could take her strange knowledge of his name in stride like that.

Helena decided not to worry about it. “That’s good. I’d hate it if you foresaw things…staying the same.”

Firenze nodded and was silent for an uncomfortably long minute, shifting almost nervously from hoof to hoof. He glanced back towards the dark edge of the Forbidden Forest, mere feet behind Helena’s outcropping. When he looked back at Helena, his lips were pulled in a solemn frown.

“I…should not speak to you. But for good or ill, I feel I must tell you to beware of shattered family, Helena Gaunt—”

Alright, so he knew her name too. She didn’t want to think too hard about how such a young centaur had learned about her. She hoped it was the stars, but somehow she doubted it was that simple.

“—You cannot be bound. You must not tie yourself to him.”

Helena swallowed thickly around the sudden sensation of drowning. That was oddly direct for a centaur, even one as unconventionally straightforward as Firenze. But still, centaurs were notoriously cryptic, just like reading the future produced notoriously enigmatic results.

Firenze could not be telling her to stay away from James. Helena refused to believe such a thing. She was already bound to him by familial love, and nothing was going to change that. Whatever this warning meant, it would become clear only with time.

As logical as these reassurances were, however, they did not banish the ice filling Helena’s chest.

Something else to lock away in the back of her mind.

“Right, er, well thank you, I suppose… For, er, taking the risk to tell me that.”

Firenze bowed his head with a graceful, courtly bend of his front legs, then turned and galloped away.

Helena crawled to her feet, no longer in the mood to stare at the stars. It was dark, and she had homework to do.

She started trudging back along the path towards the castle, cursing the multitude of rocks and roots she could barely see with the moon shadowed by tree branches. It was slow going, especially given her sullen mood.

And then in the distance, a wolf howled.

Cool dread shivered down Helena’s spine.

She was a hundred kinds of idiot. She couldn’t even console herself that she hadn’t remembered it was the full moon. She’d been staring at it for hours, even daydreamed about joining the Marauders on their midnight stroll around the school grounds. And never once had it occurred to her to worry about actually running into the werewolf.

She was going to be the moron who gets bitten by a werewolf because she decided the night of the full moon was the prime time to take a hike. Or worse, the monster who put herself in a situation where she had to defend herself from Remus despite knowing all about his condition.

The real Moody would be so embarrassed by her lack of situational awareness.

Chapter Text

Helena was edging around the Whomping Willow, finally close enough to summon her broom from Gryffindor tower, when her retreat to the castle was halted by the very werewolf she was trying to avoid.

The Marauders were gathered at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. They were located closer to Hogsmeade and the Shrieking Shack than the Whomping Willow. But they still had a clear line of sight over the lawn Helena needed to cross to reach safety.

Moony and Padfoot were wrestling as playfully as cubs on their first excursion out of the den. Prongs pranced around them in a wide circle, tossing his head in the same manner he did while in human form. Wormtail wasn’t visible, but Helena knew he was with them too.

She spotted them as she crested the hill that led down to the lakeside path and immediately dropped into a crouch, heart pounding. There wasn’t anything to hide behind up here except tall grass, which only reached her chest even hunched over as she was. The Whomping Willow was a comfortable hundred feet to her left, lazily waving its branches in greeting to the full moon. A small outcropping sat on its far side, but Helena worried the tree would react violently if she tried to sneak passed it to shelter amongst the stones, alerting the animals to her presence.

“Accio,” she hissed, then held her breath, waiting.

A full thirty seconds elapsed before she felt the spell connect, but the familiar tugging sensation was wrong. Usually, the summoning charm grabbed an object and pulled with a steady force. And her magic had grabbed on to her broom. The spell feedback was clear on that front. But the pull force was waffling, yanking and releasing over and over in three rhythmic beats.

Thunk, thunk…thunk.

Helena clenched her eyes shut and fought the urge to punch the ground. Her broom was locked in her trunk, she remembered. She could picture it in her mind’s eye, the broom knocking against a lid that wouldn’t budge, the luggage dragged along for the ride only to bang against the narrow windows in her dorm.

“Finite,” she spat like it was a curse.

Alright then, time for Plan B.

On the plus side, she was standing right next to the entrance to the Shrieking Shack’s secret tunnel, which would be safe enough for the time being. And she could walk from the Shack down to the passage under Honeyduke’s.

The only problem lay in getting into the tunnel before the werewolf clocked on to her presence.

At this distance, Moony could be on her in under twenty seconds. The knob at the tree’s base, the one that would freeze its vicious arms, was situated directly facing the Marauders. She needed to walk the hundred feet to stand before it without catching the attention of Remus or the notoriously sensitive Whomping Willow. Then she needed to poke it, preferably with a long stick. A stupify would probably work too, but if she made it that far undetected, a bright red spell would surely tip everybody off. This would be fine if she hit her small target on the first try, but if she missed the knob by even an inch, she was looking at a fight with someone she desperately wanted to avoid hurting.

Helena glanced over her shoulder. She could also pull back to the Black Lake, but she didn’t trust her luck that far.

So she stalked forward cautiously, careful to keep her breaths slow and even, her steps gentle. She’d watched enough big cats hunt with her father to know that the key to stealth was deliberate, unhurried motion, especially given the autumn debris scattered amongst the grass.

It took her ten solid minutes to cross the hundred feet to the Whomping Willow. Her muscles were stiff by the time she was in place. Her eyes ached from straining to see in the dark. Still, she was undetected, and that was all that mattered.

Turning her back on the Marauders was more difficult than she thought it would be. It reminded her of the cupboard under the stairs. The pitch-black as the house creaked. Her skin prickling as if a predator was breathing down her neck, mere shadow when she braced to defend herself. The way her ears struggled to identify the whisper of sound under her cot.

Helena’s gut clenched with the need to guard her back.

She resisted, instead focussing on her summoning charm. She pictured the kind of stick she needed: Long, three or four times her own height; thin and lightweight; few if any twigs. And then she cast.

Her stick came hurtling out of the Forbidden Forest with a loud crash, snapping twigs and leaves to carve a destructive hole in the canopy. It was a javelin thrown by a gold-medal Olympian, but Helena wasn’t worried about it impaling her. She didn’t even watch as it came to rest beside her, stopping dead in midair to hover by her hand.

Her heart skipped a beat. Her perception narrowed down to the blood pounding in her temples.

She heard a startled yip, paws scrabbling over loose gravel, hooves pounding over hard-packed dirt. And then the howl that made all her hair stand on end.

Intellectually, Helena knew she should seize these last few seconds to petrify the Whomping Willow. But she couldn’t stop herself from turning to face the threat for the life of her.

Moony, ten paces in front of his friends and closing in fast, was savagely beautiful. At first glance, he was indistinguishable from a real wolf. His thick silver-gray fur reflected moonlight with a healthy shine. His body moved with svelte grace, strong muscles propelling him forward in bounding leaps. So different from the malnourished beast he became in the future.

Rather than diminish the feral hunger dripping from Moony’s gaping maw, the werewolf’s elegance enhanced it.

Red panic drew Helena’s arm up in a hammering motion. A purple blasting hex burst from her wand before she had a chance to consider what she was doing. Only the last-second thought that this was Remus kept her aim from flying true. Her hand twitched, and instead of landing a brutal shot to her friend, she instead exploded the ground in front of him, spraying him with chunks of earth.

The dirt didn’t even slow him down.

Helena scrambled back a step, her mind filled with white noise as she tried to think of a spell chain in her arsenal that was non-lethal. But there wasn’t one. She was practicing to fight Voldemort and his Death Eaters, not cursed schoolboys.

Moony was less than fifty feet away. Padfoot and Prongs still trailed him by several seconds. One galloping step. Two. Moony leapt at her, white fangs dripping poisonous saliva…

“Ferro clypeus!” she shouted at the last instant.

BANG. Moony collided with the steel wall erected suddenly between him and his prey.

Helena jerked with the noise like she’d been punched in the gut, gasped out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Moony released an animalistic whine of pain, scratched at the metal, and growled. And then Padfoot and Prongs were there.

Helena could hear yips and growls, snarls and trampling hooves as they tried to herd Moony away from her. But she couldn’t see them around the steel wall, and it left her feeling vulnerable.

She shuffled to the side and peered around the edge cautiously, wand raised.

Moony fought with the kind of fearless insanity of a serial killer: he pulled no punches; he attacked without fear of injury; and he was not afraid to hurt his opponents. So despite being outnumbered two to one, Moony was winning.

A hard scratch over Prong’s flank caused the stag to skitter back. Moony’s glowing amber eyes settled on Helena’s face. She watched, as if in slow motion, as his muscles bunched. His mouth opened wide—she could count every sharp tooth jutting from pink gums. He lunged.

Helena hustled back several steps. Moony’s shoulder caught on the metal wall. His claws swiped through the Helena’s hastily conjured protego like it was thin plywood, then he was hurtling towards her again.

She dove to the left.

Moony missed.

The Whomping Willow did not.

Helena heard more than felt the crack of her ribs as a massive branch slammed into her side. She was airborne for one frightening second before she hit the ground hard, sliding ten feet before she came to a standstill. Her arm burned with bloody abrasions, and her head ached worse than that one hangover she’d experienced last year. But worse was the way her lungs refused to draw in air.

She gasped, wheezing, and watched with tear-clouded eyes as Moony recovered from his own match against the tree, which had shoved them in opposite directions. Prongs was on him before he could fully regain his feet, pushing him down towards the Forbidden Forest.

Padfoot was racing towards her. He waited only long enough for the other two to disappear from sight, then shifted smoothly into human form to crouch over her.

“Shit! Merlin dammit! Are you hurt? Did he scratch you, or—or bite…?” Sirius’s hands hovered over her like he was afraid to touch.

Helena was still trying to regain her breath. She attempted to pant out a response, incoherent as it may have been with how surprised she was Sirius had transformed in front of her, but the words wouldn’t come.

Sirius’s panic skyrocketed. He began to apologize over and over as he stroked her hair with shaking fingers.

“I’m okay,” she finally managed to croak out. “Not bitten.”

She placed her hand on his chest in reassurance and didn’t try to stop him from petting her hair. It felt…rather lovely, the way his fingers slowed down as he calmed to card more methodically through her dark locks. She tilted her head and sighed as he messaged a tender spot. She wouldn’t mind seeing healers, she absently reflected, if they all soothed her injuries this gently.

“Good,” he rasped, “Good, that’s…Thank Merlin, I thought he got you there at the end.”

“Nah, turns out the Whomping Willow was on my side all along.” Helena sat up, wincing as her cracked ribs protested.

Sirius rushed to place a supportive arm at her back. “I wouldn’t be too quick to count that violent thing as your ally, Luv.”

“It’s a plant. They’re not always the best at expressing their emotions, but it likes me. I’m sure of it.”

Sirius’s lips quirked up. “Gives all new meaning to the phrase go hug a tree.”

Helena laughed, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

“Can you stand?” Sirius asked, his hands back to fluttering around her like a nervous hummingbird.

It took her a second, but Helena was able to regain her feet. Walking, as it turned out, was not so easy. She took one step, and her right leg crumpled beneath her weight, white-hot pain lancing through her ankle.

She grabbed onto Sirius before she could tip over. “Think my ankles sprained.”

“You’ve been clutching your side, too,” Sirius pointed to Helena’s arm, sill curled protectively around her middle. “How bad is it?”

Helena grimaced, then admitted, “The tree probably fractured a rib or two.”

Sirius nodded, looking back and forth between her and the castle. “Here, let me—”

He bent down and looped one hand beneath her knees, then paused. He gazed up, gray eyes silently asking for permission. Helena glanced back at the castle, a glowing beacon atop the highest hill on the Hogwarts grounds. She groaned, then waved her permission.

“Listen,” Sirius said after several minutes of silence as he carefully picked his way over the lawn. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you, but please don’t tell anyone about what happened with Moony.”

“Moony? As in Remus Lupin?” Helena asked, even though she already knew the answer.

Sirius winced, likely chastising himself for using Remus’s nickname. “The teachers know about him,” he was quick to defend. “It’s not like he’s here illegally or anything. But…just, if you say a werewolf attacked you…It’s not Remus’s fault! He’s the nicest bloke in the world. He’d never hurt anyone on purpose. But that won’t matter if—And we were supposed to—”

“Sirius! Calm down, I won’t mention Remus to anyone.”

Hope shone so brightly from every inch of Sirius’s face, it was almost painful to look at. “You won’t?” he whispered.

“I won’t. I promise,” she whispered back just as softly.

“Thank you.” Sirius closed his eyes as stress melted off his handsome, youthful face. When he opened them, they no longer reminded Helena of the tormented cast that haunted his post-Azkaban mien, instead shining with impish delight. “I could kiss you for that, you know,” he said and smirked.

“How long have you waited for the perfect opportunity to say that?” Helena asked, fighting back giggles for fear of upsetting her ribs.

Sirius’s barking laugh was loud enough for the both of them. “You’d be surprised how rarely people do things that are worthy of a kiss.”

Helena grinned. “To hear James talk about your standards, I would be surprised if it was rare at all.”

“Oi! You can’t listen to a word Prongs says! He’s just jealous because he’s been gone on Evans since we were wee little firsties, and you see how much help he needs.”

“Prongs?” she mused. “Is that because he’s a stag? Are you all animagi?”

Sirius blanched like he’d only just remembered what other secrets had been revealed tonight. He proffered a very reluctant nod, more of a twitch than a deliberate movement.

“Wow, McGonagal must’ve been super impressed with you! How many points did she award Gryffindor?” It struck Helena as a little mean of her to needle Sirius like this, but she wasn’t going to stop.

Although Sirius was reluctant, the heavy silence between them eventually forced him to admit that their animagus abilities were a secret.

Helena wondered, on a scale of one to ten, how much Sirius wished he could cast an obliviate right now. Luckily for her, she knew he couldn’t perform one even twenty years in the future, so she was safe.

Which explained why Sirius was trying to act like such a gallantly charming knight right now as he talked about the Marauder’s nights spent romping around in the Forbidden Forest. He painted a romantic picture, one filled with self-sacrificing boys rebelling against the law to save their friend from a monstrous fate.

“So what,” Helena cut in, arching her brows skeptically, “you learned to turn yourselves into animals so you could run around with Remus every full moon?”

Sirius frowned. “Look, I know it probably seems stupid and reckless to you. You almost got bitten, and I’m so, so sorry about that, but Moony…It was torture on him being locked in that itty bitty room every month. And moons like this one, ones where the sun is still in the sky when the moon comes up, they’re awful. And—”…

“You don’t have to explain. I get it. It’s actually kind of…sweet.”

Sirius stopped walking. “Sweet?”

“Yeah, you’re a really good friend,” she said and had to restrain herself from laughing when an honest-to-god blush rose in Sirius’s cheeks. Compliment the boy on any number of shallow things, his good looks or his hair or his grades or his pranks, and he would accept the praise with all the confident swagger of a prince. Tell him he was a good friend, and he turned a brighter crimson than the Gryffindor banner.

Sirius cleared his throat awkwardly and resumed walking, mostly, Helena thought, so he wasn’t forced to look her in the eye any longer.

“Sweet,” he shook his head. “Almost get mauled by a werewolf, and you think this whole arrangement is sweet.”

“Hardly the worst thing to almost maul me,” she tried to shrug her shoulders, but it was a little awkward with the way Sirius had her cradled in his arms.

He gaped down at her, gray eyes widened incredulously. “That does not make it better!”

Helena smiled sunnily, warmed by Sirius’s obvious concern for her. She didn’t know why smiling seemed to make him even more distressed but figured she should probably change the topic before he popped a blood vessel. “So, I do have one condition for keeping your secrets.”

Sirius barely tensed, which Helena took as a good sign. “What is it?” he asked.

“Teach me the animagus transformation,” she grinned, anticipation rushing through her.

An answering broad grin blossomed on Sirius’s face. “Damn, you’ve got to love a lady who knows what she wants,” he laughed, shaking his head. “Well, if that’s all you're after, consider it done.”

Helena didn’t tell him, but with the triumph singing in her veins, she could’ve kissed Sirius right then.

Chapter Text

“I’m so sorry,” Remus said as soon as Madam Pomfrey bustled away to tend to a third-year girl who looked so embarrassed that Helena figured she’d probably just experienced the joys of womanhood for the first time and was in need of supplies.

Helena was lying two beds over from Remus, trying to ignore the way her arm itched as the skin knit back together under a generous slathering of dittany. Her ankle was mercifully numb, as were her ribs, so she was spared the hours of pain associated with the use of skelegrow and tendon reparative potions. Unfortunately, there was no stopping her headache—one could only take so many potions at a time without terrible side effects.

Not that Remus was much better off. A transformed werewolf might be more resilient than a regular human, but the Whomping Willow possessed a distinct advantage. Moony had taken the brunt of the tree’s beating, and now Remus was laid up with a fractured hip, a broken leg, a broken collar bone, and livid deep tissue bruises mottling the entire right side of his body.

It was enough to make Helena cringe in sympathy, even if those injuries had been her saving grace.

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Remus. It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have been out—”

“We’re at Hogwarts!” he cried, squeezing his eyes shut in misery. “The safest place in Britain. You had no reason to think, couldn’t possibly have foreseen running into a…me.”

But I could have, Helena thought guiltily.

“It’s not your fault,” she tried to reassure him, but Remus wasn’t listening.

“I could’ve bitten you. Or killed you!” he moaned.

Helena wished she could wrap him in a hug, ply him with hot chocolate and stuffed animals. She would even have settled for casting a cheering charm if Madam Pomfrey hadn’t forbidden the use of magic for the next six hours. But she was stuck with measly words of comfort.

“You would never hurt anyone on purpose, Remus. I know that.”

Remus’s honey-brown eyes were molten with anger when he turned back to look at her. “Don’t try to absolve me,” he spat. “I knew exactly how dangerous it was to run around like that every full moon. I just didn’t care.”

Helena was inclined to think desperation, not misanthropic indifference, was his primary motivation. But somehow she didn’t think he would welcome such sentiment in his favor at the moment.

Remus squared his shoulders as best he could with a broken collar bone. “It won’t ever happen again,” he declared, nostrils flaring as he huffed like a bull preparing to charge. “I’ll stay locked up during full moons from now on. I promise."

“Wait a second! I would never ask you to—”

“You shouldn’t have to ask me not to set a monster on the school!” Remus hissed with palpable self-disgust.

Helena shook her head, wide-eyed. “You’re not a monster.”

“Yes,” Remus rasped, nearly on the verge of tears, “I am. At least once a month, that’s all I am.”

Helena didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t the Lupin of the future, the adult who had reconciled himself to a bleak existence. This was a teenager who looked like last night had shattered all of his hopes and dreams.

“So you lose your mind once a month…” she tried to inject some levity into the conversation, but halted when Remus’s face crumpled. “Hey, it’s just a disease, yeah? It doesn’t make you—”

“Thank you,” Remus cut her off, gaze shuttered in a mask of stoicism, “for being so nice about this. It’s more than I deserve.”

“No! You’re—”

“But I know what I am. I know how to handle what I am. I was irresponsible, and you almost got hurt…more hurt than you already are. I won’t be that careless with everyone else’s safety again.”

“Remus…” Helena stared at him helplessly, wishing she could find words to wipe the desolate expression from his face.

“I’m sorry. I know you deserve a better explanation. A better apology. But can we not talk about this anymore?”

Helena floundered for a wise response, but she didn’t know what to say to make this okay, so after several seconds of awkward silence, she nodded mutely. Remus released a hitching sigh and tilted his head back, eyes firmly shut. But the move couldn’t stop his tears from leaking out of the corner of his eyes to course wet trails over his temples.

Helena stayed quiet.

Sometimes, she heard Hermione’s voice whisper in her mind, people just need to cry. Helena fought back the stinging in her own eyes at the memory, then struggled to contain a watery laugh at the disapproving look the imaginary Hermione cast her way.

I’ve cried enough, she wanted to tell Hermione. You should be telling me to toughen up, not chastising me into a pathetic, blubbering mess!

She pictured Ron’s grinning face then, telling her Don’t worry, mate! I’ll make sure Colin gets a picture of that for you. You could even sign it for him: The day Harry Potter turned into a puddle. For posterity, yeah?

James and Sirius’s faces had never been so welcome. They tumbled into the Hospital Wing with Pettigrew in a rambunctious display of lighthearted jostling that easily pulled her out of her maudlin thoughts, saving her from a headfirst dive into the pit of despair in which she’d lived during the first few weeks after her trip through the Veil.

“Moony! You’re awake!” James shouted across the room, smiling jovially. He jogged to Remus’s bedside and continued talking, for all the world appearing as if he didn’t notice the other boy’s red-rimmed eyes. “Did Padfoot tell you Helena’s going to be an honorary Marauder? We’re going to help her…transform.”

He wiggled his eyebrows, then side-eyed Sirius, his smile settling into a mischievous smirk. “Siri thinks she’s going to be a dog,” James snickered, though what he found so funny about that statement, Helena wasn’t sure, nor did she understand why it made Sirius cross his arms defensively and glare at James.

“I, on the other hand, think she’s going to be a cat,” James finished with all the aplomb of a famed seer announcing a prophecy.

Emotions flashed over Remus’s face too quickly for Helena to parse out, before his expression settled into a mien of easy cheer. “A lioness, maybe,” he said instead of addressing the numerous more serious topics he could have chosen.

With a mental shrug, Helena decided to let sleeping dogs lie for the moment. “Aren’t you curious what I think I’ll end up being?”

“Eh, no one ever guesses their own form right. I thought for sure I was going to be an eagle, and Padfoot was convinced he was going to be a bear.”

“And Peter thought he was going to be a fox,” Sirius tacked on with only the faintest hint of mockery, but he immediately took the sting out of his tone with a light, good-natured punch to Pettigrew’s shoulder.

“Well I think I’m going to be a hawk,” Helena declared.

“Oh now you’ve done it,” Sirius said. “You’re definitely not going to be a hawk now.”

“If not a hawk, then some type of bird.” She tilted her nose up as if daring any of the boys to gainsay her, which of course meant Sirius promptly jumped to contradict her.

“Are you trying to doom yourself to a flightless existence?” he lamented, shaking his head in faux pity.

She laughed, glad of the numbing creams when her ribs gave only the barest twinge of protest. Which reminded her… “How’s your side?” she asked, pointing to the approximate area where Moony had scratched James’s stomach.

James gingerly patted his obliques. “All good. Padfoot fixed me right up.”

“And there won’t be any side effects from—” She glanced sheepishly at Remus, wishing she’d let the subject drop, but it was too late to take the question back now. “From it being a werewolf scratch?”

“Nah, it wasn’t a bite, and Siri cleaned it with Essence of Silver before I transformed back.”

“Worst case scenario,” Sirius said, “I didn’t get it completely disinfected, and Prongs will develop a taste for rare steak.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst outcome. At least I’d finally fit in with all the moneybags at those fancy restaurants my parents like so much.”

“Oh please, like you don’t already fit in without eating rare steaks,” Sirius scoffed.

James snorted. “Me? The Potters are new money, thank you very much. If anyone was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, it would be you, oh great heir to the Most Noble and Most Ancient etcetera, etcetera House of Black.”

“I was blasted off the family tree,” Sirius declared with a perverse sense of pride.

“I’m sure you’d both fit in at any posh event,” Pettigrew gushed, completely missing the point of the debate.

“There, you see? You’re both fancy-pants tossers,” Remus said without missing a beat, valiantly covering for Pettigrew’s cluelessness.

Unable to resist, Helena said, “I think I can top them. I’ve dined with a queen.”

The dumbfounded blinks she received were nothing short of priceless.

Pettigrew was somehow the first one to regain his senses. “Really?” he breathed, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling with awe.

Helena suppressed a shiver of revulsion. She was glad now that her statement was so misleading. James and Remus and Sirius would accept her story as the whimsical joke she’d intended it to be, but Pettigrew, he would be disappointed. And though it might have been petty, she couldn’t help the vindictive pleasure that bloomed in her chest at that realization.

So for the rest of the hospital visit, she regaled the group with anecdotes from the time her parents had stashed her away in Las Vegas with a part-time magical portrait forger and full-time drag queen. Needless to say, even if Pettigrew didn’t look like he knew whether he should be disappointed or even more awestruck, Sirius appeared suitably impressed.

Helena was half convinced he would let her dress him in drag before the hour was up.

Something to bring up with James, perhaps. She was sure he wouldn’t be opposed to helping her prank his best friend.

Helena was searching for an unbiased treatise on werewolves when she ran, quite literally, into Lucius Malfoy. They reached for the same book simultaneously, smacked shoulders rather more roughly than one would expect under the circumstances, and stumbled in opposite directions.

She’d figured she should take a page out of Hermione’s playbook and research if she wanted to find a responsible enough approach to full moon excursions for Remus to get on board. What Malfoy was doing in the werewolf section of the library, she couldn’t begin to guess. But his presence completely derailed her plans.

“Pardon me,” he said as he straightened up. “I didn’t see you there.”

“No, I—” Helena turned to absolve her fellow student, but the words died on her lips when she caught sight of the boy occupying the aisle with her.

Malfoy was standing across from her, arm extended in a solicitous manner. His black school robes were neatly pressed, fine wool with a jade silk liner. His leather shoes were polished to a high shine. His hair slicked back so every feature on his pointed, aristocratic face was unobstructed. He looked, every inch, like the kind of rich, goody-two-shoes boy that prep school parents wouldn’t hesitate to let their daughters date.

Helena wanted to curse him.

The last time she’d stood this close to Lucius Malfoy, he’d been twenty years older and surrounded by insane Death Eaters. But he’d worn the same ingratiating smile and stretched out his hand in the same politely beseeching manner.

He took in her stiff silence with one perfectly plucked eyebrow lifted high on his forehead, quietly chastising her lack of manners in the face of his perfunctory apology. His voice, when he continued speaking, was like satin sliding over polished marble, smooth but lacking the warmth that would make it charming.

“Malfoy,” he said, twisting his outstretched hand sideways for a handshake. “Lucius Malfoy. And you must be our new student, Helena Gaunt?”

“Yes,” Helena returned the handshake with visible reluctance.

Malfoy’s expression hardened before settling into a cold press smile. “The Gaunts are very well regarded in the United States, aren’t they? Some would say…almost famous?”

Helena was tempted to write him off as another brown-nosing Slytherin eager to network after that question. But his icy eyes were filled with too much calculation, were too intense for a casual encounter. So instead of baldly announcing that her father was estranged from his family, which had worked so well to diminish Slughorn’s interest, she instead shrugged uncomfortably and muttered, “I suppose so.”

Malfoy was undaunted by her short reply. “I’m surprised to find you in this section of the library,” he said, leaning towards her conspiratorially. “Knowing your family’s rumored affinity for other magical creatures.”

Snakes, Helena realized with a jolt. Malfoy wanted to know if she had an affinity for snakes. She’d known her ability to speak parseltongue would be of interest to the dark side, but she hadn’t given much thought to the way her last name might give the secret away. Which was stupid in hindsight. It was such a rare talent, and with Voldemort taking so much pride in his Slytherin ancestry, of course he would have researched every other family sharing the ability.

A new suspicion churned in Helena’s gut. Her eyes flicked down to Malfoy’s covered left forearm. Surely not. He’s still in school! her mind wanted to protest, but she couldn’t shake the sudden conviction coating her tongue in ash.

She peered down the aisle, desperately hoping to chance upon an escape route, and in a rare show of kindness, the universe deigned to answer her prayer.

She locked eyes with Sirius, who had come to see what was taking her so long. He took in her discomfort at a glance, and immediately called out, “Helena! There you are!”

He jogged up to her and flung his arm around her shoulders. “We were beginning to think a book had eaten you or something equally dastardly.” He paused, squeezed her shoulder as she relaxed into his side, and looked over at Malfoy, dipping his head in the shallowest of nods at the blond boy. “Malfoy.”

“Black,” Malfoy sneered. Then he turned and gave a much more regal bow to Helena. “Well,” he drawled, “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Helena. I hope we’ll have the chance to speak again soon.”

And with that overly familiar adieu, he glided out of the library without checking out a single book. Sirius chortled, shared a look with Helena, then doubled over in laughter, shortly followed by Helena, who couldn’t help but join in his merriment over Malfoy’s pompous display.
“He’s a giant arse, yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” Helena laughed, rubbing at her aching cheeks.

Sirius chuckled, hugging her to his side with the arm he still had wrapped around her shoulders. “Odd though. I don’t like the bastard, but even I can admit he can be a charming git when he feels like it, and it looked like he was trying to be pleasant for once.”

Helena shrugged. “I knew a guy like him once,” she said, thinking of Draco. “First time I met the guy, he nattered on and on about my best friend living in a shoebox. Malfoy had the same look about him.” A more accurate statement Helena had never spoken. Father and son resembled each other to an eery degree.

Sirius perked up, bouncing out ahead of her and spinning so he was walking backwards. “A shoebox? Really? Can’t say a blame the bloke, honestly, I’d probably have nattered on about that too.”

Helena cast him a dark look.

“What? That’s bloody impressive! How many people lived in it?”

“It wasn’t actually a shoebox!”

“Oh,” Sirius deflated, “Just an ugly house then?”

“Seriously?” Helena glared.

“I’m always serious,” Sirius grinned so brightly it was impossible for Helena to maintain her irritation. She shoved him lightly and moved to take her seat at their library table in good spirits.

In the back of her mind though, she wondered how many students might already be marked Death Eaters.

Chapter Text

“Purists,” James lectured as he stirred powdered bighorn hoof into an animagus revelation potion, “will tell you meditation is the only right way to discover your animagus form. The thinking goes without months of self-reflective meditation, you won’t ever understand your soul enough to truly connect and become one with your inner animal. There’s also some speculation that the meditation method produces a different, more accurate animagus form. But luckily for you—”

“We’re not a bunch of giant transfiguration snobs,” Sirius nodded sagely as he completed James’s sentence. Though judging by the way James wrinkled his nose like he’d stepped in something foul, that was not how he would have phrased it.

They’d found an empty classroom in the deserted north wing of the castle to use for their brewing. One with ample windows for ventilation so they didn’t need to replicate the air filtration charms used in the dungeons. There was no furniture other than the five chairs James had conjured for everyone, big brown leather things that swallowed their occupants in fluff. So the large room felt a bit cavernous.

Sirius had charmed his chair bright red and twice as large as everyone else’s, but it only helped the room feel a little cozier.

Remus and Pettigrew were situated away from the other three, playing a game of exploding snap. Remus had said he was happy they were helping Helena become an animagus, but he was so adamant her transformation wouldn’t lead to any more full moon adventures that she knew the project made him uncomfortable. Hence his passive-aggressive refusal to get any more involved.

The way he hunched down in his seat and turned his face away when Sirius began to loudly speculate about how soon Helena would be able to join them only confirmed her impression.

She lightly kicked Sirius’s shin to shut him up and leaned forward to softly murmur, “Maybe we shouldn’t push it? Remus seems pretty adamant that’s all over.”

Sirius scoffed, but his voice was just as soft when he replied. “He’ll get over it. We’ll be more careful, go deeper into the forest, or something. It’ll be fine.”

James set the stirring rod aside and came to sit in his own cushy chair. He bent over with his elbows resting on his knees so their heads were close enough for a confidential conversation even with the subject of their tête-à-tête in the same room.

“That’s going to be a hard sale, mate,” he said, mouth set in an unusually solemn frown. “We should be bloody thankful Moony didn’t manage to bite anyone. I don’t think he’d ever recover from something like that.”

“Unless it was Snape,” Sirius said, sneering at the thought of the greasy Slytherin boy.

A cold rush swam down Helena’s neck, her chest, settling as a thick knotted lump beneath her sternum.

“Please tell me that was just a bad joke,” she snapped, though she knew it wasn’t. Her godfather had nearly sent Snape to his death at around this point in his sixth year.

Sirius took in the flashing anger in her eyes and the unconcealed disappointment in her scowl. He shifted uncomfortably under her stare, glanced at Remus moping on the other side of the room with Pettigrew.

“Course it was,” he muttered with such blatant chagrin a toddler wouldn’t have mistaken his guilt for a jest.

“Good,” she said, scowl still firmly in place.

Sirius’s brows dropped into a straight line over his hooded eyes. “Merlin, I said it was a joke!” he growled defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. “If Moony’s going to hurt any of those wannabe Death Eaters, I’d make sure he was conscious to decide how he wanted to do it first!”

Which wasn’t much better, even if it was a giant leap in the right direction.

“So that’ll be never, then?” James rolled his eyes. “The great, bloody pacifist Moony is.”

Helena very nearly gaped at him. Remus a pacifist? That had to be an exaggeration. She’d seen Professor Lupin fight. He’d been right in the thick of things at the Department of Mysteries. He was one of the most vicious duelers their side boasted.

Could time and loss have altered his beliefs that much?

She had the sickening suspicion the answer was yes.

“Now, back to the real issue at hand,” James said, pulling her out of her spiraling thoughts, “I think we need to come up with some better safety measures if we ever want Moony to run with us again.”

Sirius flicked his wrist like he was shooing away an irritating fly. “I already said it. We go further in the Forest, and it’ll be fine.”

“You think that’ll convince Remus? If Helena had been a titch less bloody competent…” James shook his head with a pained grimace.

“So we have to be more careful, keep a better eye out.” Sirius shrugged. “But it’s not as if we’re likely to run into anyone if we go deep enough.”

James grit his teeth, nostrils flaring with sudden anger. “We failed, Pads!” he croaked. “It was our job to keep Moony from attacking anyone. He trusted us to stop him, and we failed.”

Sirius blinked and sat back, eyes big and mournful as a kicked puppy’s. Everything had worked out. Remus hadn’t bitten Helena, hadn’t lost her as a friend. She was fine, closer to them than ever. They were even helping her become an animagus!

He knew they’d messed up, but… But…

Helena cleared her throat awkwardly. “What about the wards Dumbledore set up around the Shrieking Shack? Maybe we could replicate those on a larger scale out in the Forbidden Forest,” she suggested.

James’s gaze flicked over to her, but he was shaking his head before he answered verbally. “There weren’t any.”

“None?” she exclaimed.

James tilted his head and rocked his hand in a so-so gesture. “There was a proximity ward so Dumbledore would know if people got too close, but that was easy enough to get around. He wasn’t expecting anyone to try very hard to get closer to the screaming ghoul, I guess.”

“But there was nothing to stop Remus—”

“Wouldn’t have worked, would it? Not much of a point when Moony would’ve just torn through anything Dumbledore set up.”

“You need physical barriers to contain a werewolf,” Sirius clarified when Helena continued to appear confused. “Any purely magical ward that could stop a werewolf would kill it.”

“That can’t be right,” she denied. “The Hogwarts wards stop all kinds of magical creatures from entering the grounds, including werewolves. You can’t expect me to believe they kill any werewolves who wander too close!”

Hermione would have said something if that were the case! Though Helena had to admit she’d never paid too much attention to the details of her friend’s lectures. And Hermione had always seemed so righteously furious when discussing the state of wizard-creature relations. But surely…

Sirius grimaced. “I don’t expect it happens too often. Werewolves know not to transform anywhere within the vicinity of Hogwarts, or any other major magical sight, not unless they want to be incinerated.” He paused, then bitterly added, “Which includes pretty much every pureblood manor house in England, not that the poor bastards even know where all those are located.”

Helena looked over at Remus, who was grinning triumphantly at Pettigrew as he laid down another winning hand, and almost heaved as nausea swept over her.

“Well that rules that option out then,” she said, pleased when her voice didn’t shake. “What about building an enclosure? We could conjure—”

“It won’t work,” James cut her off before she could complete the suggestion.

Helena shot him a cross look for the interruption, then another at Sirius when he snickered at her disgruntled expression. It made sense they had already researched this stuff. Teenage boys didn’t decide to become illegal animagi on a whim. But that didn’t make being so perfunctorily shot down any less irritating.

“Why not?” she huffed, determined to at least get on the same page as her cohorts.

James sat up straighter, adopting the same posture he used while tutoring her in transfiguration.

“Reginald Baggins tried to build a werewolf sanctuary two centuries ago,” he said in that engaging, storytelling tone of his that made normally bland subjects seem interesting. “He built a twenty-foot brick wall around thirty acres of land. And then the first full moon came, and the werewolves climbed right over it. So ole Reggie coated the entire inner wall with steel so there wouldn’t be any tiny footholds for the werewolves to stick their claws. And guess what happened?”

“The werewolves dug under it?” Helena predicted.

“Right in one! They dug more’n fifty feet down in one night to get out. Give ‘em enough time, and werewolves are some of the greatest escape artists in the world.”

“It’s why you need a cage,” Sirius said. “Four walls, ceiling, and floor—the Shrieking Shack has steel in the middle of all its walls.”

Helena sighed. “We probably couldn’t clear out the space to conjure a wall anyways.”

“Not to mention the amount of power it would take to keep a conjuration of that size standing,” James noted, more out of academic interest than practicality.

“Middle of the Forbidden Forest is way too far from the Hogwarts Ley lines,” Sirius agreed. “We’d have to go out there twice a day to maintain it.”

The three of them stared at each other, then with identical petulant frowns, James and Sirius nodded and in unison grumbled, “Research.”

Not for the first time, Helena wished she possessed Hermione’s eidetic memory. Not that trait had ever stopped Hermione from spending ten times as many hours researching as the rest of them.

“Well,” James said a minute later as the alarm he’d set on the animagus potion chimed, an optimistic smile climbing back onto his face. “If we can become animagi before we’re old enough to buy fire whiskey, we can figure this out too!”

Sirius raised an imaginary glass in a toast. “Hear, hear!”

Helena grinned as they settled back and pulled out her potions essay. It was a jumbled mess of random facts, some completely irrelevant, others tossed down on the page without any attention paid to coherence. It was a Troll worthy effort if she was honest with herself.

“Have either of you completed the potions assignment for Slughorn?”

“Haven’t started it,” Sirius admitted at the same time James claimed he’d made it through the first five inches before calling it quits.

“No chance you know why the Blemish Blitzer ointment is so hazardous, then, is there?”

Sirius slid sideways on his oversized chair so his long legs hung over one armrest, his head over the other so he was staring at her upside down. He smirked.

“Haven’t the foggiest!” he said cheerfully.

“Something about one wrong move turning it into a deadly poison or some such rot,” James shrugged. “Lily could tell you. She’s your potions tutor, right?”

He always called her Lily when they were alone, like the casual familiarity would make his attempts to slip her into conversation twenty times a day less obvious. He didn’t make eye contact when he mentioned her, studiously examining the instructions for the animagus revelation potion, which Helena knew he’d memorized back when the Marauders originally undertook the task of becoming animagi.

“Yeah, she is, but I’d like her to think there might be some hope for me, you know?” She shared a conspiratorial look with Sirius, barely holding back laughter as she continued. “Oh! Maybe you could help me out? Ask her a couple of potions questions, maybe shop for some ingredients for me? Maybe during the next Hogsmeade weekend?”

“Er, I’m not sure—Lily doesn’t—she said she won’t…” James stuttered, a blush creeping into his cheeks.

“And while Prongs is busy entertaining Evans, I could show you all the fun, worthwhile shops,” Sirius offered. He was still hanging with his head upside down, and his words came out in a breathless rush as a result.

“Perfect!” Helena smiled happily. “I heard there’s a great enchantments store in Hogsmeade. My godfather had this knife that could open any lock, and I’ve been hoping to find something similar since I, er, lost it.”

“Davenshaw’s,” Sirius nodded, smiling so brightly Helena wouldn’t be surprised if his cheeks ached for days. “My family swears by that place. And while I wouldn’t normally pay one sickle for their opinions, in this case, I’d have to say their elitism is worth every knut.”

“But—But how do I…? She’s not going to—” There was a note of panic in James’s voice when he interrupted them, like asking Lily Evans out hadn’t been a daily occurrence before he’d started taking Helena’s dating advice.

“Make it a group thing,” she suggested, thinking about how much she’d wished for Ron and Hermione’s presence as a buffer during her one disastrous date with Cho Chang. “It’ll take some of the pressure off.”

James relaxed instantly. He nodded slowly, clearly warming to the idea. “Yes, that’s brilliant!” he whispered, then more loudly, “You can ask her, Helena. You’re the new student. She wouldn’t dream of saying no. And all us Gryffindors could go down together!”

Helena laughed but conceded it was a good idea easily enough. She’d never say no to spending more time with Lily, and she definitely wanted to facilitate her future parents' relationship. A great plan all around, she thought.

Which was why she was surprised when Sirius sat up straight in his chair and glared half-heartedly at James, his lips turned down in a moue of dissatisfaction. “Merlin, Prongs, sometimes you’re a right tosser!”

James looked at him, wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights. “Er, sorry Pads. That was…” He smiled sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“I thought it was a good idea!” Helena was quick to defend him.

James instantly pointed at her. “Right! She said it, it’ll take the pressure off!” He nodded firmly and moved his eyes meaningfully in her direction as if he was trying to impress some other point on Sirius.

Sirius tipped his head back and groaned, throwing his arms up in resignation. And that was how Helena ended up asking the Gryffindor girls to spend their Hogsmeade weekend together with the boys a few days later.

It was almost disgustingly easy for Helena to gain leave for the Hogsmeade visit. Given the circumstances of her parents’ deaths out in the middle of a remote jungle, her legal status had gone largely unaddressed by any government body. She had no guardian, but she wasn’t an emancipated minor. But given that she was attending Hogwarts on a student visa, the British Ministry of Magic was not overly concerned about her living situation outside of school.

As such, all Helena had needed to do was ask Professor McGonagall to sign her permission slip in loco parentis, as was her right with regards to all orphans and foreign students, and she was set.

It was a starkly different response to the last time she’d asked McGonagall to sign for her. Voldemort was an enemy of the state at the height of his power, a far worse threat than Sirius Black could ever have managed. But there was no reason to believe Helena would be a target in this time.

She sincerely hoped she never became famous again.

They were all queuing in the Entrance Hall, waiting for Filch to check them off his approved student list before heading outside to the thestral-drawn carriages that would carry them to town. Sirius was once again dressed head to toe in muggle clothing, standing out in a crowd where even the muggleborns tended to wear robes—A Rolling Stones t-shirt paired with his black leather jacket, he was only missing a motorcycle and a lit cigarette to complete his rebel vibe.

James had gone in the opposite direction, donning the finest set of casual navy robes Helena had ever seen. She would bet good money their needlework pattern was stitched with honest-to-Merlin gold thread. Standing side-by-side, the two boys looked like portraits of vanity taken to opposite extremes.

Sirius winked dramatically when he caught her staring.

She flushed, shaking her head and laughing. “You’re ridiculous,” she told him.

He preened like she’d paid him a compliment, flung his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t be jealous, we can get you a leather jacket at Gladrags. Brown for you, I think. I would say dark green would suit you—to match your eyes—but we all know Slytherin’s the enemy, so brown it is.”

“You saying I have Slytherin eyes?”

“It’s sad but true,” he grimaced with mock-solemnity.

“You’re right,” she agreed with a completely straight face, “I’m going to have to charm them Gryffindor red.”

Sirius pulled a face. “That…would be creepy.”

He sighed, a complete swoon with the back of his hand pressed to his forehead. “Alas fair lady, I wouldn’t have you change a single feature on your face! Especially not your eyes, even if they are the enemy’s color.”

He said it like a joke, but there was such earnest sincerity warming his eyes when she turned her face up to look at him that she found herself caught. Her breath hitched, her cheeks heated. She’d never noticed the icy blue flecks in his gray irises before, bright spots of color that made them shine. She felt the strangest urge to stroke a finger over his brow, like touching him would allow her to imprint this image on her mind so she could hoard his warmth forever.

“Oi, Padfoot! Stop flirting!” James hollered from the Entrance Hall doors. “You’re holding up the line!”

Sirius jerked his gaze away and growled, low in his chest like an agitated guard dog, and threw a rude gesture James’s way, much to Filch’s consternation. The old caretaker glared at them, his scraggly face pinched in an even more severe frown than normal as he muttered meanly under his breath.

“Idiot teenagers, staring at each other so happy like. Giggling, always with the insufferable giggling,” she heard him say, then more loudly, “Your name?”

“Come on, Argus, you know who I am,” Sirius said with his most innocent smile.

Filch glared harder. Helena was sure he knew exactly who Sirius Black was. He probably fantasized about stringing Sirius and James up by their thumbs on a daily basis. So of course Sirius felt the need to needle him.

“Your name?” Filch asked again, brandishing his clipboard like a weapon.

“Helena Gaunt and Sirius Black,” Helena said before Sirius could continue, not interested in dragging this out any longer.

Filch grunted and waved them on with a beady-eyed sneer.

When the Gryffindors hopped out of their carriage a short ride later, Sirius threw his arm back over her shoulders in a move that was becoming increasingly familiar and comfortable. A chill wind ruffled their clothes and she snuggled in closer to his side, grateful for the body heat. She knew she should’ve worn a scarf out today, even if she usually found them irritating.

“Where to first?” she asked the group as she gazed down Hogsmeade’s quaint main road.

Unlike Hogwarts, Hogsmeade had changed over the course of the next twenty years. Not enough to be significant, but it was still a bit like looking in a funhouse mirror. The cobblestoned street and the medieval-style cottages with their thatched roofs and candlelit windows were the same. But she could spot small differences all over the place that made her head want to spin. The sign for Zonko’s Joke Shop was freshly painted. The roof over the Three Broomsticks was all one color, lacking the large section towards the back where it had been repaired with red shingles. And Stella Luna Bakery didn’t exist at all.

“I vote we head to Tomes and Scrolls,” Dorcas said. “Tina Mayflower just published a new writer’s guide that I’ve been dying to get my hands on.”

“Who?” Lily scrunched her nose up when she asked the question, which judging by the hearts in James’s eyes as he watched her must have been an absurdly adorable expression.

Dorcas was clearly not of the same mind. “Tina Mayflower,” she said with the despairing sort of tone old people used to say Kids these days. “Phoenix Rising? The Silent Banshee? Dark Souls? Merlin! Do none of you ever read good books?”

“I’ve heard of Dark Souls!” Lily tried to protest.

“Have you ever read it?”

“Well, no…”

Dorcas shook her head. “How are we friends?”

In the end, they spent over an hour in the bookstore. Helena was not a big reader, so she mostly stuck to the Defense section, but there was nothing in the shop that couldn’t be found in the Room of Requirement. Afterward, Marlene—who Helena had learned was the source of the pitch-perfect shower singing in their dorm every morning—dragged them all to Dominic Maestro’s Music Shop. Then James finally got his way and they hopped over to Honeyduke’s, where he proceeded to purchase a 2,000 piece bag of caramel chocolates for Lily.

(Because they were her favorite, he told Helena later when she tried to ask why he’d gotten Lily an entire year’s supply of candy.)

They were in bright spirits when they ran into Snape and his Slytherin cohorts right before lunch. Most of Snape’s group was already waiting by the carriages ready to head back to Hogwarts, along with a smattering of other students, but Snape was trailing behind them, just exiting The Three Broomsticks as the Gryffindors were heading in.

James and Sirius shoved past him without a word, trailed by Remus and Pettigrew, for once not paying their rival the slightest bit of attention. Snape glared at them, then turned to sneer at Lily.

“You’re hanging out with them, now? Really?” he said with silky disdain.

Lily’s expression closed off, going from rosy-cheeked and smiling to blank in an instant. “That’s none of your business anymore, is it?”

Snape’s black eyes darkened further, a contemptuous smile curling his lips. “It’s embarrassing. If you had half a brain, you’d ditch them and go back up to Hogwarts.”

“Leave us alone, Severus,” Lily sighed and turned to walk away.

Snape stared after her stiffly, then snarled under his breath and stalked off to join his friends.

“Well that was dramatic,” Helena spoke into the awkward silence. She wanted to ask how well Lily knew Snape, why they’d seemed so familiar with one another when as far as she knew, defending the greasy boy against James and Sirius after their OWLs was the closest Lily had ever been to Snape. But this didn’t seem like the right time for that conversation. And to be honest, she wasn’t keen to discover anything disturbing like that Lily had dated him or something.

She was gratified when Lily snorted and the other girls relaxed, picking up her teasing quickly so they were all grinning and happy again when they joined the boys at their table.

The entire incident had been swept under the rug half an hour later. Alice had consumed enough butterbeer to make her slightly tipsy despite the drink's minuscule alcohol content, which incited no end of taunting from the rest of the table. Helena was laughing as Sirius regaled her with a story of the time he’d accidentally burned down his crazy great aunt’s living room when he was twelve. And James was actually managing to carry on an intelligent conversation with Lily about interdisciplinary applications of potions and transfiguration.

Helena should have known trouble would find her. But she was enjoying herself. When her next huff of laughter came out in a cloud of icy steam, she didn’t pay it any mind. The realization came slowly, her giggles tapering off as frost splintered across the pub’s windows. She shivered, cool dread pooled in her stomach. Fearful confusion flickered across her friends’ faces as Helena stumbled to her feet.

“GET TO THE FLOO!” she roared at the frozen crowd, wild with panic.

Dementors were descending on Hogsmeade.

Chapter Text

Helena had participated in fights in both her lives. She was intimately familiar with the way fear sharpened the senses. Time would slow, her eyes tracking fast-moving projectiles with ease, her attention snagging on small details. Strength would flood her limbs. Her magic would crackle with the restrained fury of a dragon preparing to spit fire. And when she cast, it would sing.

But for all her experience fighting, she’d never been on the receiving end of a formal military attack.

The patrons of The Three Broomsticks froze when she shouted for them to flee. It was quiet as the grave for one heart-stopping second, then the candles died. Someone’s mug crashed to the floor unseen in the sudden gloom, and chaos erupted.

A bear of a man launched himself across the room, grabbed a handful of floo powder, and disappeared with a panicked shout. More adults jostled after him, pushing and shoving to get to the fireplace. Others stayed back, calling for their loved ones, trying to make sure they didn’t leave anyone behind. A Ravenclaw girl screeched about their inability to floo into Hogwarts, growing louder and more shrill as her words went ignored. A pair of third years, small and skinny and baby-faced, huddled together in their booth, crying.

Helena headed towards the front door, ruthlessly elbowing her way through the flailing crowd. A hand on her shoulder stopped her right as she reached for the handle.

“What are you doing?” said Sirius, shouting to be heard.

She jabbed her finger at the large window to the left of the door where they could see people fleeing from the first flashes of spellfire. A boy, no older than five, was cowering behind a wooden barrel on the other side of the street, no parent in sight to save him.

“There are kids out there!”

Sirius pointed out the same window towards the sky which was blackened by a swarm of wraithlike creatures in gossamer cloaks.

“Those are dementors!”

“I know.”

Sirius’s fingers spasmed on her shoulder. He swallowed thickly. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he clenched his jaw tight. His eyes were wide and glassy with pain, the dementors’ hooks already speared fast in his brain.

“Okay,” he said, resolute, and gestured for her to lead the way. “Then let’s have some fun,” he added facetiously.

Helena thought about trying to convince him to stay behind, but in all the ways that mattered, Sirius was the most stubborn son of a bitch she’d ever met. If he said he was following her into battle, he was following her into battle.

She reached up to squeeze the hand on her shoulder, nodded at the rest of the Gryffindors who had finally managed to push their way through the crowd, then yanked the door open and sprinted outside.

A cold blast of air embraced her as she ran to the middle of the street, burning her lungs as she inhaled. The dementors were spreading out over the town, more than a hundred strong, blotting out the overcast midday sun. What light did make it past them was dim, like a solar eclipse had cast the village into hazy twilight.

Helena could hear a woman screaming. Not Harry! Please…Have mercy…Have mercy! And she recognized that voice now, knew how it laughed, how it lilted when it grew impassioned, knew how it sounded when Lily wasn’t begging for her son’s life.

A clock with a mother of pearl face. Two golden spokes marked Bellona Farnese and Marcus Gaunt fallen like broken bodies, her own lonely spoke pointing straight towards LOST. Abandoned equipment, struggle marks dragged through the mud, a vine swaying in the current. The crushing guilt of I was asleep!

Helena sucked in another bitingly cold breath and shoved those memories aside. She pictured Ron and Hermione with their arms thrown around one another. They smiled at her. The war won’t ever touch us. You’ll make sure of it.

They were with her till the end of the line. Always.

She let that thought wrap around her, then roared, “EXPECTO PATRONUM!”

Prongs burst from her wand, a towering twelve-point stag in his prime glowing silver bright like the moon. He paused for one beat, then lowered his antlers and charged down the street. Pulsing waves of power spread across the village in his wake, driving the dementors back. Immediately the air around them warmed, and despair lost its grip on her heart.

“Lady Magic on high,” Sirius whispered, watching in awe as her patronus tore through the swarm.

Helena watched with him, panting, before she regained her senses.

She ducked into the alley beside The Three Broomsticks and turned to look at the others who had followed her, only slightly surprised to see every Gryffindor in their year with her, even Pettigrew, all looking to her for direction.

Right then, she prayed to Merlin she got this right.

“Remus, I need you to run to Hogwarts and get help,” she said. As a werewolf, he would be faster than the rest of them no matter the time of month. She hoped that would be fast enough. “Don’t engage in any fights if you can help it.”

He nodded and took off at a dead sprint without pause. She looked at the rest of them, trying to figure out what to do in the few seconds they had. A concussive bang shook the ground while she was deliberating, and she had her answer.

“Wormtail, go back into The Three Broomsticks and get kids away from the windows. Get them under tables or behind the bar. And try to get that floo line organized!”

That would get him out of the way.

“Everybody else partner up and spread out! We need to get those fires put out. If you see any children, get them inside!”

Grim determination lined their youthful faces as they followed her orders without question. Alice and Lily ran towards the blast, James and Sirius towards a group of terrified fourth years sheltering in another alley, and Dorcas and Marlene charged straight at a cluster of Death Eaters torturing an old man at the top of the street.

It was only then that Helena realized she’d somehow left herself without a partner, but she didn’t have time to rectify that error. The battle had lulled when she expelled the dementors, but it was picking back up with a vengeance now.

A squadron of Death Eaters was marching onto the main street, nine in total attacking in a standard triad formation. There were three groups of three, each trio standing in a small “V” to make up one larger “V”. It was a powerful configuration, with designated defenders protecting the offensive, and the Death Eaters were taking full advantage of the arrangement, fearlessly carving a swath of destruction up the road.

Helena watched them for one second, long enough to see them send a wave of fire at the town’s grocery, then she leapt into the fray. Her wand swept through a series of practiced motions, rapidly firing off a bone breaker, two different blasting curses, and a ground alteration that would send stone spikes shooting up beneath her opponent’s feet—all aimed at one defender.

He fell to one of the spikes, screaming behind his skull mask as stone punctured his thigh.

Helena had the entire squadron’s attention now. Their bone masks turned on her, eerily expressionless.

There was a stark difference between battling a group and the single combat fighting she’d been practicing. She was almost entirely on the defensive, dancing between curses, evading and shielding with minimal forward advancement. She abandoned spell chains as soon as she began them, only one or two hexes in before she was forced to shield or dodge again. In the back of her mind, she made a note to practice chains with more powerful opening casts, but most of her attention was focussed on surviving.

And all the while she could feel her patronus slowly draining her energy.

She swerved around a sizzling purple curse and slashed her wand in an upward diagonal, releasing an easily blocked cutting curse, then twisted her wrist in a small circle and jabbed her arm at the squadron, superheating the air between them. The three closest Death Eaters collapsed screaming as their masks melted on their faces.

Helena didn’t stop to revel in her success, her wand continuing smoothly down in another cleaving curse. But before she could complete the motion, three spells came at her simultaneously, the vivid red of the cruciatus, an unknown sickening yellow, and a bright green Avada Kedavra.

There was no way to dodge them all, not at this range with the spells coming from different directions. So she redirected her wand, desperately crying out, “Ferro clypeus!”

If she’d had a moment longer, it would have worked. But the steel wall was too thin. It dented when the Killing Curse hit, warped as the cruciatus smashed into it a fraction of a second later, and splintered apart with the impact of the yellow curse.

Metal shards cut shallow wounds into her face and arms. A larger piece stabbed through her left bicep, almost exactly where the basilisk fang had pierced her in her previous life.

Don’t pull it out! Some part of her mind screamed at her.

She would have ignored that inner voice, was already reaching to yank the shard out, but another hex landed a foot to her right, blasting her off her feet. Her thigh was burning. She threw up the strongest shield she could muster, glanced at it, and was nearly sick when she saw a chunk of her leg slowly dissolving before her eyes. The yellow curse, something flesh-eating—the steel shield hadn’t absorbed all of its power.

A quick finite halted the spell’s progression, but Helena couldn’t heal this. And no amount of adrenalin could suppress the scalding agony ripping apart her nerves. It took her several precious seconds to stop shaking. When she finally tore her eyes away, shakily beginning to scoot towards better shelter, she realized no one was firing on her.

The squadron of Death Eaters, half of whom had fallen to her wand, had backed away, fanning out to block off a circle around her. And at their center, staring at her with intense curiosity, was their malevolent leader.

Voldemort was shockingly human. His features, though waxy and exaggerated, were still those of a normal man, with a nose and thick brows and prominent cheekbones. His eyes glowed red, but his pupils were round. Salt and pepper hair covered his head. The only serpentine thing about him was his tall, willowy build.

“Helena Gaunt,” he greeted her with a sharp smile as she scrambled back to her feet, his voice high and cold as ever. “It’s nice to finally meet you, cousin.”

Helena startled and shook her head in denial. “We’re not cousins.”

Real battles don’t stop for two enemies to have a conversation. But as far as Helena could tell, this one had. There were skirmishes further up the street, but everything around her was still, like the world was holding its breath.

She was back in front of The Three Broomsticks. Honeydukes across the street, Zonkos beside it, right where most of the Hogwarts students were hiding. She could spot some of the braver ones situated closer to the street, wands at the ready, listening keenly.

“No?” Voldemort’s smile turned mocking.

“No, there aren’t any Gaunts in Britain—”

“They died off years ago. Yes, I know,” he smirked cruelly. “I admit I took great pleasure in killing them. An illustrious line, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself. They’d become a disgrace to our heritage. But the American branch has done great things, I hear, and now you’ve returned home. You cannot honestly tell me you traveled all the way to Scotland without knowing about our connection, can you Helena? Or perhaps you did, and this is simply fate smiling upon me.”

Helena listened to his speech with a detached sense of horror, bile souring the back of her tongue. She’d always known Voldemort was descended from Slytherin, but the Gaunts? They had a fraught past, but they were her family.

She didn’t know anything about their history before Gormlaith Gaunt tracked her niece, Isolt Sayre, to Massachusetts, dragging her illegitimate ten-year-old son with her. As the story went, Gormlaith had set out to murder her niece and died in pursuit of her malicious goal. The son was raised by his much more sane aunt, establishing the Gaunts as a formidable family in the upper echelons of American society, which naturally came with its own black marks over the years. But she’d never guessed that in the distant past they’d been Slytherins.

Dear Merlin, she was related to Voldemort.

Something petty and vindictive curled in her stomach. It wasn’t wise to antagonize him, but she wanted to get under Voldemort’s skin the way this news had gotten under hers. And she knew just how to manage it.

“The only cousin I’m aware of on this side of the pond is a Tom Riddle. So tell me, Tom, what’s a half-blood doing leading a pureblood crusade?”

Voldemort’s eyes flashed dangerously, but he remained surprisingly calm in the face of her jab. More than calm, he looked triumphant.

“I own them. I am their master,” he said with obvious relish. “And when you join me, Helena, I will make you their queen.”

Helena sucked in a sharp breath at the implication. “Never. I will never join you.”

He cocked his head, examining her with hungry, covetous eyes. “I will have you,” he said, implacable and sure.

The words whether you are willing or not went unspoken, but she heard them nonetheless.

They’d been slowly circling each other as they spoke. Helena limping, streaked with dirt and her own blood. Voldemort, clean and hale and smug. She threw the first curse, the best answer she could give to his terrifying presumption.

Voldemort turned on a dime, sidestepping and firing back, meeting her blow for blow.

It was worse than fighting nine Death Eaters at once. Every movement he made was precise, calculated to disrupt her rhythm. His spell choice was unpredictable, powered with the force of a raging bull slamming against her defenses. He apparated more swiftly than most people could jump, practically a ghost on the field for all her ability to land a hit. And the way he called out instructions as they fought…

“Dueling is a symphony, Cousin! A dance! You don’t need to gather power for each spell. Build it towards a crescendo. Let your magic flow through the chain like water! Your movement and intent will drive the effect.”

He was toying with her. And worse, his advice was good.

Helena didn’t know how long they fought, with Voldemort treating her like some kind of child performing a new trick for its betters. Her arm ached. Her leg cramped every time she put too much weight on it. Black spots dotted her vision, and she knew with a kind of cold certainty that she wouldn’t last much longer.

Salvation came not a moment too soon.

She could have wept when she saw the teachers storming into town, Dumbledore a bright spot of fuchsia in the lead. Aurors in red robes popped into existence, attacking the remaining Death Eaters with prejudice. More patroni, a silver hare and a striped cat and a great phoenix, joined her stag in the sky, driving off the dementors for good.

Voldemort snarled, half-turned to face Dumbledore, and Helena seized her chance. With the last dregs of her energy, she exploded the ground at his feet. Voldemort was able to shield in time, but the concussive force knocked him back several steps. And the resultant spray of crushed cobblestones and dirt provided the perfect cover for Helena to make her escape.

She dove into the nearest alley, scrambling to hide behind a stack of old crates. She could hear Voldemort’s screams of rage, then the sounds of renewed battle as Dumbledore—it had to be Dumbledore—confronted him.

Helena slid down the wall as her legs gave out, breathing hard.

She reached for the wound on her leg, tried to gently shift fabric aside so she could see it. But her hand was shaking too hard. She lifted it up before her eyes, stared at her trembling fingers. Blinked.

Oh, she thought fuzzily as blackness began to creep over her vision, I’m about to pass out.

She heard someone frantically calling her name, but she couldn’t muster the energy to respond. Everything was fading, and she was so tired. She could close her eyes for just a second, just a moment, and then she would call back.

When Helena regained consciousness several hours later, she was in the hospital wing, and there were a lot of adults arguing very, very loudly.

Chapter Text

Helena was not confused when she blinked her eyes open. She instantly recognized the white stone walls high overhead and the uncomfortably thin mattress beneath her. The stench of antiseptic potions hung heavy in the air. Her bedsheets were overly starched and stiff, rubbing against the sensitive new skin on her arm and thigh like sandpaper with every minute shift. And her head ached, throbbing in time with her heart in a way that was all too familiar.

Thanks to her life in the future, she had a wealth of unfortunate experience waking up in this infirmary—not to mention her recent visit post werewolf encounter. (And wasn’t that just her luck? Two major life-threatening incidents within the first month of school. It had to be some kind of record).

The only unusual thing about the situation was the heated argument taking place at the foot of her bed.

There were four people: Dumbledore, Bartemius Crouch Sr., a man sporting marvelously thick black mutton chops, and one formidable woman. Naturally, the headmaster was the only one to notice Helena watching them. When he spotted her, he smiled, winked, and very pointedly failed to alert the others to her wakened state.

Helena figured she couldn’t have been unconscious too long. Dumbledore was still dressed in the fuchsia robe he’d worn during the battle in Hogsmeade, so unless she had imagined that garish color racing to her rescue, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours since she’d passed out in that dirty alleyway.

Which as it happened was just long enough to feel like an eavesdropper on a conversation taking place right in front of her.

“I read the witness reports same as you, Bartemius,” the formidable woman was saying, hands braced solidly on her ample hips as she spoke in a loud, uncensored voice. She was a tall woman—nearly of a height with Dumbledore, who typically loomed over his company—with kind eyes and deep laugh lines, though her face was currently pinched in a stern frown.

Crouch was one of those eerily ageless men, the type that made people suspect vampirism or secretly created philosopher's stones to explain their unchanging visage. In twenty years, he would still sport the same unnaturally straight gray hair, parted neatly in the same spot, with the same narrow toothbrush mustache and staid black attire. And his wrinkles, few though they were, would be no deeper or more prevalent than they were at this moment.

But his expression was unlike anything Helena had ever seen on his face in the future. The closest equivalent she could think of was the time he’d accused her of casting the Dark Mark after the World Cup, but even that had lacked the feverish intensity he sported now like a religious totem.

“Clearly not,” he said, “Or you wouldn’t stand there defending the girl like she’s some kind of innocent.”

“She’s sixteen,” the woman hissed back.

And Crouch sneered, the same ugly, condemning expression he’d worn in Dumbledore’s Pensieve memory as he tossed his own son into Azkaban Prison. “Sixteen? I cannot tell you how many sixteen-year-olds we arrest every summer. Vandalism, theft, assault, stupidity. Give teenagers an excuse and they’ll reap more destruction than a hundred adults. And the Death Eaters are nothing but an excuse, the greatest excuse in existence!”

Helena was chagrined to admit, if only in her own mind, that Crouch wasn’t totally off base. Case in point, she’d taken five friends with her to the Ministry of Magic and managed to wreck an entire secret department. By age twelve, her actions had led to the destruction of a priceless magical artifact as well as a major historical landmark. And at thirteen, she broke a prisoner out of jail. Good intentions aside, that was a lot of chaos. And that was all before Harry had managed to time travel decades into the past and merge souls with a girl raised by parents who were only semi-law abiding on their best days.

Though in fairness to other teens, Helena was pretty sure they didn’t fall face-first into nearly as many ridiculous situations as she did.

“Your poor experiences with teenagers aside,” the woman sniped, pulling Helena out of her thoughts, “Miss Gaunt hasn’t done anything wrong. On the contrary, I’d say she acted like a damned hero today.”

“That is one interpretation of today’s events.”

The woman’s expression grew more pinched, like Crouch had poured straight lemon juice down her throat with his patronizing tone. Dumbledore merely hummed, to all appearances listening to the debate with polite disinterest. The last man, the one with the fluffy muttonchops that made him look both old-fashioned and militaristic, chose that moment to chime in with all the consummate prevarication of a seasoned politician.

“I take your point, Millicent. To all appearances, the girl hasn’t done anything wrong. And given her age, well, normally I would agree with you that we should give her the benefit of the doubt. Protecting the youth is our highest priority.” He shook his pointer finger so emphatically his fluffy black mutton chops bounced with the motion. “Magic be my witness, you know I believe that with all my heart. But under these circumstances? The girl is not just any youth. Bartemius is on the front lines of this war. And I say he must have the right of it. It's a very bad business, very suspicious. We have to ere on the side of extreme caution.”

“The circumstances being her relationship to You-Know-Who, you mean? Not her defense of Hogsmeade? By the Witch Father, Minister! If we judged every citizen by their worst relation, there wouldn’t be a single free citizen left in Britain!”

“There’s no need to be hyperbolic, Millicent. Clearly the cousin of You-Know-Who himself is a special circumstance. And you have admit, what happened in the battle, well, you have to agree, it’s all very dodgy.”

Millicent set her jaw and glared, Crouch’s smug sniff the only sound to break the stony silence that fell after the Minister of Magic stopped speaking.

“Come now,” he said, flapping his hands at Millicent imploringly, “you do see it, don’t you? What are the chances that a teenage girl could fight You-Know-Who to a standstill?

“That’s your evidence? She didn’t die.”

“I’m not suggesting we arrest the girl! But a little caution wouldn’t go amiss. You have to agree!”

“No, I most certainly do not have to agree.”

Helena was of half a mind to start applauding the woman, especially when Crouch reentered the debate to point out that they didn't need to arrest Helena to use her.

“Maybe you are correct, Mrs. Bagnold,” he said, “maybe the girl is innocent. Maybe until a few hours ago she was even ignorant of her connection to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. But she is not ignorant now, and what's more, it is clear he wants her. She is his cousin. She is talented. And she possesses the same cursed ability to speak parseltongue. Who knows what he said to her out there, what hissed promises he made her. There is no doubt in my mind that he wishes to recruit her. We have to use that!”

“A trap. You want to use a child to bait You-Know-Who.” Millicent Bagnold shook her head in disgust.

“She is already bait!” Crouch shouted, composure shot. “The only choice here is whether we take advantage of that fact or not!”

“Not, I should think,” Dumbledore said, smiling serenely when the other three adults twisted around to stare at him, having clearly forgotten he was standing there.

“What?” Crouch asked, blinking dumbly.

Dumbledore peered down his long, crooked nose at them, exuding disappointment so potently it made Helena squirm with vicarious shame. “I am afraid, Bartemius, that I cannot allow you to exploit any of my students, no matter how well-intentioned you believe yourself to be.”

Crouch narrowed his eyes. “No?”

Dumbledore smoothed down his long white beard, smiled wider. “No.”

It didn’t take long for Crouch to back down, unequal to the headmaster’s calm resolution. Dumbledore waited another moment as the Minister and Crouch turned their faces away. Then he waved a wrinkled hand in Helena’s direction and said, quite jovially, “I am sure Miss Gaunt is glad to know our little disagreement has been resolved.”

Helena tensed as four sets of eyes swiveled in unison to face her. “Er, hi,” she managed to croak out, only to immediately regret it as her dry throat protested her attempt to speak with a violent coughing fit.

“I believe gentlemen, Mrs. Bagnold, that we have disturbed Miss Gaunt’s rest quite enough,” Dumbledore said as he conjured a gaudy crystal blue goblet with silver stars inlaid around the rim and filled it with water. He handed it to Helena with a gentle pat to her back. “Would anyone care to join me for a cup of tea in my office? Limy has recently discovered a new lemon tart recipe that, I must confess, surpasses even my love for lemon drops.”

“She still needs to be questioned, Dumbledore!” Crouch protested.

“And I am sure you have many capable aurors who can take her statement later. Now, if you please, Limy will show you up to my office.”

On cue, a diminutive house elf popped into existence before the group. She was clean and smiling, decked out in a freshly-laundered fuchsia tea-towel to match the headmaster’s robes, with a hand-stitched Hogwarts crest taking pride of place over her heart. Her large ears twitched excitedly as she took in the ministry officials.

“Limy be leading guests to your office right away, sir! Limy is getting them tea, sir, and lots of lemon tarts, sir. Limy is baking a fresh batch!”

“Thank you, Limy,” Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling merrily.

“Right this way, sirs, ma'am, right this way. Limy be showing you the way now,” she announced, prim and authoritative despite her squeaky voice and the way she bounced on the balls of her feet as she spoke.

Millicent Bagnold left without hesitation, a triumphant bounce in her step buoyant enough to rival the elf’s. Crouch and the Minister were more reluctant, but under Dumbledore’s implacable stare, they too exited the Hospital Wing.

The headmaster turned back to Helena with a genial smile. “That was a very brave thing you did today, my girl.”

“Not everyone seems to think so,” she noted, bitterness coating her words.

Dumbledore sighed and gestured towards the chair at Helena’s bedside. “May I sit?”

Helena nodded, one stilted bob of her head. The headmaster settled into the seat, fluffing out his robes and arranging his beard so it pooled like a pile of cotton in his lap. He studied her for a long moment, then finally addressed her initial remark.

“In my long experience, I have found that fear, especially when coupled with ambition, can make monsters of us all. The real challenge, my dear girl, lies in choosing to remain kind in spite of our fears. Bartemius Crouch and Minister Minchum are not the first men to fail in the face of that challenge. And they will, unfortunately, not be the last.”

It was odd having Dumbledore’s complete focus like this. He’d avoided her for the entirety of her Fifth year. He’d refused to make eye contact with her when she was on trial before the Wizengamot, and again when she came to warn him about the attack on Mr. Weasley before the winter holidays. And as much as Helena had tried to tell herself he was not purposefully avoiding her, she’d known the truth, a truth which was even more evident now as he sat beside her, granting her his undivided attention.

It made her wonder, resentfully, what she, as Harry, could have possibly done to make Dumbledore shun her, when he was so perfectly at ease with Voldemort’s own cousin.

“It doesn’t bother you then? That I’m—related—to Voldemort?”

“I am not in the habit of judging the child for the sins of the father, no.” Dumbledore chuckled, “Or as the case may be, for the sins of a distant cousin. Besides, I believe your fight with Tom demonstrated your true colors quite admirably.”

Helena tilted her head to the side questioningly.

“It is one of my lesser-known talents, but I do possess the ability to understand parseltongue, though I cannot speak it myself.”

Helena jerked. “Parseltongue? Crouch mentioned, but…Were we…?”

“Hmmm, yes,” Dumbledore nodded, “Shortly after Tom declared for all the world to hear that the two of you are cousins, your conversation became incomprehensible to most everyone else.”

“I hadn’t realized…”

“I thought that might be the case.”

“Do—” Helena’s voice cracked. She cleared it, downed the rest of the water in her conjured goblet, and tried again. “You know, then? What he wants from me…”

Dumbledore’s twinkling eyes dimmed. “Yes, I heard. I am sorry, my dear girl. Terribly sorry.”

Helena shivered. She tried to hug herself, an unconscious act of self-soothing, but her left arm complained violently, the puncture wound in her bicep too recent to move even with the aid of magical healing. It made her want to cry, for what, she wasn’t sure, but the urge was almost overwhelming.

Not here! she snarled at herself. Not where anyone can see you. By Lady Magic, get a grip on yourself, girl!

“I will not pretend your situation is not dire,” Dumbledore continued after a moment. “Knowing Tom as I do, I doubt even fleeing the country would take you from his notice now. But so long as you remain at Hogwarts, I assure you I will do my utmost to keep you safe. And later, well, if you will accept a compliment from an old man, it has been many years since I have seen anyone demonstrate such a natural gift for dueling. You do not have to be his victim.”

Helena blushed, pleased by the recognition, though she tried not to focus on it. “Later, sir?”

If he had been anyone else, Helena would have said Dumbledore looked sheepish. “This is not something I would normally address with a student, but given your unique situation… Have you ever heard of the Order of the Phoenix, Helena?”

Helena blinked, momentarily startled. “It’s—your secret organization, isn’t it, sir? The one you created to fight against Voldemort?”

“Secret, yes,” Dumbledore chuckled, eyes regaining their merry twinkle. “So naturally the whole world knows. Dubious secrecy aside, your description is more or less accurate. The Order is a group of trusted individuals I have gathered together to fight against Voldemort in areas where the Ministry either cannot or will not. I would like you to consider joining when you come of age.”

“Me? But—I’m only a sixth year!” Helena exclaimed, taken aback. If Dumbledore should’ve been asking any student to join the Order of the Phoenix, it should have been the Boy-Who-Lived, not the brand-new transfer student that Voldemort wanted to forcibly marry.

The headmaster smiled mildly. “Yes, it is rather unorthodox of me to speak to you now. But do not trouble yourself, my girl. We still have nearly a year before you will turn seventeen, plenty of time for you to think about your decision. And in the meantime, I would like to offer the occasional lesson to help you with your dueling.”

“Really? But—why? I haven’t even said yes, yet!”

Dumbledore cocked his head to the side, stroking his long beard contemplatively.

“You have the ability to be a very real force for good,” he said solemnly, then more cheerfully, “And perhaps more personally for me, I am and will always be a teacher at heart. There is nothing that brings me greater pleasure than fostering the potential of a talented student.”

“Thank you, sir,” Helena breathed out, excitement beginning to bubble in her chest.

Dueling lessons from Dumbledore…She shook her head, quietly marveling at the idea.

Dumbledore smiled and patted her arm as he stood up. “Now, I believe I have some important ministry officials waiting on me for tea, so I will leave you to your much-deserved rest.”

“Sir?” Helena bit her lip as a new worry occurred to her. If the Ministry had learned about her unique situation, then surely her friends, who were actually present at the fight, had heard about it by now too. “Has anyone been by? To visit me, I mean?”

The headmaster looked back at her with an expression full of understanding. “I am afraid Madam Pomfrey is not permitting visitors. She’s a bit overrun at the moment and doesn’t have the room or, I believe, the patience to deal with concerned friends.”

Helena looked around, for the first time realizing how many beds were visibly filled, and how many more had privacy curtains around them. The Hospital Wing was so quiet that it hadn’t occurred to her that she might not be the only patient. Which was silly. Of course Madam Pomfrey used silencing charms to facilitate the comfort of those under her care. The transparent golden bubbles encircling every bed were proof of that.

It still struck her like a blow to see the tiny second year boy sleeping fitfully in the bed beside her. The little boy turned over, face scrunched up in distress, and Helena recoiled, bile rising swift and pungent up the back of her throat.

The boy’s left sleeve was empty. His arm was gone.

“None of our students died,” Dumbledore said, gentle as he offered the only reassurance he could. “You were a big part of that.”

Helena tore her eyes away from the child to stare up at the headmaster, desperately wishing he could offer her more.

“Please, consider joining the Order when the time comes,” he said with a slight bow of his head. “And have faith in your friends. If that group is as worthy as I have always believed them to be, they will not abandon you.”

Helena silently watched as he walked out of the Hospital Wing, then looked back at the boy with the missing arm.

When the time came, she knew what her answer to Dumbledore would be.

Chapter Text

Helena scrubbed her hands over her face as she trudged towards the Gryffindor common room. Madam Pomfrey had only insisted on keeping her overnight for observation. But then the next morning had rolled around, and she had not been discharged. Lunch followed swiftly, then the afternoon, which dragged on interminably as Helena sat alone in her bed without any entertainment, the infirmary barred to visitors. It had almost been enough to make her wish her interview with Auror Highbrow had taken longer, even if he had spoken in the dullest monotone she’d ever heard. But that had concluded without any hiccups after a mere thirty minutes without one mention of her ability to speak parseltongue—which Helena could only attribute to Dumbledore’s interference—and she’d been left alone to wallow ever since.

Lying in a hospital bed for two days—bored out of her mind—should not have been so exhausting.

(Except that little boy was missing his arm. And the girl across from Helena still hadn’t woken up. And another girl—blonde with a thin, bird-like face—hadn’t stopped crying: awful, gut-wrenching things kept hauntingly silent beneath a translucent golden bubble.)

“Fama volat,” Helena said when she arrived at the common room entrance, then arched a brow when the Fat Lady snorted and pretended to wake from a deep sleep.

The portrait looked straight over her head, smoothing down the voluptuous pink skirt of her dress as she blinked out at the empty hall. Helena cleared her throat and waved.

“Oh!” the Fat Lady glanced down, a hand pressed to her overflowing bosom in an expression of great surprise as if she’d never considered that she might find a student standing directly in front of her. She leaned down, studied Helena for a moment, then sat back with a delighted smirk on her painted lips. “Well, well, well, Violet’s just told me everything. You-Know-Who’s cousin is it?”

Helena grimaced. “Fama volat,” she said again, pettily satisfied when the Fat Lady huffed and swung open.

The common room was packed when she entered, a boisterous cacophony that grew silent in waves as people noticed Helena. They looked wary. Some curious, though most appeared downright fearful.

Helena grit her teeth. This was expected, she reminded herself. Just like Second Year and the dueling club. Or even last year when she returned from Summer break and everyone believed she was a nutter. She could handle it. She just needed to find…

(Ron and Hermione. But they were gone.)

Lily! Lily was sitting at a corner table writing an essay. She was the only other person in their year present. But that was okay. Helena could go sit next to her, and they could work on their assignments, and she could ignore the stares from the rest of the House.

She started in that direction but was stopped after only a few steps by an older, auburn-haired girl. Emmeline Vance. She was an Order member—or she would be—part of the advance guard that had come to retrieve Helena from the Dursley’s after the dementors had attacked her and Dudley. They’d never been introduced in this time, but Helena recognized Emmeline. And she knew from Alice that the Seventh Year girl was one of the most notorious gossips in the entire school.

So it came as no surprise when she planted herself in front of Helena, hands on her hips, and said, “Is it true then? I heard it from Julie who heard it from Matthew who got it straight from Zabini that You-Know-Who was trying to recruit you.”

Emmeline glanced around furtively, then leaned in a titch closer as if her next words were some great secret. “Someone even said he was giving you dueling tips.”

“Er, that’s not…” Helena cast around for a good defense, something to lessen the rampant distrust in her housemate’s faces, but what was she supposed to say? Nothing Emmeline had announced was technically incorrect. Voldemort had been trying to recruit her. And though he’d been mocking her at the time, he had given her dueling tips.

“We all know there's only one reason a man that old gets interested in a sixteen-year-old girl,” someone else chimed in, safely anonymous amongst the crowd of spectators, “and it’s not to teach her how to duel.”

Helena flushed an angry red even as an icy chill dripped down her spine.

He can’t know, she thought, he can’t know what Voldemort said.

Her eyes landed on Lily then, and Lily was staring back. She was biting her lip. She tucked her bright red hair behind her ear as she continued to hesitate, eyes darting from Helena's face to the table and back again. Then, finally, she stood up.

“Helena saved us,” she said, effectively halting the whispers buzzing about the room, the crude jokes and mutters about cousins and parseltongue.

They were the right words, exactly what Helena had hoped to hear. But the flash of uncertainty in Lily’s expression, the second of hesitation before she spoke, cut Helena to the quick.

Helena gazed around the common room, the suspicion and anger filling it like a toxic fog…

She turned around and left.

Sirius found her up in the astronomy tower an hour later. He knocked against the open door, leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed when she looked over, lips quirked up in what could have been a small smile or the beginnings of a smirk.

Helena hunched down, squeezing her knees tighter against her chest. “What? Are you here to accuse me of being Voldemort’s whore, too?”

Sirius scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Hardly. Doesn’t seem like the brightest idea to pester the future Dark Lady, does it, luv?”

“Piss off.”

Sirius scoffed again, rolling his eyes even more dramatically this time. “Oh come off it. You can’t think I’d care about all of this? Me?”

Helena looked away. “The Blacks are hardly Voldemort.”

“No, you’re right, my situation’s definitely worse. There’re dozens of crazy, homicidal Blacks, and I’m directly related to all of them. How far back on your family tree do you have to go before you find your connection to the dark tosser?”

“Probably not as far back as Voldemort has to go to find an ancestor with the last name Slytherin,” Helena shot back, but she was suddenly grinning, unable to maintain her ire in the face of Sirius’s bullheaded loyalty.

Sirius laughed and slid down to sit next to her, nudged her with his shoulder. “So you’re related to a dark lord, we’ve all got one.”

An inelegant snort escaped Helena before she could fight it back. “Really?”

“Sure, it’s like the nobility’s super-secret right of passage or something. No evil overlord on your family tree? Do not pass go; do not collect two hundred pounds.”

"You know how to play Monopoly?”

Sirius shivered dramatically. “Don’t ever let Evans teach you. She may seem all nice and fair and shite, but Monopoly is her training ground!”

“To become a real estate mogul?”

“It sounds innocent when you phrase it like that.”

“As opposed to…?”

“Listen, Luv, if you want to know which student in our year is going to become an evil overlord, she’s your lady. I swear Evans is going to be running this country by the time we’re thirty.”

“…As a real estate mogul?”

“Oi! Don’t smirk! You know it’s always the quiet ones!”

Helena laughed. “Lily’s not quiet!”

Except for earlier, for that one broken second when I needed her to believe in me without question.

The smile slid from Helena’s lips.

Sirius nudged her shoulder again. “Hey, if you think ole Voldie’s bad, you should hear about some of the wankers on my family tree.”

Helena closed her eyes, drew in a shuddering breath, then forcibly relaxed her posture.

“You think you can top Voldemort?”

“Oh, sure,” Sirius said, pretending he hadn’t noticed her moment though he wrapped his arm around her in a loose side-hug. “What’s he done, really? Attempted a little coup d’état? Murdered some people? Tried to subjugate literally everyone? 'Tis nothing!”

“Yeah, nothing. He’s not terrifying at all.”

“Exactly! Now my great-great-great, great-great-great, great grandmother Ursa, she was a terrifying woman.”

Helena leaned into the hug, let her head fall against Sirius’s shoulder as his voice washed over her.

"What did she do?” she asked, and Sirius was off.

“You ever wonder why it's called the Black Lake? Aside from its color?” he asked.

“I didn’t know it needed another reason.”

“Ah, but if you’d seen it before 1682, you wouldn’t have recognized it. You see, the Black Lake used to be renowned as the most crystal clear loch in all of Scotland. It was so clear you could see a mile straight down to the bottom. You could ride out in a sailboat on a sunny day and wave to the merchildren playing down in kelp valleys outside the mervillage. Then Ursa Black—who, I will add, later went on to invent two of the three Unforgivables—decided she was going to declare war on the spirit of the lake.”

“The spirit of the lake?”

Sirius let loose a loud, barking laugh. “Just one great example of the Black family madness. She believed that a powerful spirit protected the lake, and she had an ongoing feud with the then-headmaster of Hogwarts, Arsenio Selwyn, who had rejected her in favor of another witch. She took his rejection as a personal slight to her power, of all things—though if you ask me, the poor bloke probably just wanted to marry someone to the left side of completely insane. But Grandma Ursa was offended. And she had a private army, because no one can consider themselves truly rich if they can't afford a private army, and the Blacks are nothing if not rich. So she marched that army to the edge of the lake and declared war on the spirit. And when no spirit rose up to meet her, she took her army down into the lake and slaughtered the entire, unsuspecting kingdom of melusine living beneath the surface—”

“Melusine?”

“Think mermaids,” he explained, his voice losing the lilting cadence it had gained while he was telling the story. "But with two tails instead of one.”

“And they had an entire kingdom down there?”

“Oh yeah, supposed to have been the most sophisticated melusine community in Europe at the time.”

“And Ursa…?”

“Killed them all,” he said, his voice immediately regaining its measured tempo. “They bled black and stained the water with their death. And to this day, the lake remains dark.”

“That…” Helena cleared her throat. “Okay, that was pretty horrible.”

“Horrible enough to beat Voldemort?”

“He’s still Voldemort.”

Sirius grinned. It was not a particularly happy expression, not the carefree smile she’d grown accustomed to seeing on his lips in this happier past. It was sharper, a cut-glass humor that delighted in the hanging noose. They had to laugh about this, the sins that ran through their veins, because if they didn’t, they would have to think about how truly horrible it was, about how much it hurt. How much it ached to know that this was what they came from. What they perhaps had the potential to become.

“You can’t hide behind Voldemort forever. Come on, don’t tell me you only have one evil git in your gene pool.”

Helena smiled into Sirius’s shoulder. She thought it over for a second, breathed in the subtle scent of his cologne—something warm and inviting, like whiskey and dark chocolate. Merlin, but she'd missed him. From the moment he’d fallen through the Veil to the weeks she'd spent lost in the Amazon. And even once she'd come to Hogwarts. But this, here and now, this felt like the man she’d known, the darker undertones that had always been there hidden beneath his carefree bluster.

The difference, Helena thought, was that before Azkaban he had been capable of so much more. And it warmed her straight down to her toes that she got to know this version of Sirius. This boy who could understand the resentment she harbored for the Dursleys, bordering on hate in her worst moments. And the fear she felt when she considered the similarities between herself and Voldemort, the sibilant whispers that said, ‘We’re not so different, he and I.’ This Sirius understood, but he could also shout with unrestrained glee when the Marauders pulled off a prank and loudly decry his love of quidditch and romp around as Padfoot every full moon.

But until tonight, he’d only let Helena see his brighter side. And she’d missed him.

So she snuggled in a bit closer and allowed herself a second to just breathe, and then she smirked. “You ever heard of the book Cruciamen?”

“The treatise on torture? ‘Course I have. My parents own a first edition copy.”

Helena jerked around so she was face-to-face with Sirius. “It’s illegal!”

“I know.” He shrugged.

“In every single country.”

“I know. My parents are very proud of it.”

Helena stared at him.

Sirius raised his brows. “The question is how do you know about it?”

“How do I…?” Helena spluttered. “My however-many-greats grandfather wrote the damned thing!”

“And you thought that topped Ursa Black?”

“The Russian tzars keep an official copy just in case!”

Sirius continued to look unimpressed.

“He invented the cruciatus curse!”

“Ursa got the other two.”

“That’s not—”

“And I have another ancestor who, supposedly, brought fiendfyre back from Hell.”

Helena stopped short. “What? That’s not real.”

“According to my dear mother…”

Helena made a face, and Sirius smiled like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“Centauri Black—Ursa’s older brother as luck would have it; I’m sure they were a charming duo—Learned about Christianity and decided that he would find a way to venture down to Hell and broker a deal with the devil.”

“Another example of Black madness?”

“It galloped in that generation.”

Helena laughed. “So that's the origin of fiendfyre then? He went to Hell and brought it back?”

“If you're to believe my mother. She’s convinced of it. She'll tell anyone who’ll listen that her great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather summoned a demon and set it on the filthy muggles. She’s very proud of it.” Sirius rolled his eyes. “No one else knows if he was successful. But they do agree that London burned during Centauri’s lifetime in the largest use of controlled fiendfyre ever witnessed. And to add an extra spooky layer to the story, that is also the first confirmed use of fiendfyre in the world, so either the cursed fire is literally a remnant of Hell, or my ancestor created one of the most destructive curses to ever exist. Ever.”

Helena was silent for a long moment, then, “Voldemort.”

Sirius laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “Alright fine, Voldemort. That’s a bad enough egg for all the Gaunts. But what about the other side of your family? Both my parents are Blacks, so I only have so many stories. But I’m going to guess your parents weren’t kissing cousins.” He grimaced, the quickly said, “So? Your mum have any crazy ancestors?”

Helena shook her head, a wistful smile stealing across her face. “There aren’t any dramatic tales about Mama’s side of the family. The quiet life running a vineyard in Tuscany for the last seven generations doesn’t exactly breed animosity and excitement. The most scandalous thing that’s ever happened to them, at least to hear them tell it, was Mama running off with that crazy foreign boy for a life of adventure.”

Sirius tilted his head to the side like a curious dog. “Why’d you come to Hogwarts? If you’ve got family in Italy, don't they all attend Sapienza?”

“They do.”

“So what?” he reached out and grabbed her hand, started fiddling absentmindedly with her fingers. “You don’t get along?”

“No, no they’re lovely. Really,” she said as her mind flitted to the handful of times she’d visited her relatives in Italy, to the good food and laughter and sleepy pace of life. She could have been content there for a little while, she knew, but she had her mother’s wanderlust and her father’s adventurous spirit and the Potter magnetism for trouble, and she knew that that life would’ve driven her mad with what she knew was coming for England. Besides, her heart called her to Hogwarts, to Sirius and James and Lily. To the people she could save. “But I couldn’t go there.”

Sirius nodded slowly and didn’t press her.

“Well, I’m glad you decided to come here,” he said. He pulled her hands to his chest like he wanted to cradle them by his heart. “And…you were amazing the other day, you know that, right? No matter what anyone else says.”

Helena’s smile was a wobbly thing, and she wanted to thank him, but…

“Lily…”

“She didn’t defend you?”

“No, she did. I just—I don’t know—she…”

“Wasn’t quick about it?”

Helena’s eyes flew to his face, surprised by his perceptiveness. Sirius shrugged, a wry smile quirking his lips.

“She’s a muggleborn, Luv,” he said.

And from anyone else, Helena would have thought it was an insult, but not Sirius. And she must have looked as puzzled as she felt because he was quick to elaborate.

“Voldemort wants to exterminate them. That’s not a small thing.”

“…Yeah, I know. I’m being ridiculous.”

“Maybe a titch.” Sirius held his thumb and pointer finger up in front of his eye, laughed when she shoved him. “I’m just saying Lily’s a good sort. Give her a moment to get her head wrapped around everything, and she’ll be spitting fire at anyone who looks at you funny.”

He stood then and held out a hand to help her up. “Come on, let’s go raid the kitchens.”

“I already had dinner.”

He tsked and shook his head like a disappointed parent. “Ice cream, Luv. And if that doesn’t solve everything, we can find an empty classroom and blow shit up.”

And that sounded just about perfect. So Helena looped her arm through his and let Sirius lead her away from the astronomy tower.

Chapter Text

Helena took to avoiding everyone with great diligence the following day.

She and Sirius had returned late last night, well past curfew, so she’d missed the girls in her dorm before bed, slipping in after they were all asleep. And this morning she’d risen at her regular early hour for training; she was an hour into dueling practice dummies in the Room of Requirement before anyone else in Gryffindor was even awake. But when breakfast time rolled around and the prospect of a meal in the Great Hall was before her, Helena was forced to admit that this morning was far from business as usual.

She didn’t want to face her friends. Not yet.

The rest of the school could go hang. But James and Remus and Lily? Alice, Dorcas, and Marlene? Helena could give them more time.

…That was the right thing to do.

So she called Zippy, the head Gryffindor house elf, to bring her breakfast, then she bunkered down with a massive encyclopedia of battle curses and began to craft a set of new, deadlier spell chains. This occupied her until a huge, gilt bronze clock manifested itself in the center of the room and told her (in a very bossy tone!) that it was time to go to lunch. So she called Zippy again, and the house elf, thrilled beyond measure to receive a second request in one day, popped back in with a veritable feast.

Helena eyed the heaping plates of steak and potatoes with dismay when she finished eating.

“Zippy?” she said to the empty room, and the house elf appeared with a loud crack, already bouncing on the tips of his toes.

“Miss be needing something else?” he squeaked. His bat-like ears wiggled excitedly as he peered up at Helena with big, luminous, hopeful golden eyes.

“Er, yeah,” she shifted uncomfortably under his worshipful stare, “Is lunch still going on?”

“Oh yes, miss! All the other studentsees still being down there, miss!”

“Right, good, er well, I’m done, so could you take the rest of this down to the Great Hall for me?”

But far from looking thrilled by Helena’s request, as she’d expected, Zippy instead eyed the plates of food with horror worthy of a bloody massacre. He shook his head hard, ears swinging about to slap against his face over and over. And for a second, Helena worried her food had been drugged… Then Zippy let loose a mournful wail and rushed to reassure her that the Hogwarts house elves never served their students leftovers, and her concern was diverted onto an entirely different track.

“What do you do with the extra food, then?” she asked.

She’d never given it a moment’s thought before, happy to have a full belly and not a Dursley in sight. But Bellona Farnese had been a devoted feeder of the homeless, a holdover from her childhood in Tuscany, and Helena had spent hundreds of weekends in their little tent kitchen whipping up Italian cuisine for the poor with her mother—usually werewolves and hags and the occasional yeti.

So when Zippy straightened up, puffed his little chest out with pride and said, “We house elves be vanishing it, miss!” Helena couldn’t help but feel almost personally insulted.

“Vanish it!” That was a nice way of saying banished into the center of the sun! Assuming Hermione hadn’t been trolling her with that charming factoid.

It could be difficult to tell fact from fiction in the Wizarding World. Hermione hadn’t done it often, and she’d usually given herself away almost immediately—she could tell a boldfaced lie about nearly anything, but when it came to academia, her left eye tended to twitch when she said something misleading. Still, she’d once had Helena convinced for an entire week that wizarding boys could get pregnant, and that had been, well…

But either way, vanishing the food was disgustingly wasteful.

“Zippy?” Helena said after a moment of thought, “Would you be able to take all these leftovers down to Knockturn Alley?”

“Knockturn Alley, miss?”

“Yeah, I remember there being a bunch of beggars down there.”

Hags mostly, but the destitute had lined the so-called ‘dark’ street in 1992, and there was bound to be someone who could stomach cooked meat among them.

“Miss be wanting Zippy to be bringing the beggars food?”

“Yeah, I mean, only if it won’t get you in trouble.”

“Oh no, miss!” Zippy was back to bouncing on his toes, a broad smile taking up his entire face. “No trouble at all! Zippy be finding all the beggars on Knockturn, miss, and be bringing them food!”

“Thanks,” Helena smiled gratefully, then before Zippy could disappear, “And for all the other leftovers after meals? Instead of vanishing them…?”

Zippy nodded, a series of quick, jerky flaps. “Helena Gaunt is so kind! Zippy be taking care of everything, miss. Everything!”

And then with another determined nod, he vanished with a crack, taking the food with him.

Helena smiled fondly at the empty spot where he’d stood.

House elves were the best.

Romula Morrighan glared at the finely robed back of yet another retreating Death Eater. A new recruit if she’d ever smelled one. Young, skinny, superior. The whelp had offered her nothing she hadn’t heard before. Land, protection, legal rights. So much hot air. Romula would believe it when they proposed a single bill before the Wizengamot advocating werewolf rights.

But that wouldn’t happen, not with that wanking pillock Greyback and his lickspittle sidekick Geri making a habit out of biting children. They’d cozied up to the Dark Lord early on and shot the rest of their kind in the arse. If the dark side was catering to boneheaded brutes like that, they could have no genuine interest in improving public opinion of werewolves. And without a change in perception, laws could only do so much. But at least this way Romula knew better than to trust in Death Eater promises, and she could direct her small pack to steer clear.

Small but powerful. Not a turned muggle among them. The other packs respected Romula. She was something of an unofficial alpha-queen to the greater British isles. And that meant constant recruitment efforts. Eventually, she knew, the Death Eaters would stop asking nicely.

Romula ran a hand through her cropped blonde hair and turned to head back into her dingy pub. But a loud CRACK had her spinning back around, a snarl building low in her chest as she tried to spot that sniveling little…

But it wasn’t a wet-behind-the-ears Death Eater waiting for her. It was a Hogwarts house elf. Gryffindor given the red and gold striped tea towel it was wearing. Romula had been a Slytherin back before the lupine curse infected her, so she had no trouble recognizing a school elf, even when one did appear, incongruously, on the wrong side of town. But recognition did not breed comprehension, and she found herself staring dumbly at the bouncing creature for a minute complete before she thought to ask what the bloody hell it wanted.

And then the little thing was squeaking, and proudly declaring that the “Great Miss Helena Gaunt be sending Zippy with foodsies for Miss Wolfie and all the Miss Wolfie's friendsies!”

Not just this once, but for all future meals as well.

And Romula had heard the rumors. The slip of a girl who had killed either two or twenty Death Eaters during the Battle of Hogsmeade, depending on who you talked to. Snake speaker. The Dark Lord’s cousin (fiancé, escaped whore, ally, sworn enemy). The Ministry didn’t trust her, but they had not arrested her. The Dark Lord supposedly owned her, but he’d left her in the hands of his enemies.

Romula was no fool. She knew no Dark ally would kill Death Eaters to keep their cover if they didn’t have to, just as she knew Helena Gaunt could have run away during the attack. Which meant Romula and the girl were in the same boat, kindred souls, hunted by the Dark, maligned by the Light. And if the girl was sending provisions, she was savvy enough to recognize their situation.

Romula chuckled and smiled for the first time that week.

This might actually be a recruitment pitch she was willing to hear.

At half past one, Helena finally tore herself away from her encyclopedia of battle curses. Mostly because the gilt bronze clock on a power trip had ordered her to wait out in the corridor for Sirius, who had asked for defense tutoring while they were eating ice cream last night, but also because her eyes were beginning to swim from staring at a book for so long.

(Hermione Granger, she was not. Whatever genetic quirk her bushy-haired friend possessed which allowed her to read straight through the day without taking a break, Helena had not inherited it in either life.)

She was not expecting the crowd of Gryffindors trailing in his wake when Sirius arrived.

The boys were at the front of the pack, James shoulder to shoulder with Sirius, Remus a step behind with his hand on a twitchy Pettigrew’s shoulder, who looked fit to faint when he caught sight of Helena. Dorcas and Marlene skipped along behind them, arm in arm, while Lily and Alice made for a dignified caboose.

Lily smiled when their eyes met, a tight, concerned expression that instantly made Helena feel like an idiot for the tsunami of hurt she’d failed to hide behind her resentment yesterday. But still, Helena was petty enough to enjoy the fact Lily had worried. The knowledge loosened an uncomfortable knot in her chest. She smiled back—Lily’s expression turning easy and warm in response—then she settled her attention on Sirius with a pointed nod at the crowd.

“Your army, m’Lady,” he said, rolling his shoulders in a lazy shrug as if what he’d really meant to say was There was no stopping them.

James hopped forward, grinning wide. “We are not worthy!” he exclaimed in an eerie imitation of a future pair of tricksters, sweeping into a deep, courtly bow, which he held for several long seconds. Then he straightened and threw his arm around Sirius’s shoulders, and the mirage of Helena’s future dissipated before her eyes.

“Now I know,” James declared in a grand tone, “new position, you need to get yourself properly established, start recruiting for your harem and all that, but unfortunately, my heart belongs to another.”

James winked at Lily. She rolled her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Padfoot though—OUCH! Merlin, mate, no need to get so rough!” he complained, rubbing at the spot on his side where Sirius had just jabbed his elbow. “I was only going to say that the two of you should start a club: the Dark Side Rejects. DSR for short. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“Oi!” Sirius cried, “They didn’t reject us. We rejected them. We’re the rejectors!”

“Eh, it’s all right. Not as catchy as DSR, but it’s your club, mate.”

“It’s the same initials,” Helena pointed out.

“Right you are m’Lady!” James paused, tapped his chin. “Or do you prefer Your Highness?”

“Don’t be thick Prongs, she would clearly be Your Majesty.”

“Your Imperial Majesty?”

Sirius pointed at James. “Add it to the list of goals: The sun never sets on Her Dark Empire.”

“That’s beautiful, Pads.” James pretended to wipe a tear from his eye.

Helena smirked, swept along in the wake of their humor despite her earlier determination to brood. “I think General sounds better,” she said.

Sirius wrinkled his nose like she’d suggested he eat a flobberworm. “It doesn’t have nearly enough panache for you, Luv. Any plebeian can become a general.”

“So you don’t want to become a general in my dark army?”

“Never.” James cast a sly grin at Sirius. “Pads would much rather be your king.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes at James, then lifted his chin and sniffed with all the hauteur of born royalty. “That’s Prince Consort to you.”

Helena felt a flush rise in her cheeks at the unintended implication, but she had to admit Sirius suited the role of prince far better than the stiff title of general. It was almost comical to picture him in a starched military uniform, his inevitable discomfort and the way he would fidget with its tight collar until it was as loose and relaxed as his everyday dress code violations. But she could imagine him in a crown with ease, lounged back in his casual finery, a bejeweled chalice lifted high in a merry toast.

Remus snorted—Dorcas and Marlene were giggling, Alice and Lily looking at Helena with shit-eating grins that left her feeling like she’d missed the punchline somewhere—then Remus waved at the empty hall and asked where they were actually supposed to be having this defense lesson.

Because apparently it was a forgone conclusion that Helena would tutor all of them, and she couldn’t bring herself to correct their assumption. She had trained her fellow classmates before, and that had ended with Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, and Ginny in a death match against Death Eaters. With Sirius falling and Harry diving after him…

But regardless of the catastrophe that had ended Fifth Year, her reasons for training the other teens stood. Her classmates now were no more likely to accept being sidelined from the war than those of the future, and if they were determined to fight, they needed to know how to fight. Training them was Helena’s best option for keeping them all alive.

But not Pettigrew, and not here where the rat could learn one of the castle’s most useful secrets.

She eyed the group. Wormtail was a pudgy boy, one as out of shape as his appearance would suggest. She’d seen him bent over panting after he’d jogged after his friends up a single flight of stairs last week. James, Sirius, and Remus, on the other hand, were all highly athletic. Unfortunately, Marlene, while quite pretty in Helena’s opinion, was about as athletic as Wormtail, and of the remaining three girls, only Dorcas participated in the one sport offered at Hogwarts. This could backfire and limit Helena’s student pool by more than just Pettigrew, but getting in shape was important for dueling regardless so…

“Before we start on any magic,” she said as a positively evil grin spread across her face, “We have to make sure everyone is physically prepared for a duel first.”

Nervous shifting met her declaration. The others traded glances, then Lily hesitantly asked, “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

Helena’s smile grew even larger. “I mean that I’m going to make you run. Guys, you’ll have twenty-three minutes to run a 5K. Girls, you’ll have twenty-eight. When you can do that, I’ll teach you how to duel.”

Without further ado, Helena spun on her heel and started jogging. “We’ll use the trip down to the quidditch pitch for our warmup lap!” she called over her shoulder, smirking to herself when she heard the others scrambling after her.

In the end, only Remus and Dorcas managed to run their 5K in their allotted time period. James and Sirius had been close, both athletic enough to put in a good showing, but quidditch was not a cardio intensive sport, and they’d started the run at a pace they couldn’t hope to maintain without training and burned themselves out early. Every one else would require some real work, Pettigrew thankfully more than the others, but as the group trudged into the Great Hall that evening for dinner, sweaty and tired but cheerful, Helena felt confident about her game plan.

It was enough to bolster her against the whispers that spread across the room at her entrance. And with her fiends immediately closing ranks around her, protective scowls settling on their faces, Helena found herself quite unconcerned by the rest of the school’s reaction.

Sirius was practically glued to her side as they sat down. James took to glaring at anyone who stared in their direction a second too long. Remus actually growled at one particularly vulgar comment not-so-quietly whisper shouted over at the Ravenclaw table, while Alice, Dorcas, and Marlene began to brightly discuss their training schedule in an effort to drown the other students out.

But it was Lily’s reaction that truly made Helena smile. At first she, like James, simply glared at their classmates. But after a few minutes with the chatter growing in volume rather than dying down, she whipped out her wand. No less than ten people flinched back at the sight. Lily merely sneered at them, an expression oddly reminiscent of Snape, of all people, then with a dramatic flourish and a muttered “muffliato” the noise went hushed, as though an invisible wall had been erected between the group of sixth year Gryffindors and the rest of the students.

“There,” Lily said with a prim sniff, “no need to listen to all that rot. And now they won’t know what we’re saying either.”

James, as was his habit, gazed at Lily as though he believed her to be some kind of divine goddess in disguise. “Where’d you learn that spell?” he asked.

“Never you mind,” she waved him off. “I want to know what the plan is.”

“The plan?”

“For this lot of idiots.” Lily made a sweeping gesture over the rest of the Great Hall.

“Oh,” James blinked. “Oh,” he lit up, a delighted grin stretching his cheeks, looking for all the world like all his Christmases had come at once. “Lily Evans,” he said, exaggerating each syllable, “light of my life, I always knew you were perfect!”

Lily scoffed and looked down, but her pale complexion couldn’t hide the light flush that appeared in her cheeks, nor could she seem to stop a small smile from tugging at her lips.

Helena was tempted to shoot a thumbs up at James, but she settled for sharing a conspiratorial grin with Sirius instead.

James, for his part, was too busy leaning eagerly towards Lily to notice anything else around him.

“Right,” he said, “So the plan is—and it’s pretty flawless, but feel free to chime in any time.” He spread his arms out wide on either side of his head. “…SNAKES!”

“Er…what?” Helena said.

James pursed his lips. “For our revenge prank, Gaunt, do keep up.”

“Okay…” she stared at him for a moment, “And that’s your whole plan? Snakes?”

“Like the thing with the squirrels last year?” Lily asked, though she didn’t wait for a confirmation before she continued talking. “I don’t think transfiguration will work if we want to pull it off with snakes.”

“Worked for the squirrels,” Sirius pointed out.

“No,” Remus said, “I agree with Lily. Transfiguring squirrels worked because we could use rodent trap charms to lure them where we wanted them to go, and the layered sound effect charms were relatively simple and meant to be heard by everyone, but if we want to properly roll out snakes…”

“Golems,” Lily slapped the table decisively, “It’ll have to be. I have an ice hardened steel cauldron we can use to brew them.”

Somehow, Helena realized, she was the only one without a clue in this conversation. Even bloody Pettigrew was following along better than her, and the magical theory was clearly going right over the boy’s head.

“Why are we brewing golem snakes?” she asked.

She didn’t know much about golems other than that they were magically constructed bodies most typically used by hospitals to grow transplant organs for terminally ill patients. Why they would want to grow snake bodies, however, she hadn’t the foggiest.

“Transfigured snakes might not technically be alive, but they are still self-regulating snakes. You can’t control them like an animated object, not with anything legal at least,” James answered her, looking thoughtful. “And even if we could find a spell that would reliably make them chase after people, silencing charms don’t last long enough to keep them from hissing and giving away the game.”

“What about a tangible illusion then?” Alice suggested.

Sirius laughed derisively. “Can you manage that?” he asked. “Because I know I can’t, not if it’s out of my sightline.”

“Which is why we need golems,” Lily insisted.

“Hang on,” Helena narrowed her eyes as the pieces of the puzzle finally began to form a clear picture in her mind, “Are we trying to prank people into thinking they might be parselmouths?”

“Now she gets it,” Dorcas snickered.

“We’re going to brew fake snakes so we can animate them to follow people around and, what? Whisper things in English to them?”

“Imagine Ewen Smith’s face if he thinks he can understand snakes,” Sirius cackled gleefully. “He’ll probably have a complete nervous breakdown, the self-righteous git.”

“Ooh, or Clarice Thornwell,” Marlene chimed in, bouncing on her seat. “She’s awful! And I heard she’s taking bets on—well, never mind that. But she really is awful.”

Helena began to smile, slow and wicked. “Brilliant,” she said, “Is there any way to record everyone’s reactions?”

The prank planning session was a good distraction for the group during dinner, but while Helena was unfortunately accustomed to the occasional cold greeting within her own house, the others seemed to take the general avoidance from the rest of Gryffindor down in their common room that night to heart.

As everyone was headed to sleep, Lily crawled onto Helena’s bed, right under the covers to prop up next to Helena on her pillows.

“You okay?” she asked.

Helena huffed a laugh under her breath. She’d been staring off into space, zoned out, but whatever the other girl had thought, today had generally been more positive than upsetting for Helena.

“Yeah,” she replied after a moment, “just…thinking.”

“About?”

Helena shook her head. “Nothing important.”

“You seemed pretty deep in thought for nothing important.” Lily gave her a look and nudged her shoulder. “Come on, you can tell me.”

Helena hesitated. Her mind had been blank, but at Lily’s insistence, a common nagging refrain wormed its way back into the forefront of her brain, and she found herself suddenly gripped with the desire to talk about it, as she’d so often wished she could talk to Lily about her various worries in the future.

So she said, “I can’t help thinking about the war. It’s going to take years for it to end.” Five more years last time, and there was no miracle boy-who-lived cure this time. “I hate fighting.”

“Scarily good at it, though,” Lily said.

“You can be good at something and hate it.”

“Yeah,” Lily nodded sagely, “it would probably be more fun as a sport. No chance of dying.”

Helena laughed darkly, then sighed. “Seriously, though, fighting is going to be our lives for the next however many years. We might be old ladies before we get to focus on anything else. Doesn’t that thought exhaust you?”

“I think,” Lily began slowly, Alice’s loud snores punctuating her words, “I think that we have to hold on to the things that we love, give ourselves a goal that has nothing to do with the war. Like me? I’m going to be a potions master for Saint Mungo’s.”

“Really?”

“Why do you look so surprised? I’m your potions tutor.”

“No, it’s not that,” Helena said. “You’re amazing at potions. It’s just, you always seem so passionate about everything in the papers. I suppose I figured you wanted—”

“To go into politics?” Lily wrinkled her nose. “I want to save lives. Everything else,” she waved her hand, “that can be someone else’s goal.”

“Huh, well, you’ll be an amazing potions master.”

“I know,” Lily said, not an ounce of humility in her tone. “I’m going to be the best. But what about you? What do you want to do?”

“Dunno, I guess auror makes sense, or maybe a curse breaker. Something useful.”

“I suppose you are some kind of defensive magical prodigy,” Lily’s brows furrowed. “But you don’t sound very enthusiastic about either of those options…What about teaching? You did a pretty bang up job with us today, even if it was just running.”

“Thanks, but I don’t know…” Helena shook her head. “Teaching you guys was fun. But I think if I ever came back to teach kids, a part of me would always feel like I was teaching them to fight because I expected them to need to fight. And that sounds depressing, so…”

Lily laughed. “Oh come on, there has to be something you love. If you could do anything every day and be happy, what would it be? And it doesn’t have to be useful!”

Helena only had to think about it for a second. “Baking,” she said, her throat tightening with emotion as her mind flashed for an instant to a small tent kitchen, to a pair of hazel eyes crinkled up with laughter above a cheek smeared with a line of white flour.

Lily looked at her in surprise.

“See!” Helena accused, clearing her throat as she pushed the stab of grief back down. “I couldn’t bake for the rest of my life. Everyone would always look at me like that and think I was wasting my talent. And then I would start to think I was wasting my talent. And then I would be miserable.”

“No, don’t say that! I was surprised, but…Look, when the war is over, when we’re at peace, we won’t need people to fight. It will be like when I was little, and the taekwondo instructor down the street was teaching kids a sport, not a martial art that was actually intended for war. When our world is like that, baking, it would be something that makes people happy. And that will be just as important—just as valid—as crazy ninja powers.”

“Crazy ninja powers?” Helena laughed. “Maybe. But I think things are still going to be pretty messed up even after all the fighting’s done. I’ll save my baking for my friends. Do something more like—”

“Politics?” Lily suggested, dry as the Sahara.

“Ew, no.”

“I don’t know, you have a lot of opinions when we read the newspapers too.”

“Politics adjacent,” Helena conceded the point. “Maybe. Politicians give me the creeps.”

“Yeah,” Lily snorted, shuddering dramatically. They were both silent for a moment, side by side in the dark room, then, quietly, Lily said, “I am sorry you know. For yesterday, when everyone was being so awful. I should’ve stepped in sooner, or…”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Helena whispered back just as quietly.

“No,” Lily agreed, sighing, “But…I could have been better. I will be better.”

Helena’s throat went tight again. She blinked rapidly as tears threatened to well in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, leaning her head against Lily’s shoulder to hide her face from the other girl.

Lily wrapped her arm around Helena, squeezed her close and stayed silent. Eventually they both drifted off to sleep, and when Helena woke up at four the next morning for her pre-dawn workout, she found herself scrunched up on the edge of her bed, Lily star-fished out across the rest of the mattress.

Chapter Text

“Curly Wurly?” Professor Dumbledore proffered a bowl piled high with braided bits of chocolate broken into inch-long pieces. “I admit, I typically prefer zestier candies myself, but the muggles gave this treat such a delightful name, I couldn’t resist when I saw them in the store.”

Helena imagined Dumbledore, with his white beard hanging down to his hips, dressed in a garishly bright outfit as he strolled through the candy isle of a muggle supermarket, and couldn’t help the amused grin that overtook her face as she plucked one of the chocolate-covered caramel bits from the bowl.

Dumbledore offered her a pleased smile of his own as he too selected a candy. “Alas, so few of my guests accept when I try to share. Due to a rather unfortunate rumor that I lace my candy with calming draughts, I believe,” he sighed, blue eyes twinkling merrily in contrast to his tone.

Helena paused for a split second, then, shrugging, she went back to nibbling on her candy. It was Tuesday, three days post the Battle of Hogsmeade, and she was up in the headmaster’s office for her first dueling lesson. Classes had been canceled for the week following the battle—time for the less severely injured students to heal, for others to start coming to grips with the attack without the stress of assignments and tests clouding the field—or in Helena’s case, time to attend an extra lesson in the middle of her day during what would have been a free study period in a normal week.

“Sir?” she asked after a moment of silence. “What are you going to be teaching me? Er, that is…I brought a list of spell chains I’m working on? So you can see what level I’m at?”

Dumbledore accepted the piece of parchment Helena thrust at him but spared it only a brief glance before he set it down on his desk. “Very practical, my dear girl,” he said. “But tell me, what did you find most difficult about your duel with Voldemort?”

Helena fought back the urge to claim that her spell chains were the most difficult aspect of her duel. Her magic didn’t flow smoothly enough. It had left her a step slower than Voldemort, constantly on the back foot. Not to mention her chains had been too predictable by far. But, much to her chagrin, bloody Voldemort’s mid-duel coaching had actually been helpful, and after just a single day of practice, she could already feel the way his advice would improve her.

She remembered then her frustration during their fight, Voldemort’s mocking smile as he’d easily avoided every attack, her inability to land a single hit…

“He kept apparating,” she said.

Dumbledore stroked his beard contemplatively, peering at Helena knowingly, or, perhaps, as if he thought her answer lacking.

“Hmmm, yes, ghost apparition is fiendishly difficult to counteract for the average dueler, and Voldemort is a master at the technique. Fortunately, there is a straight forward if somewhat grueling solution to that problem. One merely needs to undergo several hundred repetitions of trial and error to develop an instinct for where one’s opponent will land. But we can return to that later. First, I think we shall begin our studies with an altogether more ancient question which, yet, largely remains a mystery: What is magic?”

Dumbledore looked at Helena expectantly. She tried not to flush under his gaze, but she’d never been an academic sort, in either life, and she didn’t relish being put on the spot with theoretical questions.

“Er,” she stuttered, “It’s the ability to…make things happen? Without physically, you know, touching anything?”

“Magic is will made manifest?—As the great magical theorist Lionel Leonidas defined it in 1783—Is what you are saying, my dear girl?”

“Yes!” Helena perked up, pleased with the eloquent rephrasing of her stumbling attempt.

Dumbledore nodded slowly. “That is not a bad definition, of course. Some variation of that sentiment has existed since antiquity, and still, to this day, holds sway. But let me ask you this: Why is it magic when you or I cast a bombarda, but it is not magic when a muggle presses a button which sets off an explosion miles away?”

“Because…the power for the bombarda comes from within?”

“And so we move closer to our answer! Though I will remind you that there is plenty of magic utilized the world over which relies on magical power not generated by the human practitioner. Potions, as a common example, or fertility rituals which call upon the Earth’s core to bless a patch of farmland. In both cases the witch or wizard is merely a conduit for outside forces.”

“So it’s not because the power came from within?”

“Let me phrase it this way,” Dumbledore replied, then he proceeded to ask Helena another question. “Why is an electric eel considered a muggle animal while a dragon is considered a magical one?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“They both have power generated from within, yet the energy of an electric eel’s shock is not magical while the energy of a dragon’s fire is. Why do you think that is the case?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Helena grit her teeth. “Is it a different type of energy?”

“Precisely!” Dumbledore beamed at her as if her answer had been insightful rather than bordering on sarcastic. “Magic is a specific type of energy, one which is capable of some truly mind-boggling effects when it interacts with the many other types of energy in the world. Witches and wizards, and various other creatures and beings, are capable of producing and controlling magical energy. And when we control it, it is our understanding of the world which gives that energy its direction and form.”

“So is that why we’re starting with theory?” Helena asked dubiously.

Dumbledore chuckled, eyes twinkling behind his half-moon spectacles. “We are going to be delving into higher level magics,” he told her. “I believe muggle scientists who study quantum physics might sympathize when I say: Magic, at such an advanced level, is not intuitive. And yet you must understand its twisty-turny logic in order to achieve our desired results.”

“And this is going to help my dueling?”

Helena didn’t mean for her question to sound rude, but she couldn’t deny her disappointment. Dumbledore was a lauded genius. People like Hermione would kill for the chance to talk magical theory with the man. But this conversation was wasted on Helena. Helena was a practical person. She was much more interested in the how's than the why's, and she’d always learned best by doing.

“Magical theory is the cornerstone upon which we build our skills,” Dumbledore replied. “But I can see you are not convinced.”

He smiled kindly, and Helena tried not to squirm guiltily in her seat. She took another bite of her candy to stall the necessity of a polite response.

Professor Dumbledore chuckled. “Perhaps a practical example will change your mind.”

He paused, and Helena found herself unconsciously leaning forward with sudden anticipation.

“I am sure at this point in your studies you have been amply warned against chaining two diametrically opposed spells together, yes? For instance, the glacius charm and the fire whip, in terms of wand motions, make an ideal combination. But effective chains rely on a smooth flow of energy, and the switch from an energy signature intended to freeze to one that creates condensed fire is jarring, and if enough power is in play, painful and even dangerous for the caster.”

“There’s a workaround for that?” Helena asked eagerly.

“Indeed,” Dumbledore smiled, pleased. “When you power a spell, you draw magic from your own core. You draw it out, your intention and physical motion give that neutral magic a charge which will cause it to react in a certain way, and then you release it. Now, your average dueler will then pull forth fresh, neutral magic to charge a new spell, but humans are not perfect conduits. And so, if the first spell had a diametrically opposed charge to the second spell, and the dueler has a quick enough second cast, those energies could collide catastrophically.”

“…But that’s not what happens with an advanced dueler?”

“And so we come to the idea of residual energies, those which float around and even within the caster in the fractions of a second after a spell is cast. The bane of the average dueler and the treasure trove of the greats. So long as you are casting quickly enough, you can pull that ambient magical power back to you to augment your next spell. Which is, in itself, an advanced skill. But for now we are focussing our inquiry on diametrically opposed energies, and the question becomes: How do you augment a fire whip with the energy from a freezing charm?”

Professor Dumbledore looked to Helena for an answer, but she had to shake her head and admit she had no idea.

“Glacius is a rather ingenious charm,” he informed her. “It is essentially a basic auguamenti charm which is designed to suck the heat away from a surface as soon as the water hits, thus instantaneously freezing the water. Notice I said the charm sucks the existing heat away—that is a very important detail for our purposes, and it is true of all spells designed to lower temperature. They subtract heat. They do not add cold. So now think about your fire whip. How would you augment it with the energy from a glacius charm?”

“If the freezing charm is extracting heat,” Helena hesitated, then guessed, “then I could pull that heat to me?”

“Exactly right. For a fraction of a second as your magic lifts heat away from the surface, that heat is one with your magic and is therefore yours to command.”

Helena gazed at Dumbledore with bright eyes. “I understand, sir,” she said.

And she did. This was dueling technique, but it was technique she couldn’t hope to master without understanding the why's of the spells involved. Dumbledore had made his point, in his own roundabout way, Helena was chagrined to note: She was the student here, and she would be wise to let the master teach.

Dumbledore nodded, satisfied. “Now,” he said, "I believe that is all the time we have allotted for today—”

Helena was shocked to realize she’d been in the headmaster’s office for nearly an hour.

“—So for your homework, I would like you to consider the mechanics of a simple lumos. We will resume our conversation at the same time next week.”

Helena left, mind swirling with ideas for new spell chains, things her enemies would never see coming, if only she could figure out how to make the spells work together.

She was lost in her thoughts—and generally determined to ignore the whispers and harsh glares that greeted her periodically as she walked down the hall—so she was completely taken off guard when an electric blue shield charm suddenly bloomed to life over her left shoulder, flaring bright as it absorbed an attack before dissipating with a shimmering afterglow.

Helena’s heart stuttered in her chest. Her stomach swooped, her fingers twitched, wand appearing in her hand before she could think to draw it as she turned, locking eyes with a tall blonde girl in Hufflepuff robes. The girl had her own wand raised, her sneer caught halfway into an expression of surprise. Helena had time to blink, and then a bright red spell slammed into the girl’s face. She stumbled back. Blood smeared across her face, her nose cranked to the side. Her three friends, who had been standing two steps behind her, shrieked, arms reaching out in support, and then it was like the world suddenly sped back up, and Helena was left standing stock still, limbs tingling with readiness but with no outlet at which to direct her energy.

The three friends were all clambering around Helena’s would-be assailant. They were yelling at her—directions to stop the bleeding, questioning if the girl was okay, a cacophony of noise as they each sought to be heard even as they were herding the bleeding girl away. The shortest of the lot, a square-faced girl sporting a bright yellow bow holding up a ponytail of dark hair, planted herself between Helena and the others, as if she planned to use herself as a human shield should it prove necessary.

Loyal, Helena mused in something of a daze as she watched the small quartet hurry around the corner at the end of the hall, but ultimately pretty stupid if the girl actually expected further retaliation, considering she never once reached for the wand chopsticked through her shiny yellow bow.

It was only as that thought forced a snort of mirthless laughter from Helena that she remembered her savior. She turned, words of thanks freezing in her chest when she caught sight of the tall, reedy boy standing behind her.

Evan Rosier nodded politely, looking for all the world as if he were greeting a passing acquaintance at the bank rather than coming off the tail end of breaking a schoolmate’s nose. He didn’t trouble himself to say anything to Helena either, merely tucked his wand back up his sleeve and strolled right past her without a word.

Helena was too befuddled by the entire encounter to move for several long seconds, and by that point, Rosier, too, had disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall.

Rosier, the future Death Eater who once-upon-another-life had managed to take a chunk of Mad-Eye Moody’s nose.

Helena, slowly, continued on her way, but much as she didn’t want to dwell on it, she couldn’t help but wonder. The Hufflepuff girl’s attempted ambush didn’t particularly surprise her. Similar instances had occurred the last time she was outed as a parselmouth. Perhaps less violently—most people felt more comfortable hexing a sixteen-year-old than a twelve-year-old—but her ability hadn’t exactly gained her any friends then either, much to her helpless frustration. But Rosier defending her? Helena knew it had to do with Voldemort. There was no question in her mind on that front. But was he simply reacting to the rumors? Or was the Dark Lord already marking Hogwarts students?

Helena had felt convinced the maniac was doing just that after she’d met Lucias Malfoy in the library. And given all that had been said during the battle in Hogsmeade, her conviction could only grow on the Malfoy front. And if he was already a bonafide Death Eater, why not the brothers Lestrange, Rosier, and the others?

A cold chill prickled down Helena’s spine as she considered that option. That sense of helpless frustration rose again, because if there were marked Death Eaters roaming these halls, there was little she could do about it. She didn’t even think people knew about the Dark Mark tattoo in this time. Certainly the Ministry didn’t. Even Sirius, an active Order member, hadn’t known what it was when Harry mentioned Karkaroff’s mark during his fourth year in the future. That hadn’t become common knowledge amongst the Order until after Voldemort’s return. So any attempt to expose marked students now would surely prove fruitless.

Helena raked a hand through her hair, squeezing a fistful tight enough to make her scalp ache.

Practice. That was all she could do. Practice and prepare and work on her bloody spell chains. She was supposed to be meeting James and Sirius in their makeshift potions lab, but they would understand if she dipped out on them. It wasn’t like she was contributing anything to the brewing process. That was all James. She and Sirius were only there to keep him company. So there would be no harm in her telling them she couldn’t hang out today, she decided.

But no sooner had she opened the door to their private hangout than Sirius put paid to any idea she had of ditching them.

“You’re here!” he exclaimed the second he caught sight of her, bounding across the room with a great, wide grin. “Finally!”

“You that bored watching James brew?”

“With his ugly mug?” Sirius barked a laugh, ignoring the shouted “Oi!” from James. “But no, that’s not it. Your potion has been ready for an hour, luv. The suspense is killing me!”

Helena felt her entire body flush with excitement. “I thought it wouldn’t be finished till tomorrow?”

“It’s an eleven to eighty-six hour range for the ripening period,” James explained, walking over. “Tomorrow was just a guess. You got lucky.”

From his fingers dangled a glass phial filled with a bright evergreen potion sparkling with drops of blue, like a forest canopy captured in a bottle.

As James had explained to her in frankly excruciating detail, the animagus potion was nothing more or less than a revelation potion. It would, for a period of ten minutes, transform her into her animal body. But that was all it would do. In order to become a full animagus, Helena would have to meditate for months, mastering the art of transforming each individual component of her body into that of her spirit animal. Then, once she felt confident with every component transformation, she would need to walk around with a mandrake leaf beneath her tongue for a minimum of one full moon cycle, chanting the incantation Amato Animo Animato Animagus every sunrise and sunset until the first lightning storm following her moon cycle. Only then could she attempt the full transformation without losing her mind to the animal within.

But this was the first real step, and in a few minutes time, Helena would discover her form. Her hand shook with excitement as she reached out to take the phial from James, all plans of ditching the boys a distant shadow of a thought.

“Containment circle’s this way,” Sirius said, grabbing her hand and tugging for her to follow him, bouncing on his toes, tail wagging for all that it was not physically present.

Helena grinned as he pushed her gently over the chalked ward line in the far corner of the room. Sirius immediately bent down and tapped the line with his wand. It lit up, glowing the soft white of a light bulb for three seconds, then the glow faded, leaving behind a faint buzzing, like an invisible electric fence humming with energy.

Helena raised the potion in a toast to the two boys. Her eyes locked with Sirius, gray to green. “Cheers,” she said, and knocked back the entire glass in a single swallow without hesitation.

Only then did Sirius decide to say, “Don’t worry if you turn into a fish or something lame like that. James has lots of practice conjuring tanks.”

Helena spared a wry thought for all the warnings she’d heard about the dangers of attempting the animagus transformation alone (without professional supervision).

“And if I turn into something giant like a shark?” she asked.

James’s lips pinched in mild concern. “Do you think that’s likely?”

Well, that was reassuring. Helena rubbed at the side of her neck where gillyweed had once forced gills to grow along her throat, and prayed to whatever powers that be that she was not about to experience a similar sensation.

“I suppose we’re about to find out,” she said.

She didn’t have to wait much longer. She could feel warmth building in her stomach. It started low, comforting like she’d swallowed a sip of perfectly heated hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day. But it grew quickly from there, like her perfect hot chocolate had instead been a cup straight off the fire, scalding her mouth and esophagus, making her chest feel too tight, her breaths too sharp, her muscles down to her thighs cramping in protest as the heat rose up the back of her neck, scraping over her spine to jab at the base of her brain.

Adrenalin shot through her system. Fight or flight.

A golden eagle spread its wings before her eyes: Bravery and hope, freedom and truth, devotion to a single partner bright in its penetrating gaze.

But it was batted away by a set of sharp claws.

Mine, the thought came from nowhere. They’re mine. Mine, mine, mine. It rang through her head with a familiar scream of protective rage. She would fight for them, die for them, use her own body as a shield to keep them safe. It didn’t matter where in the world she needed to be, what time or circumstance. Helena was adaptable. She was a predator. Agile and quick, she stalked on silent paws, a secret living in her soul, a temper unpredictable even to herself at times.

Helena managed to raise her head from where she’d curled up into a tight crouch, hands on the ground. She once again locked eyes with Sirius. He was watching her closely, biting his lip in sympathy. But when she looked to him, he tried to smile encouragingly.

Mine, she thought with another wave of fierce protectiveness. Her head flared with a lightning quick flash of burning pain, and then her body was shifting. Muscle and bone and sinew rearranged themselves beneath her skin. Her spine lengthened into a tail, grew flexible in a manner that would make elite gymnasts green with envy. Course, tawny fur sprouted over her body. Her legs shortened, her fingers and toes became soft paws with deadly claws as she dropped to all fours. Her ears shifted to the top of her head, grew rounded and upright. Her jaw gained muscles and teeth that could crush spines.

It hurt like hell.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

Not much of the next ten minutes would remain with Helena on a conscious level. She remembered the smells most vividly. The pain of her first transformation had left her irritable and on edge. One of the boys, she couldn’t recall which one, had whistled admiringly. Helena had not appreciated the noise. She’d hissed at them in warning. But the wary aggression she’d felt in response to her confusing situation hadn’t lasted long, not with those smells.

The room itself was inoffensive. Old stone and herbs and boy. She liked the smell of the boys. They smelled happy. Skin salty-sweet, a bit musky, warm and content. There was an underlying hint of arousal on the air that settled pleasantly in Helena’s nose. She could curl up in those scents, purr and play and rub her cheeks against those scents.

Except one. Rat. But it was a stale scent, not present. She could kill it if it came back.

But the other boys, they didn’t smell enough like her. She needed to change that, to mark them more clearly. They could pile together. It was pleasantly cool, her stomach was full. She would herd them back into this nice, sheltered corner, and they would curl up and purr and nap, and when they woke, they would smell properly of her. With those instincts guiding her forward, Helena had tried to take a step towards the boys. But the containment circle had blocked her in.

Helena hadn’t understood then why she couldn’t reach her family. But it had infuriated her as much as it had scared her. And so she’d done the only sensible thing: She’d tried to attack the invisible wall.

Ears pinned back, forelegs spread wide, claws extended, she’d released the famous scream of a mountain lion. Again and again. To hear James tell it, she’d paced, growling and hissing her fury before screaming as she rushed the line over and over for the entire remainder of her time in animal form.

Helena vaguely remembered that, but mostly she just remembered the spike of fear she’d smelled coming from the two boys and her desperate need to reach them in time.

That need was still roaring strong through her veins when the potion’s effects reversed. Helena went from crouching on four legs to kneeling on her hands and knees in a second. She was dizzy, a bit achey, but she knew she had to escape. Knew she had to get to James and Sirius. And so she’d surged forward and banged her fist against the barrier.

Once, twice, and it had disappeared before she could hit it again. And then Sirius was there, wrapping her tight in a hug.

Helena gasped against his neck, trying to smell him, to smell that he was alright, that he wasn’t afraid or in danger. But she couldn’t smell those things with her weak human nose. All she could scent was his familiar cologne—whiskey and dark chocolate—and the more subtle sense of clean linen. It soothed her regardless. As did the big hand running gently up and down her back, and the soft words murmured by her ear.

“You’re good. I know it’s disorienting the first time. But you’re good. I’ve got you, Hellcat.”

Helena let herself relax into his embrace for another few seconds before she reluctantly pulled away.

“Hellcat?” she asked.

Sirius’s answering grin was cocksure as he declared, “No one gets to pick their own Marauder name.”

“Seems a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

“Be thankful. Prongs wanted to nickname you Night Screamer,” Sirius informed her. And if his smirk was highlighted by a touch of red in his cheeks, Helena was too busy staring at James in disbelief to notice.

James, of course, looked delighted by his own wit. “It’s what the locals call cougars,” he informed her without a hint of shame. “My gran went on some kind of wilderness hiking trip in the Florida Everglades once—no idea why—but she loved to tell me the story of the time she got chased by…a night screamer. It seemed appropriate.”

Helena shook her head and turned back to Sirius. “Hellcat it is,” she decided.

Sirius nodded solemnly. “Knew you’d see it my way.”

And now, for your reading pleasure, another OUTTAKE. I wrote this little blurb, but I don’t see it fitting in smoothly anywhere in my outline, and so instead I’m presenting it to you as an OUTTAKE from Voldemort’s perspective following the Battle of Hogsmeade. Warning: Voldemort is a total psychotic creeper!

Lord Voldemort first met Obsession as a small boy. It was during a ubiquitous moment common to the lives of all magical people, the moment a young wizard first consciously realized he was using magic. Perhaps it was a moment which stood out less prominently in the memories of those who were raised in magical households, surrounded as they were by all manner of fantastical objects and people. For them, the shock must have come from learning that the majority of the world did not possess magic. But for Tom Riddle, an abandoned boy growing up in a poor, dilapidated muggle orphanage, the moment he realized he possessed special powers was a much-cherished memory.

Lights had always had a tendency to flicker when Tom was upset. Glass would crack and splinter when he cried. Caretakers would jerk their hands away from a stinging zap when Tom wished to be left alone. But it was not until his fourth birthday that Tom did something which was undeniably the product of his own power.

Rich muggles liked to think themselves charitable during the Christmas season. So every year on the 25th of December, Wool’s Orphanage received a stack of neatly wrapped toys. It was always a small stack, and competition for the cheap toys was always stiff. Tom at four years old did not yet command enough fear and respect to take his pick of the lot. He’d tried for the shiniest bauble in the pile—a small metal car painted a bright emerald green—but an older boy, now nameless and faceless in Lord Voldemort’s memory, had shoved him out of the way. So Tom had lost out on the car, and, butt planted on the floor from the harsh shove, he’d lost out on the chance to snag another toy in the mad rush and been left with nothing to show for his Christmas season. When his birthday had rolled around five days later, Tom had been left to glare heatedly at the older boy as he’d sped Tom’s car down an imaginary road.

No additional toy had been forthcoming to commemorate Tom’s birthday, and he’d seethed over the injustice of it all, burning up on the inside with an envious rage. But then, before little Tom’s eyes, the older boy had shrieked with pain, yanking his hand away from the car as though he’d been burned, and the car had come zooming across the floor straight into Tom’s delighted grip.

Tom had known then that he had power the likes of which he’d only seen before in fairy tales, and that that power could get him anything he wanted.

Lord Voldemort next met Obsession in a cave by the seashore as he’d watched Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop writhe in pain, their echoing wails a more beautiful melody to young Tom Riddle’s ears than the loveliest harmony sung by the church choir on Sundays, their agonized faces more beautiful than a Renaissance painting. Tom had known since he was four that his power could get him anything he wanted, and what he’d wanted was to watch his fellow orphans scream.

And then had come Hogwarts, the most magnificent place in existence, a castle built as a monument to magic and learning, a shining beacon free of muggle rats. Hogwarts was Tom Riddle’s home. When he learned of his own noble ancestry, it seemed as if fate itself wanted him to claim possession of this most magical place for his own. Beauty, grandeur, power, all united in a place founded by the most distinguished bloodline in the whole of Wizarding Britain, a heritage only Lord Voldemort was worthy enough to perpetuate.

And so Lord Voldemort knew Obsession again. And his obsessions stayed with him as the years progressed, growing and building upon one another as he gained experience, until the day he first laid eyes on Helena Gaunt.

She was a beautiful little thing, delicate of feature, jewel-bright eyes glittering like the basin of emeralds hidden away in Salazar Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets. From her lips flowed the sibilant song of their ancestors. In her veins ran the blood of their great House. From her wand spilled magic powerful enough to do their noble heritage proud.

Helena Gaunt was the shiniest bauble Lord Voldemort had ever seen.

He would have her for himself alone. He would see her elevated to her proper station in life: above all others, beneath only Lord Voldemort himself. And if he had to break her a little first? So be it.

Helena Gaunt looked lovely covered in blood.

Chapter Text

“Listen up fives! A ten is speaking!”

Sirius was standing up on his bed, arms outstretched, holding court before their entire Gryffindor year group. They could have met in an abandoned classroom for this little planning session, but venturing outside of Gryffindor’s cosy walls had not proved necessary. Whoever had laid out the ward scheme for the dorms centuries ago had clearly harbored some double standards, because while the boys could not ascend the stairs to the girls’ rooms, the same could not be said in reverse.

Helena, sitting crisscrossed at the foot of Sirius’s bed, knocked his shin with her elbow and snorted. He glanced down at her, gray eyes dancing.

“Not you, Hellcat,” he said, wiggling his brows with a playful leer. “Don’t worry, you’re almost as gorgeous as me. Nine point nine for sure, luv.”

“Well maybe if you would teach me your hair styling charms…”

“Alas! Those are a Black family secret. You’ll have to marry me if you want to learn them.”

“A dire prospect,” Helena quipped back, mockingly grave.

Sirius’s face screwed up, like he couldn’t decide whether he should laugh or pout.

“Not that they even work,” James muttered from the foot of his own bed directly to the left of Sirius’s.

Remus, Dorcas, and Wormtail were sitting on Remus’s bed across from them, with Alice and Marlene situated primly on Remus’s shabby school trunk.

Lily, for all her professed aversion to James, had chosen to sit on his bed right next to him. And she turned to him then with a look of frank disbelief. “Sirius tried to teach you his hair charms?” she asked incredulously.

James, naturally, took that as his cue to run his hand through his hair, messing it up even further from its normal wild nest. “The Potter family curse,” he told her, puffing his chest out. “Not even dark magic can tame this.”

“Dark magic, he says.” Remus cast a sly grin at Sirius.

Sirius barked an easy laugh in reply, which faded quickly when Pettigrew decided to chime in.

“It’s the Black family, Moony! Everyone knows their magic is evil.”

Helena glanced back up at Sirius just in time to see his jaw clench, the muscle jumping visibly beneath his skin once before he forced his lips back into a smile. “Oh fuck off,” he said, and Helena could tell that he wanted to sound lighthearted, to sound unbothered as he’d been when James and Remus jokingly proclaimed those same sentiments which Pettigrew uttered so earnestly, but Sirius didn’t quite manage it as he tacked on, “It’s just hair charms.”

“Of course, yeah, no! You wouldn’t use any of the evil stuff. I know that!” Wormtail was quick to say, practically tripping over his words. “I only meant in general, you know? Like you’re always saying.”

“Right,” Sirius drawled, “Of course. Thanks, Peter.”

An awkward second ticked past. Helena nudged Sirius’s leg again, and when he glanced down and made eye contact with her, she silently mouthed ‘Voldemort’ at him, raising her brows sardonically.

Sirius grinned quick-sharp. “Fiendfyre,” he all but purred back at her, staring her down with dark gray eyes.

The stiff line of his shoulders had gone lax.

His damned tone, though…

Helena blinked. She’d never heard Sirius sound like that before—playful, yet intense and rumbling in a way that had a thrill shooting down her spine, like the adrenaline rush at the top of a Wronski Feint.

“No one likes a braggart,” she informed him a second too late.

“Really?” Sirius smirked. “Because I’ve always been told confidence is key.”

“And if you’d stop flirting,” James drawled, “You could confidently tell us how your part of the plan is coming along.”

Sirius broke eye contact with Helena, his brows furrowing into a sharp V. He coughed once, almost awkwardly, then his face cleared and his typical easy grin reappeared.

“It’s not my fault Hellcat is so distracting,” he said, tossing Helena an exaggerated wink, all traces of the previous few second’s…whatever-that-was…gone like a mirage.

“Now!” Sirius exclaimed, and with a flourish he drew forth a square wooden box the size of his palm from his pocket, holding it out before him for everyone to see. It was light brown, plain and unadorned but for a small round hole an inch in diameter on one of its six sides. “Allow me to present to you… The Presenter!”

A beat, then, “What’s it do?” Marlene asked.

“Patience McKinnon.” Sirius smiled smugly and turned to Lily, holding out his free hand. “You have the first golem ready, yeah?”

Lily nodded and opened up her bag. The snake she pulled out was two feet long and reddish-brown with a dark zig-zag pattern down its back. It hung weirdly limp in her hands, the only sign of life being the small expansion at its sides which indicated breathing. It was a bit creepy, honestly, but it was also the reason they had chosen to use golems in the first place: the things, much like a statue, could only move and perform actions under the power of an animation charm. They were an oddity of magical engineering, for while a transfigured animal at its base remained an inanimate object, the transfigured animal would operate under its own power like a real animal. Golems, on the other hand, were real flesh and blood, but capable of no independent action.

“Oh, no, no, no. You didn’t!” Dorcas cried, shrinking back against the headboard of Remus’s bed.

“What?”

“Is that an adder?” Dorcas asked, pointing her finger accusingly at Lily.

Lily clutched the limp snake to her chest. “They’re the only snakes native to Scotland,” she said defensively.

“They’re venomous!”

“We’re not going to make them bite anyone!”

“I mean…we could?”

Lily and Dorcas both turned to stare at Marlene, aghast.

“People are arseholes.” She shrugged, entirely unrepentant. “I’m only saying…we could.”

Alice pinched the bridge of her nose. “Marlene…no,” she said with an air of long-suffering fortitude.

Helena was leaning the full weight of her body against Sirius’s leg at this point, tears building in her eyes as she silently cackled over the remarks that seemed so unexpected to nobody but her.

“Great,” Sirius said, patting Helena’s head as he spoke, “Well now that Alice has stopped Marlene from murdering anyone—”

“Not murder. Just poison. A little bit.” Marlene pinched her thumb and forefinger together to illustrate her point.

“And I am in full support of your future criminal undertakings,” Sirius informed her. “But first! The snake if you would please, Evans.”

Lily handed the golem over without further protest from anyone. Sirius spent a few moments running his wand along its spine. He tapped each of its eyes, then tapped the presenter box. Then with a softly muttered “Animus” he set the snake down and they all watched it stir to life.

The snake tensed, its body finally losing its creepy limpness. It remained still for a second before, with a few rippling curves of its torso, it slipped to the edge of the bed then down onto the floor.

“Oh hell no!” Dorcas said as the snake began to slither towards Remus’s bed. “Keep that thing on your side of the room, Black!”

“Y-yeah, Sirius. We-we don’t need it any closer to see that it works,” Pettigrew chimed in his fervent agreement.

Without a word, the snake stopped obediently in the center of the room. It lifted its head to regard everyone, a full third of its body raised in the air as it slowly twisted to look at each of them. Then, as quickly as it had gained life, the snake’s body sagged, animation cut off.

Sirius thrust his arm out before him, palm up cradling the presenter box.

“Mischief Managed,” he intoned with an air of solemn gravitas.

Light spilled from the hole in the box like it was a movie projector, but unlike a muggle movie projector, the light from the presenter box did not need to land on a physical surface to display its images. Instead it acted more like a sci-fi hologram, focussing into a clear display in the open air eight feet in front of Sirius. On that display they were able to watch through the snake’s eyes as it slid off the bed, as it twisted to look at each of them in turn. The view was surprisingly normal. The colors were muted, and though not necessarily fuzzy, items across the room were more difficult to make out than they would have been with the naked human eye. There were none of the heat gradations Helena associated with night vision goggles from Dudley’s military video games, but she supposed that not all species of snake possessed heat vision. The sound though, when Dorcas’s “Oh hell no!” echoed from each of the four walls of the dorm, was crystal clear.

“Well, I’d say that was a roaring success!” James clapped cheerfully. “Moony, looks like you’re up!”

Remus raised his hand to his brow and flicked it in a lazy salute as he climbed off his bed. “We should test this layered over both the animation and recording charms,” he said to Sirius.

So Sirius repeated his earlier spells, and when the snake once again stirred from its pseudo-grave, Remus pointed his wand and cast, “Vox Serpentis.”

The snake turned at some silent command from Sirius and slithered to a stop a foot before James and Lily. Its forked tongue flicked out twice, then:

“Humansssssssssssss.”

“Hello, snake. Fancy seeing you here,” James chirped, smiling down at the venomous animal.

“A ssssspeaker! I have never met a sssspeaker before! It isssss an honor…Masssster.”

The snake dipped its head in a facsimile of a bow, and Helena absolutely lost it. She was still leaning against Sirius’s leg, but now she needed to wrap her arms about his knee to support herself.

“You good there, Hellcat?” Sirius grinned down at her.

But she could only continue to laugh, rolling her forehead back and forth as she shook her head against his thigh. “Snakes—” She flapped her hand vaguely in the golem’s direction. “Snakes don’t sound anything like that!”

“I thought you said it sounds like English to you?” Remus said, but he was smiling too, not offended in the least by her reaction to his spell work. “That you couldn’t tell the difference unless you thought about it?”

“I can’t! But that—” Helena snorted, a few stray giggles spilling from her chest before she regained control of herself. “It sounds like English in the moment, but if I think back on it…It’s like the sun! I hear ‘sun’ but I also hear ‘bright-hot-light-in-the-sky-need-to-bask-in-it.’ Or people, people don't have names, not really. Everything is conceptual to a snake, less actual language than the impression of an idea. I could say ‘Wormtail’ but a snake would hear, er, ‘Smells like Rat-but-too-big-hard-to-eat.’ Or if it was a really big snake, it might hear ‘Smells like small Rat-but-looks-like-big-juicy-meal.’”

“You saying Peter smells like a rat?” Sirius asked, mirth dancing in his eyes.

Helena shrugged. “To a snake,” she said, taking a bit too much pleasure in the bloodless fear clear on Pettigrew’s pale face. “And they definitely don’t have that kind of deference for humans. If they find out a person can understand them, they mostly just want to be pointed in the direction of food. Or to be let out of a cage. Or to be picked up so they can bask in our body heat. They are not all that complicated, honestly.”

“Hmmm,” Remus scratched his chin, “That’s fascinating, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to imitate that kind of dual-comprehension with a spell.”

“Does it matter?” Alice asked. “Helena is the only one who will know the difference.”

Everyone in the group looked around. After a few seconds of silence, they seemed to throw out a collective shrug, and it was decided: their prank was a go.

“Want some company?” Sirius asked Helena when she came down to the common room dressed in workout clothes that afternoon.

He was already dressed in his own set of joggers, today paired with a Rolling Stones t-shirt. He wore his ebony wand in an equally black dragon-hide holster on his right forearm, which highlighted the hard line of muscle there quite effectively when Sirius quickly flexed his hand in what might have been a bout of nervous fidgeting in a less confident boy.

Quidditch, Helena noted, was excellent for building upper-body strength, if less impactful on one’s cardiovascular health.

“You know my condition,” she reminded him.

“And I’ll do it right now if you’ll join me for a pre-practice jog?”

Helena considered saying no for all of half a second, but running was good for her training routine too, and it wasn’t like Sirius was who she was trying to squeeze out of dueling practice with her 5K condition, so the sooner he managed the run in the time limit, the better.

“Alright,” she agreed.

She looked to James then, their only other year mate currently in the common room, to see if he wanted to join them. But he was lounged back, arms and legs spread out to take up as much room as possible on the couch.

“Lily’s not planning on joining you, is she?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder towards the stairwell which led up to the girl’s dorms.

“No,” Helena drew the word out slowly as an idea came to her. “But, you know, it’s not a bad idea for you to try and become her exercise buddy. It’s a built-in activity for you to do together, and there’s no such thing as an awkward silence if you’re both out of breath.”

When James turned back to her, his eyes were twinkling brightly enough to put stars to shame. “Yeah, you know…that is a great idea. And you’ve already gone and made running mandatory for us.” His eyes flicked to Sirius, somehow gaining an even brighter sparkle. “And—”

“And Prongs can wax lyrical about your brilliance some other time,” Sirius said even as he grabbed Helena’s hand and began towing her towards the portrait hole door. “We’ve got places to be, daylight to burn, kilometers to conquer, etcetera, etcetera, and all that.”

“You kids have fun!” James called after them. “Don’t do anything I would do! Or do! But make sure you record the results for me!”

It hit Helena in a sudden flash what life might have been like growing up with James for a father. She’d had them before, vague insights and fantasies that always left her longing, but never so clearly as just now.

Helena loved her father from this life with her whole heart, though a more different dad from the type James would have been, she could not have conjured up. For all his shady dealings, Marcus Gaunt had been a straight-shooting sort of man, all business all the time right up until the moment of the fall when he would transform into the world’s biggest adrenaline junkie. It had made him a steady presence, dependable and solid as a rock, though jokes had been few and far between. But with the general instability ripe in every other aspect of her life, Helena figured he was exactly the kind of father she’d needed.

But she also knew a lifetime of lonely memories, of countless days where she’d been ignored or locked away in a small, dark cupboard. If life had been kinder, she, Harry Potter, would have thrived with a father like James. And that crystal-clear knowledge filled her chest with an ache she couldn’t quite shake even as she and Sirius made their way outside and began to run.

It stayed with her when Sirius did, indeed, manage to complete his 5K on time. When she led him up to the seventh floor, when she grinned and congratulated him and laughed at his shock as the Room of Requirement was revealed, a secret, she informed him, that he could not share with the others until they too successfully completed their 5Ks.

That ache remained, boring like a parasite into her bones.

“No,” she huffed at Sirius twenty minutes into their lesson. “I told you, basics first!”

“Yeah,” he said, rolling first his shoulders and then his neck. “And it turns out that’s as exciting as it sounded when you first explained spell chaining to me.”

Helena grit her teeth. “You still need to know the basic sequences.”

“Do I?” Sirius arched his brow. “Come on, what do you think is more predictable? A basic sequence everyone knows—”

“Everyone except you, you mean?”

“—Or a sequence filled with prank spells?”

Helena squinted at him. “I’m sorry, are you trying to argue that you using prank spells in a duel would not be predictable.”

Sirius raised his pointer finger. Lowered it.

Helena nodded. “Do sequence one again,” she told him.

Sirius groaned. “Can I at least practice it while we duel each other?” he asked, giving the stationary target Helena had set him up with a dirty look.

At this point, Helena was just irritated enough with Sirius’s attitude to agree.

“Great idea,” she said, marching up a fresh set of stairs onto a dueling platform even as the Room raised it from the previously flat ground for them. “I’ll stick to sequence one as well.”

Sirius’s brow furrowed, and Helena had to suppress a slightly spiteful smile. She wondered how long it would take him to realize he did not have to begin a chain at the beginning of an established sequence. Helena was learning to approach all of her chain sequences more creatively, but this particular sequence she could have performed perfectly ten shots of vodka deep after two days without sleep.

Sirius was not going to know what hit him.

Literally. For it only took Helena three seconds in their first duel to lay him out flat, and half that in their second duel.

By their third, though, Sirius apparently remembered dodging was a thing, and Helena’s easy domination grew a bit more hard-won, and by their eighth duel, Sirius managed to go an entire minute without suffering a hit. But with his greater success, it seemed, came a greater sense of flippancy.

Helena cast a stunner. She saw Sirius duck the jet of red light, laughing at her.

His face was lit with exhilarated delight.

“Come on, you can do better than that!” he yelled, his voice echoing around the room.

Helena was purposefully casting more slowly than her countless hours of practice had made her capable of casting. Even so, her wand was already curving through the motions of a dizziness jinx, and when Sirius had ducked, he’d left himself open. Her next spell would hit him squarely on the chest.

But Helena had seen this play before.

Sirius had been older, his handsome face wasted by Azkaban, but his expression had been the same then as it was now, his words an exact match.

Helena barely registered the unpleasant buzz of suppressed magic in her hand as she came to an abrupt halt.

“Would you stop messing around?” she snapped.

Sirius straightened from his ready position to mirror Helena’s stiff-backed stance.

“I’m not messing around.” His dark brows lowered in a straight line over his hooded gray eyes. “I was enjoying our duel. Or is that not allowed?”

“Not if you can only enjoy yourself if you're trash-talking your opponent.”

Sirius clenched his jaw. “What?” he jeered, “You can’t take a little heat?”

“Maybe if your skill matched your words,” Helena savagely replied.

Sirius flushed. His scowl grew more pronounced.

“You asked me to train you,” Helena spat. “I’m not going to do that if you can’t be serious.”

“I’m always—”

“No! We’re not joking, remember?”

“Well if we’re not joking, can I just say you really need to chill out?”

“You want me to chill out?” Helena wanted to scream. “We’re not here training for some stupid competition! We’re here to train for war! So excuse me if I don’t want you treating this like it’s a game. You can’t joke around and taunt your opponent. It’s going to get you killed, Sirius!”

Helena’s voice cracked; her throat closed up, halting her rant.

Sirius’s scowl went slack. He stared at her with wide eyes as he stepped closer, one hand stretched towards her, the other held up placatingly. “Come on Hellcat, I wouldn’t do that in a fight with real Death Eaters.”

You already have, she wanted to shout.

“Then don’t do it here,” she croaked instead.

Sirius’s eyes held a note of panic as he quickly agreed, but Helena barely had the wherewithal to notice that detail, for her attention was consumed with the burning behind her eyes, with the way her throat had grown tight and clogged, the way she couldn’t seem to draw a full breath.

“No, come on now, don’t cry,” Sirius said pleadingly. His eyes darted about the room uncomfortably before he looked back at her and inched a half step closer. “I’m sorry, okay? You’re right, this isn’t a game. I promise I’ll take everything more seriously. So…so if you could maybe stop crying?”

“I’m not crying on purpose!” Helena managed to choke out around a harsh sob, swiping at her eyes furiously.

Sirius made a sympathetic noise low in his throat, which sounded more like a distressed whine than anything else, and inched another step closer.

And then he was hugging her, and Helena all but melted into his embrace, burying her face against his chest. And the room must have sensed her need, because Sirius was lowering her down to sit on a fluffy loveseat which had magically appeared behind them, rocking her back and forth as he gently shushed her.

For her part, Helena didn’t even understand why she was crying. She’d been having a good day—no nightmares, she’d left her early morning practice session invigorated and spent the first half of her day surrounded by her friends, enjoying the easy companionship that came with a lighthearted spot of prank planning. She felt safe here, despite the recent battle. She had people here, and they weren’t just familiar faces anymore. They cared about her.

So it didn’t make sense for her to break down now.

Helena had spent the four days after her parents died crying. Those first days after she’d woken up to her mess of a merged mind, she’d done nothing but cry. But her tears had not helped then when she’d been alone and stranded and grief stricken, and they weren’t helping now when her circumstances were quite the opposite.

Despite how firmly she tried telling herself this, though, she couldn’t seem to stop.

It seemed to go on forever, but Sirius never let her go, and eventually, finally, Helena calmed. Her face was still pressed to Sirius’s chest. Her hands were curled into his shirt. And perhaps she should have moved, but a combination of embarrassment and contentment kept her in place.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t know why…”

Sirius squeezed her somehow closer. “You’re okay,” he mumbled into her hair.

They fell quiet again. Helena turned her head slightly. Like this, she could hear Sirius’s heartbeat, steady and soothing, against her ear. The scent of his cologne was warm and inviting in her nose. When she peeked her eyes open, she could see that the Room had transformed around them. There was a fire crackling in a marble hearth. The walls had shrunk, turned wood-paneled and cozy. And a thick blanket had found its way across their laps.

One of Sirius’s hands trailed up her back, digging into her hair at the base of her scalp. He began to lightly massage his fingers, and Helena released a deep sigh. She kind of hoped they could stay curled up together like this for the rest of the day. She hadn’t felt this at ease in…a very long time.

“With all the gossip, I didn’t ask after Hogsmeade,” Sirius said after a moment, his voice vibrating by her ear, “But how are you holding up?”

“…M’fine,” Helena mumbled.

“Yeah? This is completely unrelated then?”

Yes, she couldn’t tell him. “I didn’t ask how you were holding up either,” she said instead.

Sirius shrugged. “I’ve never fought in a battle before, but Voldemort has been a problem for years now, and I’ve seen the aftermath. It’s not the same, but…”

He shrugged again.

“I can’t imagine how it must be for you though, moving to a country at war.”

He shook his head, and this time it was Helena’s turn to shrug.

“I knew what I was getting into.”

“Did you? I figured we must not have gotten much international attention when you enrolled, but—”

“No, the rest of the world knows, they just don’t care enough to make it their problem.”

“Why the hell would you move here then?”

“I wanted—I needed—to help.”

Sirius pulled away so he could get a proper look at her. “You came here with the intention of fighting?”

Helena looked away, gnawing at her lip. “I can make a difference,” she said, cringing internally because she knew how ridiculous that sounded.

And Sirius clearly agreed with her internal assessment.

“Not to knock on your competence,” he said slowly, “Because you’re good—really bloody good—but what do you honestly think one soldier is going to change? I know you’re not that arrogant.”

This coming from Sirius Black.

Helena glared up at him, though she made no move to slip out of his loose embrace.

“It’s not arrogance,” she insisted with deep conviction. “I know I can make a difference.”

Because I know what happens to you if I don’t, she didn’t say.

Sirius rolled his eyes. “What are you? Some kind of seer?” he asked sarcastically.

But Helena must have tensed despite the wrongness of his guess because Sirius’s eyes all but bugged out of his head.

“Wait, are you a seer?” he laughed breathlessly. “Merlin! You are, aren’t you!”

“What? No!” Helena shook her head.

But Sirius wasn’t listening to her. He shifted his hand to cup her cheek, his eyes so bloody sincere as he said, “You can trust me. I promise I won’t tell anyone, not even James.”

“Thanks,” Helena said, “But I’m not a seer.”

Sirius squinted down at her, searching her face for any sign that she was lying. Whatever he saw, it had him blinking dumbly, his expression abruptly softening with deep sympathy.

“Oh,” he whispered sadly, “You fell into a Dreamer’s Pond, didn’t you?”

Which was a shockingly on-point if wildly incorrect guess.

“Those aren’t real,” Helena said.

Her voice wobbled.

Sirius eyed her knowingly.

“I know you can’t talk about it,” he assured her. “Magic of the Ponds and keeping Fate’s secrets and all that rot. Don’t worry, I know better than to ask, and I’ll make sure the others stay off your back too, yeah?”

He was so solemn and earnest as he said it, so sure that she had truly fallen into one of those mystical ponds, that she’d been cursed with knowledge, seen visions of a possible future, able to act on them but never to speak of them for fear of drawing Fate’s damning ire.

He looked terrified for her. And that, more than anything, had her telling him, “It wasn’t a Pond. It was the Veil—”

“No!” Sirius shouted in sudden panic. “No, don’t say anything!”

Helena snapped her mouth shut.

“Magic gave you a gift, Hellcat,” he said intensely. “If anyone else is supposed to know, Magic will let a seer have a nice, proper prophecy.”

“That’s it?” Helena asked. “You’re just going to let this go?”

She didn’t know if she felt more guilty or relieved when he pulled her back against his chest in another tight hug.

“Of course,” he promised her like there had never been any other option.

FUTURE OUTTAKE: This is vague enough that I am quite sure it does not actually give away anything (at least nothing everyone reading this story couldn't have seen coming from a mile away), but if you are one of those people who absolutely despise spoilers in any form or fashion, I would skip reading this outtake.

Hermione Granger shifted nervously in her seat for the nth time. It was a big, beautifully upholstered chair with a set of nice, plush cushions, but it may as well have been a straight-backed, steel torture device she was so nervous.

The Marauder Foundation was…everything.

And she, Hermione Granger, at just fifteen years old and still months out from her dreaded OWL exams, had an interview for one of their ten coveted summer internship positions.

It was a dream, a fantasy, the stuff girls wrote thirty-page diary entries about.

She honestly thought she might puke.

Hermione had read up on the organization’s entire history, of course. She could reel off the dates of all its major accomplishments. She could list all its large donors. She knew the names of every politician or celebrity who had publicly endorsed it. She could recite verbatim, from memory, the Foundation’s publicly stated goals, as well as its honor code just in case her interviewer should ask her that. And its financials—

With a sense of dread, Hermione realized she had forgotten to follow up on the numbers from last year’s Mischief Gala.

Oh, they were definitely going to ask her about that! It was so recent! And actually pertinent to the running of the organization, unlike the list of all those celebrity endorsements Hermione had wasted her time memorizing!

“Miss Granger?” the receptionist chose that moment to call out.

Hermione’s head snapped up.

The receptionist offered her a kind smile. “You can head on in,” he told her.

Hermione could only offer him a weak smile in return. Her legs felt like jelly beneath her as she made her way past his desk to the door of the interview room. She reached out, heart in her throat, twisted the knob, stepped over the threshold, and stopped dead.

Because there, sitting behind the interview desk, smiling at Hermione in a way she could only describe as fond, was the instantly recognizable face of Helena Black.

The woman behind the lightning bolt.

The reason that was the symbol synonymous with one of the most influential organizations in the Wizarding World and not some other, more on-the-nose emblem.

“Come on, Hellcat, picture it,” said a man’s voice, and Hermione suddenly realized she’d been staring so hard at Helena Black, she’d completely missed the handsome man perched on the corner of the desk.

Sirius Black. Helena Black’s husband. A man almost as famous as his wife. The man behind the woman behind the lightning bolt.

If Hermione could find the wherewithal to unstick her feet from the ground, she would turn and run back out to the receptionist. Because surely she was in the wrong room. Surely Helena and Sirius Black were not here to interview a summer intern. Hermione was not supposed to meet them until after she’d proven her value as an employee!

“An entire week without the kids,” Sirius Black continued on, oblivious to the turmoil his mere presence was inciting. “Just you, me, that little red bikini—”

“I'm going to have to stop you before you traumatize my interviewee.”

Black paused. His head tilted lazily in Hermione’s direction. His gray eyes seemed to pierce her in place for all of the single second he took to scan her from head to toe, then he barked out a deep belly laugh, head thrown back and everything.

“Looks like it might be too late on that front, Luv,” he said.

Helena Black snorted, a much less delicate sound than Hermione would have expected from such a delicately-featured woman.

“Be that as it may,” she said. “I’m supposed to be working.”

Her husband held his hands up in surrender. “Just giving you some food for thought, Hellcat.”

“Mmhmm, and I’ll be sure to give your suggestion all the attention it deserves. Later. Now shoo,” she said, waving her hand.

“Kitty’s got claws,” Sirius Black grumbled as he hopped off the desk, but he was smiling as he leaned down to kiss his wife’s cheek.

“Do you like cats?” Hermione asked dumbly, only to flush straight down to her kneecaps when the two adults turned to regard her, utterly mortified that those were her first words to the woman she’d idolized since she first learned she was a witch.

A wide smile slowly stretched its way across Helena Black’s face. Her green eyes positively danced as she cast a sly glance up at her husband.

“Oh, I’m more of a dog person, really,” she said.

Naturally, Hermione Granger found herself with a job after that interview.