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Chapter Text

Severus Snape was brought into a state of semi-consciousness when someone sat down on the edge of his mattress, disturbing the weight balance, and causing enough of a shift that sleep eluded him. Still, for a blessed moment as he laid there, eyes shut, his overtired mind continued to dream.

Smiling slightly as he rolled over at the sound of his given name, gripping at the down-filled duvet, its warmth threatened with a light tug at its far corner, Severus opened his small, dark eyes, swollen with the effects of slumber, half-expecting the man to whom he sublet and subsequently shared his bed to have been overcome with a desire to share his favourite limerick in the middle of the night or ask if he remembered something amusing but ultimately mundane. Maybe it was in fact already morning, and Remus had made breakfast or been to the corner petrol station and returned with coffee and crisps, which was frankly preferably to his attempt at tea and toast.

Still lost in his illusion, wondering vaguely how someone could consistently ruin a meal that allowed for a certain amount of scorching in its very description, Severus rubbed his eyes to find that rather than being rudely awoken in the small, dark, drafting upstairs bedroom in his home on Spinner’s End, he was instead in his small, dark, damp, and outright cold dungeon chamber in the cursed place that afforded him a respectable income but little in the way of self-respect. He heard his name again, and certainly not from the soft if chapped lips of his casual lover.  

Severus was disappointed, slightly annoyed, but far from surprised. He danced this morning waltz with Remus over the holidays and on every weekend in which he did not have an assignment to fulfil for the Order or an extracurricular event to supervise. He did the same with Minerva more often than he would rather like to consider.

Perhaps eventually she might try coffee as opposed to curt pronouncements if she expected him to play along with her power trips. He shut his eyes after shooting her as much of a glare as he could mange in his present exhaustion.

“Severus,” she repeated sharply. He answered with an uncommitted kick in her general direction, wrapping himself tighter in the blanket she again threatened to remove.

Severus again opened his eyes, though just enough to note the hourglass on his bedside table. If his maths were right - and even at this too-small hour nothing in his experience would lead him to conclude that he might be mistaken - he had only slept about an hour and a half of the past twenty-four. Muttering that it was Thursday, he pulled his pillow over his head, determined to ignore his most unwanted intruder.

“Then you are aware that the morning staff meeting started ten minutes ago?” the Deputy Headmistress continued in a tone that suggested she was determined to turn this statement into a conversation.

Realising there was some measure of discrepancy in what should have been understood equally, Severus, his face still covered, expanded, “I don’t have a class until third block.”

“Such hardly qualifies an excuse for missing a mandatory -”

“Hm,” Severus gave to indicate he was considering what was being said, which, in fact, he was being troubled into. Had there been a security threat, he would likely have known about it before any of his colleagues - Minerva included - and addressing the concern would not have been treated as mere a line item the following morning. Had there been an accident or some other concern around student safety, he likewise would have been informed upon returning to the castle two hours prior. He had absolutely no reason to get out of bed, go into the staff room and pretend to listen to Flitwick talk about his Frog Choir, bitterly sipping at his black coffee without comment until Trelawney addressed him directly with another of her death threats, reminding him how badly he wanted a cigarette to hasten his approaching doom if nothing else. No. There was no reason why he should have to sit though a half-hour of everyone else’s ego-trip.

There was no Quidditch at the weekend. The Night Watch had already been agreed to and signed off on, as had the scheduling of the upcoming Apparition lessons. Exams were still months away.

What this therefore was, he concluded, was Minerva seeking to exercise temporary authority to an unnecessary extent. As she always did when the opportunity arose.

Eleven years separated the Septembers in which Severus had started at Hogwarts as student and teacher, respectively, and remarkably little had changed in its reception in said time. At ten he had arrived battered but not yet broken, with hope that quickly turned to apprehension when met with the cruelty of his classmates and cold indifference of many of the professors he now called colleagues. At twenty-one, they had been as dismissive of him as they had been when he had been a pupil. By his second term they had begrudgingly let him in on their office bants; by his third he had come to expect that he was the butt of most of their jokes.

Filtch - who perhaps still legitimately believed him to be a student - threatened him with detention whenever they met on night patrol; Flitwick, hearing about this, often joked that the caretaker still mistook him for a house elf, but that Severus, presumably, would grow out of it whenever puberty had finished with him, always drawing attention to the spots that still appeared from time to time on a face Severus still did not have to shave.

His appointment to Head of House had made logistical sense but had not sat well with the only two other former Slytherins on staff, who never missed an opportunity to compare him to his predecessor and remind him that he had never been a member of the illustrious Slug Club, which they, of course, both were. Severus had tried his best to pursue a strategic alliance with them, but this proved difficult for the very reasons that Sinistra and Vector had been overlooked when the post became available - Sinistra only taught Astronomy at night and Vector taught only part time, having a far more lucrative position in privately funded arithmancy research.

Sensing ambition and secret envy, Dumbledore never missed an opportunity to remind Severus that, unlike Professor Vector, he had long since hit his proverbial glass ceiling. He would never be a celebrated potioneer; he would always be the boy whose mistakes had killed his best friend, leaving Hogwarts the only place where he would be safe with his secrets.

Trelawney, who had made the fatal prophecy he had been so unlucky as to overhear, followed him around as though he were a victorious Roman general enjoying his Tribute, whispering reminders of his own impending death. Except Severus had never been triumphant in anything, and he did not need Dumbledore to tell him as much from behind a nurturing mask.

He was as much of a loser as a teacher as he had been as a student.

There were days when death seemed like a welcome release, and this was already shaping up to be one of them. Maybe Trelawney was trying to be nice. Maybe he should drag himself from bed for ten minutes to hear about frogs and snakes. The Deputy Headmistress changed tactic and began kneading at his toes, reminding him that her claws could come out at any moment.

Of all of his colleagues, McGonagall was by far the worst, for she had made a point of taking him under her wing, of meddling in anything she found out about him personally.

Sometimes Severus imagined it was her way of apologising for the way she had treated him when he had been a student; more often he was of the mind that she was simply continuing a proud Gryffindor tradition of making his life a waking nightmare.  

He hated that they were on a first-name basis.

“We have a major staffing issue, Severus,” she continued, speaking to him now the way she might a student. He resented the tone and its implication. At twenty-four, Severus was still the youngest member of staff, though he was far from the newest. He was a Head of House, however begrudgingly, and taught a core curriculum subject with the highest student retention rate at the N.E.W.T. level despite his equally high standards and the frequent complaints the school received with regard to his manner and method of instruction. It had been nearly nine years since he had been forced to sit a Transfiguration double, Severus having dropped Minerva’s class as soon as O.W.L.s were over. He had always hated the subject itself, hated the classmates who had excelled at it, and hated Minerva’s style of instruction. He hated the extent to which his own had come to mirror hers.

If it were not a quarter to seven, he might well have had a mind to remind her of all of this. Instead, he muttered without commitment or conviction that Hogwarts had had a staffing deficit for decades, and he had his doubts that it had anything to do with a curse if the DADA seat was treated to the same wake-up calls he received on the regular.

“No one is waking Professor Collins up this morning, I’m afraid,” Minerva continued sombrely as Severus again tried to shut his eyes. “Whopping cough,” she added, as though this were an accusation. “Quirrell, too.”

He sat up, at long last appreciating that this matter might concern him. “I’ll check my supply cabinets,” Severus assured her, making no commitment to do so immediately. The antidote was akin to an acid trip, and it was not untold for Hogwarts professors to occasionally come down with the illness in objection to repeatedly being denied their overtime.  

“Remind me why you keep the concoction stocked?” Minerva asked sharply as though she herself had never forced a sick day.

“The brewing of basic medicine is part of the year four curriculum,” Severus answered blandly, his voice too raw to feign care or conviction. “I keep a variety of samples under lock and key to demonstrate how various methods affect said substances, as I am required to do under present Ministry guidelines. I suggest you direct your complaints to -”

“Severus, did you yourself partake?” Minerva asked, reaching for his forehead as though concerned. He doubted this had anything to with his heath or welfare, but rather if she was going to have to find someone who could substitute Advanced Potions in the afternoon. Once satisfied he did not have a fever, she continued with renewed condemnation, “Where were you yesterday evening?”

“Do you recall a certain incident in my sixth year?” Severus countered, leaning over to meet the challenge at eye level. Minerva’s gaze, however, fell upon the scars and scratches he ordinarily kept concealed beneath long sleeves and high necklines, as he had rather suspected they would. Continuing in his half-truth, he said, “It was a full moon last night.”

“But Potter,” she stammered. He smiled darkly.

“Played the hero as he was wont, whereas I was again punished for being the victim of yet another assault that could well have cost me my life. And yet … it would seem - to a decerning mind - that there is a certain pattern to the dates in which we find ourselves here, me begging for rest, you … Minerva, why exactly are you here?” he demanded. “Septima Vector is the primary DADA substitute, and whilst I recognise I am the only member of staff qualified to cover Muggle Studies in the event of absence, it hardly suits your position as Deputy to have me do so as I’ve already had to fill in for sixteen hours of the option alone in this calendar year, meaning that you, in Dumbledore’s absence, would be required to sign off on a substantial compensation for an effort that I promise I am in no condition or mood to extend myself towards.” ‘Substantial’ was a stretch. It was a ten Galleon bonus, most of which would be taken in taxes. At least it meant more work for Minerva, too.

“You are hoarse,” she stated. It seemed like she wanted to ask a logical question, having already drawn a conclusion.

The truth, Severus reflected to himself, might in fact be worse than that which he was leading his boss to assume.

Sixteen months ago, he had stopped off in Cockworth where he had a mortgage if not, exactly, a home, and intending only to make change for the laundry mat across the street, had gone into the local pub with the twenty pound he had in muggle currency to find one of his oldest enemies pulling tap. Affronted that the werewolf Remus Lupin had drifted into a town he would have otherwise found no pride in claiming, he had vowed to drive the monster out.

To date he had proven unsuccessful in this venture.

In the course of conversation, they found the sort of understanding which evolved into affection and in the time since had deepened into –

Oh no. Severus thought. The truth really was far worse than the fiction he was weaving between fact and omission. Last night, he had been reading aloud to Remus in his lycanthrope from, absentmindedly running his fingers through fur all the while when he stopped to summon a cup of chamomile for the vocal chords strained by a day’s worth of lecturing, a night of muggle literature and screams of pure pleasure somewhere in between, when he whispered three small words, knowing Remus was in no condition to respond in rejection or in kind.

Severus paled upon reflection. What had he done?!

Wanting suddenly to hide, he grabbed the blanket back and recovered himself with it, stating dismissively of the mutilations found on his flesh, “I wasn’t howling at the moon, Minnie. The truth, I fear, would cause you greater horror yet. We’ll leave it there and you’ll kindly leave my quarters.”

“Severus, what happened to you?” she asked, her voice steady but her expression betraying confusion, pity, and disgust. He wondered how she would meet the source of his worries, that he had thoughtlessly and in the most cowardly fashion in which he could conceive spoken a haunting truth to her favourite former student. He would go home late Saturday evening, holding his students in detention longer than any of their offences warranted in order to avoid his own, only to find that such had been unnecessary. Remus would not be at their house on Spinner’s End, nor would he be at the pub, nor would he be anywhere in Cockworth. He would be gone at last, and on Sunday morning Severus would show himself at the Manor alone with no mind for occlumency and Narcissa would want to Talk. About. It.

Which he would not. Ever.

He shuttered. Minerva raised a thin eyebrow at an involuntary reaction she could no more read than Severus could give language to.

“In a general or specific sense? Never mind, it is far too early for philosophy and far too late for feigned sentiment. Leave, Minerva,” he ordered. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed and figure out what I am going to do with Quirrell’s students.”

“And Collins’?” Was she really asking him – on this of all mornings – to not only fill in for Professor Quirrell but to preform her duties as Deputy? He had half a mind to suggest appointing Quirrell to the DADA seat when Collins inevitably quit, died, or got the sack. The man was absent enough, maybe this way they could be rid of him altogether. Minerva’s expression told that she would not be particularly receptive to the sort of common-sense appraisal that could be equally interpreted as a slight, however, and Severus decided best to leave it.

“Vector -” he started.

“Has two full classes of her own this morning.”

Septima Vector, he decided, was full of shit.

“There are fifty students at this institution taking Arithmancy?” he sneered. “The rest of it – two of our instructor’s presumably poisoning themselves with intent; frequent absences threatening our charter and insurance policy; my having to work overtime I’ll never be able to take because Hogwarts has nothing in the way of a functional contingency plan – none of that is a struggle to accept. But the idea that our insipid, indolent students willingly take Arithmancy, and in such numbers? I think someone is having a go at you.” Vector had started teaching when Severus had been in his fifth year, her single class had consisted of only himself, Lily Evans, James Potter, Sirius Black, Katie Longwood, Munevar Shafiq and Sedo Yesil. And Black had dropped it after three lessons. By the time he left school she had found a grand total of twenty-four numerically inclined students of the thousand in attendance. Severus had been her favourite, then, before disappointing ambitions he had not realised she harboured by majoring in science rather than maths. When he became the youngest fully certified Potions Master in two centuries before starting at Hogwarts, she had made a curt comment that it had been his lack of ambition that had kept him from that damnable Slug Club, and she had written tauntingly to offer him an entry level research position. Severus never said anything to the effect, but he assumed Vector only taught for the tax benefit, and that Dumbledore only employed her to cover DADA from April to June, stifling Severus’ ambitions to again be near the Dark Arts.

There was no way she had that much work falling under her actual job description, and Severus said as much.

“I imagined you’d be overjoyed at the opportunity,” Minerva gauged, again trying to feel at his forehead with the back of her hand.

He would have, had it not been a full moon last night. Had he not fallen under its influence and told his casual lover that his own feeling were deeper than anything he could imagine Remus harbouring towards him. The only thing Severus wanted was to curl up under his covers, cover his head with his pillow and scream until his vocal chords broke completely.

He did not want to explain any of this to Minerva this morning. Or the Malfoys come Sunday. The only person he wanted to talk to at all was Sybill Trelawny, and that only because she had a single refrain. In thirteen years, Severus Snape would be dead. At least there was still that to look forward to.  

“Don’t worry,” he assured Minerva, hiding himself behind the sarcasm everyone had by now come to expect. “I have an idea of what I’d like to do with my DADA students. We are going to look at the contingency plan you and Dumbledore dreamt up and talk about what kind of black magic would need to be employed to render it operational.”

With that, he reached underneath the corner of his mattress for the bundle he had wrapped in a plastic bag for such occasions. Opening it to introduce the scent of catnip, he again repeated his earnest request. “Now go, give me space to ready myself for the day ahead.”

Minerva’s eyes widened, then tried to squint as though she was trying very hard to be angry but could not quite manage it. “I’m reporting this as harassment,” she warned.

“Do and I’ll level the charge that this is all from your cat’s claws,” he answered, gesturing at the scars on his arms, visible in the old tee shirt he slept in.

Grabbing the catnip, Minerva hissed “Insindo!” At once the herb was ablaze in her hand before being reduced to smoke and ash. Minerva coughed, then, very slowly, began to grin.

“Oh, that was smart, Minerva, burning a substance you are sensitive to in an unventilated room.”

“I think that is why I come round often as I do,” she responded lazily. “Anyone else and I’d have sent an elf or a student.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he stretched, standing up at last. “They are more afraid of me than they are of you.”

“I hate to shatter your illusions-” Minerva purred, taking advantage of his sudden absence to roll herself onto to vacant bed.

“Then don’t,” Severus suggested, “it is all I have in this life after all.”

This would prove an unbelievably taxing day. Better to get on with it. He produced a stream of cold water from the tip on his wand filling up the porcelain wash basin atop his chest to freshen up. Uncovering a mirror he ordinarily concealed - mourning nothing but his own reflection, refusing to chance looking at himself when unnecessary – he saw that the circles under his small, slanting eyes where nearly as dark at the irises themselves, his lank, black hair was unsalvageable, unevenly curled from sweat and broken sleep. He tied it back, his stomach churning when he remembered Remus saying he liked it better this way, looking ruefully at the face he could neither hide nor hide from. His finger began to unconsciously tap against the counter as he tried to collect himself.

“You are still terrified of me though,” Minerva smiled.

“I live across the road from what I soundly suspect is a meth lab. I’ve learnt to be weary of addicts,” Severus spat. Then sneezed. He wondered if the nepeta cataria was at cause.

“And yet you teach here, ever the man of contradictions. So, how long have you yourself been in the business?”

“I’ve only had it for about a month,” Severus shrugged, realising he would have to go to the damned staff room after all to speak to Flitwick about covering Transfiguration.

“You know, you can literally get some off of any student with an actual cat,” he said.

“How would that look though?” Minerva retorted as though this had been suggested in earnest. Severus thought it better not to point out that she was rolling on her back, perfectly content.

“No different than how it does when Sprout turns a blind eye to the marijuana students try to grow in Green House Five, only to confiscate it come harvest.”

“That is why she wasn’t considered for the Deputy position when it became available,” Minerva seemed to sing. As though anyone of sense would have wanted the post! He wondered if it was the drug speaking or if she was always this deluded.

“I will have to do even less to quell the rumours that I am running a supply chain, then,” Severus shrugged. He wished there had been more irony in his statement. Sighing, he removed his nightshirt, sprayed on deodorant, and walked to his armoire in search of clean robes, continuing to brush his teeth as he compared fabrics in his fingers, searching unsuccessfully for something that would not prove stifling if forced to teach above ground in the spring weather.

“I am sure you could start by showing up on time. Honestly, Severus! Look at the state you are in! Where do you leave to? I know it is not strictly Order business or else Albus would meet my concerns with vague smiles and stern comments around just how trustworthy you are -”

“You have raised such concerns?” Severus asked, trying to keep his tone level. The last thing he wanted was the people he worked with knowing that he was seeing someone, particularly a fellow spy. It was enough trouble having his informants know about the relationship. ‘The relationship’, he repeated to himself, as though Remus agreed that that is what this was. As though he had not likely already left!

“Albus chucked and said that you seem rather pleased with yourself, and your friends think,” she began to laugh uncontrollably.

“I have no friends. Not if Septima can’t bother herself to assign maths and call it dark magic the way she normally does when filling in,” he answered without meeting her gaze, feeling the knot in his stomach, concerned that his mask would falter.

Why had he said it?! It was not as though he imagined himself and Remus Lupin were going to pay off their mortgage, move to a better area, marry, adopt a mut and few war orphans and become one of those couples who wore matching socks and found it cute. That was far too much commitment for either of them. Severus was ‘rather pleased’ with brewing Wolfsbane, exchanging wry insults, having hard and fast sex in semi-public places and drinking at Cockworth’s dive bar for free as he was screwing the barkeep. He was not looking for more and was certain that Remus did not either.

Minerva continued to laugh and purr, “Septima, in particular, thinks -”

He well knew what she thought – that every time he had his hair pulled back he had fucked some stranger the night before. There was nothing he could say or do to dissuade her from drawing this conclusion or repeating it, mostly owing to the fact that without his hair to act as curtains, his blush was apparent to anyone who happened by. He glance quickly at his mirror to see if he was redding now at the thought, but found to his singular disappointment he had recovered it. Little matter, Minerva was too far gone to notice either way.

“Higher praise for her cognitive abilities that I might offer, but apropos - whilst you are still capable of intent, can you kindly transfigure into your feline form as to make the next few minutes easier on us both?” In what sounded like a stifled laugh, she complied.

Severus coughed, wondering if he really should have a go at quitting cigarettes or if the thick air was indeed beginning to affect him too.

“Since you won’t recall this anyway,” he said as he hurried to dress in woollen robes he was now forced to pull at random. “Here is some Muggle Studies meets Defence for you; where I live, in Cockworth, actually a town over where we do our grocery shopping, there is a pet store in the same strip mall as the big Lidl, that ordinarily I would have been content to continue to ignore, save for the fact that your favourite former student was driving me half mad on the morning in question. I suggested we go in to get dog biscuits for his mood; he agreed on the grounds that we should probably see if they had anything for the pony he unthinkingly agreed to stable until my godson’s fifth birthday – which,” Severus frowned, “regardless, while there I saw the catnip, thought of you. Fondly, even, if you want. Pony is still alive, for what little it is worth to its actual owner, and perhaps of some shared scientific interest, werewolves are more than willing to ruin their appetite on dog treats, if you were ever wondering. Living with Lupin,” he droned, “I’m beginning to believe the Dark Lord wouldn’t have stood a chance against normal Muggle household products.”

At the mention of Remus’ surname, Minerva stood on four legs, batted at him, then fell and continued to purr. Severus wondered if he would do better to get Pomfrey or Hagrid, or maybe even Flitch, whom he remembered had a cat – as he was bound to get reprimanded for this regardless. Maybe if he had to sit detention, he wouldn’t have to sit through another goddamn pedagogy course. Students were not children from seven thirty in the morning until three thirty in the afternoon – they were inexperienced and irresponsible wizards whose recklessness needed to be reined in. Why must the only other person at Hogwarts who shared his view still think he was an underaged pupil himself?

Feeling slighted and sorry for himself at seven in the morning, Severus Snape had no idea that events outside of his knowledge or control were already conspiring to ensure that he would be spending the rest of the school year with no concern other than early childhood development; for absent of how Remus felt about the confession, they were indeed about to pay off their mortgage and adopt a mut and few war orphans.

They no longer had a choice in the matter.

Chapter Text

Close your mind, empty yourself of emotion, Narcissa Malfoy repeated to herself. The words had long since lost any individual or contextual meaning. The spell in itself was ineffective against her present enemies; the underlying strategy, however, had time and again preserved her mascara if little else.

Close, close, empty... she thought, tapping the tip of her quill on a sheet of parchment which she felt would never become the letter she had sat in her office intending to pen. Outside the rising sun gave promise to a beautiful, clear morning to give contrast to her gilded cage in all of its dark elegance, to the items of her everyday existence that bore tribute to eras past. Her desk was the spoil of an eighteenth-century war, the correspondence littering it evidence of archaic custom manifest in an empty life. Forgetting herself for a moment to her frustrations, Narcissa gazed with something approaching longing at the heavy drapes covering the long, crystal windows, wanting to order them fully opened, knowing, however, that light exposure could damage a number of the paintings and priceless artefacts laying testament to ten centuries of regional power.

Frowning, she wondered if a true curator’s fascination would lie in the magical properties of her husband’s inheritance, rather than in the cultural or historical titbits she had no trouble listing, not that anyone ever listened when she did. She felt like a fraud. Lost for words amidst whispers that echoed her innermost, she began to doodle the constellation signalling her sister’s name in the margin as a form of address. It did not matter. Little seemed to these days. She looked again to the drapes and then to her wand. Close. Empty. Obliterate.

As few missed the chance to remind, she was not particularly suited to other forms of magic.

Narcissa was reasonably skilled at what her more talented relatives referred to as the ‘light options’ – charms, runes, and magical history, none of which would ever win her acclaim, all of which, she still considered, would have made her an effective diplomat, had her life’s trajectory opened that path, the way she had imagined marrying into the landed aristocracy would. Instead, she had a title that served as censor, reducing her efforts to writing cheques at charity events, smiling when she was supposed to and never saying anything that might fodder someone else’s politics.

She was good at it, the public parts at least. Privatly, she had failed her station as entirely, she supposed, as had been possible.

Narcissa had not been able to give Lucius an heir naturally or through exhaustive spells, potions, or prayers, and, after five years spent in desperation, had sought recent advancements in muggle medicine to force conception where all else had failed. Draco had thus been conjured in vitro and was every bit as fragile as the glass that had served his first womb. He was nearly five now and had yet to display any tendencies towards accidental magic. Narcissa felt she was to blame. Everyone did. It had, after all, been her idea and those who knew about these muggle means had warned her from it.

She should have listened.  

If you make a deal with the devil, she now knew, you did not get to name the price.

It wounded her that Draco, ultimately, would be the one to have to pay it.

Part of Narcissa hoped her precious son was simply a late bloomer; a not unequally part of her hoped magic would in fact never manifest and he would be able to live away from here as an adult, absent the traumas that tainted their family tree.

Lucius had already resigned himself to the idea that his son was a squib and had made numerous, contradictory contingency plans for his future, for the family’s. Draco would still inherit the county and the title held of their muggle queen, he would attend Sandhurst as opposed to Hogwarts and Lucius would arrange a marriage of unquestionable magical stock with the hopes that his grandchildren would not inherit Draco’s deficiencies. Arthur Weasley, he had suggested in what Narcissa had hoped had been jest, had recently had a daughter, and no one could argue that such a union would lack for offspring.

‘But I’m a Black’, Narcissa had replied almost mutely, knowing the implication engrossed her personal and physical failings.

‘The last of the name’, Lucius had replied sadly, taking a fully different meaning from her misery.

Everyone else in her generation was now either dead, disowned, or condemned to a lifetime of imprisonment. The Malfoys needed new allies. Narcissa was not convinced they would find any in the wizarding world, and she was fully certain that her son would not be forced into a union with anyone who blindly followed Albus Dumbledore’s seemingly fickle whims, for posterity, prosperity, or anything else for that matter. So long as she lived, she would never allow it.

Lucius, to his credit, consented to her arguments in this regard. He would search the cadet branches, and if no one he deemed suitable could be found, they would officially name their former ward heir to heir to everything else. The Viscount Squib and the Half-Blood Prince, he had laughed, declaring the matter sorted.

But for the same reasons Narcissa would be damned to see Draco betrothed to this Weasley girl, she would never – never! - entitle Severus so long as that sheep in wolf’s clothing was in his life.

Narcissa wanted to try again. To make amends. Lucius refused - refused to even touch her as he once had. ‘It is not as though Draco is not being affected by all of this,’ he had argued. ‘I try to keep contact between him and his grandfather to a minimum and have had all of the portraits removed from his rooms, but it is not as though I can keep him from understanding my reasons, and even the occlumency you and Severus employ around him and mistake for his benefit does not shield him in any way from the real reason why he is made to spend so much time with his Godfather in Cokeworth. He knows, or can at least sense, that you are already trying to acclimate him to muggle things – do you really think that wise? He is terribly smart, to his benefit, and extremely sensitive in ways I worry will lead to problems down the line. Cissy, he has already asked me if he is going to have to live there someday. How do you think he would feel if he knew you wanted to replace him?’

‘It is not him I want to replace, and you well know it!’ Narcissa had shouted back, shattering in the painted eyes that watched them the character of the perfect consort she tried so hard to play at.

She loved Draco with all of her heart and soul; she loved Severus as though he had truly been their first born (despite the fact that she was only five years his senior), but Narcissa Malfoy loathed the man he was seeing and she knew the sentiment to be mutual. She had yet to be convinced that the wolf had the capacity to love anyone.

Remus Lupin – ‘Moony’ as he was known to his friends - had be part of her cousin Sirius’ clique back at school. For all of Sirius’ faults and personal failings, he was fiercely loyal to his friends, and in Narcissa’s estimation had warranted the same esteem. When, however, Dumbledore had begun to view Sirius as a liability he had orchestrated a sham trial, hastily convicting her cousin to a lifetime in Azkaban for crimes he neither logistically could have nor logically would have committed.

And Remus had remained loyal to the Order all the same.

Narcissa wondered if Severus was not blinded by his personal dislike of her cousin in his willingness to ignore this reality; surely, he must by now recognise that for all of their shared distain, he and Sirius were similar in that they were not ones to compromise their morals to reflect the errors in another’s judgement.

Sirius had already been judged harshly, someday, she knew, Severus would surely meet his own similar fate.

Lupin, whose thoughts seemed a recreation of the party line, this ‘Greater Good’, would doubtlessly turn his back on his boyfriend same as he had his best friend, and no matter how Narcissa phrased this, she could not make her former ward see sense.

What was worse, Lupin had been able to charm Lucius, too. ‘He doesn’t like you,’ Narcissa had told her husband, ‘He pities you because you are married to me.’ – ‘He doesn’t. While you and Sev communicate telepathically over dinner thinking no one can tell, we laugh at the fact that you both have exactly the same resting bitch face – the resemblance is uncanny! Next time they are both over I’ll have to take a picture to prove it to you. And you know, if you didn’t deny him your playful humour or his boyfriend’s sardonic commentary, you might find relations easier.’

‘He betrayed my cousin,’ Narcissa had answered, wondering if she really did have an obvious expression when employing legilimency. ‘He thinks I’ve a pseudo-Oedipal hold on Severus which I believe threatens his design to do the same to him. Dumbledore’s orders,’ she had rolled her eyes. The phrase never resulted in positive outcomes for anyone she loved or once had.

‘What did he do?’ Lucius had asked.

‘Nothing! The point is he did nothing. He did not even warrant the matter worthy of critical consideration!’

‘You could have seen Sirius acquitted,’ Lucious had appraised.

‘I would have,’ Narcissa had agreed, ‘on principle of nothing else, were I not cursed with this muggle distinction that for reasons I confess I will never understand prevents me from practice though the Wizengamot is outside of Crown Court jurisdiction. But you Malfoys have to have a finger in every pie, don’t you?’

‘Our son is a squib, Cissy.’ He had answered with a certain finality to his tone. ‘If Sirius, whom you never had any great affection for prior to his conviction, has to sit in Azkaban so that Draco can sit in the House of Lords, that is a price we should both be willing to pay. Who knows what Remus is getting out of this arrangement, and frankly – what business is it of ours? I hardly see you crying for Bellatrix.’

Narcissa felt her throat condense. ‘You weren’t there, Lucius. You would have done the same,’ she had choked.

Lucius shook his head. ‘My dear, she threatened our son. If I had your capabilities, I wouldn’t have stopped.’

He loved her. She wondered how much that was worth if he refused to trust her judgement. Who could claim to know better, after all?

The margins of her letter were coded in constellations that asked questions she knew her sister would be able to interpret, but she had yet to write a word. On the walls around her ancestors of her married name continued to scowl and offered the slights in which they were terribly well rehearsed. Sometimes, she employed her education to argue the particulars of an event in which the Malfoys claimed participation with these memories trapped in paint. Sometimes, she wished that her true powers were as effective against them as they were the living.

She looked down at her parchment, wishing occlumency could be equally transferred to the pen.

Dearest Andromeda,

Were that We could claim your problems as our own! We do not know that We’ll be able to offer the assistance you seek, for must confess that We know Draco’s mind little better than you do Nymphadora’s, but perhaps this is simply a fate shared by Parents against which Professors are spared. We will do as you request and raise the concern with Severus, though We should rather doubt any explanation or answer he will be prepared to provide will be met with your approval, or our own for that matter, for - being of the mind that your daughter’s designs cannot possibly be malicious - these should not be punished as such. Severus, We both fear and find it prudent to warn, does not share in this view.

Your obedient, and ruefully obliging Servant,

Narcissa, Lady Wiltshire

A loud crack caused her hand to slip as she moved to sign, causing the ink to splatter in turn.

Oh, she thought, looking at the familiar basket presented for her approval. So, it was the day after the apex, atop everything else.

Narcissa turned to the elf, suggested a number of improvements to his preparations and wondered vaguely as Dobby continued to address her in the second person if she might instead ask him to proof-read her short missive, to see if she had mastered the style in which she was condemned by custom to correspond. The irony was not lost on her. She had not seen her sister in fifteen years but could still imagine Andy laughing at the strict formality of it all.

“Should Dobby bring Mistress’ gifts to Master Remus after adding the Gilly Water and macaroons?” the filthy creature croaked.

“Remus Lupin is not and will never be your master, Dobby,” Narcissa replied sharply. “In fact, I forbid you to fulfil any request he should ever make of you. And no, I would prefer to visit myself. Dobby …” she paused, her patience tested, though not specifically by his theatrics, “do not cause yourself injury, it is not warranted and I have further use of you. As I am going to the muggle world, I shall need something to wear and find myself rather undecided. You enjoy muggle fashion, do you not? What would you suggest? The Dior? Saint Laurent?”

“Mistress is beautiful in both.”

“Be that as it may, I’ve yet to study a single issue of Vouge this season - the still photographs, they bother my eyes so,” she fussed. “You have had a look and I trust myself to your judgement.”

This was met with and expression of gratitude and a low bow. Dobby disapperated to see the take fulfilled without waiting for her to tell him that she would be up in a moment. As she hastened to scribble a far less decorative brief to Severus, imploring him to find out where her young niece thought she was off to the evening prior and what had possessed her to attempt to try to leave school grounds, the familiar lamentations from the walls began anew. How could it be that the hopes of Malfoy Manor rested with Half Bloods and Half Breeds! Had Lucius but selected one of the other sisters Black! Or had Narcissa driven them both to madness as to leave him without options?! She had invited and allowed Muggle medicine to taint their name and blood! Oh, was this woman even a witch?!

Narcissa picked up her wand and pointed it at the curtains, intending slow injury to these intrusive thoughts by inviting the oils to crack and fade when the door flew upon her husband's entrance.

“Silence!” Lucius, still in his riding clothes, shouted to instant compliance. She had not heard him get up that morning and assumed he had left for business on one of their estates. Remembering when they would both race brooms before dawn threatened to crush her.

For a moment, it seemed as though he was about to defend her honour.  Instead, he looked at the gift basket, pinched the bridge of his long, pointed nose and asked, “Is this necessary?” his criticism redirected.

“I should think so,” Narcissa answered curtly. “He’s dating our former ward, we’ll not soon be rid of his company, and he ... he despises me.”

“You are not exactly keen either. I don’t see why you have to push the issue. Is it not enough that Severus is happy?” Lucius observed.

“I know you refuse to see it, but Lupin presents something of a liability. Everything I say or do is met with mockery, derision! It is as though he holds himself so superior that -”

“That you have to remind him that he is a werewolf?” Lucius surmised. “Really, Cissy? Every month?”

“That is not what I am doing!”

“Yes, my dear, it is,” he sighed. “You know ... what I genuinely respect in Remus is that he has had this condition since boyhood, but he hasn’t let it become his defining characteristic, his single talking point, the way most of them do. I’ve spent more time with him than you have, and the topic of lycanthropy came up but once in passing when I asked if he managed to kill that pony you bought for Draco yet.”

“Oh, yes, I should really check up on that,” Narcissa made a mental note. If all else failed, she supposed that Severus seemed like the sort of lad to take pleasure from dismembering livestock, but something about asking outright felt gross. She knew herself to be frowning. She knew she was not half so pretty when she did. Lucius looked bemused, beautiful as ever.

“I should doubt he appreciates the reminder,” he continued, “even if it comes in the form of Chocolate Frogs. If you really want to be his friend -”

His friend? She shuttered. “I don’t have any such aspersions. I don’t exactly take pleasure in his company, either, but Severus is infatuated - in love even - and as such I have to make an effort.”

“Noble of you. Still, you afford Remus far more worry than I promise you he is worth. As far as werewolves go -”

“I could not give a damn that he is a werewolf!” Narcissa hissed. “It is the fact that he is Dumbledore’s man that gives me pause. He is Dumbledore’s man, and he detests me, and we can both think of numerous examples of how that usually works out for those in our position.”

“So is Severus,” Lucius said plainly.

“Severus knows his own mind; he is no more a reticent servant than my cousin was. He can’t protect us if he stands to be compromised.”

“I would be willing to venture that Remus, perhaps, feels the same way about Severus that Severus feels about him. You claim he detests you and maybe he does, but regardless of what he thinks, he’s never been anything but cordial and polite and I’m of the mind that the way in which he conducts himself speaks far more to his character and intentions than whatever sarcastic comments fill his mind when confronted with something he lacks the culture and context for. Do we not mock them, too, after they have gone?” he smiled. He always had a way of lightening to mood.

“Only because they insist on dressing like they live in Seattle. And it isn’t as though I always censor myself in that respect.” Narcissa wrinkled her upturned nose.

“I don’t know enough about grunge to comment, nor would I, having manners, but I guess the goth thing really wasn’t ‘just a phase.’”

“I’ve met better dressed House Elves.”

“As stated, I’ll leave you to the cutting ridicule. We can’t all be Blacks.”

The statement was impish there was no insult behind it, but it stung all the same. Narcissa would never be a Malfoy, not really. She was not a Black anymore, either.

“Can’t all be Blacks? One might, however, aspire,” she answered.

Harry Potter sat beside a dead tree down at the riverbank where he had been told not to go, tired, hungry, hurting, but not entirely ready to give up hope. If only he knew what to be looking for! He had asked the few people he had passed, and they had all been able to confirm what little his aunt had told him, but not in detail he found particularly helpful in his search. He leaned against its hallowed trunk and looked up at branches that would never again bloom of bear fruit, willing them to break. A wizard could do that – had done that! - and had done so here. And Harry, four years old and filled with phantasy, was determined that he should meet him. He picked up a stick and pointed it at the branches above, reciting every fairy tale incantation he could think of to no effect.

He removed his glasses, wiped them clean on the blanket that had apparently been his as a baby - the blanket he had tied around his shoulders to wear as a cape – and looked up to try again to the same underwhelming outcome. Except now he was conscious that he had gotten his ‘cape’ and trousers dirty, and that when he went home, Aunt Petunia would be especially cross with him.

Harry wondered vaguely how long he had been gone, if anyone had noticed his absence or if anyone cared to look, doubting the latter very much, as he had not been meant to come to Cokeworth in the first place. Aunt Petunia had inherited a house in the area from her late parents years ago and had fought a long legal battle to obtain possession – something Harry’s uncle Vernon had sought to blame on Harry’s mother whenever the matter was discussed. There had been some measure of difficulty in their producing Lily’s death certificate, which had caused Harry months of near-to sleepless nights, imagining his mother was still alive and would come to find him. Inevitably, if unfortunately, fancy always found a way of shifting into dream and Harry would awake in the cupboard serving as his bedroom staring up at spiders and cobwebs and wanting very much to return to the worlds his mind had made.

Last night, however, had been different. Last night, instead of tucking himself into bed while Uncle Vernon cracked a can, sat in front of the telly and cheered on Stoke and Aunt Petunia excused herself upstairs to read her son a story whilst Harry invented his own, the two boys were given juice boxes and shoved into their car seats, Uncle Vernon cursing Harry for his existence all the while. His sister had agreed to watch Dudley while he and Petunia were away to finish sorting this sorry business but had not factored Harry into the equation and upon being reminded of his presence had refused outright. This, apparently, was Harry’s fault, too.

In the car, long after Vernon had ceased fuming at Harry, London traffic, numerous motorway construction projects, and the fact that the match was not being covered on radio, Aunt Petunia had still looked tense. Then, Dudley asked what had been on Harry’s mind, too – namely when they were going to get there - and Petunia snapped her long neck around to look at him, eyes still wide with apprehension.

‘It is not a holiday, Dudley,’ she said. Harry sat up, as did his cousin. It was odd for either of them to be addressed by their given names. Dudley was always referred to in over-long terms of endearment; Harry was simply ‘Boy’.

‘When we get there,’ Petunia had warned, half panicked, ‘neither of you is to leave the yard. I have it on some authority that that awful boy from you-know-where is still about, still hexing children no doubt and I’ll not have you -’

‘You mean like a wizard?’ Dudley asked, cautiously interested in this lecture. For his part, Harry assumed the language was for Dudley’s benefit and bore no basis in fact. Had it been him alone, he would have to hear about drug addicts, prostitutes, drunkards, thieves, and quite possibly refugees, because that was a term that had been in the morning news a lot lately, too. Harry did not know what any of these words actually meant, but he knew that none of them were magical and all of them were bad, if for no other reason than they had all been uttered at one time or another in connection to his late parents.

‘That is exactly what I mean!’ Petunia told them in her high, shrill voice. Harry leaned forward a little. ‘What he called himself, at least.’

‘Your bitch of a mother’s best friend,’ Vernon added, seeing Harry’s interest in the rear-view mirror, thinking this statement would somehow stifle it.

‘Language, Vernon!’ Petunia shrieked.

‘Aunt Lily was a witch?’ Dudley asked with widened eyes.

‘That is not what your father said,’ Petunia snapped, plainly flustered, ‘and no, you should not say that word, you should not say ‘witch’. Ever. Witches are bad, Dudley. They are ugly and evil and that is why people in the middle ages used to burn them. They don’t exist anymore.’

‘But you said that there was a wizard who lived around where Gran used to,’ Dudley began to contradict.

‘But you said my mother had no friends,’ Harry said, more interested in this detail of the narrative than any of its fantastic elements.

The argument continued until they pulled off the motorway to a McDonald’s. After a surprise Happy Meal and half an hour of belting one another with plastic balls from a playground which Petunia had declared unsanitary (seemingly at the exact moment she noticed a budding comradery between her precious son and the undesirable she had fostering under her stairs) the family had returned to the car and Harry had fallen asleep. When he awoke, the sun was up, and he and Dudley were in twin beds in the room their mothers had shared as girls with its pink-floral wallpaper Petunia now described as horrid.

Dudley had not wanted to go out to play with him in the front yard, despite the presence of a tyre swing. After Harry had fallen asleep, his mother had apparently relayed some narrative in which the self-declared wizard had caused a branch to fall upon her, and this felt a risk not worth taking by Dudley’s estimation. Harry, however, reminded that his aunt had lied to him – that his mother, in fact, had had at least one friend - was determined to meet him, even if it meant getting hexed himself.

Wrapping a blanket which he had been hastily told had once been his around his shoulders, thinking it might disguise him as a ‘wizard’ or at least announce his willingness to meet with one, he waited at the front gate for what felt like hours until Uncle Vernon bellowed at him to get lost, saying that he was frightening off potential buyers. So far, no one had come. Harry chose to interpret this as permission he knew he had not been given and simply left the yard when Vernon had turned his attention away, making his way into Cokeworth proper.

To his immense surprise and wonder, the people he met seemed to know exactly who was meant when he asked if they had ever met a wizard. He had a name Harry could not shape his tongue around, lived somewhere called Spinner’s End, but was probably at school at the moment. This excited Harry even more – so he, Seh-rus, was still a kid? Like Peter Pan? Maybe he would want to be his friend then, too, if, in fact, he had been friend with his mum. Seh-rus was at school, they said, but Re-mus was likely at the estate in his stead, if he was not at the bar. After walking around for what felt like hours, hoping to find this Spinner’s End and what he imagined to be a gingerbread house, but finding only decrepit, identical row housing everywhere he tried to look, Harry eventually saw a place on a commercial street that looked like it might be a corner pub. He walked in and asked if it was one, and if Re-mus was there, because he had been told he needed to find him because Seh-rus was at school. This seemed straight forward enough. The adults present looked concerned.

‘And … why aren’t you at school, young man?’ a hefty and heavily tattooed woman had asked from behind the counter. ‘Where is your mum?’

‘That is why I have to find Seh-rus,’ Harry answered, not wanting to have to explain again. ‘Where is Spinner’s End?’

‘It is by the river, few block from here,’ a man with matted hair replied, not averting his attention from the slot machine at which he was sitting, surrounded by three old, plastic shopping bags that seemed to contain all of his possessions.

‘Severus?’ an old man then asked from behind a mid-morning beer. ‘But he’d be at school.’

‘I know that,’ Harry answered. Everyone exchanged looks he did not understand and the woman working at the bar told him to wait, turned her back and reached the corded phone from the wall. Something told him she was not about to call the wizard. Knowing where the river was, he ran towards it as fast as he could before anyone seemed to realise what was happening.

Hiding himself behind dead bushes, assorted rubbish, and what had once been a tree, he tried to imagine the magic Dudley had been described. So far, it had not worked. This, too, was discouraging.

He looked up, with renewed determination to make something happen, when suddenly he heard a loud pop. Harry looked over to the boards of what had once been a pier, where suddenly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was holding what looked to be a large picknick basket, seemingly as surprised to see him as he was her. As if by reflex, she reached a wand from her fitted pencil skirt but failed to raise it. Harry lowed his stick and stood to meet her cautious approach. Her pale blue eyes fell upon his clenched hand, and she smiled - almost sadly - Harry thought. She knelt before him to meet him at eye level and extended her wand – far more elegant than his own makeshift one – with her open palm facing upwards. Harry, assuming this was manners, mirrored the gesture.

A witch! He thought, a real witch and a good witch at that! In all of the picture books and cartoons he had ever seen on the subject, good witches were depicted precisely as she appeared, with long blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. Maybe she would not know how to preform a hex, but she looked like she was capable of conjuring a glass slipper or something – not that Harry quite knew what he would do if he had one. Still, he could not believe he had gotten this far! Maybe she could help him find this wizard who had known his mother.

“Who are you, little one?” she asked softly. “And here I thought it impossible for Severus to keep secrets from me. Another budding wizard in Cokeworth, hm? How he must delight in you! Or rather,” she paused as she seemed to study him, “how very much he will. I take it you have not yet met, but how terribly alike the two of you are.” Her smile did not extend to her eyes, but Harry felt too elated to bother himself with concern. There was that name again. Sev-er-rus. Sev-er-rus. Severus. He must be so close!

“Is it true then? Are witches real? Are you one of them?”

“I am,” she winked, wiggling her upturned nose in a way that seemed rehearsed as she pointed her wand at the ground. With a flick, a checkered picknick blanket sprang from it and spread itself across the tilted shore. Harry tried not to look surprised. Sitting, she gestured in invitation for Harry to do the same.

“My aunt said that we weren’t to go out. That a wizard lives here, Sev-rus,” he attempted still standing. He saw in her smirk that she knew who was meant but that again he had again fallen short. “She said he hexed her when she was a little girl and that he would hex us, too. But then my uncle said that he didn’t want me around when the ah-stay,” he struggled. “Ah-stay, the lady, the lady who they invited to the house so she can sell it for them.”

“The estate agent?” the woman kindly assisted. She reminded Harry rather a lot of his favourite primary school teacher, who had sat with him after lunch when the other children would not let him play. At least, she had been his favourite teacher - until the day when she saw bruising on his wrist from a time when Uncle Vernon had handled him too roughly. Then, he recalled, another woman had come to school with a uniformed cop and asked him a bunch of questions, after which Harry had spent a week sleeping with Dudley in his room until the second woman and another officer had shown up at Privet Drive and put the same questions to his aunt and uncle. After this, Vernon, purple faced, had ushered Harry back into the cupboard, screaming something about how people ought to mind their own and that Harry ought to take care not to air his laundry, whatever that meant. He had been removed from the class after that and had never seen Miss Miller again.

Harry blinked, unsure why he was suddenly remembering this episode in such vivid detail. He shook his head and the woman - who had been wearing a horrible frown that distorted her features - was returned to her serene beauty. Were all witches as ugly and evil as Aunt Petunia had made them out to be? Had he imagined it?

Recovering, he continued, “When she comes, I shouldn’t be there. So, I thought, maybe, I could find the wizard, if he really exists, and get him to hex my aunt again, and my uncle, and maybe Dudley, too. Or maybe he could just show me how to do it. She said he was mean, but I think she is pretty mean, so maybe ... do you know?” he asked hopefully. “Can you show me how to get there? Can you hex people? Did you know my mum, too?”

“I can!” she grinned. I don’t know about your mum, but that wizard? He’s one of my very best friends and between you and I, he’s probably the best there is when it comes to making up mean-spirited spells. I was only just bringing,” she glanced towards the picknick basket, seeming to reconsider whatever it was she had meant to say.

Shifting, she asked, “Should I show you something? Are you hungry?”

Harry smiled and nodded, suddenly realising he was famished. He did not know how late in the day it was, or how long it had been since he had eaten. For a moment, without understanding why, he felt he was in his room with half a bowl of cold, canned soup, but just as suddenly he was returned to the present when the witch tore open a candy wrapper, after shaking her head slightly an mummering an apology. She could not always control it as well as she would like, between them, she felt like it controlled her sometimes, ever since her sister - but the again-pretty witch did not elaborate further and Harry’s curiosity was quickly taken by a frog made of chocolate that hopped around excitedly, causing his hands to clap.

“You can eat it, too,” the young woman winked, catching the creature, and handing it to Harry. She tore open a frog of her own and before her knew it they had eaten half a dozen between them while sharing the most delicious hot chocolate he had ever had. She had not made it, of course, she told him when he asked for the recipe, she had an elf to do those things and even if she had not, she would not be able to  – she was simply useless at potions and had never even been in a kitchen used for preparing anything else. Harry, who prepared breakfast and tea for his family regularly, reckoned he could show her some stuff and said as much. “But why should you?” she wondered. “You are no older than my son, Draco.”

“I’m younger than Dudley, and he doesn’t cook either, but my uncle says I have to earn my keep.”

“We’ll have to find a way to change that, now won’t we?” she asked vaguely, focusing on the brown river before them. Harry wondered if she could turn it into real chocolate. His stomach growled.

“I don’t think I would want to eat anything Dudley made, no matter how hungry I was,” Harry offered honestly.

“Not that. The earning your keep bit. Merlin’s beard! You are a child! It is illegal to hex muggles, but I won’t deny that I am tempted in your uncle’s example,” there was that ugly frown again, though her voice remained soft and whimsical, rather like a windchime. “I could break his mind, of course, such is not traceable and from what you have told me it would be a rather small task, but I am afraid that would not provide you with much stability or assistance, Harry.”

He had not remembered telling her his name. “So, you can’t hex people?” he asked, disappointed before remembering that the wizard he had been looking for was apparently the best in the world in such matters. “Is your house made of sweets? I was looking for one, gingerbread, but I couldn’t find it- ”

The woman turned to look at him, blinking a sudden absence of understanding. “No, no, I can’t say that it is. I live very far away from here. I’m Narcissa, Lady Wiltshire,” she said as though this should hold some meaning for him. Perhaps seeing that he was lost for context, she smiled playfully, “But … my friends call me Cissy.”

“I’m Harry. From Surry. It is also a long way away. I don’t have friends, I guess they would call me ‘Harry’ though. It is what my parents called me. My aunt and uncle mostly just call me ‘boy’.”

“That is not very nice,” she answered with a put-on pout. “I’ll call you Harry if it is all the same. And I’m Cissy, alright?”

Harry shook his head, half hoping that his wizard also had a short form, half hoping that it was not quite so derogatory as that of the good witch. He wondered if she really wanted him to call her that. Maybe it was not so bad for a girl.

“My cousin calls me ‘sissy’ sometimes, too. He doesn’t mean it to be friendly.”

“My cousins didn’t like me much, either, but … should I tell you a secret? I think,” she said, leaning over to whisper to him, “it is because I can do something they never could, and it made them terribly jealous. I think your cousin and your aunt and uncle and terribly jealous of you, too.”

“Of me?” Harry blinked. “But I can’t do anything.”

“You can cook - which I can’t do - and you seem to know where to look for wizards. Harry,” she paused, squeezing his hand, “where are your mum and dad? Do you want me to help you find them, too?”

“You can’t help. They died. I wanted to ask the wizard … the real reason I want to meet him, my uncle said that he had been my mum’s best friend when she was a kid, so maybe … maybe he could tell me if it was true, what my aunt says, if she really so awful? Until last night, she told me my mum hadn’t had any friends at all.”

For a moment, Cissy stared at him with a horror she could not hide. She lifted her hand from his to cover her gaping mouth. “It is fine,” Harry said, relatively used to this reaction. “They died when I was a baby. I don’t even remember them.”

“I know,” Cissy swallowed. How could she? For a fleeting moment before the witch recovered her resolve, Harry had the sense that she was very much afraid of him, though that did not make sense at all.

“I met your mother but once, Harry, though she was in Severus’ year so we must have overlapped, but she was in another house and we hadn’t much to do with one another, Slytherins and Gryffindors, you know?” he did not and said as much. The smile she was trying so hard to force faded. Again, she pressed her hand against his and squeezed. “We met but once, your mother and I, and not in the ideal setting. We did not have much chance or cause to converse, but she was incredibly kind to Severus and my late cousin Regulus - though Merlin knows she had cause enough to deny them her company - and she was … cordial, if reserved, with Lucius and myself, but then, as I confess, we did not know each other. The point is, from what little I know of her, I doubt your mother was anything at all like your aunt. Blood tells, they say, but so much of what it expresses is an outright lie. I’m nothing at all like my sisters.”

“Are they witches, too? Are you all witches? Was … was my mum a witch?” the question sounded as stupid in his mouth as it had in Dudley’s, but Cissy had appeared out of thin air and given him frogs made from chocolate.

“Oh yes, yes very much so. And she was certainly better than I’ll ever be at magic, between you and me. But then so is Severus - Sev,” she added for his benefit with a wink, “the wizard, my friend, who, despite what your aunt thinks, isn’t so mean when you get to know him, though I’ll admit there are times when he really does come close. I’m sure he would,” she paused, considering, “if not welcome the opportunity to talk to you about your mother, certainly oblige your curiosity. He’d gladly hex your aunt again, of that, I am sure.”

“Do you think he’ll want to be my friend, too?”

“Oh,” Cissy shook her head, trying and half-failing to supress a laugh. “Heavens no! That is to say, he won’t want to have anything to do with you at all, but he’ll take one look at you, and you’ll have his whole heart. You’ll see, I’m quite confident. Now,” she seemed to consider, “Sev isn’t in residence at the moment, because he teaches in a school where little boys and girls learn magic, but I’m here, and I will help you do a spell if you help me with one, hm? Does that sound fair?”

Harry supposed it made more sense that Sev was a teacher now, instead of a student, but he felt slightly let down still, having spent hours imagining having a friend around his own age to play with. And if he was in fact mean, well, maybe Aunt Petunia had been telling the truth. He had the sudden feeling that Cissy, Lady of … something, was the sort of person who was only nice when she thought it served her. It seemed like his mother had been cautious of her, and that gave him pause.

“What do I have to do?” he asked as he watched her pour out a bottle of water from the basket and pull out her pretty wand.

“It won’t hurt, physically, if I use it,” she said quietly, “but I promise, if you scream, I’ll stop.”

“What do I have to do?” he repeated.

“You have to think very hard for me, about you home, about your mean aunt and uncle, about anyone and anything you want to hex out of your existence.”

Harry closed his eyes and tried very hard to focus but soon felt as though he had lost all control as terrible memories returned at random until tears were running down his cheeks. A moment later he was on the ground sobbing and being sick, Cissy speaking softly and rubbing his back. “For a short while,” she told him as he curled into a cradle, letting himself be rocked back and forth, “before I was a Lady, I was a lawyer. I know how to sort these things. That is the other kind of magic – besides reading minds - which I can do really, really well.”

“My uncle says all lawyers are evil,” Harry coughed. Still, he hugged himself to her. Maybe she was evil, maybe Sev was, too, but Cissy had been the nicest adult her had met in a long while,she had been honest in a way few adults trusted themselves to be,  and her friend had known – even liked! – his mum. Without really comprehending any of it, after feeling so sad for the moment she had pointed her wand at him, Harry felt safe in the embrace.

“Evil? Oh. You have no idea,” Cissy smiled, darkly. “Neither does your uncle, yet, but he soon will. And though I realise it means little to nothing to you, so will Saint Albus. I’ll get him back, for this, at least. Let’s send them all to hell, kid.”

Remus Lupin again awoke to the click-clack-clack of a woman’s heels pacing briskly back and forth in the kitchen below, wondering distantly how long he had slept, if Lady Wiltshire had just ended the conversation she had been determined to have or if, alternatively, it had just begun. The clock on his nightstand gave him no real indication. It was two in the afternoon now and Narcissa had first arrived shortly after eleven, far too early after a night spent suffering the effects of his illness for Remus to have been much receptive to the act of kindness which she thought to clear her conscious through inflicting upon him.

She is not that bad, he tried to tell himself, remaining unconvinced.

Remus smiled ruefully as he sat up in bed. Of all the fears which he had secretly harboured and which Severus had given voice to when they had first started dating, blind, affable acceptance from otherwise close-minded people had not been among them. However, for all of their individual enemies, personal doubts and emotional deficits, the worst thing to have yet befallen the young couple came in the form of weekend mimosas, wizard polo, and other various entrapments of wealth masking itself as amicability. While he could see why Severus, who had grown up impoverished and among cruel people had been taken in by it all, Remus, who had known even less stability in his youth and had spent half of his adult life as a homeless drifter, found these displays disgusting - especially when the Malfoys presented their extravagances and eccentricities as charity for various causes they neither cared about nor bothered to understand on a human level.

Lucius was haughty, Narcissa simply haunted, but they were both so energetic and outwardly friendly that it was difficult to speak against them without referencing parts of a past which no one, Remus included, was particular keen to remember.

Not that he had much of a choice at the Manor. Narcissa, for all of her blithe smiles and benign conversation, never let him forget.

Sirius had warned him against her when they had been kids. The Blacks had a certain familial magic manifest in their very blood which Narcissa exploited with frightening ease. Unlike her sisters and cousins, she had been an average student at Hogwarts, never quite excelling at spell craft, and thus relying so heavily on her physic gifts to disguise these deficits that it had become its own kind of psychosis.

As an adult, she never missed an opportunity to silently draw happy memories of her cousin to the forefront of Remus’ mind and would meet his absent-minded smiles with one of her own, one that said ‘I know what you did’, or rather ‘what you failed to’ before continuing to chat about something that had occurred on a committee on which she sat.

The last time he met with Dumbledore he had mentioned this, only to hear Sirius’ earlier assessment repeated with more wisdom and understanding – Narcissa Malfoy, neé Black, likely was the greatest legilimens alive, and certainly she was the best occulumens, but that fact alone should give quiet to Remus’ caution. She found what she was looking for to support her presumptions, unable to recognise her own prejudice in doing so, unable, thus, to rely on any information she stole and entirely incapable of recognising this weakness. Severus had similar problems when he was in the field too long, though not nearly to the same extent, Dumbledore had reminded him. Remus knew this to be true.

But that, however, did not make Narcissa wrong in her fundamental assessment.

Her reasons for hating him were perfectly valid. Remus hated himself, too. He just wished this was not all hidden behind pleasantries, behind making plans he and Narcissa both hoped would never come to fruition, their partners completely oblivious to the private strife.

The worst of it was that Remus could never voice the pain he felt to Severus, for the far that he would take it as a personal slight. Sirius had tortured the Slytherin his entire time at Hogwarts, and Severus was emotionally unequipped to forget or forgive. Maybe, Remus thought, it was better this way. Whenever they two spoke of the past, it resulted in wry insults and self-deprecating humour, in which they were both uniquely skilled. It helped to halt memories Remus still found happiness in from being turned to hurt. It helped him make new ones with the man he loved.

Remus continued to listen to Narcissa pace. Rapid, if muffled, chatter escaping her. Remus wondering how long she would permit things to linger as they were.

She was, after all, not mistaken.

Dumbledore had in fact, asked if he would report of Severus if cause should arise.

‘I think you have cause enough,’ Narcissa had whispered to him at Christmas under the mistletoe hanging at the ballroom entrance. It was private as it was public, their one-sided conversation closed off to all ears by cries of ‘Uh-oh, Professor!’ and ‘Oh-ho! Beauty and the Beast!’ followed by drunken cheers and hearty laughter.

‘I think you have cause enough,’ Narcissa had whispered, ‘whatever Saint Albus’ designs, I’m sure they don’t allow for you or Severus to be happy. People are easier to control when their own demons are doing most of the work. Think on that.’ When she had kissed him on the cheek, he could not help but to wonder if he had just met a Dementor.

She is not that bad! Remus tried to tell himself again, looking at the care package the Malfoys never failed to bring or send after every full moon. It was a nice, if not altogether too extravagant gesture, and however intrusive Remus sometimes found it (particularly in the morning when he would otherwise be sleeping) he knew it was necessary, for Severus’ sake if not his own. Its physical presence allowed his boyfriend to say ‘thank you’ with the implication ‘for accepting Remus’ and the meaning ‘for accepting me’ without demanding more language than Severus was able to employ when made to feel vulnerable.

With this notion, Remus sat up, suddenly awake in the memory of what had transpired the night before.

What had he been worried about?! He wondered, suddenly laughing. Severus Snape was in love with him. Against all odds, Severus Snape was in love with him!

Was there anything else in the world so significant? Would there ever be?

Remus ran a hand though his thick, already greying hair. His joints cracked as he shifted the posture of his overlong, lanky body, its flesh covered in self-inflicted scars and none of it mattered. For the first time in living memory, he was waking up from a full moon without the notion that he was a hideous monster, a danger to anyone he might come to know in passing. Severus Snape, who at first had feared him, whom he had given more cause to than anyone else, who was otherwise careful and cautious in everything he undertook, was in love with him.

Remus had never heard those words before.

Of course, Severus had never let slip an opportunity to admit his affections by other means. He brewed him Wolfsbane every month, stayed with him during the transformation that he would not have to go it alone, read aloud to him to alleviate boredom – at which, Remus had long suspected, great inconvenience to himself as he was employed to lecture and come morning could barely speak. But last night, last night he had finally said it aloud, idly, and when Remus was at his worse, as though the lycanthropy that defined and dictated so much of Remus’ perception of self, of how he met the world and how the world met him, had long since ceased to be of any significance whatsoever.

Remus had not gotten the opportunity to say it back (as he rather suspected had been his boyfriend’s intent) nor had he said it prior despite long yearning to, recognising that Severus had to take the lead in all such matters or else he would be bound to take offence.

Frustrating though this could be to navigate, Remus felt elated at every little line they crossed. And this, this was enormous. As far as Remus was concerned, Severus had as good as proposed.

Tucking himself into his care package and preparing to reread the last two instalments of Bonfire of the Vanities in the Rolling Stones issues Severus had confiscated from a student for this purpose, Remus was disappointed to find the chocolate Frogs packaging had been emptied of its contents, both chocolate and card, and the cacao was cold and half consumed. This left macaroons, which he didn’t really enjoy, accepting only as it would now be rude to say otherwise, and a few bottles of Gilly Water with pretty, expensive packaging. He assumed that Narcissa and himself were on the same cycle, so to speak, groaning when he saw further evidence of this in the firm of a swirling memory now housed in one of the otherwise pretty bottles.

He looked at the basket feeling dejected, electing the now cold chocolate milk in absence of a frog, when he heard a knock on his door. How did she always find a way of interrupting his happiest memories?

Knowing that objections would serve him little, Remus invited Narcissa in, trying to remind himself to be nice, if for no other reason than he did not want to put the love of his life in the middle of this particular feud the way he himself had long ago been placed in the one between Severus and Narcissa’s cousin.

“Did you manage to talk to anyone?” he asked, not particularly caring for the answer. When she had knocked, she had not bothered with even the usually pleasantries that existed between two people bound to one another by chance rather than choice and demanded to be directed to his ‘fairy tone’, which, after a few minutes of miming, Remus understood to mean ‘telephone’ – that odd muggle contraption that Severus had hanging from the kitchen wall which could summon a pizza or plumber should the need arise. Remus never used the device himself but watching Narcissa try had been the hight of amusement. Picking up the receiver, she introduced herself using her fancy muggle title, demanding that she speak to the muggle in charge of children’s welfare, as was her right. Remus let her listen to the dial tone until it died, and seriously debated going back to bed without telling her about the numbers she had to press to make it function. She looked flustered when he eventually explained, which had given him greater pleaser than he felt the matter warranted.

“Yes, yes, of course I did. I was very successful in my venture,” she said resolutely. “Oh, Remus, it is simply awful, isn’t it?”

Remus glanced at the bottle filled with white gas and grimaced, suspecting that regardless of how he responded, the conversation would leave him feeling sorry for Lucius Malfoy, which he did not want to be in the habit of.

“The hold music?” he tried. “Cissy, if it is all the same, I am rather tired and weak from last night, and lovely though it is to see you, I simply don’t know that I can prove the best shoulder for you to cry on at the moment. If, if you want, I can host you on Sunday, here, and we can talk about whatever has you in such a fuss.” He hoped she would be over it by then, or at least, would have the common courtesy to cancel last minute. “Are you hungry?” he asked, offering her a stupid French biscuit now that everything good was gone.

“Oh no, your basket!” she exclaimed. “Oh Remus, I hadn’t forgotten, and it is only just occurring to me that I have yet to explain.” He wished she would not and very nearly said as much. “You see, I was on my way to check up on you, taking the usual path up from the pier, when I came across a little boy wearing clothes that were so big for him they were practically falling off, who looked so lost, so scared and hungry and reservedly hopeful that for a moment I thought him a smaller version of Severus, although I realise now that to have been rather foolish.”

Remus sighed, imagining himself seated at another charity banquet that completely missed the point. “There are a lot of children around here growing up under similar circumstances, it is sad, and we all do what we can, but you can’t ‘save’ them all.”

“Well, this one was pointing a makeshift wand at me when I appeared,” she said with a small huff, “And maybe you can’t provide assistance, but I’ve the means, and I’m not talking about saving all of Cokeworth, just the one, because it is worse than what you imagine! You know … my sister Bella used to tell me stories when I was little about how evil muggles were to their offspring, and I assumed it all exaggeratory, the way all fairy tales are and well, you know my sister -”

“Only by reputation.”

“I promise she lives up to it, as the story I am about to tell you lives up to all of the nightmare scenarios I have ever heard about Muggle kind: This boy, and he is a wizard, I am sure of it -”

“He was probably just playing,” Remus dismissed. “Normal kids do stuff like that. Draco would, too, at home, if you and Lucius were not so insistent that he learn French and Latin. He does when he is here and sometimes finds other boys and girls to play along. The kid was probably just following in that example.”

“Does he, truly?” Narcissa asked, hesitantly proud of social skills she had yet to bear witness to. “And Severus allows it?”

“He’ll read him a few pages of the Latin version of Asterix sometimes, but how eager do you really think he is to lecture at the weekend? Anyway, he never bothered with Chinese when he was a child and had people around who could have taught him, and his parents never really encouraged it, so I don’t think he sees that value. Sorry to disappoint,” Remus smiled. He had been bothering with the Chinese workbooks out of boredom if nothing else and liked being more knowledgeable than his boyfriend in something, at least. Severus did not care – yet - but it was bound to annoy him eventually.

“Oh, yes – I often forget some of his muggle ancestors used to be opium merchants,” Narcissa nodded to herself. The phrasing was insensitive, but the assessment was true enough. “Do you suppose that will prove problematic?”

“In what possible way?” Remus moaned.  

“If anyone ever runs a background check! They look into family history, do they not? I remember when Lucius and I took custody of Severus when he was sixteen, we had to fill out -”

Merlin, were they really back to this? “Narcissa, I don’t mind watching Draco at the weekend, but you are really making far too much of this. If you gave the boy a bit of space for error, if you didn’t control everything in his itinerary and cater to his every wish and whim, magic would likely have long since manifested. And even if he is a squib, it is not like he is going to have to come live with us in Cokeworth at eleven, or like Sev and I would be willing to move to the Manor and act as private tutors. As it is, my job is cash to hand, I’ll never need a background check, and with his academic titles and Dumbledore to vouch for him, it is not as though Sev will ever have to answer questions about the couple of citations he picked up as a teenager - ”

“Oh! Albus Dumbledore!” Narcissa fumed. “The fact that that man is allowed any say in children’s welfare is a joke! This boy, the one I met at the docks, well, his family keep him housed in a cupboard, honestly, like the way you might think to punish a house elf when you have no mind or mood for their usual theatrics. Even recognising the name when he gave it, I could not abide by it, and the fact that Saint Albus evidently can -”

“He told you he lives in a cupboard?” Remus blinked. Children had a lot of phantasies. Unfortunately, some adults did as well.

“Like a broom closet sort of thing, and he didn’t tell me, I -”

“Read his mind and made assumptions?” The worst thing about Narcissa Malfoy, Remus considered, was that there were times he was convinced that she truly did mean well. He hoped she had not taken things too far this time.

“He is not at an age that lends language to experience,” Narcissa defended.

“And by your estimation -”

“Well! I found out that his aunt and uncle were in Cokeworth to speak with an estate agent about the home of the aunt’s deceased parents, so I thought I would have a talk with them, too. It was an open house after all. As soon as I got there, I offered to buy it outright for double the asking price, stimulating that they provide a trust to care for the child that they clearly did not want. The man, the uncle, whom I spoke to first seemed to be considering the proposition, but then his wife came, screaming ‘Get away from that witch!’ and before I had time to figure out if this was meant as a pejorative or if she somehow recognised my power -”

“Maybe your clothes gave you away?” committed as he realised that he now was to damage control, Remus could not resist getting a dig in after all of the comments he had been made to suffer over the past year and a half with regard to his Oxfam wardrobe.

“This is YSL,” Narcissa blinked. Merlin! It was almost too easy to distract her.

“That means little to someone with ties to Cokeworth.”

“I have ties to this place; I own your mortgage. I very nearly bought another property here this very morning,” she answered, as ever entirely missing the point.

“Narcissa, I understand you have good intentions, but you can’t gentrify the area an expect that the people who have lived here for generations, who are doing their best within their means are going to welcome the accretion that they can’t care for their children from a woman who has plainly never had to suffer material concerns-”

“Then allow me to reiterate, a cupboard! They are keeping this boy in a cupboard under the stairs, not in Cockworth, though the premise would not change because of the post code,” she spat.

Remus nearly laughed. “Are you honestly calling me classiest?”

“Are you not making the same insinuation in my regard? At any rate, Remus, apparently the happy family keeps residence in Surrey, which is why it took me so long to contact the muggle version of children protective services to report this abuse.”

“Surrey,” Remus repeated, reflecting.

“Is that somehow significant to you?” Narcissa asked, testing, almost teasing.

Remus froze. What had she done?!

“I know someone, but no, it can’t – you can’t possibly be talking about -”

“You’ll forgive me for burying the lead, Remus, but you must understand, this places me in a highly precarious position and you and I, we don’t know each other very well. In fact, you seem determined not to get to know me, and I appreciate your perspective enough not to take offence at it – but honestly! I tell you that I met a little boy who is being locked in a small cupboard under the stairs and your answer is to shrug and say, ‘it is a bad area’? I somehow expected better of you, on a human level.  But then maybe I’ve been led astray by darling Severus’ romantic notions, and it has escaped my notice that werewolves really are monsters of the night to the last. To think! I meant to involve you in my scheme! Well! I am leaving, and I am taking this, and these, and -”

She made a show of grabbing the gift basket and magazines. Remus grabbed her wrist. Hard. He knew this would leave a mark but for once he did not care.

“You met Harry Potter? Harry Potter? Narcissa, I can’t let you just go; you can’t tell -”

Even in his weakened state, he was sure he could take her in a duel if it came to it and wipe her memories if need be.

“I’ve already told the people who matter, the muggles who are in charge of these things,” Narcissa informed him curtly, unflinching though she must have been in pain. “Who else should I tell? I thought it better to leave that part to you, but as you are tacitly indifferent to the whole affair, I shall have to find other arrangements.”

“What ‘arrangements’?” Remus worried.

“Well, he can’t stay with his family, that is for certain. I had several decent arguments to try to have him placed here with you and Severus and more than enough connections to ensure that outcome -”

This went from bad to worse. “How can you – Sev and I can’t possibly -” he gaped.

“Well, Severus can’t admit to wanting anything and I suspect you will say that it somehow the fault of my influence. But you? You are the most selfish, self-absorbed individual I have ever in my life met and I thought you would jump at the chance to raise your late friend’s son as you own. Think on it, Lily was Severus’ best friend, James was yours, it could have been so perfect. But I suppose after the way you turned your back on Sirius that -”

So, there it was, at long last. It angered Remus more that the accusation had not been spoken in a moment where a direct retort would have been appropriate.

“That is your argument? That we were friends with his parents? I’m a werewolf and Severus is a Death Eater.”

“No,” Narcissa said darkly, pulling her wrist free of his grasp. “My argument is that if the Dark Lord has truly been defeated and Harry was the instrument of his demise, I’ll have gone some way towards rehabilitating the Black and Malfoy names by rescuing him from an unenviable domestic situation. Should he, Lord Voldemort,” she crossed herself mockingly, “someday return, I will have hand delivered his mortal enemy to a – ahem - loyal servant.”

They kept each other lock in a stare. Narcissa spoke first. “Mostly it is the cupboard under the stairs thing, though. Come, I can show you. Where does Severus keep his pensieve?”

“Narcissa, this is more complicated than you realise,” Remus warned, pulling his wand from the side table.

“Are you sure about that? Go ahead, tell Dumbledore, tell him what I told the Dursleys, that I have the liquid funds to bludgeon and bury him in court if he dares stand against me in this.”

“Want to race?” Remus asked as he produced a patronus.

Narcissa snorted, seeing its form. “Selfish and self-absorbed, as I’ve always said. Okay, bet,” she nodded and, with what Remus assumed must have been incredible determination on her part produced a ferret from the tip of her wand, which bounced between the floor and ceiling several times before falling and fading at last.

“What the hell was that?” Remus snorted, his wolf having long since left.

“Fine! I actually can’t do that spell. I could – once, you know – but since Draco was born it always just, well, you saw. I think it must be another side effect of having trusted in muggle medicine,” Narcissa shrugged. “But, whilst we await the inevitable?” she suggested, taking the child’s memory from where it sat in the gift basket, holding the bottle as though she meant to toast to her own self supposed brilliance.

Remus Lupin had never liked Narcissa Malfoy. He had never truly loathed her until this moment.

Chapter Text

Severus Snape sat in the back of a classroom, half-full two hours after school had been let out, frowning at the parchment in front of him.

Until this very moment, he had rather been enjoying his ‘detention’, both for the fact that copying a long and tediously complex document in Flitwick’s classroom would presumably spare him whatever punitive measure their shared boss might otherwise invent, and for the looks he had been receiving from students, their indignation at the fact of their punishment turning to uncertainty as they spotted him in the back row, whispering amongst themselves in bewildered wonder at the reality of a professor somehow out of place. It was the same way, Severus mused, when he ran into students while at the pub, bookseller, or record shop – teachers, as it seemed to be widely understood by the under-seventeens, were only meant to exist with a blackboard behind them.

In public places, the debate over if they should trust their eyes occasionally lent itself to awkward greetings and short conversation that felt forced on both sides. Here, however, no one had thus far trusted themselves to ask if he was really ‘the dreaded Professor Snape’, which had held its amusement for about half an hour but had since grown tedious.

Flitwick, who had never cared about students chattering through his lectures, seemed even less concerned with the commotion in the detention he was meant to supervise. Severus thought to say something to the room at large, but it could wait. He absolutely refused to do the little wizard’s job for him after being forced though lack of planning to cover for Quirrell, Collins, and to a lesser extent McGonagall that same morning.

Severus looked up to take another tally. Five Gryffindors, seven Hufflepuffs, two Slytherins (three, if he was to be counted), and no one from Ravenclaw. He had always suspected that his fellow House Heads were every bit as guilty of the ‘blatant favouritism’ they were so quick to accuse him of, especially this close to the end of term with their bonuses tied to the Points system. This year Severus would walk away with nothing owing to the little stunt his former Quidditch team had attempted in their match against Gryffindor, and as such had been almost happy that morning at the opportunity that had presented itself to further punish both the captain and star chaser, who, weeks after the fact, were still determined to take the other to account.

The frustrations of the matter, however, outweighed any sense of schadenfreude. Chaser Joséphine Volpe had jumped Seeker Elliot Orchard in the sixth-year Defence Against the Dark Arts block Severus had been supervising when Orchard had managed a silent shield charm she could not break with a simple hex. Severus had realised the moment the fight had broken out into fists that he would both have to by some means revise the curriculum for whomever next took the seat, and that he would have to teach Miss Volpe how to throw a proper punch in order to restore his faith in physics if little else. She had at least four inches on the former seeker; she ought to have been able to knock him out cold.

His predecessor Horst Slughorn, Severus was quite sure, would have had far more constructive ideas around the larger conundrum, would have long since solved it. The members of the team who could still remember the man’s tenure – Orchard and Volpe included – had since drawn the same conclusion. No one had said it aloud, but such was the curse of legilimency. Severus could not help but to feel himself lacking whenever he looked at them.

The two were not sitting together now, he noted, but occasionally looked up to glare at one another from across the room, occasionally glancing back at Severus when their shared outrage needed another familiar outlet. At least, he could comfort himself, they were not chattering as the less disciplined Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were wont. Severus, however, was beginning to wonder if such truly served their shared aims. The two Slytherin students held equal guilt for the affair, but neither could sacrifice their future by taking the blame. Orchard wanted to study in Cairo after Hogwarts; Volpe belonged on a broom and was not particularly suited to anything but; and for his part, Severus was determined to ensure those individual outcomes.

The hearing was in a few weeks, and the pair would have to salvage their understanding before answering questions in front of the Federation. Severus, knowing his deficits for what they were, recognised that he was among the least suited members of staff to broker a peace. He considered appealing to Hagrid directly, for he had some skill in these sorts of things, but the half-giant had been decidedly deaf to his requests since Severus had fallen out with the Headmaster over something ultimately minuscule that frankly went far above the concern his paygrade permitted. He could always bring it up with Minerva, who could offer advice if little else, but that mean making his own peace, which he was not in the mind to do.

No. As per usual, he would have to go it alone and fully unprepared.

Severus had hazarded into the staff room that same morning holding the Deputy Headmistress by the scruff of her neck, unceremoniously presenting her to Ravenclaw’s House Head with the statement that it seemed they were both to be made victims of inconvenience. At lunch, Minerva had declared this treatment ‘most undignified’ and refused to exchange another word with him, limiting Severus’ conversational options to Trelawney and Binns - Sinistra never waking up before supper and Vector having had the sense to make herself absent after having thrown the entire contingency plan for a loop.

Everyone else hated him at present. More than usual, it would seem. He had kept his head own. At least he had had gotten an over-formal owl from Narcissa that morning to aid in ignoring present circumstances. Remus had not written, as Severus’ had hoped he might.

He glanced back down at the page he was meant to be copying out for punishment, indulging again the resentments he had an answer for.

When Filtch had threatened Severus detention for the offence of imagined youth, as he often did when the Potions Master strode in late to a staff meeting, Flitwick had smiled and, rather than saying something in his young colleague’s defence, had offered his classroom, his eyes twinkling slightly as they narrowed as though Severus had been foolish enough to challenge him to a duel. For his part, the Potions Master had had to actively fight back a laugh at the meeting, gleaning from the hesitant half-smiles filling the room that he was to be tasked with compiling everyone’s invoices and budgetary requests to present to the Governors for their probable rejection.

It was a thankless but necessary task of the kind Severus lived for, and the invitation to in effect spy on his competent colleagues felt a vast improvement on sipping champagne before noon while recovering fascists made remarks which they were too isolated by wealth and status to perceive as insensitive.

It was fun, if one happened to be a numbers-nerd, which Severus unashamedly was.

At least, it had been.

He had copied various departmental budget proposals into something cohesive and coherent until reading the Defence Against the Dark Arts annual summary and request, which seemed as though it had neither been updated nor adjusted for inflation in the quarter century since Voldemort had been denied the post.

In this, the entirety of his cursed morning found its context.

He hated this place.

How, he wondered, did a school of this size not have a permanent secretary to keep an eye out for these sorts of discrepancies?

It made sense, Severus supposed, that with few DADA chairs staying on until the end of term, that no one would have cause to put in a request for the coming year, but for Dumbledore to continuously submit the last one placed before him? It was the hight of incompetence!

Of the eighteen pupils in the year six class which the Potions Master had subbed that morning, fully three could manage a non-verbal spell. None of the third years he had supervised had so much as an effective grasp on a shield charm -

How many lives, Severus wondered, had been lost in the Wizarding War because the Headmaster of Hogwarts had not bothered himself to update the Defence curriculum accordingly?

What was Dumbledore about?

And why had no one else noticed?

Severus reasoned that he had really ought to ask for a pay raise for all of the troubles he took. He frowned at the thought of following through with this notion. It was enough of a struggle to see himself as possessing anything worthwhile, it would simply prove too much to task his superiors with the same. Still, he smirked to himself as he watched Orchard fold a piece of parchment into a frog and enchant it to hop across the room to his former friend only to have it thrown back in his face, the Headmaster’s crooked nose would make an excellent target for Volpe’s upcoming boxing lesson.

“It is not him, Elliot!” Volpe hissed as the parchment met its target. “Why would the real Snape be hanging out doing homework? Pretending – just pretending – that you are right, you would be fucking stupid to say anything.”

“Two points, Miss Volpe,” Flitwick sighed, not taking his eyes from the Quibbler as he deducted for language.

“Does Slytherin even have two points left to take?” a girl from Gryffindor laughed before her friend told her to hush, for “everyone knows ‘the red fox’ has rabies. Even Snape says it.” Ordinarily, Severus reasoned, Volpe would have taken pains to prove them both right, but her ire and attention remained fixed on her former teammate.

“So, you see my point then?” Orchard asked. “Professor,” he turned excitedly. “I solved the problem you’ve had on the left of the board since the start of term. It’s not a Potions question, but rather one of agriculture.”

“Explain,” Severus commanded. Stuck in a prestigious but ultimately dead-end job that limited his contact with qualified professionals to two conferences per year, he attempted to facilitate an exchange with his more decerning pupils, writing out problems that had thus far defeated him, inviting his students to expand his scope for extra credit, House Points, and ultimately individual glory should one happen upon something truly clever. To this point, he had only received solutions to the chlorine problem in Cokeworth that he had already come upon himself, ones that relied so heavily on magic that they could neither be explained nor replicated by muggle science, rendering them useless to his aims. He could not have trouble with the Ministry, nor could he well afford for the pureblood supremacists he reported on to catch him in using magic to help his muggle neighbours.

“Legumes! They replace natrium in the soil, which would create a sample in which -”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

The reasoning was sound, insofar as Severus could follow it over Volpe’s frenzied concern that Orchard was about to hand the answer and with it a hundred promised house points to another student, one who “might not even be in Slytherin.” She had a point. Other honours students, he could see, were already taking notes.

Orchard might actually be on to something if Volpe was this concerned, they both had backgrounds that lent themselves to this understanding, his muggle parents having a large farm in Devon; her father owning a number of vineyards in southern Italy where his elfin slaves produced some of the finest red available.

Severus wondered if he could not entice them to teamwork once more.

“Write it in an essay, Mister Orchard. In Latin. And have it on my desk by start of class tomorrow if you truly trust in your hypothesis,” Severus said with as much disinterest as he could feign. “Know that I’ll be deducting in possible points earned for any grammatical errors I find.”

“Oh, that is definitely Snape,” a few students whispered.

“No, it is not! He never threatens points from Slytherin!”

“It is only a threat if there is no follow-through. Miss Volpe, have you anything to say on the matter?” Severus sneered. He had taken five for unprovoked aggression that same morning. Not that he necessarily would have done had his house still been in the running. Volpe paled.

“I’ll take that bet,” Orchard answered after some consideration. The boy could not conjugate to save his life.

“Bloody hell you will!” Volpe snarled. “Marian, move aside! Ells, just write it in English, I’ll translate.” She could, Severus knew. The kids who had been raised Catholic, as he had, usually had an edge up in spell work against their peers, and from Volpe’s pronunciation, he doubted that her priest paid any more heed to the Second Vatican Council than they did in Cokeworth, where nearly everyone grew up functionally illiterate in the ancient tongue.

Good, Severus thought as he watched his students scribble and shove one another. They still loathed each other, but at least it was a start. Maybe he was not so bad at this responsible adult thing after all.

“That is another two points, Miss Volpe,” Flitwick said. “Severus, I’m going to have to hold you in detention more often, you have a certain effect on people I’ve heretofore failed to fully recognise,” he chuckled.

“I believe it is simply a matter of being attentive, Filius,” Severus sighed, rubbing his temples, and trying to conceal a small smile. He was not ‘nice’ or ‘nurturing’ in the ways that he was encouraged to be in those stupid pedagogic courses he was made to sit whenever there was a complaint about him, and he was certainly glad he was not and would never be a parent, but he was the best damned educator in this sorry excuse for a school.

At the exchange of given names, most of the students put their heads down, certain that their eyes had not, in fact, deceived them. Good. It was, indeed, better to be feared than to be loved.

It was not long, however, before Severus’ self-satisfied smile fell into a frown.

Psssssssst! He heard again from his left.

The single student who had been brave enough to take a seat beside him filled the sudden silence the same way in which she had every time it fell. He tried to ignore her. Tried to refocus his efforts on improving the DADA report and request, but this proved difficult – impossible, without a silencing charm – and Severus was not stupid enough to pull his wand on a student in front of a teacher who, unlike himself, had tenure.

Psst! Psst!

Scowling, he turned to the child who had been trying, on and off, to get his attention since shuffling in five minutes late (and seemingly without any of the assignments she had outstanding with which to fill her ninety-minute punitive measure.) Severus had not wanted to give her any of his time on the grounds that Narcissa, who had never had to earn an income and who, in turn, had no way of appreciating exactly how demanding his day-job was, had specifically asked him to intervene. He had no idea what she expected him to do for her niece from the letter, but the fact that she clearly expected something was enough to put him off direct action.

Sometimes, he thought, recalling the pony Narcissa had purchased in February for Draco’s birthday in June and the fact that Remus probably would not be up to checking that it had enough food and water the day after a full moon, the Malfoys simply asked too much.

Damnit!

Was he going to have to go home tonight? Risk a conversation he was afraid to have because the man he loved could not get out of bed after having all of his bones broken? He hoped that Narcissa, in all of the fluster and bluster that usually accompanied a letter from Andromeda, had order Dobby to Spinner’s End instead. The Elf would check up on his young master’s mighty steed without having been told to do so, saving Severus a trip, saving him a series of complaints about Narcissa’s wealth, status, and resultingly ill-informed worldview that could be equally levelled against her cousin Sirius, which would result in an argument Severus did not have the energy for.

Psst! Psst! Pssssst!

“Miss Tonks,” Severus began gravely, “despite whatever rumours are currently making the rounds about my person, I can assure you that I neither speak nor understand Parseltongue.”

“Wotcher – brilliant that! Hard to believe they caught you, too!” she whispered back, her eyes widening with excitement before narrowing into a reflection of his own. “I thought we might work together next time, since it seems we had the same functional plan to the same presumable ends. Polyjuice, was it? But then what were you intending to use it for? I know it takes a month to brew and you can’t just … how much did you take to have stayed this way so long? Wouldn’t you gag or get sick after more than a mouthful? And how did you get his hair? Whoever you are under there, you’ve my respect,” she beamed as she blabbed.

“As … you have mine,” Severus puzzled over the parts of the outburst he had context to follow. Then, he simply stared. It was disconcerting speaking to someone who could alter their appearance on a whim. Seeing his face contort in an expression he doubted it had known since he himself had been twelve, he attempted, awkwardly, to mimic it, reasoning he would find more sense in this interaction if she could prove a closer reflection.

He studied her, or rather, himself, awaiting the sorts of small adjustments equating to open mockery. Nothing happened. Maybe, he hoped, however faintly, Remus spoke in earnest in the rare occasion he trusted himself to comment on appearances. Severus, as interpreted by Tonks, was not quite as ugly as he had so often been told. Then, perhaps, most of the faces he was used to seeing were those of (actual) awkward teenagers, and against a skewed sample he simply had an edge only age could afford.

“So c’mon, mate, who are yas under there?” she pestered, trying to pinch at him.

“Professor Snape, by general consensus at least,” Severus answered dryly. “And … you are here for attempting to impersonate me, Miss Tonks?”

“Yours is better,” she admitted. “Voice needs some work though. Snape is silky and you just sound like you gargled sand.”

Perceptive, Severus thought. She would have no way of knowing that he had spent the better part of the past forty hours speaking with relatively few interruptions.

“The smile gives you away,” Severus answered. “Should you try it again, I advise you think about your current grades in my class and show a bit of humility. Though … I’ll confess I’m intrigued that a particularly inattentive second year knows quite so much about the Polyjuice Potion, especially seeing as you’ll presumably never have a use for it.”

“Well, ‘you’ mentioned it towards the beginning of my first term,” she stuck out his tongue in a rather serpentine fashion, “I was … apparently ‘proving a distraction’” she imitated, rather well, he had to admit, “and ‘you’ asked if I had been dropped in a vat of it as a babe like a real life Obelix or something -”

“To which you responded that the small village of indomitable Gauls holding out against the Roman invaders was probably being assisted by Liquid Luck, which you clearly weren’t, being made to sit through a double-hour of potions on a Friday. I recall.”

At the mention of Liquid Luck, Volpe turned around sharply, presumably to right the rumours around her with whichever lie she had now settled into.

Everyone else – including Flitwick – had turned their attention to Orchard, who reddened under the scrutiny. Prior to the last match, Volpe had received owls from several scouts from profession Quidditch teams advising that they would be attending to watch her play. Volpe was the best player at Hogwarts by far, but Gryffindor admittedly had a better squad overall, and, fearing that the match would be lost, she had pressured Orchard to make their side sample his Potions project, and this to absolutely no physical result. In order to meet the demand, he had boiled the brew too soon and at too high of a temperature for efficacy. It would not have given anyone an advantage even if that had not been caught. Severus, as Potions Master more than anything else, had been disgusted.

He had named the boy captain not out of favouritism - Orchard being one of his most promising students - but because he thought he alone would be able to stand up to Volpe in such an instance. But either from love or fear the Seeker had consented, been found out before the whistle, and since faced the wrath of his classmates and Severus’ profound disappointment, not only because he had rushed the brewing but because it would have made so much more sense to give Volpe a simple Calming Drought instead! Finding two Professor Snapes in ripped jeans and band tees sitting at the back wall, Volpe lost her considerable nerve and quietly continued her translation. Severus wondered if Madame Pomfrey ever dosed out the Xanax which she kept stocked for staff recreation to troubled students. He would have to ask. Maybe if Septima and Aurora did not have anything going on that evening he could take one of the bottles of Elfin Wine from the crate Volpe had given him at Christmas and they could make a night of pretending they were all friends. Now that was an idea.

“Yeah, the bat gave me detention for cheek,” Tonks laughed. “But, I looked it up afterwards, the way I guess you did, too – but even still, how did you … how did you get the supplies necessary to actually make it? And what for? The concert was only just announced yesterday so it couldn’t -”

“I also gave Hufflepuff two barely earned points for continuing the Asterix reference and for knowing what Liquid Luck is. You can have two more now if you give me a sheet of plain notepaper and the scientific name.”

“You want me to write it or …?” Tonks frowned, looking more recognisably him.

“No, I just don’t want to waste parchment on this,” Severus said with a gesture towards Flitwick, “and I find myself determined that the entirety of this study block not be wasted on you.”

“Felix feli...cissy...cicus…citrus? Shit, Snape mentioned this one as well. I know it I … wait,” she pulled another notebook out of her school bag and flipped through it frantically. “Felix Felicis – I was so close!”

Severus frowned. He did not fail to notice that his Ravenclaw counterpart had not taken two points from Sprout’s student for cursing. More testament to Slytherin superiority for (usually) taking the cup under such unfair conditions.

“You can still have the points. Here I assumed you didn’t listen to a word I said.”

“Nah, I check in for the interesting bits. Like when he accidently admits how much of a nerd he is and then tries to cover for it like he’s not allowed hobbies or interests that extend the core curriculum, or when he talks about safety hazards that have the potential to over-extend Hogwarts’ insurance policy and medical cabinet like it is some kind of challenge.”

“Miss Tonks,” the Potions Master said sharply.

“Bill?” she guessed. “Quintus? Ashton? Elliot?” she squinted, listing every student she presumably thought capable of brewing Polyjuice who was equally reckless enough to risk expulsion for doing so.

“Orchard?” Severus puzzled, “but he is sitting right there! Think, Miss Tonks!” he hissed.

“Or so he would have us believe,” she winked with Severus’ own eye.

“Stop doing that. Stop making my face move it was it is not meant to.”

“Emily?” she continued.

“Severus,” he corrected.

“I blew up a cauldron once.”

“I’m quite aware.”

“You are really, really good at this,” she marvelled.

“It would be most disconcerting if I were not.”

“So ... you must be someone who sits detention a lot, who is good at potions and who reads The Quibbler.” All of these statements were true or had been at some point. “I am conducting an investigation,” she informed him. “I want to be an Auror when I grow up. Did. You. Know. that there is an entire force dedicated to convincing Muggles that whatever magic they witnessed was an extra-terrestrial encounter? Like UFOs and Crop Circles and shit? Wicked awesome – Am. I. Right?!”

No points were taken. He would have to file a complaint, even though he suspected it would get him nowhere.

“Sounds …. fun,” he responded to Tonks, sincerely thinking this the most ‘wicked awesome’ way he had ever heard that his taxes were being invested. “But I regret to inform you that you will need to bring your grades up. ‘Professor Snape’ is incredibly selective about whom he allows into his N.E.W.T. level courses.”

“Is he though? Snape is an asshole, but he’s a great teacher, I mean. I heard that nearly half of the students who sat the OWLs last year achieved an ‘E’.”

“Hm. Is that a general consensus among the student populous?” he quite nearly blushed.

“The labs are always fun, even when I can’t engineer an ‘accident’ from the overblown safety instructions, and the discussions afterwards are really funny when he’s decided to randomly target someone else.”

Could it be that she was simply bored in her lessons?

“You have your Uncle Lucius to blame for those ‘overblown instructions’, he won’t pay for the lab goggles I repeatedly request.”

“Oh, he is not my uncle,” Tonks frowned. “He is a liar. And a criminal. My dad ... he said Lucius and Narcissa were under the Imperius Curse during the war, but my aunt, I shouldn’t say anything … but it simply wouldn’t be possible. The explanation he gave. Not for a Black.”

“No point in asking if you yourself inherited the same alleged gift. If you had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You would be able to tell who I ‘truly’ am.”

“We would. I wouldn’t use it. Not even to try and see if I could. My mum wakes up screaming every time she’s had to for work. Says it is like living a thousand lives at once but never, truly, your own. That’s why more than half of them are mad on her side of the family. My Aunt Bella, Uncle Sirius -”

“That isn’t why,” Severus interrupted.

“Is that a risk you would take? Anyway, I don’t need it, you can’t have more than half an hour of Polyjuice left in you, and you will tell me eventually who you really are, because from where I am sitting you need me more. I can do this all day,” she claimed, replacing his features at random with those of her aunts, unwanted uncle, and the second cousin she claimed as such. Severus shivered involuntarily when met with Sirius’ sudden visage. Tonks, seeing this, shook herself from the false faces altogether and apologised, completely flustered.

“I am not afraid of Sirius Black,” he assured her, and by way of which, himself.

“Still, that was ... I know what people say, I mean.”

“Let us then return to making fun of Professor Snape.”

“I’m not making fun of him. I heard he’s dope as fuck with the advanced levels -”

“Okay, seriously Filius?!” Severus snapped.

“Oh, Severus, just throw up a Muffliato the way you never failed to as a student if you intend to keep prodding Miss Tonks into poor word choices.”

“Two points from Hufflepuff,” Severus said.

“You are not on duty,” Flitwick informed him. “Ten from Slytherin if this continues.”

Severus simply gaped.

“Teacher fights are the bloody best!” – “It is not the real Snape though; you think he takes bullshit from anyone but Mc G?” - “Futue te ipsum!”

“Fine, two points from Hufflepuff, Miss Tonks; Four from Gryffindor Mister Barnabas, Mister Halbrook; and Miss Volpe, me quoque facundam Latine commonebo. Omnes professores tui sunt.”

“Not Trelawny,” Severus answered the assertion that all Hogwarts professors were fluent in Latin. Flitwick lost the fight to laughter, causing Severus himself to surrender.

“See?” Tonks asked, “Dope. He’s probably going to kill you though, Snape, kill both of us, but at least it will be metal as – well, never mind. We’ll just leave it as I guess is why we both decided on the same disguise to try to get to the Hog’s Head.”

“Hobgoblins secret show?”

“I guess we both figured Snape the most likely to go out for something like that. Pity, really. He’s also the sort who’d stop anything he was doing to make sure no one else was having fun, be weird if we ran into him at the gig, I mean. He’d flip the hm-hm out, at me at least, say I’m not even old enough to go to Hogsmeade proper, much less its more notorious pub,” she said rather theatrically, however correct she was in her assumption. “Did you hear that Ableforth threw a real Bacchanalias there last Christmas? Like an orgy with a live goat and the whole thing?”

“Where do you get this crap?”

“Professor Trelawney, mostly.”

“Hm,” Severus considered. “Well, she would know.”

“Are you taking Divination, too? She tell you how you are going to die yet?”

“Giant serpent,” he gave.

“Werewolf.” It sounded like a correction.

“Excuse me?” Severus blinked.

“That is me. I am going to be slain by a werewolf, but not during a full moon, which was a curious touch. Maybe because I cracked my crystal ball when I dropped it, so the ‘moon’ never looks full either way. Doesn’t matter though. She told me I’d get to fulfil my heart’s every wish along the way, so stick with me, kid, and we’ll make it to the show.”

“Did you get tickets?”

“Me? I only got as far as the gate! How about you?”

“Sold out. I secured four by pestering Dumbledore to appeal to the landlord on my behalf.”

“Is that how you got caught? The Headmaster make demands of retribution and repayment to a stunned Snape with absolutely no recollection of the exchange? Oh! I’d have paid to see it!”

“Seven Galleons,” Severus sighed, realising he was now involved. “Which … I might be willing to wave if you take measures to improve your impersonation.”

“What measures?”

“Your coursework for starters, Miss.”

“Damn, that is spot on. You are so much better at this than me. I was trying to walk quickly and purposeful the way Snape always does, but Mc G saw me trip and in turn saw through me completely. Took fifty points for impersonating a teacher! And another ten when I said I could do her as well.”

“That doesn’t suit me at all,” Severus frowned. “Slytherin doesn’t stand a chance in hell of winning the House Cup this year after what our Quidditch team tried to pull, collective punishment being what it is, but I’ll be damned if Minerva takes it two years in a row. Give me another sheet of paper? I’ll write a short quiz around a few topics we covered recently, and if you can obtain at least eighty percent, I’ll see those points returned and adjust your grade accordingly.”

“Okay, but what are you going to do with the first one?”

“Ask Flitwick if he wants to start a fight club with me giving the embarrassing state of Hogwarts’ Defence Against the Dark Arts Department. I’m … concerned that no one sitting their O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s this year is going to achieve a passing grade and the real-world implications of this are maddening. Though he doesn’t look like it, Flitwick was a European Duelling Champion in his youth and I … well I have initiative if little else to offer. Here,” he said, giving her five questions to keep her occupied.

“Merlin’s left nipple! You are really … but then, what are you doing here?”

Severus found himself smiling at the fact that true recognition had come at last, not owing to appearance or speech or any assessment of his character, but because the girl had a true appreciation for his teaching. So this was a question of getting her to sit still long enough that no one else had to suffer. He stared at her. She reminded him enough of a young Sirius Black that a plan of action began to formulate.

“Little you mind that,” he answered the question of how he was again being punished for the misdeeds of House Gryffindor. “Miss Tonks, are you going to assist me with my goal of insuring that Hufflepuff wins the House Cup this year or are you going to tempt me into subtracting more points?”

“Why should we win it and not Ravenclaw?”

“Because Professor Sprout is, at present, sole among the list of colleagues that I have no personal or professional reasons to wish untold ills upon. Flitwick gave me detention – actually, he gave me the budget for the coming year, but that is not of your concern.”

“I feel like I should keep pushing my luck just to level the field.”

“You are not up to the competition, trust me.”

Almost as if on cue, McGonagall entered, her face flushed with everything he was no doubt about to have to hear.

“Filius, what is this?” she demanded, almost at a loss for breath. “I need Severus. Albus wants to speak to him over a matter most troublesome. Immediately.”

“Res iudicata, Minerva, my dear,” Severus answered. “I’ve already been convicted and am serving my sentence, as you can well see.”

“I gave him the budgetary requests,” Flitwick shrugged.

“Bit harsh,” McGonagall frowned.

“I won’t claim to be happy with the assignment, but I’d gladly do it every year is no one has any objections. That this school has so much as kept its accreditation seems something of an accident -”

“Filius, did we not all talk about exactly this when he started?” Minerva rubbed her temples.

“Teacher fight!” various students whispered.

“This is why you have few friends, Severus. Come, this well and truly cannot wait.”

Though he in fact welcomed the chance to debate the Dark Arts with their shared boss, Severus took his time to rise, whispers about how Professor Snape could always be counted on to capitulate to Professor McGonagall circling the Charms room.

“I got you bruh,” Tonks said as Severus, sighing, moved to stand. Transforming into him again, she rose and declared with as much conviction as she could muster “I am Spartacus!”

“It Severus,” he buried his face in his palm. “My given name. Severus.”

“And how is this man accredited to teach Muggle Studies?! Take me to my fate!” Tonks demanded, extending her copies of his wrists forward as though they were handcuffed together to wild laughter.

“Miss Tonks, do you want another detention?” Minerva asked sharply.

“I won’t claim I am happy with the arrangement,” Tonks answered, still pantomiming Severus’ themselves exaggerated, effeminate gestures, “but I have my role as I recognise you have yours.”

“Res iudicata, again, Minerva,” Severus took charge. “Miss Tonks is already serving her punishment for a rather poor interpretation, and I’d suggest that she spend the last ten minutes of it with me tomorrow after her third block potions lesson that we might discuss ways in which she might improve upon her act and behaviour more generally. Filius, I’m a man of honour, I’ll come see you at my earliest possible convenience, but might I suggest that rather than working on the budgetary request more broadly, we discuss the ways in which we two might fill the deficits in DADA short notice?”

“Duelling Club?” Flitwick surmised.

Severus gave a slight bow and received on in return.

“You can’t just -” Minerva flustered. Student chatter erupted once more.

“Mister Orchard, keep your head down. Miss Volpe don’t make the situation harder to escape,” Severus said in a final word of warning to his two Slytherins, lightly slapping the backs of their heads as he moved the exit the room. “I told you, we will find a way to fight this, but not if you are racking up a disciplinary record off the pitch. Come on, ‘Spartacus’,” he nodded towards Tonks.

“You are being serious?” she blinked.

“My offer is rather masochistic, but not facetious, no.”

“Wot?”

“Read a book, Miss Tonks, and meet me tomorrow at 12:30 in my office.”

She did not have to be told twice. He saw he trip as she tried to scuttle away past him and Minerva in the corridor. Dumb kid.

“What was that about?” the Deputy Headmistress asked wearily.

“She isn’t lazy and inattentive, she is bored in class and seeking the wrong outlets,” Severus assessed blandly. He had a plan. That Minerva would surely hate it made it all the more enticing.

“How is that your problem?” she asked as she began a brisk march to the Headmaster’s Office.

“How is it not? When she disrupts one of my lectures, she puts everyone in the room at risk. And … Cissy asked me to intervene.”

“You have already spoken to Narcissa Malfoy then?” Minerva inquired, her eyes widening.

“She wrote me this morning. Why?”

“About Harry?” she stopped dead in her tracks.

“Who?” Severus frowned. The only ‘Harry’ he could think of off the top of his head was -

“Better we wait until you are sitting down.”

When Remus Lupin finished retelling the morning’s events, Severus Snape was visibly shaking, though it was impossible to gauge if the involuntary tremors owed to horror, fear, anger, or something else altogether. His face seemed impassive, but then Remus had only seen it in profile since the mention of Harry’s name. His boyfriend’s gaze remained fixed on Albus Dumbledore when at last he spoke in little more than a whisper, “How can you so much as suggest -”

“That you honour your promise to Lily? You gave me your word, Severus,” Dumbledore replied without warmth. Remus felt his fist clench, his nails opening old, familiar wounds in his palms as he watched pain fill his lover’s face.

“As you gave me yours,” Severus choked.

“Ah, yes. And I’ve kept it. It is not I who seek to expose the best in you, but rather one of your informants, as we’ve established. Did I not advise you – repeatedly – that the Malfoys are more trouble than they are worth?”

“I can handle Narcissa,” Severus answered, his tone, though collected, causing the statement to be heard as ‘How dare!’ by all present – Remus, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Dumbledore, who alone seemed unmoved by the muted outburst.

Remus caught McGonagall’s eye and knew her to likewise be remembering the last time they four had found themselves in this self-same constellation, ten years prior almost to the day. Severus – ‘Snape’ to him, then, ‘Snivillus’ the day before – had been forced under threat of expulsion to make an unbreakable vow swearing Remus’ secret would never leave his lips. He may not have killed him, but he knew Snape was going to die because of his disease all the same. And Snape knew it, too. McGonagall, Remus only now realised, must have known as well, for she had stayed with him for about an hour afterwards, long enough for Remus to tell Lily himself in order to stop her best friend from falling on his own sword, electing to warn her with what would have otherwise been his last words. Remus had never hated himself for what he was as much as he had when Lily’s answer of ‘I know,’ that admission that she was choosing Severus’ tormentors over him had nearly caused the other boy’s collapse. Why, Remus wondered, did it so often seem that Severus paid such a high price for the act of existing? Why did Dumbledore in particular see fit to poison everything positive in his most trusted spy’s sorry life?

Narcissa Malfoy, for all of the fatal flaws in her judgement, had been right about at least one thing. Remus felt a growl building in the back of his throat.

“Have you, as of yet, been able to enter her mind without invitation?” Dumbledore asked, tapping his fingers on his desk.

“Of course not!” howled the portrait of Phineas Nigellus. “A daughter of House Black be undone by a half-blood?”

“Such is hardly necessary in Narcissa’s example,” Severus replied in calm dismissal of both Headmasters. “Her motives are transparent; she is trying to force you hand ... Sir.”

“She said that if the Dark Lord was truly defeated, she would be rehabilitating the Black and Malfoy names by rescuing the Boy Who Lived, if he should, however, return -” Remus began. Severus unlocked his gaze to glare at him.

“He shall return, Remus,” Dumbledore said gravely.

“The Malfoys are not much interested either way,” Severus said with seeming indifference. “They will survive the upheaval regardless of what form it takes. Narcissa,” he paused to consider his phrasing, “has long imagined that she can right her greatest wrong, but her efforts have always been in vain. Generosity does not belong to her nature, it is a trait she is trying to learn and some measure of good has come from it, but not enough to light the darkness that consumes her. She doesn’t want to be a Viscountess, she doesn’t want to smile and wave and manage various estates; she wants to work in diplomacy, to have fights for their own sake without anyone seeing her hand. I … do not believe she recognises this about herself,” he added. “She may think she is being kind, but she is not. She is playing at politics in the only way open to her, not particularly caring for the outcome.”

“But you are generous, Severus,” McGonagall observed. “Some might say to a fault.”

“I could count the number of people who would concur with that assessment on a single hand and consider it a pity that Narcissa is among them,” he dismissed, adding darkly, “You, however, had ought to know better.”

“Her greatest wrong?” Dumbledore repeated. “And here I thought you considered the Malfoys beyond reproach.”

“In all fairness, whatever motives we might assume, she has always proven herself consistent when met with the suffering of children!” McGonagall snapped. It was only now Remus realised that she shared his anger and resentment, except she had the courage to voice it. Almost. Dumbledore looked patient and unperturbed.

“This stays in this room?” Severus asked, looking at Remus. Remus was wounded that his partner evidently did not trust him as much as he did his colleagues but nodded his agreeance all the same.

“Draco Malfoy was born of muggle medicine. When Bellatrix found out she declared the birth a betrayal to equal Andromeda’s and began hurling curses at her youngest sister, demanding that the spawn be cast out, his blood having been tainted by Cissy’s weakness, which is to say in fear manifest as impatience as it has always exposed itself in her example. Narcissa, fraught and fearing for Draco’s life fought back in the only way she thought she might win, assaulting her sister’s memories, pushing her past the brink of madness until she was but a shell of the witch and woman she had once been. All that magic and the mind of a child. It is terrifying to so much as consider.

“When Lucius and I returned to the Manor later that same evening, we found Narcissa cradling her sister where she had fallen, Bellatrix muttering incoherently, Narcissa seeming to beg us for absolution, saying she had tried, she had tried but she could not take back what she had done. I thought I knew how she felt,” Severus swallowed, for the first time betraying something other than cold indifference when relaying the narrative, “and maybe at the time I did, we had both yet to fully appreciate the consequences of our actions. But how many more orphans are there now, I wonder, because everything connecting Bellatrix Lestrange to whatever empathy might have once existed inside of her was taken in a panicked mistake? How much of that blame belongs with Narcissa? I myself am responsible for at least one orphan, and I pretend, even to myself at times, that it is all cosmetic, but I can’t look at myself in the mirror, literally as well as figuratively. Vain though she seems, Cissy never takes more than a cursory glance.

“She never went after Draco again, Bellatrix, having learned how very much she had to fear from her little sister, but she did the same thing to the Longbottoms that had been done to her, and on the same night the Potters died. I don’t pity Narcissa or seek to excuse her, but I know what it is like to have killed my best friend. I know what it is like to live with that,” with this he slouched further, burying his face in his palms. It took a long while before he trusted himself to continue.

“That said, I’m sorry, Sir. I can’t comply with your whims. Take the boy in?” Severus gaped. “How could I even look at him after what I’ve done?”

“Do you not seek the same absolution?” Dumbledore challenged, his tone however kind. Remus felt blood trickle through his fingers as his fists tightened. Dumbledore, the wizard he had idolised for so long, who had given him a place at Hogwarts and in the Order, did not care at all for the pain of his best placed agent. Or for that placement at all. Remus wondered darkly if the esteemed wizard actually cared what happened to Harry. Was Severus so disposable, or was this simple punishment for decent? His mind wandered to Sirius rotting in Azkaban, and Remus felt he might well be sick.

“I swore to you I would do anything within my power to protect that child. If you entrust him to my care … what if he should wind up being like … like me?” Severus chocked as though such were the worst possible outcome that could be imagined.

“There is a greater threat of that if he should return to the home which he’s know these past three and a half years, or, alternatively, should he remain in foster care,” Dumbledore said with a nod towards Remus. “Shall I show you?” he asked, gesturing to this missive.

After Remus had sent his patronus to warn Dumbledore about what Narcissa had set into motion, he had entered Harry’s memories at her insistence with horror and a sorrow deeper than he thought himself capable. Narcissa had helped him apparate to Hogsmeade, bought him a Firewiskey and repeated her intent to see the boy’s deepest wishes fulfilled.

‘He’s drunk,’ she then turned to explain to two women with dark skin and hair, slightly older than herself but positive children in their disappointment that all of the tickets to an upcoming concert had already been sold. Remus, was not, in fact, even the slightest bit inebriated, but recognising in Narcissa’s damning gaze the intended explanation as to why he was so weak on his feet, had forced a belch. ‘He has a meeting with Dumbledore to interview for the soon-to-be-vacated Defence post, would it be possible for you ladies to escort him to the castle? I’m afraid I’ve other, urgent business to attend to. Before you deem to answer, I’ll remind you that my husband will be receiving your budgetary requests in two weeks’ time,’ she had informed them without inflection, not taking her cold eyes from Remus all the while.

‘Really? Drinking before an interview? Well, at least we know he’ll fit in,’ the first woman whom Remus identified too late as being Professor Vector, one of Severus’ favourite colleagues, had snorted.

‘Did Collins really quit this morning? And you are only just telling me?’ Professor Sinistra complained to her fellow teacher before recognition had set in. ‘Remus?! Remus Lupin?! Why that is marvellous! No, that is terrible! Where are we at now in the rhyme?’

‘Divorced – Beheaded – Died – Divorced – Beheaded – Survived,’ Vector recited. ‘Well … assuming Collins kicks it from the Whopping Cough he brought upon himself, I’d say this one is due for a particularly bad break up, nothing more. Former student of yours?’

‘One of my best,’ Sinistra answered.

Remus ignored them both. ‘You are not coming?’ he asked Narcissa.

‘No, as stated I’ve other matters to attend. You can tell Albus Dumbledore that we’ll surely see one another sooner than later in court. Here, in case he should need convincing,’ she said, handing over the plastic bottle that had been emptied or Gilly Water and refilled with early childhood trauma.  

“He is desperate to meet you, Sev,” Remus said. He did not agree with Dumbledore that Spinner’s End was now the best place to hide the boy, but nor could he consent to his boyfriend’s assessment that the sum of his traits was undesirable. Of all that Remus had witnessed, Narcissa’s own recollection of Harry’s longing to meet his mother’s best friend after hearing lies about the woman for nearly the entirety of his short life had hit him the hardest. Severus had refused the pensieve outright.

“No,” Severus said, resolute. “I’ll not be swayed. For Salazar’s sake, Albus – you are overlooking the obvious! I was a Death Eater; Remus is -” he still could not bring himself to say it again in company.

Remus wondered if Severus had wanted to die the day that he had tried to tell Lily. He wondered if that would have been kinder, to have let Severus escape his mortal chains when he might yet have died a hero, if Lily would have still been alive if he had not been around to hear the prophecy that had been interpreted into her demise. Severus, he was certain, often wondered these things when the full moon approached, though they never spoke about them. No wonder he could not meet his own gaze.

“Then who better to protect the boys than two people who have known the worst of the world, know what to expect from the enemies they will no doubt have? Remus is on Wolfsbane, and you are an accomplished potioneer,” Dumbledore countered.

“They?” Remus questioned.

“Yes … you hardly could expect that Child and Family Services would have left Harry’s cousin Dudley in the care of two people who kept the boy locked in a cupboard under the stairs, and Dudley, he is now key to the protective spell Lily’s death cast around Harry. If he has a home with someone who shares his mother’s blood until his seventeenth birthday, Death won’t be able to find him. Petunia sealed the spell when she lifted Harry from the porch where we left him. Granted, I don’t know that it will be as strong with only a cousin serving as its anchor, but the boys must remain together, that is paramount. Otherwise, Lily’s sacrifice would have been for nothing.”

Remus watched the expression on Severus’s face shift slightly and knew everything Narcissa had ever said to be true. “You assume if you leave Harry with a remorseful terrorist and a self-loathing lycanthrope he’ll be as much yours to manipulate as the two of us,” he surmised. “That is why you sent his godfather to Azkaban, didn’t want to risk having another Black on your hands.”

Dumbledore simply stared at him, betraying nothing though his patient, nurturing mask.

“You don’t have to admit it, but you should know that is what Narcissa is really after, what Severus was alluding to but did not want to say. She tortures me, constantly, with happy memories of him -”

“She what?!” Severus exclaimed, both alarmed and injured.

It was what Remus had always feared, but the wolf had already been unleashed and for once, he was willing to let him take over.

Remus hated Narcissa for her irresponsible actions, hated her more now that Dumbledore had all but proven the case she had long been trying to make. He hated that the man he loved, the man who had spoken those very words in a night that might have been a dream, clearly held more esteem for those seeking to make cruel and unreasonable demands of him at untold costs. He hated that he, Remus, had given Severus every reason and right to mistrust him, consistently backing down from arguments worth having in order to safeguard his still newfound sense of security.

He knew he was not worth the confidence he somehow – selfishly - felt bitter about not being bestowed.

He certainly was not anywhere near ready to take on the responsibility he feared Severus had already resigned himself to.  He hated himself for that as well.

Trying to remember if Vector was the Divinations Professor who made sport of Severus’ sense of fatalism as he recalled the offhand comment that he was due for a particularly bad breakup, part of him wondered if this was not for the best -

If this was part of Narcissa’s design.

Or of Dumbledore’s.

The former did not want him in a relationship with, or in fact anywhere near her all-but-adopted son; the latter did not want to allow either of his agents so much as the idea of personal happiness. Narcissa was right, people were easier to control when their own demons were doing half of the work. How could Dumbledore expect Severus to care for Lily’s son? How dare he seek to break Severus with the mere suggestion? Why would he put him in a place to argue against all of the positive traits he fought so hard to help his boyfriend see in himself? If love was truly a more destructive magic than hate, where could this lead them?

“I believed she trusted I won’t say anything to the effect for fear that it might wound someone whom we both love, but this, here, is bigger than the sum of anyone’s shared trauma,” Remus continued, collecting himself though the wolf continued to rage. “We are talking about the life and livelihood of a little boy – two to hear you tell it. We are not equipped, financially, emotionally, or otherwise. I have a shit job in a pub that I am fairly certain only exists as a way of laundering money for and exporting munitions to the IRA and giving my condition it is the best I can get. Severus has a great CV by comparison, but he is barely home.”

“We could alter your boyfriend’s schedule for the coming term, set up a Floo Connection between his office and Spinner’s End that he could return to pick the boys up from school when you are moonlighting, you of course being there to see them off in the morning. You could live together, more or less. Like a family.”

“Except you can’t though, can you? When has my workday ever ended at 4:30?” Severus snapped. “Entirely absent of the fact that I’m up until late in the evening making lesson plans and grading essays, I’m Head of Slytherin, meaning I’ve already a duty of care to some two-hundred students. I had two lectures scheduled today and wound up giving six in a table built for four. And then … and then sitting detention for my efforts, because half the staff still thinks of me as a child! The way you run your school; you can’t honestly think -”

“And whilst you were there you took a struggling student under your wing, despite the fact that she isn’t connected to your house,” McGonagall reminded, for once soft as she was stern.

“Not in that sense,” Severus dismissed with a wave, “but she is the niece of my former foster parents, and I was hardly being responsible. I may have committed myself to bringing her to an indie metal gig at the Hog’s Head. She’s twelve,” he stressed. “I shouldn’t be trusted with children.”

McGonagall frowned. “I disagree. Your methods and motives may give cause to question, but you meet your pupils where they are at, which is a skill to which most educators aspire.”

“I assumed we would be on the same side, Minerva,” Severus sneered.

“When have we ever been on the same side, Severus?” McGonagall seemed to taunt. “I’ve already written a recommendation for you, and because I know how much you hate hearing compliments, let me assure you that I meant every word.”

“Is any of it rooted in fact?” Remus asked sceptically, imitating the Deputy Headmistress’ tactic. Severus’ gaze found him for the first time in what had seemed a rather long while. He had brightened, slightly. Remus felt a pang of envy, wishing that he got to spend even half as much time with his lover as Severus’ work-rival did. McGonagall clearly knew what she was about. Remus, again, felt like a passenger in his own life.

“I for one am far more comfortable entrusting Harry to the care of individuals we know rather than strangers who don’t even share our way of life -” she started.

“It had to be!” Dumbledore interrupted, not ready to permit any portion of his authority to be usurped. “He was safer hidden in the muggle world when Voldemort fell. He was safer with family as I maintain he remains. Cokeworth is now the best option.” What did it strategically matter, Remus wondered, if his servant was more receptive to someone else’s lead insofar as he, Dumbledore, got what he was after in the end? Once again, Remus had to question if Harry’s welfare was even being considered.

Before he could formulate these feelings into words, however, Severus asked darkly, “Have you ever been?”

When Dumbledore did not answer, he continued, “Let me tell you about my hometown. Cokeworth doesn’t suffer for postcode envy. For about fifty years following the onset of the industrial revolution it expanded in the ways concurrent with gross capitalism – most of the row housing thrown up in this era was built hastily without any mind to human health and safety, much of it has fallen into an even greater sense of disrepair and has been declared uninhabitable. The fact that half the town, including the street on which we live has yet to be demolished owes itself to the fact that the land is unprofitable, no developer wants to take that bet and the current government its keen to sit on sunk costs. Ten years ago, it was revealed that the river contained bacteria hazardous to health, and in an act of over-correction so much chlorine was pumped into the water supply to kill it that the tap still is not fit for human consumption. Were I to say that I can’t keep a houseplant alive, I wouldn’t mean it allegorically.

“As Remus can also attest, the shower burns into every little scrape. We have a mould problem being as we are right on the river, whose banks are filled with decades of rubbish and decay. The house is never warm, it sits in the shadow of a run-down factory where kids go to snot Ketamine and where – sorry to keep labouring this point but I feel you are somehow missing the implications – Remus used to run amok in his Lycanthrope form before I explained to him that he was potentially putting lives at risk. Granted, if you were to take a trip just to take a trip as it were – and that happens, too, for we don’t have enough legal residents to warrant a police station or any form of local government representation - there is storehouse right across the street. I invite Hagrid round once or twice a year and have a beer on the front porch with him just to avoid trouble with the local gangs … not,” he paused, “that I necessarily would without unspoken threats. You want Harry to be raised in a Muggle environment, but everyone in Cokeworth knows that I am a wizard and refers to me as such. A few even believe that there is some truth in it. I outed myself as a boy not much older than Harry and Dudley are now. It is a running gag where we live, and I shan’t be able to shield them from it. Cokeworth simply isn’t a safe place to raise a child.”

“Look how he turned out,” Remus agreed, nodding. “I don’t mean that in the way I know it to sound, Sev is clearly the exception to a rule, but it is precisely for this reason that our home cannot be equipped to accommodate children. He’s brilliant, absolutely, terrifyingly brilliant, and terribly under stimulated with the demands of the core curriculum. My diet mostly consists of canned goods as it is all our kitchen can accommodate -”

“You can’t cook anyway,” Severus muttered, clearly uncomfortable with the positive appraisal Remus had tried to hide with insult.

“True, but it is not as though I have much space to learn, being that our counters are covered with cauldrons and notes that for the extent of my understanding might as well just read ‘Do Not Touch’, for he has this hobby of figuring out the impossible and then translating it into means that can be replicated by muggle chemistry.”

“At one point we had to stock our bottled water in the library as I was keeping a sample of Uranium in the basement, it was not enriched, but even still,” Severus added.

“Exactly, whatever that means,” Remus said, seeing on the expressions of his former teachers that they had no idea what Uranium was, either.

“Harry and Dudley would probably be safer in the meth lab across the way,” Severus surmised. “Also,” he turned to Remus, raising his eyebrows, “my … ‘hobbies’ are among the reasons why we are constantly broke.”

“Ah. I always wondered. Thank you both clearing that up and for not turning this into a teaching moment, can’t be bothered to approach your haughty intellect after the morning I’ve had,” Remus smiled.

“It is coming,” Severus warned, “You’ll at least know the Periodic Table before the week is through, but as stated I had to give six lectures today on very little sleep. Can’t be asked at the moment.”

“You could not move all of your little experiments to the basement?” Dumbledore challenged gently.

“Are you offering to help us clean it out, then?” Severus smirked.

“I’m sure we have spiders down there that would cause those living in the Forbidden Forrest to look positively miniscule by comparison,” Remus said.

“Better company that either of us, though, I’m sure,” Severus gave. “Sir, as we are in this sanctuary of your office, would you be so good as to produce my HR file? Just the complaints from students and staff should do. As well as literally anyone else’s just for a means of size comparison? And might I also trouble you to procure my, and Remus’ disciplinary records from our time as students?”

“That is hardly conducive -”

“Then allow me,” he said with a flick of his wand. “Oh.” The demonstration clearly had not had the effect Severus had been anticipating. “Well, I’ve only been here for three years,” he seemed to excuse a file much slimmer than he had expected. “The fuck are people saying about Filtwick, though?” he squinted his small, slanting eyes further.

“It is mostly sexual harassment complaints. You should see the size of Sprout’s,” McGonagall told him in an aside to Dumbledore’s disapproval and Severus’ visible excitement. “They used to date.”

“Well then! Accio -” the latter began.

“Expelliarmus,” McGonagall interceded.

“I shan’t tolerate wands drawn in -”

“In the office of the Headmaster of Britain’s most prestigious magical institution?” McGonagall scoffed, handing Severus’ wand back to him and taking his student file from his lap in the process. She began to shift through it was she continued, “Albus, you delegate these matters to me as a rule, and therefore it is up to be whom I tell. Severus happens to be the best sound board and sparring partner you have yet to provide, by I concur that this isn’t the time.”

“He is trying to change the subject, it is what he always does when an argument isn’t going his way,” Remus offered.

“Don’t you now start. Tis always amusing when Mummy and Daddy are fighting,” Severus defended, then shifted. “We don’t need to unpack that phrasing,” he said, seemingly only to McGonagall. “I’m not its origin.”

“Who then?” McGonagall asked. Severus gestured lazily to Filtwick’s file. “You assume the worst of me, Minerva. Always have.”

“Whose fault is that though?” McGonagall raised an eyebrow challengingly before returning her gaze to Severus’ recorded misdemeanours from his student days. Remus wondered what she was looking for.

“I should think the matter settled,” Dumbledore remarked. “You are both committed to the Greater Good and bother have more than enough grounds to care on a personal level. No excuse or accusation either of you can level can stand against the responsibility I trust you both to rise to,” he said in inspirational tones. “Remus, you are the kindest, most nurturing individual I’ve met in all of my many years. You see the best in people and everyone you meet aspires to your expectations. Severus you are -”

“Spiteful, traumatised, ill-adjusted, petty, and self-sabotaging,” Severus interjected. For a fleeting moment, Remus was glad that his partner seemed immune to such overtures. But then - “People, normal people,” Severus continued, “without degenerative illnesses that stop them from going out, meeting and hooking up with those worthy of them,” he said with a gesture towards Remus, “or people who don’t harbour degenerative, destructive ideas around social engineering,” he nodded towards Dumbledore, “people like that … don’t like me at all. I can’t be someone’s dad.”

He could not think that Remus was only with him because his market was limited! The man, as well as the wolf, wanted to howl in protest.

“I like you,” McGonagall said. “As, unfortunately, do the Malfoys, as do your honours students to the last -”

“Not those formally of the Slytherin Quidditch team.”

“They are ashamed in front of their classmates, and rightfully so, and terrified for their futures as they extend beyond this season. They don’t hold you responsible for their error, they see you as the person who can help them set it right, which we both know you will before the year is out. Are you still losing sleep over this?” McGonagall frowned.

“As I’m constantly being reminded, I’m not Slughorn, I don’t have his connections.”

“But you have his address, and you have your own useful acquaintances,” McGonagall countered sharply. “Don’t tell me there are no former Death Eaters on the English Quidditch Federation’s Board of Directors.”

“Nothing but, but such hardly works in anyone’s favour if I’m found harbouring Harry Potter!” He stood and began to pace behind his chair. “I’ve spent years undercover for you lot and you are willing to throw all of my hard work and sacrifice away for the sake of blood magic that you are not even sure will continue to work? Even if it does, Harry and Dudley are four, almost five years old, which equates to Freud’s Phallic Stage of Psychosexual Development – and yes, Minerva, I pay some attention in those courses you keep recommending I attend! It is the age where they begin to mimic the behavioural patterns of a same sex parent, and neither Remus nor I are particularly good role models in that regard. I already see it to some extent with my godson, whom I only have maybe six days each month, and he’s …” he faltered, stopped where he stood, his voice beginning to crack.

“He is not a bloody squib,” Remus countered. He did not have enough to do with Draco to have much of an opinion of the lad but was well sick of hearing about his supposed deficits all the same.

“I can’t convince him you don’t reject him on precisely those grounds, I can’t - physically - tell him the real reason, and even if I could, I should doubt it would make a difference at this point,” Severus said, sounding defeated. “He’s already internalised your apparent disgust, and I have to assume some of that self-doubt owes itself to my influence.”

“I had no idea,” Remus said. “I … hadn’t even considered. Sir, when Harry was born, when Lily and James were … I couldn’t pick Harry up either. That is to say, I was terrified of hurting him. And it seems I’ve hurt Draco far more by trying to shield him, but … my own parents, they wouldn’t touch me either, after it happened. When I announced I wouldn’t be returning the summer after I turned seventeen, they didn’t press the issue. And I was happy for it at the time, but now I think – I never meant -”

“My father beat me daily,” Severus said without inflection, the tone he always fell into when discussing pain he refused to truly process. “If I didn’t have magic flowing through the blood which he was so willing to spill, I’m sure I would have died well before his drinking caught up with him. My classmates hated me, and my professors never honoured their duty of care until far past the point of it mattering. By the time I was placed in a home with nurturing parents, I did not know how to reciprocate it, and I don’t know that I do a good enough job of imitating it now to mask my many social deficits, not to mention Remus’. Understand, I’m not saying ‘no’ because I don’t care, but because I do. There has to be a better way.”

“You are not saying ‘no’ at all,” McGonagall said, having pulled a piece of parchment from the file. “I think all four of us have, at some point this evening, remembered the last time we found ourselves collected here as such. Harry went looking for you this morning - you, specifically, Severus. You imagine that you are not loved, are not worthy of the love you are shown or cannot properly reciprocate, but answer me honestly … if one of your students asked you exactly what you asked me that day, what would you have said, and more significantly, what would you have done?”

“No, Minerva, not you. Please don’t tell me you had any hand in -”

“What would you have done, Severus?” she demanded.

“Anything.”

“Then you already know what happened. And you already know what you will do.”

“But why?” Severus whispered.

Remus felt his heart stop. Severus had long suspected the Order of hastening his father’s demise, but he had never quite taken the concern seriously. To Remus, it made far more sense that if anyone had acted to further their agenda, it would have been the Malfoys – after all, Narcissa could wound without a wand, and no one would know without ‘invitation’. It occurred to him only now that Dumbledore, after a certain point, had never been in direct proximity of any Black. Was he consenting to Narcissa’s wishes here in order to protect some yet greater secret?

Severus had always warned him that there was no operational difference between good and evil, it was only the outcomes that matter to those seeking or holding power. Perhaps there was something more than personal misery manifest in this assessment.

Remus stood as well. “What,” he asked Dumbledore, “Did Sirius know that he had to be locked up for? He can do it too, can’t he? The only reason the gift seems more manifest in Narcissa is because she has no other, but they can all conceivably do the same sort of thing with their inborn abilities, can they not? Bellatrix certainly learned.”

“Bellatrix was shown,” Dumbledore answer sharply.

“Yeah … yeah, Cissy has tried the same with me, to some extent. To the extent she can reasonably get away with at a dinner party. I can’t do much with it, I mean, except mope around. But knowing what her relationship with Sirius was like, I can’t imagine for a moment that she never tried to make a game of it. That he picked up a few tricks from her torture.”

“They all did, the Blacks, in the Slytherin common room. Back then,” Severus answered. “Thing is, Sir, the Princes are a cadet branch of that most ancient and noble house. I can play, too. But you already knew that.”

“Never dare endeavour to enter my mind, Severus,” Dumbledore warned.

“Never presume to afford me grounds for suspicion,” Severus answered. Remus felt, however, as though he had been speaking to him. “Now, about Harry and Dudley.”

“Is that really what you think?” Remus Lupin demanded for what must have been the third time in the past minute alone.

In truth, the only thought that occupied Severus Snape’s mind was that of how very badly he wanted a cigarette. Not because he was stressed, per se, but because he had actually gotten away with all of it. He was in too much shock for any sense of contentment to yet settle, but he was already certain that when he looked back on his life as he lay dying in thirteen years, to hear Trelawney tell it, he would think upon this day as one of his proudest. He had done it. He had played his role. He had played them all.

He pulled out his tobacco and rolling papers, fidgeting with them as Remus continued to panic.

There would be a time to tell him the truth about what had just happened, but this was not it.

Narcissa Malfoy, regardless of if Phineas Nigellus could credent his claim, was so terribly easy to read - without necessitating the sort of magic in which the Blacks were said to excel - that it was almost laughable. Severus had no fucking idea what Sirius knew that Dumbledore sought to silence, but what he had known for a long time, what he was now certain that Dumbledore knew as well, was that the man had not committed the twelve murders with which he had be charged and convicted.

Dumbledore also likely knew that Narcissa knew this, but for reasons Severus was sure he may never fully comprehend, could not accept his warning that she would try to force his hand on the matter. Apparently, she had been trying to work through Remus for some time now – something Severus would resent when he got around to it – and this whole situation with Harry and his cousin was no different than whatever happy memories the Marauders once shared.

Except in that it was in that it happened to fall into his, Severus’, favour.

Taking a drag, he imagined Sirius being freed from Azkaban, happy to return to his old, reckless ways, only to be afforded custody of his godson and some other boy who shared Harry’s blood to act as an anchor for Lily’s love. It would destroy him. It would shatter every idea he ever had of himself, could at present still desperately clutch his cell. He would be undone by the responsibility, and Severus would laugh.

Severus, meanwhile, would get to have the sort of relationship with Harry he had imagined they might enjoy back when Lily was alive. This was to say, he would send the boy birthday and Christmas gifts, and occasionally show up for cake, only to go stand in a corner for most of the party and have his cigarettes ruined by Sirius’ presence at the single ashtray the Potters only had for the two of them, forcing conversation and hoping against hope they would not find anything in their shared interests they might be of the same mind about.

Exactly as things had been before Hell had happened.

It was for the best, for the ‘Greater Good’ if one wanted to give a fancy name to it.

He might even take the boys on weekends when he had Draco anyway, because Remus would want to do favours for his best friend, and Severus, secretly, thought both his partner and his godson would benefit from the company of peers. He might run into them at the sort of parties the Malfoys threw which Sirius would be obliged to attend – oh Merlin! How he would hate that, too! – and Severus would do his best to encourage Harry and Dudley’s more destructive tendencies, within reason, which at their age probably would not amount to much more than giving them Cholate Frogs and Every Flavoured Beans.

Should they someday attend Hogwarts, he would keep his fingers crossed during sorting that neither would wind up in Slytherin, not that he would not step in for one of the other House Heads if either had a problem he could help them to solve. If they made it to the N.E.W.T. courses, he would make sure to play The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album while they were brewing with the hopes that they would have another listen at the holidays, driving Sirius mad with the fifteen kilohertz dog whistle on “A Day in the Life.” Oh, he would do right by Lily yet!

And the best part of it was, his plan to set this all into motion came with a ten percent pay raise, effective immediately.

When Remus began ranting about how Narcissa tortured him with memories of Sirius, Severus had begun to formulate his plan, having guessed at those of his opponents. Narcissa blamed Dumbledore for Sirius’ imprisonment – fairly, it would seem – but mostly, to Severus’ mind, because she and his boss were the same kind of manipulative self-seekers. She wanted a fight against someone who could equal her in this regard and had long since chosen ground on which to stage her resistance.

True, he had not used legilimency to figure this out – even twelve-year-old Dora Tonks could explain that such was dangerous and more often than not, unnecessary – but as things stood, Dumbledore seemed to believe that he, Severus, could not read Narcissa, and, more importantly, had seen into his own deeply held thoughts, increasing the threat the Headmaster imagined her to pose.

All of this was absurd. Severus could see Dumbledore for his sins in his visceral reactions to the idea that he had been intercepted.

He had followed this misdirection with demand. He could not raise two boys on his current salary, and could not continue to work at Hogwarts the way it was being run.

Minerva, he argued to her astonishment, deserved the same consideration. He had said this not because he liked her or valued her as a colleague, but to test the extent to which Dumbledore was in his power, and to bring her under his influence as well.

After raises had been sorted, Severus had offered to rewrite the DADA budget (as though he had not already gleefully done so), but insisted that the school appoint a part-time permanent secretary, to ensure that such important items no longer fell through the cracks. Dumbledore had consented to this, too, and would likely assign the responsibility of naming someone to the role to his Deputy, now that he was paying her more to effectively do his job.

Severus gauged that it would not take much to convince Minerva to appoint Narcissa to the post. He would wait until after the next Governor’s meeting, whereupon he, and no one else for that matter, would be able to effectively argue a cost-benefit-analysis to Lucius Malfoy. Shrewd businessman that he was, however, Lucius could never say no to his wife, likely valuing his peace as much as he did her happiness. Minerva would see sense in this, and Narcissa would have an outlet for her talents that did not involve her interceding into the private lives of others as intrusively as could be manged. While working at Hogwarts, she would look for evidence to her claims regarding Sirius and Severus, decent as he was, would make sure she found enough to entice an argument with the Headmaster.

In the meantime, he would have gotten Remus to go to the Manor to broker a peace between Lady Wiltshire and himself. It occurred to Severus that Narcissa would know exactly what to do, or, failing that, exactly whom to talk to about the Slytherin Quidditch Team and their upcoming hearing before the sport’s governing authority. He would plant the concept in Remus’ mind, convince him the idea had been his own, and await the quid-pro-quo from his Hogwarts office. Narcissa would ask Remus to convince his boyfriend to testify on Sirius’ behalf in exchange should the matter come to trial, and Severus would agree, knowing that he would never have to, for Dumbledore would give in rather than risk his credibility being called to question.

Albus Dumbledore enjoyed a great many favours from the ministry, and for the moment, at least, Remus and Severus could count on these as well. Severus had additionally pointed out that in order to gain custody of Harry and Dudley, Remus would need muggle papers, which had resulted in Dumbledore hastening to write to Cornelius Fudge to expedite the request. A werewolf would never have been granted this consideration without incredible cause, and Severus saw it as little consequence that they two would never, actually, have to care for the children for more than a few weeks, a few months tops. Remus could finally get a real job!

Sirius would win his acquittal, and then Harry and Dudley would be his problem. And he would probably complain about parenting during an uncomfortable cigarette break at a child’s birthday party or charity event, and Severus would smile, nod, and admit to the fact that he was grateful that he only had to deal with children from September to June. And no one would ever see his hand in any of it.

Someday, maybe, Remus would understand. Maybe he would not and would instead spend the rest of his life smiling at how wonderfully everything had just worked itself out.

For now though, Severus was content to halt his boyfriend’s inner doubts by raising himself on his toes to meet Remus’ mouth, kissing him deeply, secured by the threat of his reputation that none of his students were going to sneak up on them in the semi-secluded smoking area the teachers who did not attend Hogwarts at the same time he did – which was to say, all of them – did not know about. The kiss was desperate, passionate, and filled with things unsaid, their tongues managing without sound to explain every hidden desire far better than words ever could. Severus felt himself grow hard and regretted the moon’s cycle, knowing that Remus would not be up for it tonight, but half hoping he might get a hand-job for all his pains and plotting. When they finally pulled away, Remus spoke. Severus, relaxed after his nicotine rush, was at last ready to listen.

This was a mistake.

“Narcissa said that you can’t admit to wanting anything, that I would claim it is her fault but in truth, I know it to be mine,” the wolf began breathlessly. “You want to take them. You made up your mind the moment you heard, where I had to be convinced. I literally had to watch every moment of Harry’s suffering to be convinced. You are a better man than me, than most. I love you, too. I love you so much. Without caveat or exception, I love you - moody and sarcastic and fatalistic and self-effacing,  driven and brilliant and determined, overwhelmed, overworked, undernourished, habitual, addicted, nerdy, dirty and otherwise weird. I love you, Severus. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I don’t question for a moment that we will. I always thought of life as happing someday, but if it is happening now, we’ll meet it together. Should we, I mean, once I have papers, do you want to get married? If nothing else you’d get to claim me as a dependent on your taxes and it would make adopting Harry and Dudley a whole heck of a lot easier,” he smiled, his amber eyes filled with joyful, jubilant tears.

Well, thought Severus. Fuck.

Chapter Text

“Five minutes!” Severus Snape said coldly to those gathered at the kitchen table, marching straight past it to the door that opened to the back yard, slamming it in the same fashion he had the one leading to his street only moments before. Hands still trembling, he fumbled to roll himself a cigarette. A minute later, the door opened again - as he might well have expected it would - were he in a right state of mind. He closed his eyes, unwilling to address his would-be accoster in this lingering panic, present although the danger had passed and nothing, in fact, had transpired of his fears.

Was this the typical experience of raising children? Or was he just particularly ill-suited to the task?

He had only had the boy in his charge for a span of nine hours, and already -

“Roll me one, too?” a woman asked in a deep, sultry voice, the sort that would have been alluring if not for the terrible familiarity it shared with tormentors of old. Severus turned to look at her. Despite the French bob and Muggle-passing tee-shirt and shorts, Andromeda might as well have been her sister Bellatrix. She raised and lowered her perfectly shaped eyebrows expectantly, her thin, painted lips fighting against a sneer.

“Uh,” the request had thrown Severus. He had been expecting an assault of some kind: ‘How could you have just us left like that?’ or ‘What happened?’ or - worse yet - ‘Are you alright?’ But then, of those he had abandoned an hour prior and moments before curtly dismissed without offering explanation, she was the very last person he would have expected to follow him outside.

Severus knew far less of her than he did the rest of his company, and it occurred to him that his quick assessment owed nothing to character, but rather to acquaintance. In this notion, he wondered if he really bothered himself to truly know anyone at all.

He had been wrong about so much so far, as the reality of this day stood to witness.

Two months prior, he had given Remus the idea to offer Narcissa an apology she was hardly owed by way of asking her advice on a legal matter, fully unrelated to the process she had initiated around Lily’s son and nephew. Narcissa had been forthcoming, contacting her former boss from the days where an ancient title did not prevent her from arguing against the state, and using the status she presently held to entice her former Head of House to put his knowledge, experience, and plentiful connections at Severus’ disposal.

Severus had long been sore towards Professor Slughorn, dating to well before he had stood wanting in the man’s massive shadow. As a student he had brewed the best potions and obtained the highest marks, but only to silent approval – ‘Well done, my boy!’ scribbled on every essay or lab report he handed in to impossible fractions.

But he had never been good enough.

Recently, frustrated after weeks of looking for an answer that refused to present, he had levelled this accusation to sympathy and understanding he had not expected in response. It should have made him feel better, but developments since had only increased his sense of bitterness. Not being able to direct this at Slughorn, Severus turned in on himself.

In the end, it had been Remus – who had not even an O.W.L. in Potion Making to speak for him! – to have solved the elusive riddle. Having far too much time on his hands and finding a quarter or so of Severus’ Muggle heritage far more interesting than the professor himself ever had, Remus had bothered himself to learn to read Mandarin and had found an advertisement in a Chinese children’s magazine he had picked up months before at a Kiosk in Diagon Alley (‘For practice!’) for a potion that hallowed bones, which was said to be useful for kids first learning wandless levitation.

When he presented this finding to Severus, rather than saying any of this, he had argued, dumbly, that ‘It might just be marketing, but here it looks golden, so maybe some of the same ingredients are used?’

Severus was wont to ignore this intrusion. Slughorn, however, looked it up, conferenced with colleagues in Hong Kong, and brewed something close to what Orchard had given his teammates after heating his cauldron too quickly. The old man was delighted. Remus, predicably, was rather smug. And Severus sulked and ate more curry and cod on weekends and evenings when he was home in Cokeworth, too ashamed of his absent sense of culture to grace their local Chinese Take-Away with his patronage.

When he was not bemoaning the fact that he was not the smartest person in the room, Severus had been taking pains to makes sure that Orchard still had that idea of him, giving him private tutorage in brewing a supplement of which he himself had only just become aware. It was not, strictly speaking, illegal to use in a Quidditch match, not that many would try – the risk of injury outweighing any aerodynamic advantage to be gained.

But convincing Orchard and the rest of him team otherwise was something better left to solicitors. Yaxley, whom he had personally never held in much esteem, could prove so persuasive under the constraints of profession that legilimency hardly seemed necessary, but given the reality that it might be used by the prosecution if any factor called the narrative the defence presented into question, Narcissa said it was necessary to correct everyone’s recollection of what had happened. It was not the same as erasing memory, she had explained as she had taken pains to teach him, expecting she might need assistance. Oblivion was traceable; no one knew how to check for correction, for it was so seldom used.

When Severus proved himself lacking on this front as well, Narcissa had written to her sister for her skills and expertise. Andromeda, perhaps owing to her post-Hogwarts qualification, perhaps simply to the strength of her character, was more patient in instruction. She worked as a psychologist at St Mungo’s and told that even in the course of her profession, in the few incidents where such measures were to be recommended, it was rarely possible, for in these cases there was not much of a mind left to work from. Still, in light of the tutorage he had been offering Dora, she was willing to give it a go.

And so there they were. Severus, Slughorn, Yaxley and two of the Black sisters, rewriting minds on a Saturday in June.

At least, they had been, before they had been too successful and Orchard had come on his own ideas, imagining the plot and potion to have sprung from research and efforts of his own. Then Severus had been forced to leave to stop the boy from doing something even stupider. Even his best students were dunderheads! What did anyone expect him to do with a pair of soon-to-be five-year-olds?

Severus handed the cigarette he had already finished to Dr Tonks, mostly, because he was grateful that she was not her younger sister, nor his predecessor, nor their solicitor, nor whichever student they had been interrogating in his absence.

“Thought you quit,” Severus commented, trying to return to a cold calm.

“Thing about that,” Andromeda said as she emblazed its end with a quick inhale, not bothering to ask for a lighter – perhaps, Severus considered not even conscious of the existence of such a device – “I haven’t seen my sister in fifteen years, and I can’t quite decide if this counts?” she wrinkled up her nose. “We’ve been here since seven this morning, asking the same set of questions over, and over, and over whilst rewriting memory in accordance with the explanation you and Slughorn dreamt up, breaking occasionally to understand the science ourselves, trying to make coherent sense of an outright lie all while Yaxley calculates what will prove permissible in court and the children cry and complain. I’m exhausted. I’ve a banging headache. I both need a coffee and a shot of something forty-proof, but I’ll settle for a fag. Maybe Cissy will come and scream at me for smoking, and we can rekindle our relationship that way,” she stuck out her tongue at the small window to the kitchen. Severus turned to look. Narcissa narrowed her eyes, then rubbed them, unable to commit to hostilities.

“Can we all take a break?” Severus suggested. “Maybe you two could walk up to the petrol station at the other end of the road, grab some coffee and um, perhaps do a beer run? I’ll cover the costs. I – it was not my intention to leave you like that.”

“I mean we are pretty much done, and it wasn’t,” Andromeda smiled, then bit at her lower lip as her eyes danced back and forth, searching for polite phrasing, “don’t take this the wrong way, but your part of the burden was not a struggle for us to bear on our own.”

“If I’d have been a Black this would have been finished by noon,” Severus remarked, feeling all the more inadequate.

“No, no. We probably would have quit by noon; I grant you that – but no one could have organised this as you have. Plus, pubescent minds – not a fucking chance of getting them to actually do anything useful, even - maybe even especially - if it is in their own self-interest. But you know that Pro-fess-sore,” she countered, half mockingly.

“Hm,” Severus reflected. “What do you mean we are ‘almost done’? Did you sit with Irving in my absence?” Everyone else on the team had undergone several sessions already.

“Nope. Yaxley says that unless someone on the team truly believes they were taking Liquid Luck the entire narrative will sound coerced, so better to have a third year whose talents lie in other subjects take the fall. If done right, there won’t be any repercussions that exist outside of this single season. All that there is really left to do is make Rabies forget roughly half of what she learned about levitation. Wine and weed should be able to cover that for us, and I’m sure there will be a party to crash tonight in Gryffindor Tower, giving how long this match has been going on. McGonagall did say she’d send an owl once it was ended, or?”

As a teacher, Severus wanted to object, but he knew Andromeda was likely correct in all of her assumptions. This work could not be done at the castle, and he had gotten permission from Dumbledore and the children’s parents to test the new Floo Connection in his office by bringing the lot of them to Spinner’s End with the argument that it Hogwarts would not be safe for the team during the final match of the season.

If Ravenclaw won, regardless of the margin, Slytherin would come in dead last for the first time in two centuries. If Gryffindor won by a margin of less that four-hundred points, Slytherin would finish third, and if the Lions manged the impossible, Slytherin would be tied with Ravenclaw for second.

This left a mostly green congress cheering on the reds to Remus’ immense amusement. Ted Tonks, who had come with his wife, was not keen to see Hufflepuff finish forth, and had, for the most part, been avoiding extended company for the better part of the day as a result. Dora, likely, did not want to see her house fall in the ranking either, but as Severus had suggested she come along for the sole purpose of keeping Volpe distracted when she was not being interrogated, had so far avoided saying anything to this effect. Severus, for his part, could already hear Minerva gloating regardless of the outcome, and did not want to give her the added satisfaction of a spectacular victory even if such were in his own self-interest. And then there was the Orchard thing.

“Sound though I am sure that is, I’ve half a mind to scrap all of this and present Orchard as the sole culprit,” he replied bitterly.

“What did he do now?” Andromeda raised an eyebrow.

“Went to the meth lab across the street to try to borrow a beaker.”

“Did. He. Buy. Drugs?” she over-enunciated the way the women of House Black were wont.

“No.”

“Fucking tool,” she moaned. “Yeah, let’s call this in.” She put her cigarette out, approached the window made a hand gesture at her sister and received a rather rude one in return, which caused her to laugh for some reason. Turning back to Severus, she frowned. “A beaker? Seriously? Why not go down to the Chamber of Secrets Lucy turned your basement into? Any chance Elliot played you there?”

There was not. When Severus had burst in, he had caught his student and neighbour standing in front of an anatomy poster, talking about the latter’s pharmaceutical studies. The time it had taken Severus to escape from a conversation that had ventured into Muggle chemistry at his arrival told him that nothing terrible had been up for topic.

“Avoiding the monster within I suspect,” Severus answered dryly, still unwilling to offer anything of his panic as a point of analysis.

“Isn’t Remus down there? Don’t tell me there is trouble in paradise already.”

He was not getting out of it. Such had been too much to hope for.

“And how! But I was referring to Lucius. He discovered this morning that Muggles print horoscopes in their papers as well, and now he’s in hiding, effectively. Remus is likely still begging him to remove the enchantment from the wallpaper in the room we now share, the one that used to ‘belong’ to his son for lack of a better word. Remus doesn’t think he can sleep with those weird peacocks walking around … pecking at the floorboards.” Severus was personally keen to leave it. If all went to plan, he would have his room back soon enough.

Except nothing was going to plan in the larger scheme of things.

Nothing.

Narcissa was being so helpful with the Quidditch kerfuffle that she seemed to have entirely forgotten about her ambition to free Sirius. Remus was making more of an effort to get on with her, and she was receptive enough to have ceased making her objections silently known.

It was as though Severus, who had no reason he could ever possibly voice for wanting to see his oldest and most bitter enemy saved for a horrendous fate, was the only person with any drive or ambition to see it happen!

But he could not bring it up. He could not risk saying ‘I want nothing to do with Harry. I doubt parenting would suit Sirius either. After all this time, I still hate the mutt. As such I have a solution.’ -not, at least, when Remus looked at him like he was a saint. He was utterly stuck in a situation not of his own making and nowhere near in line with his intention or ambitions. How long would he be damned to live this lie?

“Don’t you think it is just as dangerous having a full equipped potions lab in your basement as it is, say, having a meth lab across the way?” Andromeda squinted.

“Better than having all of my supplies stewed out on the kitchen counter. Besides, being that the entrance is under the stairwell, I suspect the lads will be too traumatised by former sleeping arrangements to put themselves in the path of danger,” Severus sneered.

“Have you heard anything to that effect?”

“Dudley is physically violent and has regressed to bed wetting since entering care; Harry has a lot of cheek, and when he is not being blatantly disrespectful to everyone in his vicinity – to hear the matron tell it – evidently he is given to talking to snakes.”

“Oh.” Andromeda blinked.

“Exactly,” Severus sighed.

“Yikes.”

“They won’t let him outside to play after mealtime anymore,” he expanded, “not since he brought one in as a ‘pet’ – kept it in his bed. Whispered to it all night. Little wonder the cousin has taken to pissing himself. Any suggestions? That isn’t something that gets covered in parenting classes.”

“Sure,” Andromeda shrugged. “Get him a snake.”

“People actually pay you for your advice?” Severus chided.

“Handsomely,” she confirmed. “It is important to encourage children’s hobbies, interests, talents, and it is important to set boundaries. If he has a snake, he’ll have to care for it, feed it, clean up after it, things – one can imagine, no five-year-old is going to have any great interest in doing, and then you can lecture him on commitment and obligation and he’ll eventually come to ignore their sneaky, snake-y whispers same as he’d likely ignore anything you said to the contrary if you forbade Parseltongue. He’ll have grown out of it by the time he gets to Hogwarts.”

Severus had a vivid image in mind of what such measures might actually accumulate into.

“Are you acquainted with my colleague, Sybill Trelawney?” he asked.

Andromeda blinked. “Only insofar as Dora has done a few impressions of her. Loon.”

“I assure you these are played down. She told me I would die from a snake bite.” Severus shuttered. His fear had nothing to do with the prophesised nature of his death, but rather with the time frame Trelawney had presented it in. He had done the maths and determined that he would be around thirty-eight at the time of his eventual passing. Did that mean he would have to keep Harry as his charge until the boy was himself of age? Why had he not put up more of a fight?! He had thought he understood Narcissa. Had Dumbledore been right in accusing that the Malfoys were more trouble than they were worth?

Andromeda did not look impressed.

“She also told Dora she would be killed by a werewolf, but not during a full moon. I’ve been keeping an eye on it; I think Trelawney is full of shit.”

“Most do.”

“Remus has been pretty great with her.”

Now it was Severus’ turn to be caught off guard. “Has he really?”

“Laughing at her pranks and filling her head with ideas by relaying tales of his own,” Andromeda confirmed wearily.

“I might have suspected,” he replied darkly, his lips finding a familiar smirk.

“You seem up for it.”

“I know my enemy.”

“Do you?” she pressed. “You seem surprised he was interacting with your students.”

He was. “He avoids Draco. Harry and Dudley, one might assume, shall be my burden to bear alone, regardless of his physical presence or our marital status or -”

“Shut up, Snivillus,” Andromeda commanded, stealing the lit remnant of his own cigarette from his hand, and taking another drag. Reminded again of Bellatrix, he was too intimidated to react or retaliate.

“You are the single most co-dependent person I’ve ever in my life met,” she continued, disgusted. “Even if Remus has his – quite normal - hesitations, it is not as though you are going to be alone with any of this, look at what is happening: As we speak, Cissy, Slughorn, and Yaxley are conspiring to save your students from their errors of judgement, both the one’s we’ve taken enormous effort to erase and the ones we’ve invented of whole cloth. Your students, when not being interrogated, have been helping Remus, Ted and Lucius ready your home for the wee lads. Their playroom is filled with clothes, toys and other donations from every Hogwarts house, from that box Flitwick set up for you in the great hall. Hagrid threw you and Remus a party when you outted yourselves -”

“Don’t you think it a bit odd to throw a party because you’ve found out a co-worker is sexually active?” Severus interjected. He enjoyed nothing of this new attention.

“It is not about that aspect, and you well know it!” Andromeda hissed. “Try and be a fucking role-model. You owe it to nearly everyone. Dumbledore pressed Fudge to forge Muggle documentation for Remus. Lucius came up with that starving-artist backstory about him being an up-and-coming novelist making ends meet working shifts in a whiskey bar and got a substantial return for him on taxes he never filed in the first place.”

“Yes, Lucius does like to judge on appearance,” Severus commented, trying to resist the urge to smile. He agreed that was very much what Remus looked like if one were willing to ignore the reality of his lycanthropy, and as such had never been an issue for Lucius Malfoy, he half-imagined that the man believed it to be true. Maybe he should be the one penning popular fiction.

“Regardless of means or motive, it is a lot of back pay for someone only earning twenty-five quid a shift. Are you incapable of gratitude?” she wondered.

The answer was very much so, when all of this help went to expediting the approval process for fostering two abuse victims. But this was better left unsaid.

Dr Tonks continued to rant, suggesting that the question had been rhetorical. “Vector obtained an accreditation equivalence for you to present to Muggles. You go to McGonagall for help on every small matter to cross your mind -”

Well. That was a step to far.

“I most assuredly do not, Madame. They call that ‘commiseration’,” the Potions Master (cum ‘doctorial candidate’) sneered.

“They call that ‘friendship’, but I get it, you have your weird loner aesthetic. Whatever. Still, your Muggle neighbours whom you claim despise you came to help Ted set up the projector and surround-sound when Ted discovered he could not do so without magic and fucking Lucius kept panicking about whatever he thinks a visit from Arthur Weasley would mean for you.”

“I inherited a bunch of Sirius’ and Regulus’ stuff,” Severus said, slightly uncomfortably. “Which is to say Cissy took it when Walburga wanted it thrown out and gave it to me thinking I’d get more use out of their crap. I don’t know what Lucius imagines their possessions to amount to, but it is just clothes that are too big for me and too small for Remus, books I’ve already read and albums I already own. Plus, the acoustic I’ve lent to your daughter, not being able to start with it myself. I should doubt your cousin would mind if he knew.”

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Andromeda answered with a half-nod.

“Hm.”

“No really, thank you,” she elongated, making an example to which Severus was not particularly receptive. “Her grades have improved dramatically since she started playing.”

“Well. Sirius was the kind of jackass who would sit playing beneath the tree by the lake to impress girls. I observed him practicing chords in lecture when he otherwise would not have been sitting still and thought there may be something to that.”

“You are good with kids.”

“I’m not. I wasn’t even when I was a child myself.” Why did he have to keep reminding people of this? Before Harry Potter had been hastened into temporary shelter, everyone had been quick to criticize his method and manner. Petunia Evens – or Dursley as she was now called – had always been a cunt, but that hardly made him, Severus, admirable – even by means of comparison! Severus shook his head in disgust.

“Well, based on what I have seen, there is quite a lot you are woefully mistaken about when it comes to your person and how you are perceived. Everyone here loves you, Sev -”

“I know,” he moaned. It was too much. “And I wish I could make them leave. But we still don’t have the results from Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw and I don’t know if my students are safe sleeping in their dorms tonight.”

“See? You love them, too.”

“You know what the worst of it is? When I was working with Slughorn, I couldn’t help but to ask why I was never good enough for him, never special enough to join his stupid club and he told me that he always knew I was gifted, but that he also saw that social gatherings made me deeply uncomfortable and did not want me to feel obliged to attend something that would surely make me feel inferior when that could not be further from his intentions. And he was right. That is the worst part. He was a good teacher. He saw my strengths and weaknesses. And no one does anymore!

“I hate this. I want my house back the way it was. I want to go back to worrying if Remus remembered to feed Pebbles, complaining that Cissy thought to stable Draco’s pony here in the first place. I want to go back to how things were when we were dating, when I was afraid of everyone’s disdain rather than being reluctant of their warm acceptance. I want to go back to worrying if Remus felt the same way about me that I do about him, because that was far better than knowing that he loves me for all of the wrong reasons. I want everything to stop.”

“No, you do well under pressure,” Andromeda observed. “What you want is to reject the physical evidence of everyone’s affection because it forces you to examine how much of an arse you are by comparison.”

“That is fair,” Severus consented, wondering if Dr Tonks was nicer to her actual patients.

“It depends on what I feel they will be receptive to,” she answered a question he was not sure he had spoken aloud. “Wouldn’t take you on myself, owing to law and ethics – you are, technically, family after all - but I’ll write you a referral if you ever want to talk about it at length. Speaking as a friend though? You should probably talk to Remus.”

“And say what?”

“That you are waiting for Cissy to ask you a question, which, I hate to break it to you, will be long in coming,” she winked. “That the thought of forcing the kids on someone you think better suited if not, at present, better situated, is the only thing keeping you sane. I’d hazard to guess he’d understand.”

Severus was stunned. He was gifted enough at Occlumency that he always felt when someone attempted to enter his mind, allowing him to put up safeguards and defences. He knew when Dumbledore did so. He even knew when Voldemort had attempted. Were the Blacks truly so powerful that Andromeda, tired and talking all the while, could locate his secrets without giving any indication? Was that why Sirius had hated him on sight when they had been little kids?

None of that, he realised, actually mattered in the moment.

“Remus would think me a terrible person. If I told him that. Any version of it.”

“Well pet, he already knows you are, and he wants to commit the rest of his life to you anyway.”

In his heart he knew that Remus was too good for him. That someday, without prompting, he would figure as much out for himself. Bad though it was being loved for a lie that had gotten out of hand, he was not sure he was ready to give it up quite yet. Even if that meant he would have to live it. For some time at least.

“Cissy … can you enter her mind?” Severus asked after taking some time to reflect upon his own misgivings, only to conclude that he was not ready to abandon his scheme altogether.

“No, but I can initiate a conversation. In that spirit, can I ask – you were a hat stall, weren’t you?”

“Gryffindor,” Severus swallowed. Andromeda winced.

“Ouch.”

“Why?”

“You may think like a Slytherin, but you fail to truly plot like one. There was some doubt there, I can always tell. Look. Let me explain this from a Pure Blood perspective. Cissy could quite easily get this mess settled outside of court, but who would that serve? Sirius? Not really. Not if he was not fully, publicly exonerated. And it would not suit my sister and I much either if his case failed to set jurisprudence. And I, for one, actually like the cur. See … for people like us, it is not enough to win. Someone else has to lose. Something to meditate on when you’re trying to do what someone else has told you is the right thing.”

“What should I do about the boys though?”

At this Andromeda laughed. “Meet them before you make assumptions? Help them with their homework? Read to them before they go to bed? Let them sleep in yours when they’ve had nightmares? Attend sporting events and school recitals? Wonder how long it’s been since you’ve had decent sex? Come to accept the fiction that you ‘were once cool’ when you realise that all of your closest friends are fellow parents and you’ve just been discussing the Frog Choir with genuine interest for the past half hour? Oh, and in your example, try not to be too obviously biased towards them in Potions, they’ll have enough of a hard time of it with the rest of the students having a parent teaching there.”

“Septima sent her daughter to Uagadou for that very reason.”

“But you wouldn’t. You’d never leave them alone for a moment if you could help it. And that scares you. And it should.”

“You asked the man for half his life minutes after he had been ordered to assume custody of two children heretofore raised in the muggle world he has rejected, a world which has repeatedly rejected him,” Father answered Mr Lupin’s assertion in a tone he ordinarily reserved for court.

Draco Malfoy fought the urge to smile.

“The perceived betrayal came from both sides of these extraordinary loyalties which Severus holds and mistakes as split. You had just added to the divide by selecting the same conversation in which he was being told that Cissy had met Harry Potter and acted to remove him from an unenviable situation, in which Dumbledore agreed with the solution she posed upon realisation that there was little he could do in opposition. You picked this very moment to oh-so-casually mentioned the criticisms my wife is entirely justified in levelling against you as they pertain to her cousin Sirius, who for all of his better attributes took it upon himself to make Hogwarts as miserable as Cokeworth for Severus when you were all children.

“Additionally, Sev had just had his suspicions with regard to the Order’s method of operation all but confirmed by McGonagall, whom, despite what he claims, he considerers beyond reproach, meaning that amid the concerns you yourself hold around caring for Harry and Dudley, he’s also worried about how he is possibly going to protect them from whatever designs Albus Dumbledore has alluded to - especially giving the politics of you, his partner, and soon to be husband.”

Remus Lupin looked pale. Draco Malfoy had glanced at him just long enough to register this before returning to the job he had given himself of shuffling through old Muggle photographs before his father could take note of his smirk.

“He does not have a schedule at present that allows for a work-life balance. Exams are coming up. He has had to supervise Apparition lessons every Saturday. He, and everyone else at Hogwarts it seems, just discovered an enormous discrepancy in the Defence planning, bringing it too late to the Governors’ attention for us to aid beyond providing necessary funding for the Duelling Club he and Flitwick now host twice a week.

“He’s been working tirelessly with his much-missed predecessor to find an alternative solution to with the same base as Orchard’s failed Felix Felicis to argue in court, providing the Seeker with private tutoring in theories and methods he’s only himself just become aware of, and this whilst altering Orchard’s recollections of the lessons within the confines of the law – and you see how hard that is! Even Cissy had to ask for help!

“He brews Wolfsbane for you, he stocks the medical cabinets for the whole bloody school, and he continues to keep regular office hours as Head of House for Slytherin students struggling with any number of issues, academic and otherwise.”

No, Draco thought giddily. This was no regular You-Are-Not-Looking-At-This-Logically lecture. This was a rage of the sort which Father only expressed at the breakfast table when he read something not to his liking in the morning paper or post; the sort that would propel their House Elves to punish themselves before Father could think of some cruel act upon them which he would presumably prefer to inflict on Fudge. Or Thatcher. Or Dumbledore. Or the Russians. Or the Americans. Or their proxies in the Middle East or Latin America. Or the Queen.

Dobby, who had been returning books to shelves when Father had finished with them, began hitting his head with a particularly large one. Draco wondered vaguely whose interest this was in until he saw Mr Lupin wince at the sight. Draco bit his lip to remind himself not to laugh. He was sure that Father’s bad spirts would find him, too, eventually. No need to hasten the inevitable when the present could still be enjoyed. He hated Remus Lupin every bit as much as Father hated the ominous ‘powers that be’, and he was sure that Mr Lupin hated him, too.

Draco looked back at the pictures he had given himself the task of separating into to piles, suddenly wondering if he was going about it the wrong way and wanting desperately to ask. If Harry Potter was as great of a wizard as everyone said, surely he knew what photographs were meant to look like, surely he would hate the motionless ones Father suggested they might send.

Draco studied the picture on the top of the pile of himself as a baby being held up by Sev, next to an infant Harry in the arms of his mother, months before he changed the course of magical history. They were both screaming or crying, Harry and himself, and the adults were contorting their faces in odd ways as though they had been caught laughing or both about to sneeze. Draco hated that he could not tell, and wondered if the picture did not tell because Lily had died since it had been taken.

There was only one Muggle photograph at the Manor which Draco could compare it to, and knowing enough about the story behind it, why Grandfather kept it despite his hatred and fear, Draco could only assume he was right.

Pictures must not move anymore once someone in them had lost their life.

Would these not upset Harry the way the one of the Camp did Grandfather?

Did it even matter? Harry and Dudley would surely see him for what he was, and they would hate him for it as much as Mr Lupin did.

He hoped Father was doing a sufficient enough job of putting mean Mr Lupin in his place.

“In what I imagine to be his very limited free time,” Father continued, “he is either here trying to get the house and his personal affairs in order or attending parenting classes with you making notes on how best to compensate for your personal failings as much as his own. So, I put it to you, Remus – is Severus truly, truly ‘behaving strangely’ as you protest, or is he simply not acting in accord with whatever phantasy you dreamt up when you proposed marriage? Why would he suddenly start punctuating with terms of affection when there is plainly so much else to be said?”

“I … I suppose you are right, Lucius,” Mr Lupin gave, sounding more injured than convinced.

Draco frowned. Mr Lupin always sounded as though he were supressing some incredible pain, and Draco, who forced enough tears from small mishaps, knew this behaviour enough in himself to tell when it was performative in others. More often than not, for reasons inexplicable to him, his parents fell for it in Mr Lupin’s example.

Draco was finding a kind of dark comfort in finding that Father could be just as stern with Sev’s finance as he was with him, with his Godfather, with Grandfather, with the portraits of Malfoy ancestors hanging in their library, and with Mother when she had ‘gone too far’ – which, lately, seemed to be more and more frequent. Maybe it was just that he would be five next week. Maybe he was just noticing more now that he was older and was gaining this elusive understanding Father promised whenever he, Draco, asked a question whose answer lied somewhere vaguely outside of his years.

Father’s voice and visage softened as he continued. Draco felt himself shutter. He knew this tone, too, and did not like hearing it now. Though the specifics of their argument escaping his understanding, the context in which it was being had at once felt real in a way it simply had not until now.

Father was talking to Remus Lupin the same way he talked to everyone in the family.

Mr Lupin was family now, or soon would be.

Sev, Draco’s very favourite person in all the world, was really going to marry a man who had never liked him much, despite what everyone said. Adults, in Draco’s estimation, often assumed children were ignorant to the realities they faced owing to a comparative lack of experience, but at least in this instance, they were woefully mistaken. He was a squib. Remus Lupin hated him for it.

“Or maybe he doesn’t love you and that is why he doesn’t say it,” Draco said, his pale eyes fixed in a glare. Dobby stopped banging his head, Mr Lupin swallowed, and Father shouted his name so loudly that someone called down from the top of the stairs to ask if everything was alright. Nothing was.

“Severus Snape,” Father started again, addressing Lupin, “has told me he loves me all of three times, and I’ve been his friend and surrogate father for the better part of fifteen years. Once at Regulus’ wake, once when he left school with honours, and once, more recently, when he had been complaining about the bureaucracy involved in fostering children and I mentioned that I’d gone through the same in his regard.

“It is his tragedy, he is probably better at communicating than most, but he is so deliberate that most would accuse him of hiding his heart. When people say ‘I love you’ they never really mean it, do they? They mean ‘thank you’ or ‘tell me you love me’ or ‘let us not fight’ or something rather unkind and immediate they have no need to express in so many words – to draw from personal experience ‘Draco, please just go to sleep, I want to enjoy something for myself this evening’ or ‘Cissy, I don’t want to give you the satisfaction of admitting that you are right, but would you kindly find it in yourself to shut the fuck up?’” At this both Father and Mr Lupin smiled. Draco seethed. How dare the speak of Mother in jest!

“Severus would simply say what he meant, minus the pleasantries. I fear we took over far too late to correct for his unfortunate muggle mannerisms. I would not make too much of it. I have not seen him hide behind his walls when you say ‘I love you’, which, honestly, is more than you might ever have dared to hope for,” Father continued, comfortingly.

“Are Harry and Dudley going to be like that? Being raised by Muggles, I mean?” Draco asked hesitantly.

“More than likely,” Father answered.

“Lucius!” Lupin exclaimed.

“You said yourself they are both reported to have behavioural problems, and giving how Muggles behave as a rule, one would imagine that whatever the pair are engaged in must be particularly horrendous,” Father said. He had such strong ideas about how awful Muggles were that he was legitimately surprised to learn these were not widely shared.

“It is not my intention to frighten you, Remus, but you should approach the situation with a prepared mind. The only thing halfway equivalent to Muggle society in the whole of our world is the prison fortress of Azkaban. Muggles, they are mad to the last, if they have souls they have never been conscious of them. You have presumably seen what Severus looks like without a shirt on! The locked little Harry in a cupboard! And my father, what he saw during their war -”

“Merlin Lucius! Is the entirety of your knowledge of the Muggle world restricted to the Holocaust and the violence and neglect your foster son suffered as a child? That is so … specific and explains so much,” Mr Lupin frowned, again, as though he were in some kind of physical pain.

“No, I read the books you recommended,” Father contradicted calmly. Marx and Engles and -”

“I should have kept my mouth shut and considered the context of your perception,” Mr Lupin sighed.

“That is true in most every situation you’ll ever encounter, Remus, with most anyone you will ever meet, all the same -”

“Lucius, is that why you are hiding down here? You are not really afraid of the neighbours, are you? It was your idea to appeal for their help. They are not going to hurt you,” Mr Lupin was trying terribly hard to make it seem as though he were taking Father’s concerns seriously. He was also trying terribly hard not to laugh.

“Not as afraid as I am of what Arthur Weasley and his department might try and pull if Ted gave up and enchanted whatever it is he is trying to build out of those wires into working, which I was worried he was going to do. And … it is not me I’m trying to protect. He is too young, Remus,” he said with a glace towards Draco. “He is simply too young.”

“Take your own advice, Lucius. They are not the monsters you make them out to be. Expand your scope.”

“You were at Hogwarts! And you were a Prefect at that! Surely it could not escape your knowledge how grateful all of the Mudbloods were to be there, how their eyes would always water at tea when the food appeared, as though they could not believe their most basic physical and material needs were being met, as though -”

“How can you pretend towards empathy whilst employing such language?” Mr Lupin gaped.

“Look at Orchard upstairs, he’s ‘Muggle born’, comes from a good family by all accounts,” Father scoffed.

“And he is one of Severus’ best students, what is your complaint?” Lupin demanded.

“His surroundings have left him so full of self-hatred that he’s spent the entirety of his adolescence taking it out on his own House. They can’t be integrated, they can’t, and allowing them knowledge of us … Remus,” he paused, “my family holdings are massive. The estates that were appropriated for the war effort were wizarding settlements to the last. That cannot have been on accident. Someone with knowledge of our world and ways within Muggle government must have advised on the writ. Muggles would have fought for their homes; wizards are cultured to avoid battles with those who can’t counter with magic, and I am to be forever vilified for fighting them on behalf of families long since forced into diaspora.”

Draco had heard all of this before.

When Grandfather had been a much younger man, he had gone to the continent to protect his French assets and those living on these estates against encroaching aggression, a threat Father said would have never come had Dumbledore not defeated Grindelwald, who had wanted to put the Muggles into their proper place for their own protection.

Grandfather had tried to help, tried to hide the ones he could and help in the resistance efforts of those able to offer them, but when a group had been found in their plot, they gave Grandfather up for what he was in exchange for promised clemency, only to have bullets put into the backs of their heads.

‘Bullets’ Grandfather had explained, were a kind of curse that Muggles put into metal wands they carried around in times of conflict. They killed, and in wartime that could in fact be seen as a kindness.

Grandfather’s own wand had been broken, he had been beaten, imprisoned, and then taken to another Camp when the German-Muggles were attempting to exchange him with the English-Muggles giving his title. No such deal went through, and at the end of the war, he discovered why. His parents were dead, his lands devastated, deserted, and repurposed to make and test weapons of mass destruction, which were seen as a ‘kindness’ in wartime and a ‘travesty’ afterwards.

Grandfather could not fight the writ as he had not been present to claim the whole of his inheritance, though he attempted to do so for years after all was said and done. That was how Father had grown up and how Draco was growing up as well. When Father came of age he had taken over, both in function and in title, and, prior to the marriage, Mother, who was simply better than Father was at telling the sorts of Muggles who wore wigs and robes that they had made a terrible mistake, was able to secure reparations, which Draco understood to mean money.

He supposed that Mr Lupin had the same understanding by his expression, because he did not have any money at all and seemed to believe that no one else ought to, either.

Sev told him, often, that he had an understanding that far extended his years, that this was its own kind of magic, and that he would be a very good little Lord someday. But this made Draco cry in earnest, knowing that more or less being able to tell what grown ups meant in spite of what they said would never afford him a spot at Hogwarts.  

‘That isn’t such a terrible thing, though, is it? I had an awful time at school, and you would, too. I’d be your teacher, after all,’ Sev would smile in response. Then he would continue with whatever story he had been reading, and then, when Draco pretending to sleep, he would speak in fragments about every manner of awful things until falling to sleep himself, the way all adults seemed to.

Father worried a great deal about coming conflict promised in the rhetoric of Muggle politicians, about Divination, prophecies that had come to pass, and something he named as ‘mutually assured destruction’, which Draco did not entirely understand and was not certain his father did, either.

Grandfather reflected on his experiences in the kind of camp Muggles provided for people who were different from them, and wondered if Draco would be subject to the same treatment when another, more appropriate heir to the Malfoy name could be found, sometimes with pity, sometimes with undisguised disgust.

Mother cried that she missed her sisters so badly she felt she might break.

And Severus’ private woes were the worst of all, for these felt the most immediate. Draco recognised Spinner’s End, as it had looked until quite recently, in many of his quiet tellings. He recognised that he might have to spend his life here, too – or at least, he had.

Now that it no longer seemed an option, he longed for when he had once feared it.

“Where is Diaspora?” Draco asked, interrupting the argument his father and Mr Lupin were having, its specifics no longer interesting to him now that Mr Remus seemed to be holding his own.

“It is not a place in and of itself, that is the problem,” his father answered, somewhat off guard. “It is when a population is forced to relocate en masse. Why?”

“Well, where do they go?”

“Wherever they are safe. Draco – honestly, where do you come on such things?”

“I can’t come here anymore, can I? Sev just gave my room away to Mr Lupin, and Harry and Dudley are to have the bigger one, which used to be theirs. No one asked me, so I am asking! Where will I sleep?”

“You’ll sleep with the boys in their room when you come to stay,” Mr Lupin tried to smile.

“What if they don’t want me there? There are books about Harry Potter. Books for children. Mother read me one.”

“It is fiction, Draco,” Lucius said, burying his forehead in his palms as he slouched over in his stool, commenting that he and Mother were going to have to have a conversation, which meant that they were going to scream at each other before locking themselves in their chambers for a very long time out, giving one another a punishment whilst apparently not realising that they shared the same room. Sometimes they would scream each other’s names in their as well, but they were usually in good sprits afterwards. Evidently that was what being married was like, and Sev was making a big mistake, giving Mr Lupin the power to give him time-outs as a grown up. Sev did not even have any toys to play with. The ones that had been in the room that was now his had all been moved, had all be given to Harry.

“He survived the killing curse! He must be the most powerful wizard to ever live, and he’ll destroy me, same as he did the Dark Lord -”

“He is a little boy, just like you,” Mr Lupin said pedantically. “Look,” he said, pointing to the photograph on the top of the pile, “you were friends once, you will be again.”

“It doesn’t look like that at all. And that was before … he won’t want to be my friend, I don’t think. Even if he did, it is not as though you would let him. You hate me. And Mother. And it is not as though you can even be polite about it, the way Father is when he thinks someone’s company is a chore, because you live around and work for Muggles and are as mean as any of them!”

“I don’t … Draco, how can you think that?” Mr Lupin stammered.

“Grandfather hates me, too. He hates the very sight of me, but at least he plays with me, sometimes, reads me stories and tucks me in. You won’t even touch me.”

“Your grandfather doesn’t hate you, he -” Father started.

“Fine, he ‘pities’ me, which Sev says is worse,” Draco began to cry. “How can he!? How can he choose you over us!?” he demanded of Lupin.

“It isn’t either/or. Sev and I love each other very much, and he loves you and your parents as though you were his real family.”

“We are his real family! Not you!” Draco screamed.

“Draco, we can discuss this in private. If you carry on like this -”

“Lucius,” Lupin said hesitantly, “would it not be easier just to tell him?”

Father rolled his eyes. “Do and you’ll have to take him for at least a week. He has the most vivid nightmares of any child I’ve ever met. Honestly, however you thought your roommates at Hogwarts would react should they ever found out, this one,” Father indicated to Draco, “will surely top it in terms of drama.”

Lupin nodded, biting at his lower lip. “Draco … I want nothing more than to be able to play with you. Believe me. I think you are a cool, funny, creative kid, but I have this … illness that prevents me from getting close to people.”

“You don’t look sick,” Draco observed.

“Yes, he does,” Father coughed.

“You don’t seem to care if Sev gets ill with the same thing.”

“Severus is an adult and understands the risk. I was your age, almost to the day, when I was infected, and its not … that you would ever be at risk of catching what it is that I have, it is that this curse, it leaves its marks. You see my scars? They are self-inflicted. I gave them to myself without meaning to because I had an itch. I keep my nails trimmed, but still, they act like knives. Those cuts on your mother’s wrist that won’t seem to heal? That was my work, too, and it is not something I would ever intend to happen, but like Sev, she knows what I am, she knows the risk of being around me and can decide to take it or not. You are a kid, Draco, you shouldn’t be subjected to such things.”

“And Harry and Dudley should?” Draco demanded. “You are either going to turn them into werewolves or just … just lock them in their bedroom and hope that Sev can come home from work often enough to take them out to feed them? Father! Why can’t we just host them at the Manor? Haven’t we a duty as Malfoys? Here they will be no better off than they are being locked in that cupboard.”

Father did not seem to be listening. “How … did you decern that Remus is -”

“A werewolf? Sev told me,” Draco shrugged. “That doesn’t really excuse his behaviour, though,” he said in a tone and language imitative of Mother’s. That usually worked in making one’s point.

“He couldn’t have done,” Mr Lupin said shakily. “He made an Unbreakable Vow to keep my secret when we were boys.”

Father stared at Mr Lupin in unspoken understanding before they both turned their horrified attention to Draco as though he were the monster among them.

Dudley Dursley awoke with a jolt, momentarily certain that he was covered in his own blood. As he cried out, he became aware of a familiar stench that contradicted this notion, presumably at the same time his cousin did, for his scream was followed by an equally familiar groan.

“Just come up,” Harry said, dull and drowsy. “If you wake the matron, she probably won’t let you play tomorrow either.”

Dudley did not want to share Harry’s bed. He did not even want to share the same room. And he certainly did not want to go out and ‘play’ with the other kids tomorrow after lunch, many of whom had spent the better part of their transient youths alternating between shelters like this one and juvenile detention facilities, largely for the same sort of offences Dudley had found himself issuing and being made subject to since their arrival.

It was horrible.

And it was all Harry’s fault.

Harry was his cousin, but no one would believe it to look at the pair. Dudley was certain even his parents had had their doubts. A foundling, Harry had shown up on their doorstep one day, swaddled and in a basket, which Mum had since been using to keep her knitting organised and which had been given a far more favourable place in the home than its original content had been afforded. Dudley had never quite known what to make of Harry. Mum and Dad called him ‘odd’, and the closer the two grew through forced proximity, the more Dudley understood this explanation.

He was not sure that he liked Harry. But Harry was his cousin. And he was weird in ways that caused most adults untold pause. The thing was, Dudley was beginning to strongly suspect that he was weird as well, but as long as he kept Harry close, no one seemed to take much notice.

Taking off his soiled knickers and drying himself, he climbed up to Harry’s bunk, worried as to weather it would support their combined weight when he heard the wood creak. He was big for a boy his age; though he was nearly five, most people mistook him for a lad of six or seven, and throughout the day he was often asked what he had done wrong that he was not in school.

Dudley had, until recently, taken some pride in his size, but knowing what awaited him, he no longer saw it as an asset. Where he was tall, strong and slightly heavyset, Harry was small and scrawny, but therefore unusually fast on his feet. If worse came to worse, Dudley had a plan, but this involved keeping Harry on side, something that often felt more trouble than it was worth. Harry had absolutely no appreciation for the amount of effort Dudley undertook to keep him safe! He fought off the kids who picked on his weak, weird cousin as best he could, but Harry called this ‘playing’. Was he really that daft?

“Hurry up,” Harry groaned.

“Do you still have the snake?” Dudley asked.

“You know I don’t.”

Dudley still did not understand how Harry had gotten hold of one in the first place, but with the distance of time there was a certain hilarity to it. Animal Control had to be called and there had been a great deal of screaming from the older kids who otherwise sought to terrorise them and the adults who otherwise did little about this. Harry had told the matron that he could that he could talk to snakes, and this announcement had quickly made its rounds. Dudley suspected there was some truth to it – the problem was that many of the other children did as well. This led to yet more bullying. Harry did not seem to notice, but then, he never really seemed interested in fighting his own battles.

“You could have just told me Mason was picking on you,” Dudley grumbled. Mason was a ten-year-old, who, like Dudley himself, was big for his age and had no scruples about making everyone conscious of his physical prowess. He had an eye he could not focus, and, Dudley assumed, little behind it, for it took him a great deal of time to answer any question that was posed to him, and his responses were more often than not a series of ‘Wot?!’s at varying volumes. The best to be done was simply to keep out of his way. Dudley suspected he would be back in juvie soon enough.

“And you would have done what?” Harry rolled his eyes.

Dudley punched at his empty palm.

“He’d just have come back with his friends. You can’t take them all on. Not at once.”

That was true. “No, but I’d have screamed and gotten them all banned from movie night. Maybe then we could watch something that isn’t ‘The Fox and the Hound’.” It was Manson’s favourite film, which meant it was everyone’s favourite, officially at least. Harry smiled. Dudley snorted.

“We’ll be out of here soon enough,” Harry said hopefully. He had that stupid book under his pillow and glanced towards it, almost as though by reflex. Dudley felt cold.

“Not if I can help it. Harry … maybe you should get another snake,” Dudley suggested, snatching the album from where it had been hidden. “Look,” his voice fell into a whisper. “I think my Mum was right. I think Sev really is a wizard.”

Harry shook his head slightly in negation. A horrible realisation fell over Dudley. Could it be that his cousin had yet to figure out what the album could do? It occurred to him that Harry likely wouldn’t be able to pry his eyes from it if he had. And that meant Dudley was a freak as well. But Harry wore glasses. Maybe it did not work if one did. As he had looked at the pictures before in Harry’s presence, he could blame their oddities on his cousin if need be.

“I don’t think magic is real,” Harry continued. “Not anymore. I did, for an afternoon, when I met Cissy, but she said she could help me hex everyone who was picking on me and all she did was phone the police. And all they did was bring us here. Sev is a silence teacher.”

“A ‘science’ teacher. Not silence,” Dudley corrected.

“Not ‘silence’?”

“No, that is just the way teachers tell you to be quiet. But the class is called ‘science’,” Dudley answered, happy to know something Harry did not, “and maybe that is what Sev does for work, but look – you know what that is, don’t you?” He asked, opening the album, and pointing to a large cauldron in the background of more than a few photographs which they had been sent by the men who wanted to take them in. Dudley had seen the same in a book filled with fairy tales.

“It is a pot. That is their kitchen,” Harry said dryly.

“But it is the kind of pot that witches cook children in,” Dudley insisted in a hiss. “That is why Cissy gave you those Frogs, she was probably trying to fatten you up.”

In the days that followed their relocation, Dudley had heard a great deal about Cissy. Harry had told him that she was a good witch, like Glinda from The Wizard of Oz, but this logic was plainly flawed, for rather than helping Harry back to his home, she had taken them all from it. Mum and Dad were in jail and they, of course, were here – but as Harry said, not for much longer.

Dudley spent much of his time thinking that he ought to have done something to stop Harry from going out to search for the wizard Mum had warned them against. He had not wanted to be hexed and had not considered that Harry would actually take that risk, either. As such he had spent the better part of what was to be the last day he would ever have with his parents hiding in his mother’s old room – complaining that there was no gaming counsel at Nan’s old house. He could not afford to make another mistake like this. These days, he rarely left Harry’s side.

“I think she was just trying to be nice,” Harry said.

“I don’t think she is very nice at all,” Dudley spat.

“You didn’t meet her.”

“Before she met you, I had parents. Now we’re both orphans. How does that help anyone?”

Harry blinked. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think -”

“I’ve been thinking though,” Dudley insisted, deciding that this was as good a time as any.

“That’s new,” Harry smarted.

“Shut up. Listen. Harry, I have a plan to get us both out of this if we do it right. They will probably want to eat me first. And that is fine, because you are fast, and I can put up enough of a fight,” he claimed, though his voice was shaky. “While they are trying to get me into the pot, you just have to make a run for it. You said that you were told their house was by the river, right? Well, just run back to the place you met Cissy and tell her to take it back, and if she can’t – tell her to call the cops again.”

“They are not going to eat you! There is no such thing as magic! It is just something that adults tell kids to make car rides less boring.” Harry insisted, sounding but injured and disappointed.

“You don’t know that! Just promise me, if they try, promise you’ll try and go for help.”

“Fine. But there can’t be worse than here.”

“Maybe. Still, you should try to find a snake again before they ship us off.”

“We have to meet them first. They could still say ‘no’ to having us.”

Dudley had been counting on that, but thus far none of his efforts to that effect were paying off. He started fights with boys twice his size, threw tantrums at every opportunity that presented, and made sure to drink a great deal of water after brushing his teeth for bed, hoping that he would wet it. Harry was not much better, bringing snakes into his and hissing back at them. And still, they, in particular, were wanted. It was odd. It was not fair. Most of the other kids had been in the system for years.

“But you don’t want them to.”

“They knew my parents, Dudley. Look,” Harry took the album and pointed to a picture of a woman whom Dudley recognised from a normal photograph in his mother’s old room and a man who looked rather a lot like Harry. This one looked normal, at first, but Dudley knew better by now to expect it to stay that way.

“Harry,” he shut the book and flipped through the pages quickly with his thumb. When he opened it again, the pictures were all moving. He hated this book, the dancing photographs and everyone in them, but Harry seemed enthralled.

“How … how did you do that?” Harry asked with a renewed sense of wonder.

“I didn’t!” Dudley protested. “It’s your fault! You’re the freak! Everyone says it.”

“Sure,” Harry said. Dudley was not sure at all, but this was better kept to himself.

Two days later Dudley and Harry were dressed in identical blue blazers and shorts, donated from a boys school that had ceased operation, presumably a hundred years prior from the way the fabric smelt. The two were not just matching, Dudley was half sure their suits had been ordered in the same size. He could not get the button to close on his jacket and he could move his arms with only the greatest of effort. The garments engulfed Harry like a circus tent. Dudley commented that it was difficult to tell that a boy was under there at all, Harry responded that at least settled which of them looked more ridiculous if he himself could not be seen.

The nervous animosity continued into the car ride, whereupon Dudley, seeing that Harry’s hair was a mess, tried to flatten it for him, feeling that since Mum was not around, someone ought to. Harry, however, received this as an assault and hit Dudley back in retaliation.

In their argument, their destination was half forgotten.

It was only when the social worker made the introduction that Dudley recalled what it was they had come to do.

The two men that met them looked the sorts whom Dad would take issue with before words had ever been exchanged. The taller of the two, a lanky blonde with a thick moustache and kind eyes of a curious colour knelt down to greet them. “Harry, Dudley, it is such a pleasure to meet you both,” he said with a warm, if somewhat reserved smile. He would have seemed friendly were it not for several faded facial scars that made Dudley wonder if he had won or lost whatever fight he had been in, and if this had happened in prison. Dudley took a step back, pulling Harry by the shoulder as he did.

“Charmed,” the other man said, though he hardly sounded it. He had hair almost as long as his hooked nose, black like his eyes. This one did not bother with the pretence of a smile.

“You knew my parents?” Harry asked awkwardly. Remus, the first man, gave an enthusiastic smile at the recognition.

Severus, who was still standing, nodded, but looked as though he would rather forget. “You knew my mum, too,” Dudley told him, summoning all of his nerve. “You hexed her when you were kids.”

“I’m no longer in the habit of hexing children I assure you,” Severus answered with a smirk. “These days, I simply assign homework.”

Dudley smirked as well. He had a distinct feeling that of the two, Severus was more likely to say ‘no’ to housing the pair of them.

He glanced at awkward little Harry and considered ways in to scaring him into doing something weird in front of the adults. He looked back at the wizard.

Dudley Dursley was rather accustom to getting his way.

This, he assessed, would be almost too easy.

Chapter Text

Sirius Black was aching aware of how much he had grown to prefer his own company as he watched his cousin and her husband read the morning news with the posture of particularly decerning editors. Their pale, soulless eyes darted back and forth over the print, sometimes stopping to focus themselves into icy glares which Sirius could not begin to guess at. He had been isolated for far too long to have anything of an understanding of the particulars of the problems the pair thought themselves positioned to ‘correct’, but giving the influence the Malfoys evidently still exercised, he doubted much had changed since his sentencing. His parents had been the same way. The only real difference he saw was that the Malfoys were concerned with far more than the minutia of ministerial dealings – their spread included a number of Muggle publications, a Red Box Narcissa dare not touch (which made Sirius particularly curious to its contents though Lucius seemed content to ignore its presence before breakfast), and a few books written in runic script which the mutt assumed to be legal in nature, given the frequency at which his cousin reached one out for reference.

Sirius stretched himself out to occupy the full of the foot of their bed, a bit soft for his taste, but preferable to the wing that had been set up for him upon his arrival, if only for the fact that his presence within it caused Lucius, at least, the same hesitance and discomfort as which consumed Sirius of late.

Narcissa was content to ignore him, but then, they had never been close.

In fact, Sirius would go far enough to say that he remained her least favourite relation – which was really saying a lot giving the way the portraits of Malfoys past spoke to and about her. When he first saw her entering Azkaban a month prior, she had not even sat in on the meeting with the solicitor she had found for his appeal, preferring instead to use the rare opportunity to visit with her bat-shit sister - the sister, he recalled vaguely, whom she had driven to such a state.

Confused and a bit offended at the impersonal act of concern, Sirius had demanded to meet with Narcissa alone, at which point she calmly explained all that Yaxley had already disclosed with the same air of indifference, though she had personally acted to bring the whole matter to fruition.

She had made contact with his old friend Remus Lupin, and, though a series of conversations he did not realise himself to be having, determined that the timeline leading up to the crime with which Sirius had been charged and convicted without trail was itself an impossibility. She then turned to her precious little protégé, Sirius’ oldest rival Severus Snape, who had somehow been able to orchestrate an opportunity for her to sift through what remained of the Order’s old records under the facade of charity work for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where, she not only found evidence of his, Sirius’, innocence, but was able to have such quietly corroborated by experts in every imaginable field. It had taken her nearly three semesters, but when she finally believed herself to have enough to demand a retrial, she reached out to her former boss –

It had been there Sirius had interrupted her. ‘No,’ he had said, smirking. ‘I don’t want Yaxley. I want you.’ Narcissa had cooly explained that such was impossible, she could not herself file a suit against the Crown whilst acting as a representative of the same.

It was not an outright refusal.

Still, he had been shocked when she had appeared at his cell a week ago with a parole order and a promise that she had put in to abdicate as soon as such could be arranged with all of the owed protocol.

Sirius had made this demand to be cruel. Being at the Manor, however, it seemed the greatest kindness his cousin had ever been afforded in her adult life. On some level, he was beginning to feel protective of her. But he still did not like her. And he still could not trust her. The Narcissa he had known and now saw did favours for no one. She acted in her own self-interests, always. Sirius just wished he knew what these were.

He could, of course, assume his human form, allowing him to inquire or simply take if Narcissa insisted on being tight lipped, but such would expose him to a particular vulnerability. The woman had defeated her far more powerful sister without the use of a wand; he imagined that his own secrets would not stand a chance should she choose to seek them. If Snape had been the mind behind the opportunity and explanation to allow the wife of a known Death Eater into the Order, Sirius knew the sudden interest in his well-being must stem from very dark suspicions around his final days of freedom.

He doubted very much that Narcissa kept much from Lucius.

Occasionally, the two ice-blondes fell into conversation, comparing notes or sharing snide comments around matters of common interest, working out how best to further an agenda Sirius understood only enough of to regret being any part of it.

Lucius, frowning slightly, leaned over his wife, presumably to take a scroll from her nightstand that might confirm or contradict whatever market prediction or political calculation was playing on his mind. Narcissa, in turn, leaned forward, stopping him before he found his target with a strategic kiss.

“Cissy,” Lucius groaned. “Stop.”

“What?” she pouted playfully. How anyone could get turned on whilst reading an article about troll rebellions was completely lost on Sirius. To each their own, he supposed.

“You know I can’t with the dog watching,” Lucius answered with a certain hesitation.

At this Sirius felt his tail wag. He knew his Animagus form caused the man an exaggerated discomfort he did not want to voice to his wife, lest it make her laugh. While he could not read minds as a dog, he was especially perceptive to emotional shifts, and could almost feel Lucius’ goose skin though the man made a pointed effort not to touch him.

Sirius suddenly shared equally in the tension.

He realised troublingly that he had come to prefer himself as ‘Snuffles’, as Narcissa had christen him when she introduced him to her son, commenting to a confused Lucius that owning a dog named ‘Sirius’ was quite nearly as pretentious as being named Sirius and transfiguring oneself into a giant dog in the first place. ‘What would the neighbours think?’ she had snorted, only to be answered by her Lord husband that ‘the neighbours’ thought of nothing but their bomb and when they might get to fire it at Berlin.

From what Sirius understood, the Muggle government had a nuclear warhead hidden on land that had once belonged to his grandfather. From Narcissa’s expression, it seemed as though Lucius himself thought of nothing but when this bomb would depart, and to where, and what that might mean for his money. He mentioned it whenever his emotions were heightened. It was, Sirius considered, as though the prim little Lord had never learnt how to punctuate a sentence well and properly with a string of swear words.

If ever he resumed his human form, ‘Snuffles’ would make a point of schooling him in this higher form of grammar.

Sirius Black hated living at Malfoy Manor. He hated this mockery of freedom. He hated his fur and his fleas. He hated that these were more agreeable than the present alternative.

He hated what little he had seen of himself as a man since his arrival, ugly and emaciated from years of imprisonment, bearded but not otherwise unlike the man with whom Narcissa had been conspiring since she was fifteen, whom her little son had gleefully mistaken him for when he glimpsed him undisguised.

What could Snivellus want with or from him after all this time? - He again found himself wondering. - And what did Moony have to do with it, or with the Malfoys full stop?

“Pfft,” Narcissa rolled her eyes, setting aside her studies and crawling out awkwardly from under her husband over to his side of the bed when Sirius had taken refuge. “Let him look, I think,” she mused as she began to stroke his head. “If he keeps this up for much longer, I should fear we’ll have to neuter him. He’ll lose any context for what he is being presented. He’ll just be … there. Tell me Lucius,” she smiled darkly, returning her gaze to her husband as she continued to pet ‘Snuffles’, “You – presumably, though I’ve late to see evidence to this assertion – retain the anatomy to have a valid opinion on the matter, tell me … would it be worse to lose your balls than it would to lose your soul? Should I have left him to rot in Azkaban?”

Sirius growled. Narcissa continued to scratch softly at his ears as though she made little of the threat.

“Isn’t it a condition of his parole?” Lucius asked as he continued to read from her runes, giving credence neither to his wife’s threat nor her complaint with the full of his attention.

“To live as a dog?” she frowned. “No, this is an attempt to avoid conversation, spoken or otherwise.”

“You can’t use legilimency when he is like that?” he inquired with slightly more interest.

“No, and neither can he,” she answered, continuing in speculation. “Which suggests to me that whatever he knew - whatever he knows,” she corrected, “that the court is so determined to silence must still be of pressing relevance years after the Dark Lord’s collapse. But what would Dumbledore and Crouch and Fudge and all the other Ministry idiots want to keep hushed up to the same extent as Voldemort? Severus thinks that whatever Regulus knew, he shared it with his brother prior to his death and that -”

“Is it of particular importance?” Lucius challenged, not unkindly. “Pretending that whatever was said or seen continues to dictate that which motivates power, is it the ends you seek to change or the means?”

“I’ll win the hearing, there is no question. But will any of us truly be free if the Ministry continues to operate under Martial Law, to punish perceived decent as opposed to protecting innocence? I say out with it, whatever the consequence we will collectively have a better chance at facing up to it if we know its form and are not all operating on separate speculations.” Narcissa spoke to her husband the way she might a grand jury.

“Assuming exposure unites, and honestly, Cissy, when is that ever the case in the realm of politics?” Lucius countered as though he thought this was a perfectly normal conversation to be having before their first cup of coffee or line of coke or whatever it was that got the couple up and out of bed. Sirius found himself seriously hoping it was the latter but found that unlikely giving the dry and tedious nature of their chosen topics of pillow talk.

“If done with competence -” Narcissa resumed her courtroom lecture.

“By which you mean ‘manipulation’.” Lucius objected. “And it is something I don’t understand as you plainly do not want to wield power yourself, yet still you are determined to dictate exactly how the realities you invent are perceived. Is that ‘freedom’?”

Merlin’s cock! Sirius wished he were not colour blind as a canine, for his instincts instructed that the only suitable course of action would be to leave them to their pretentious pseudo-philosophy, enter Narcissa’s closet and devastate all of her favourite shoes in retaliation. He just wished he had a way of knowing which ones had red bottoms. Little matter, he would take the lot. He would have a go at Lucius’ stupid cane, too, just good measure. Perhaps he could sniff out a priceless artefact and entice Draco to play fetch with him again.

“If you are referring to Rita Skeeter -” Narcissa spat.

“I was referring to your willingness to reject your title, my inheritance, for the amusement of your cur of a cousin, but sure,” Lucius, ordinarily so comparatively collected, sneered. “Let’s talk about the Prophet.”

“Let’s,” Narcissa agreed. Sirius wagged his tail again, curious to hear what a paper with such a narrow scope possibly had to say about the Cold War the muggles were evidently still waging. Judging on the sudden shift in tone, Lucius sounded desperate to address the nuclear warhead resting a few miles from where his family held their seat.

Frankly, Sirius was ready for a reminder. Night being what it was, it had been several hours since he had been made to hear about ‘mutually assured destruction’ and he was beginning to miss the damn bomb.

He let out a bark, annoyed at his own lazy musings. Lucius sprang at the sound. The Death Eaters to have evaded Azkaban, Sirius decided, were as mad as those to have been condemned to the kiss.

“You lured reporters to Cokeworth to cover how that Mudblood came up with a means of solving a series of Human Health and Safety issues the Muggle government brought upon itself,” Lucius continued calmly after recovering from the shock of hearing his new house-pet’s ‘voice’. “You introduced her to the community activists – Mage and Muggle alike – who worked tirelessly to clean up the riverbank that the plan to plant legumes to clean the soil that Gilly Weed could take root and wash the water clean of all of the chemistry -”

“It is a good story,” Narcissa shrugged.

“Perhaps, but it is not the one you intended her to write.”

Hm. Sirius snuffed. So they really did write the morning news together. And here he thought he was just being bitter and fanciful.

“No, it very much was,” Narcissa countered, defiantly sticking her pointed nose upwards. “I’m all for wizards saying ‘fuck you’ to the International Statute of Secrecy without any risk of coming into conflict with it – honestly, I wish I were creative in the same way. But, being a witch of little talent as your ancestors never tire of reminding me, I nonetheless ensured that the matter would be covered in a way that significantly increased our ROI on the properties we own in the area and -”

“By means of making damn sure Miss Skeeter was all but introduced the Harry Potter and threatening her was legal action if she dared to print his name! Now she is reporting on your every transgression -”

“By design,” Narcissa agreed. “I promised her a better angle on how The Boy Who Lived wound up living in a heretofore Muggle area with a werewolf for a mayor and I plan to deliver.”

At this Sirius’ ears perked up. Since arriving at the Manor, he had heard about his godson endlessly, but never from a source he could credit as reliable. Little Draco differed between admiration and enmity when he spoke about the boy.

And he spoke at length.

And of little else.

Harry Potter was sometimes presented as his friend, sometimes as his rival, more often than not as a source of bitter disappointment – owing either to the fact that he seemed to have more fun or find more trouble or some combination of both. But Draco said a great number of things that could not possibly be true as children of that age were wont; and Draco, he considered, likely told himself a great many lies to distract from his loneliness as much as he might.

Sirius found it sad that even his invisible friend was not allowed to visit, or maybe did not want to.

He found it sadder still that Draco’s inner world was so diseased as to be indiscernible from the sorry life he led. The boy had been so excited when he had mistaken him for Snivellus – asking immediately if Harry and Dudley were there, too, then shifting easily to other phantasies when Sirius had revealed himself to merely be his new pet.

Draco had responded to this disappointment by telling him that he had a cousin at Hogwarts who could transform herself into anyone she liked just by rolling her eyes! – or so the boy had begun to ramble. And he knew a werewolf, too, but Father said he was never to name him because other people would be frightened. But Draco insisted this was ‘hogwash’ – he and the werewolf were not friends at first, and he had thought it was because the werewolf thought he was a squib as everyone else had, but the lycanthrope alone of the adults he knew had always believed him to be a wizard, and, really, he had only been mean back then because he had been afraid of hurting him.

And how silly was that! Draco demanded of Sirius, who had only trusted himself to answer in an affirmative bark.

Draco had made Mother take him shopping and he bought the man a pair of gloves from his own (likely considerable) allowance – like the kind one wore for flying! - and now the wolf could not scratch anyone anymore, and how dumb was it that no one had ever thought of this beforehand?

Sirius had barked once more. He and his mates had created the Marauder’s Map as children out of their adventures with the werewolf in their pack but had not once considered ways in which to help Remus Lupin during the rest of the moon cycle. He wondered if Draco knew Remus since Narcissa had taken it upon herself to harass the poor man but had ultimately decided against it. If there was any truth to the threads weaving to create Draco’s private world, it would mean that Remus and Snivellus had become friends in their adult lives, and surely Moony was not a traitor to his and James’ memories.

No! Never! In fact Draco himself had all but confirmed as much when Sirius had questioned for himself how much he should be concerned.

Mother had cuts on her wrist that the werewolf had given her, Draco told. Sirius knew that Remus would never attack Narcissa, however much she may deserve it just from virtue of her presence. Satisfied, he had happily let the boy bumble on- and the wolf himself, Draco had continued with an excitement the subject did not warrant, well, he had cuts everywhere! But he, Draco, had made sure that Harry and Dudley did not have any at all – but shh! They did not know and could not know, because Dudley probably would be scared and Harry would ‘provoke the situation’ he had said imitatively, as ‘Sev’ put it, whatever that meant. Draco had not asked. And did Snuffels know that ‘shh’ actually meant ‘please’ in Parseltongue? – Harry had told him that, too.

Sirius might have given these odd claims more consideration, but every time Draco mentioned Harry Potter to his parents, they two seemed lost between indulgence and annoyance, and, more often than not, simply nodded as they ignored him. In fact, the only comment Lucius had ever made in response to his son’s mental preoccupation was that Draco could not have a snake for Christmas just because Harry Potter had one.

But between themselves, Lucius and Narcissa were now discussing Harry as though the reality of him extended past the vague idea that Draco might benefit from a series of therapy sessions. Sirius was alarmed. He ought to have made an effort to listen to what the little boy had to say.

“She despises you. She exposes you to constant ridicule,” Lucius continued of the reporter Narcissa seemed to have it out with. “Our position is untenable as it is. If either side finds out about the hand we played in delivering Harry from Dumbledore’s errors in judgement, what do you honestly think -”

Bloody hell! What had they done?!

“Whatever Rita feels about me personally is of little consequence,” Narcissa smiled icily. “She’s written, likely in an attempt to humiliate, that I attend regular etiquette courses with the aim of meeting the Queen in June to ceremonially request to be relinquished of my title and corresponding responsibilities giving the conflict of interest that apparently exists between hereditary status and suing a faction of the government existing on a charter which your ancestors signed as witnesses. If she has intended to or not, she has made me into a republican hero and by the time I am again allowed to practice law, a daresay I’ll have plenty of coverage to my cause.”

Fuck you, Narcissa. Sirius growled, springing from the bed and ran to the bedchamber’s double doors.

Harry. Cokeworth. Werewolf. Severus.

He had to get away. Whatever the Malfoys were plotting, he was happy to leave them to it. His godson plainly needed him.

In a past that now felt woefully distant, Severus Snape had well enjoyed the torture his partner named as ‘foreplay’.

Now, as Remus kissed and bit at his neck, slowly moving down to his collarbone as fought blindly against Severus’ hardening member to remove his shorts, Severus found himself wishing that Remus would just get on with it before the moment passed and the madness that defined their daily lives resumed. He let out a moan as Remus began to stroke his cock, which the wolf mistook as a sign of pleasure. It was not that he was not appreciative, Severus told himself, but the lads would be awake soon enough. This bit he could do for himself, and often did, giving the limits to the time he and Remus had alone together.

“Use your mouth,” he suggested silkily.

“In due course,” Remus purred, continuing his slow decent.

“I thought we were passed the point of teasing,” Severus complained.

“You are not yet fully erect, allow me to -”

“You are not doing much to assist in that venture,” Severus quipped before he could stop himself. “Anyway, I imagine it might take a minute. It’s cold, I need you to warm me up,” he tried to recover.

“You are cold,” Remus scowled, untangling himself from blankets and limbs and shutting the curtains on their four-poster with such haste and force Severus worried they would tear. He reached over to run his long fingers down Remus’ spine, intending affection. Remus shivered and straightened.

“You really are cold,” he said, turn back to him with a clumsy half-smile.

“One would tend to think that two fairly accomplished wizards prove a match for shoddy architecture and a permanent draft, but alas.”

“You couldn’t brew us some kind of warming drought?” Remus taunted in an almost musical tone.

“You mean ‘tea’?” Severus returned, half worried that Remus was about to start humming that awful Celestina Warbeck song he lately could not escape from. “Now that is an idea. Did it occur to you to purchase actual milk yesterday or are our options restricted to ‘soy’ and ‘almond’?”

“You and Harry are both lactose intolerant. Bloody Asians,” Remus answered when he could have just as easily said ‘no’. “We’ve only the one bathroom,” he frowned slightly. “Besides, it tastes the same.”

“Even you are not so deluded that you believe that last bit to be true,” Severus sneered. “I’ll head up to the petrol station to get a pint and a few cups of coffee. I need rolling papers anyway.” At this, Remus fought against a telling smile. Severus had a very bad feeling that he had gotten them a coffee machine for Christmas, which completely missed the point. Severus did not particularly enjoy coffee as compared to tea, but smoking in front of the boys made him feel uncomfortable and irresponsible. He could easily sneak a fag on a fifteen-minute walk without setting a bad example.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t smoking better after sex?” Remus asked, clumsily repositioning himself atop Severus, stroking his cheek until the frown the Potion’s Master had not realised that he had been wearing relaxed itself. “Let me help you on your way?” Remus winked.

“You’re gorgeous,” Severus smiled, mirroring the action, feeling the rough of Remus’ morning stubble in the calloused palm of his hand. It continued to fascinate him that he could reasonably gauge to moon’s cycle on the amount of ‘fur’ he awoke to witness beside him. He felt himself hardening again beneath Remus’ weight, smiling to himself as the sight of the ring the wolf had given to him last Christmas, half a year after his bungling, desperate proposal. “I can’t wait to be your husband,” Severus murmured.

He meant it, but it was a lie all the same.

He wanted to marry Remus Lupin, but everyone seemed to want them to have a proper wedding, which Severus could well do without.

It was fortunate, therefore, that such occasions were expensive and that all of his personal savings and spare funds were otherwise occupied in indulging the interests of their wards, joking with a forced bitterness that the boys could repay them with a grand cathedral celebration when they were both playing for England in their respective sports. ‘And Tonks can still be our flower girl at thirty?’ Remus would shake his head, smiling. ‘I suppose, if she must,’ Severus sneered in return.

“Yes, you can. You don’t want to wed that badly despite your claims that you prefer my morning breath to Minerva’s screeching seven AM cat-calls,” Remus said before answering Severus’ desire for the depths of his mouth, pulling him into the sort of kiss that seemed to extend eternity as only he could. “Don’t worry. I think it’s cute,” he whispered, putting his finger to Severus’ lips though in truth he was only readying himself to protest the departure of Remus’ tongue. “Anyway, you’re worth the wait.”

Severus was not sure if this statement was true, but he took too much pride in being able to provide for the children’s whims and wishes to afford his own situation much thought. As he had grown up consumed by existential dilemmas of the sort to have found Remus in his early twenties, it came as a constant relief to both of them that Harry and Dudley took it as a given that they had food and clothes and shoes and sporting gear, music lessons and tutoring they often did not want to attend, transportation to practice and parents who made an effort to show up to every match and recital. Their own happiness could wait until the lads were seventeen and eighteen, respectively. If it would really be worth it was debatable, but he and Remus hardly had the time between them to discuss these merits. Severus had no mind to do so now. He should not have brought their long engagement up. Remus suddenly looked panicked.

“You’re bleeding – oh Merlin! Severus, shit, I’m sorry -” Remus stammered. It took Severus a moment to realise the wolf must have inadvertently scratched him somewhere visible in a moment of passion. He shrugged it off. Remus often wore thin gloves to prevent these kinds of accidents, but Severus preferred the feel of his skin.

He never said it, knowing that Remus would afford a past he would personally rather forget far too much care, but Severus was grateful for the scratches his partner left on his back, mingling with the ones that had already marred his flesh. It was not perversion, per se, simply something that let him forget the hatred that had left him so hideous in the first place. He could be naked now in the knowledge that at least some of his scars came from love and desire.

“You know I don’t care,” he said, feeling the blood on his cheek. “Everyone who matters already knows what you are, and if the neighbours ask, I cut myself shaving.”

“As if anyone is going to believe you shave,” Remus snorted. Severus frowned. He would be twenty-seven next month, still did not own a razor himself, and was beginning to accept that he likely never would. Flitch no longer mistook him for a student and all of the pupils who had once been his peers had since left Hogwarts, but he still had to show his ID buying alcohol in Hogsmeade. This continued to injure his pride, something Remus was all too aware of and made reference to on the rare occasion someone could babysit and Severus was able to visit him during an evening shift at Cokeworth’s own pub of ill-repute.

“Rude,” Severus answered, sitting up enough to press his lips against those of his lover. “Now, if you can’t help but to hurt me, do us both a favour and really make me scream.”

“Throw up a Muffiato?”

“Are you asking me to or are you inquiring as to if you should?” Severus gave a sly smile, imagining Remus on his knees behind him, pulling his long hair as he penetrated him dry. “Because if you are asking if I want it hard, then -”

“Uh. I was actually just asking you to perform the spell,” Remus answered awkwardly. “I must have left my wand in the kitchen last night after using it to conjure cacao from those Milka bars that were about to go off.”

“You didn’t,” Severus sighed.

“It is barely seven, I doubt -”

But before Remus could make any argument in his defence, the floor shook and several sounds followed, confused in their clamour. Remus collapsed down beside Severus, burring his face in the pillow. “Every damn time,” he swore.

“If you had purchased milk as I requested, I could have made hot chocolate the Muggle way and the boys -”

“Would have burnt the fucking house down attempting to imitate you,” Remus finished.

“You’re command of language seems to have regressed,” Severus remarked with mild amusement.

“We were so close! So fucking close to having a week without incident,” Remus answered, echoing Severus’ observation. Seeing this in his fiancé’s smirk, he defended, “I do censor myself in their company.”

“Don’t bother,” Severus answered. “I purposefully expose them to lyrically complex music, and it is not as though they don’t hear to same enough in this neighbourhood to lack a cultural context for it.”

“Straight Outta Cokeworth?” Remus jested. Severus hated that he was about to laugh at such a bad pun, but he was ultimately saved from doing so when another loud crack came from downstairs. The boys must have gotten hold of the wand.

“Precisely,” the Potions Master moaned. Even giving Harry’s uncanny abilities to produce accidental magic, it was unlikely that at his age he would be able to do too much damage to the house - but even so, Severus had enough of Bill and Charlie Weasley during the week to have any desire to have to meet their father over an enchanted electric kettle or something of the like on a Saturday. “You would not be the bad influence, but I could deal with you being the ‘bad guy’ every so often in these situations,” he continued, hoping that Remus would take it upon himself to dress and deal with the matter.

“I don’t want to let the wolf out in front of them,” Remus said hesitantly. It was no use.

“I don’t want to be made into an evil despot, at least not within the scope of my home-life, but here we are,” Severus snapped.

“Then we can’t act out my dirty detention phantasy?” Remus purred, pulling Severus closer.

“Now?” Severus raised an eyebrow.

“You look damn sexy in your robes. I’ve always said it.”

“You look well over thirty, you’d be misplaced in a school uniform,” Severus said, unable to credent these imaginings with anything approaching earnest. It was not the first time Remus had brought it up, though usually this only happened when something had kept him at Hogwarts, and he had not changed prior to coming home owing to delay. He was not about to get dressed now that he was already naked, and they had been so close to a rare and blessed fuck.  

“It’s the stress,” Remus answered, running his hands through thick, greying hair. “Fine. I’d be the teacher. You could -” before Remus had the opportunity to voice something Severus was all but certain he would have regretted having heard, shouts – predictably – rose from downstairs.

“You’re the freak! It is not always me!” Harry screamed. -“It was your idea!” Dudley answered. -“I wasn’t the one holding the wand though, was I?!” Harry demanded in retort.  -“Who are Sev and Moony going to believe though?! Their Golden Boy or the Boy Who Lied? Lied! Lied! Lied!” Dudley spat. - “You are the liar, Dudley!”

“It is for the best,” Remus commented on Harry and Dudley’s row, giving Severus a weary look. “They are so much easier to control when they aren’t getting on.”

There was a certain logic in this. The lads did not always ally themselves, having largely separate hobbies and interests and resulting friend groups, not to even mention being banned from sitting beside one another during school lessons - but when the two did find themselves in the same fight, the result was often disastrous -

For everyone.

And it happened too often for Severus’ liking.

Most recently, a boy in their class had taken it upon himself to spread a rumour that had long since been making the rounds in Cokeworth proper to its primary school upon glimpsing Remus at the gates a few hours after the moon had had its way with him. The explanation the locals had laded upon as to why their barkeep cum honorary civic leader was so often ill echoed the hysteria on the evening news.

Kyle, the lad in question, announced in an art class which was considerably less supervised than a core curriculum lesson, that Harry should be avoided, having ‘two gay dads’ and therefore ‘the AIDS’, to which Harry, who had incurred this accusation because had had not wanted to hand over the crayon he was using, replied snippily that yeah, he did have two fathers, which made him a great deal better off then Kyle, who had not seen his since he was two years old.

Severus and Remus still had not gotten around to explaining to Harry how very unkind this response had been, less because it had been offered in their defence than because of what transpired in its wake.

Kyle had punched Harry, breaking his glasses and his nose, and Dudley, closer and able to intervene before the mousy little art teacher could, had tackled his cousin’s assailant, sat atop him that he remained immobile and repeated, as best he could, his own – slightly more scientific - understanding of the epidemic, spitting a disgusting wad of phlegm into Kyle’s open, screaming mouth upon citing that the virus was transmitted though bodily fluid and not some backwards understanding of sin, bidding Kyle to have fun with that.

Remus, who had picked them up two hours after dropping them off at school, had been told this story by the headmistress, offered his apologies and then asked the boys in the car park if they had hit first, if they had hit hard, and if they wanted to go to the supermarket to stock up on chocolate and sweets before going home to watch movies all day, insisting to Severus when he came home to discover the lot of them laughing in pyjamas that they had already been punished enough for the transgression.

As ordinarily transpired when the two were forced into brotherhood, Dudley had been suspended for a week.

Harry, in turn, had been disappointed that he had not faced the same disciplinary measures when Remus had been able to fix his glasses and nose, allowing him to go back to regular school the next day.

His cousin got to spend the whole rest of the week in Hogwarts’ dungeons, as Remus could hardly be trusted to keep him under control. Dudley spent his suspension echoing Severus’ cruel commentary on the potion making of much older children than himself after he had completed all of the assignments in his workbook. More than once, Dudley had been able to identify errors before Severus had gotten around to the back of the room, allowing the Potions Master to further sting them with the statement that, despite Dudley’s size, his all but adopted son was six (‘and a half!’) years old and had not a drop of magical blood within him.

The effect, of course, would not have been the same had it been the famous Harry Potter telling his fifth years how to measure and mix. But then, Severus considered regretfully, Harry had no particular interest in instructions and, despite the particulars of his upbringing, probably would not achieve the marks in rudimentary potions to allow him to continue to the advanced courses.

This naturally led to more resentments that Severus could contend or consider.

Harry hated that Dudley, who liked counting, was more skilled in the subjects that held Severus’ fancy, both in the school they attended and the one their father-figure taught at. Dudley swore that magic was stupid, anyway, and that he was glad he was not a wizard like the rest of them - sounding rather a lot like his cunt of a mother in the process. Harry would answer that Dudley was just jealous - making him sound quite like his own late mother in turn, at least  within the particulars of this debate.

Severus wondered how the Evans’ had dealt with their daughters, and Remus commented that they likely did not show the same favouritism, which Severus insisted he was not himself guilty of, however it may seem.

But Remus did not realise what Harry was, what might happen if Severus gave him too much encouragement.

Perhaps it was for the best that his partner thought it a mere preference, if the boys had adapted themselves to the same assumption.

Maybe that was how happy families were meant to work.

The boys certainly both liked Remus better, at least.

But then, why would they not?

Severus looked at Remus, suddenly, consciously jealous of the easy understanding had had with both lads. Remus was the one who snuck them sweets before supper, who played games with them and was privy to their private jokes. He got them out of their chores with a wave of his wand. He had been the one to introduce them to magic, levitating them in the living room to riotous laughter when they had both still been little enough to be confused for cute.

He had the best of them, Severus felt, but perhaps that owed itself to the reality that he had more to offer in return rather than what Severus knew and could not help but to act on.

Remus did not look like he was willing to get up and deal with the mess. Maybe, Severus thought bitterly, the heart of his partner’s teacher phantasy had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with forcing Severus to be the only adult in the room.

Narcissa Malfoy nearly tripped on the exposed root of a tree she met running up a familiar hill, her focus set upon the dog five metres ahead. Sirius was outpacing her as ever, and she was beginning to fret he was set on escaping the confines of his new prison – not, Narcissa considered, unlike herself.

The thing she liked best about running was that no one ever inquired into the specifics. It was not interesting to hear about breathing technique or that someone had improved their time by three minutes of a particular trail if one did not themselves engage in the activity. And because no one she knew did, no one respectively wanted to know these things, and no one ever asked why she did not simply fly for fitness. She did not have to admit that she could no longer mount a broom. Not to anyone. Even herself if she could help it.

But little matter! Running was brilliant. Narcissa could be fully alone with her doubts and fears until endorphins or exhaustion allowed her to escape them entirely –

Usually.

She was suddenly finding that it was not quite the same with company, even in canine form.

Half-chasing Sirius, she had run further than she ever had before. Her heart was pounding. She was freezing from sweat drying in the early December air. She felt as though she might well vomit from the effort. And yet worry continued to consume her, worse now than it had when she had first set out after the ungrateful cur.

Close, close, empty, empty, she began to repeat to herself, the morning’s incarnation of the argument she had been having with her husband since fist laying eyes upon the Boy Who Lived returning to reap its vengeance on her mind and conscious. She hated – hated! - keeping Lucius in the dark.

She felt so terribly alone in her otherwise happy marriage.

She felt so terribly alone in knowledge she dare not share.

Lucius said she was being short sighted in everything surrounding Harry Potter. But he did not understand. And Narcissa could not make him understand without confessing to the full of what she had found hidden in that cursed child’s mind -

For Lord Voldemort was alive and well within a six-year-old boy.

Far from defeating him, Harry had become him. It was the Dark Lord’s masterstroke. And even his most loyal servants were left unaware. Part of Narcissa wondered if it had been an accident, but Voldemort never left anything to chance.

He had, in some respect, indeed taken poor Harry’s life. And somehow it had been left to Narcissa to take it back.

When she had glimpsed the boy’s the nightmare memories at their initial meeting, she found Riddle within the mind, his impressions interspersed with young Harry’s fully personal tale of loneliness, want, and neglect. She could not begin to contend what the legal implications might be should such ever be disclosed, but she reasoned that they might yet be worse than the war itself.

And so she had acted. Hastily, perhaps, but even still she could not conceive of what she might have done differently.

Narcissa had needed to remove Harry from the Dursley’s for his own protection as well as their own – for what horrors might come should either soul actualise the abuse the child was suffering within the context of being imprisoned by Muggles particularly incapable of empathy?

Harry’s repeated suggestion of wanting to find Severus had, at the time, seemed an optimal solution to an impossible predicament. Hindsight, however, caused Narcissa to question if the idea had in fact been born of the aggravated statement his aunt had made a few hours prior about a friend his mother once had, or, if instead, it had been the Dark Lord’s design to escape to the care and custody of a once-loyal servant, relying on the human sympathy he saw as weakness to ensure this outcome.

She pushed herself harder, feeling the weight of her wand in her hand, heavy as the hell she had so little hope of holding off.

Harry Potter was the most magical child she had ever encountered, manifest not merely in the frequency of the emotional accidents common to that age, but in the negative effects he had on everyone in his regular vicinity.

Dudley was uncommonly violent whenever Harry was upset. Severus was petty and vindictive. Draco succumbed to deep, dangerous envies. Lucius was yet more prone to paranoia. Remus was at once more predatory and territorial than she had ever known his condition to turn him prior, and he attempted to cover this altercation in demeanour through indulgences which he seemed incapable of recognising increased the shared tension rather than aiding to defuse it.

And Narcissa? When it came to Harry she was overly ambitious and acutely aware of her own inadequacies. But she had precisely one talent, and she was prepared to test its limits once more with so much at stake.

If the Ministry ever found out they would show no mercy. Harry, their saviour, would be damned for sins that were not his own and the rest of the wizarding world would not stand a chance against the jurisprudence that stood to be set should he ever be called to account for the crimes of the man whose soul crippled and corroded his own. It was not Harry’s fault that he carried such a curse, but the Wigamot, as Narcissa knew it, had long since ceased concerning itself with due process, favouring a course of ‘public safety’ that put the whole of society at a far greater risk than some memory of a dark wizard.

The air grew colder. Narcissa felt herself choke on it. Ahead, she saw Sirius stop in his tracks as a figure approached. She flicked her wand, turning it into a lead which attached itself automatically to the collar her cousin wore.

Narcissa began to shake as the figure drew nearer. She tried to call out a friendly hello to a neighbour she had not expected to meet, but her voice seemed to die in her throat, choking her on its corpse.

Where were they?

They must be close to the property line, but that meant –

No. No! No! No!

Sirius must have slipped a foot outside of her dominion to find a Dementor at the wait.

How could she have come this far only to be undone by a stipulation in a simple penal arrangement?

She looked up to find Sirius, but he had vanished. Her wand had reverted to its common form, but it was of little use to her now. The sky grew dark at midday and suddenly Narcissa was sixteen, sobbing with Bellatrix in their parents drawing room as they were told that if they were ever again caught making contact with the traitor whose name had been reduced to a burn mark in the family tapestry that they would meet the same fate. She had chosen the Black name over her own blood and lost Andromeda and part of herself in a single nod of understanding.

She was back at the Manor and her youngest cousin was in the middle of confessing to cold-blooded murder, asking for help – not because he feared being caught and tried, but because he worried he might come to regret something he believed to be right when he returned to school to face the friend whom this most affected. Regulus had asked her to remove the memory and she had done so, only to question if she had inadvertently taken something of his conscious and sense in the same act. She wondered suddenly, helplessly if her interference had weakened his natural defences, if her mercy had lead him to his early grave.

Again, she found herself shrouded in darkness,  her ears ringing with her sister’s tortured screams, the thought that she could well kill her if she so chose and the split second in which that impulse felt all too tempting.

She was reading the morning post every day that had since passed, regretting what she had failed to do, hating herself for failing to issue a fatal blow, for hurting Bellatrix as badly as she had, for those whose lives her sister had destroyed when so little of her had been left, for how easy it all was and could have been.

She was cradling and cooing to a little boy around her son’s age as he was being sick after she had entered his mind on invitation, only to meet Tom Riddle within.

She was sitting in her own cupboard of an office at Hogwarts, listening to Severus’ ugly, wretched sobs upon learning the truth about his best friend’s son, her fears magnified by his agreement that no one who had fought in the war could ever learn of this.

And she was chasing Sirius into a Dementor’s grasp down a country road in the dead of winter. Stupid, stupid Sirius who would not help at all to right a wrong even though it was explicitly in his interest! Even though it might help halt the Ministry from subjecting Harry to tortures that would almost assuredly be considered standard practice by the time they were through.

And all of this was happening at once. And yet it was not happening at all.

The world was black and she was blind, her wand emitting a pale fog, but nothing that properly qualified a patronus no matter how many times she repeated the spell. It was different now, she thought. Since Andy had left, since she had let her, since Bella had –

Narcissa’s ears began to ring.

Her patronus had been a canary once. And she had been so proud when she had managed to produce it, because Andy had been a dove and Bella had been a crow and it had seemed proper and fitting that she should have a bird, too.

But she could not fly anymore. She could not move. She could barely hope, but she had to try. With what felt likely to be her final act, she raised her wand, threw it blindly and screamed, “Sirius, you useless, useless, mangy mutt – fetch! Goddammit! Fetch!”

Chapter Text

There was a sudden crash, but the spell Dudley had attempted to pronounce and preform had done nothing of what Harry could reasonably assume had been his cousin’s intent. That was unless Dudley’s aim had been to get him, Harry, into even more trouble than he would presumably be in anyway when their ‘parents’ woke up. Harry would not put it past the lout.

Furious, Harry grabbed the wand back from Dudley’s now shaking hand. Harry had seen Remus do this plenty of times. Being six years old, having never attempted spell casting before, and having just watched his cousin fail at the same, there was no doubt in Harry’s mind as he rather performatively raised the wand that his own efforts would prove more successful. He could still make this work. Remus and Severus would remain none the wiser, and even if they should find out – well, Harry thought darkly, maybe they could be persuaded to be proud of him for once.

Harry took in the scope of the mess that he had meant to be breakfast. The wand suddenly felt heavier in his hand. Briefly, he considered running upstairs, waking up his guardians and telling them the truth – the full of it! – but weighing the plausible outcomes, he decided he would rather carry on with the standard series of fallouts between Severus and himself than face the consequence of his late mother’s best friend learning that his clear favourite child also had the capacity to cast spells -

Sort of.

It was not Dudley’s fault, Harry considered rather generously, taking a look at his cousin, and telling him to get out of the way – though where he would go was anyone’s question, the whole of the kitchen was covered in batter.

Confusion overtook Dudley’s panicked features momentarily. “Don’t,” he whispered as he moved to his, Harry’s, side, deciding that behind wherever Harry was aiming was his safest bet.  

“I’m not dyslexic like you,” Harry answered, intending this to sound assuring rather than outright mean. His cousin, however, looked affronted. Harry supposed he could not blame him.

Dudley was not stupid, not exactly, but he had a great deal of difficulty with reading and writing, and no matter how hard he worked, he never seemed to achieve the grades Severus and Remus just took it for granted that Harry would get on the spelling tests they had to sit on Fridays. Harry usually found this a point of contention, though he rarely voiced anything to this effect. If his cousin brought home a ‘satisfactory’ or even ‘sufficient’ he won a chocolate bar from Remus and a nod of esteem from Severus, the latter of which Harry did not even get with a ‘very good’ or even ‘excellent.’

And he knew why, even if Dudley was wilfully ignorant to the injustice of it all.

Dudley was good at maths and seemed to get away with everything owing to this ability alone.

Harry, who by contrast found the subject confusing and therefore boring, did not have a corresponding diagnosis to excuse him his attitude towards it. Dyslexia was nothing to be ashamed of; it was, in most instances, a bloody blessing by Harry’s estimation.

He figured Dudley got a pass because all doctors were good at maths and very few had legible handwriting – so they were naturally more sensitive to his particular scholastic short-comings than they were to Harry’s own.

What hurt was how easily their surrogates echoed this assessment; how uneven their sympathies were in response to it. It was almost as bad as Privet Drive had been in that respect.

But then he supposed that Severus was a ‘doctor’, too – and though he had explained that his title had nothing to do with medicine, Harry could not conceive of how this was possible, for Severus made medicine for Remus and always seemed to know what to do when Harry’s scar hurt whist others fell into concern or confusion. Harry knew that the wizarding world had different terminology for a great number of simple things, but usually the equivalences were acknowledged. Here, however, there was an agreeance Harry could not accept. Remus had explained that Severus was a ‘scientist’, but that, Harry reasoned, simply could not be the case, for whenever Uncle Lucy asked anxious questions about ‘nuclear reactors’ or ‘cold fusion’, Severus claimed that this, too, was not his area of expertise. He was a regular doctor, then, Harry surmised. He made medicine and took care of him when he was ill and read academic literature meant to help him and Remus help Dudley with his reading. He just wore black instead of white and was not at all helpful in coming up with a similar excuse for Harry’s failings.

And he was every bit as mean as Aunt Petunia had promised.

When Harry wrote a ‘satisfactory’ on a maths test, Severus made him sit at the kitchen table for hours on end, himself exasperated and unable to explain how Harry would ever need this skill in ‘real life’ as they went over the problems from his workbook – usually ones involving people having more apples than really made sense, than they could ever hope to eat.

Complaining only made matters more complicated.

‘If Johnny has fifteen apples and Susie gives him another seventeen, how many apples does he have?’ would become ‘Johnny then eats one, gives three to Harry, two to Dudley, six to Remus, ten to Uncle Hagrid, one to Draco, and - just for fun - he throws two at Aunt Minerva. How many does he had left? If he needs ten for his mother to make an apple pie, does he still have enough?’

Harry had no idea.

He would ask in such instances if his own mother had been the sort to make pies.

‘Not for dunderheads who couldn’t tell her if she had enough apples or not,’ Severus would sneer – then, thinking better on it, stop and pull out his wand, making an apple out of one of the oranges from their fruit bowl and then causing it to multiply, repeating the original problem and then the others he had set, perhaps eventually answering in his always cold voice that Lily might try to make such a game of it as Harry went about counting and separating, but that he could not imagine her baking. She would probably have delegated the task to Harry’s ‘idiot’ father, who would have probably just have purchased one last minute after having neglected to extend himself culinarily.

Harry secretly liked his lessons when they were like this, if only for the fact that Severus otherwise rarely used magic in front of him. Still, it did not make up for the fact that Dudley’s forced tutoring sessions were always more fun.

Dudley got to read storybooks for practice, to trace and act out the words when he could not otherwise make sense of them, and he never had to suffer what Harry expected in his own example was a slight against his parents.

Because Dudley did not ask, Severus did not know, and anyway, he let Dudley call him ‘Dad’ – something Harry would not even hazard to even try. It hurt more than Harry trusted himself to let on.

He felt the resolve that had solidified in his chest sink into his stomach as he looked at the mess that he had made. Why did numbers have to be so hard?! Even though he had measured out the recipe perfectly, what he had made had not become a batter at all, but a soup, one that now covered every available surface. Dudley had warned him that making waffles with soy milk meant he had to add more flour and another egg to adjust for the altercation in consistency as if this was all rather simple and straight forward, but Harry had not listened. He had read the recipe. He had really taken his time with measuring everything out. And anyway, what did Dudley know? He could not even read properly!

But when Harry employed the electric mixer to his concoction, it had splatted all over the counter and walls. He and his cousin had done as good a job as could have been asked of them with paper towels, but these had run out long before the unfinished breakfast. Harry had sworn that it was the fault of the electric mixer – they were wizards and should have not sought the ease of a muggle invention when they had better, more accurate methods. Dudley, who while standing on a stool was tall enough to reach Remus’ wand from the shelf on which he had left it last night, had begrudgingly consented his assistance. A spell left his lips, and he waved the wand rather haphazardly in the air, only to watch the mess multiply upon itself.

“I mean … you are not good at spelling, so maybe you aren’t good at spell-casting either,” Harry said.

“I don’t think that is the same thing,” Dudley frowned. “We should just get the grownups. We can just say … that it was you. That I threatened to beat you up if you didn’t.”

It was a plausible explanation, but hardly one Harry could get behind. The trouble was, if he did not consent, Dudley likely would blacken his eye and break his glasses in the process.

“Funny how you’ll only admit to being a bully when you think it will keep you from getting caught. What are you planning, Dudders?” Harry smiled meanly. “You just going to threaten to punch Aunt Minnie if she invites you to attend -”

“She has seen me play; seen me being sent off for a foul; she wouldn’t dare!”

Dudley’s greatest fear was getting a Hogwarts acceptance letter. Though Harry could not fathom his cousin’s reasoning, a threat, even one offered as a second-hand allusion, often proved the most effective weapon against the boy with nearly a foot and roughly forty pounds on him. He vaguely wondered if Dudley imagined that Aunt Minerva would be so motivated to make sure that he did not wind up playing Quidditch for a rival House that she would deny him entry when it eventually came out, or if he thought that a woman who could turn her desk into a pig would really be threatened by the idea of being rugby-tackled by a fat kid who still wet the bed. Harry laughed and Dudley turned a deeper shade of red.

“I’m not the only one who knows,” Harry reminded him by way of refusal. “It is bound to come out eventually.”

Dudley shrugged. “If Draco was going to say something he already would have. He likes knowing people’s secrets. If he said anything they wouldn’t be secrets anymore and it would stop being fun for him.”

Harry frowned. He did not really know how he felt about Draco Malfoy. He and Dudley were friends with the boy because their parents were friends – or at least friendly towards one another, and assumptions were made. They all three got along fine, but Harry suspected that he would not have sought the boy’s company if afforded the choice. He doubted Dudley liked him all that much, either, but Draco had inherited a certain family trait that forced them both to keep him on side as much as possible. Maybe he and Dudley really did understand one another though. They were both prats when they were not getting their way.

“That is probably fair, but … Aunt Cissy can read minds, too.”

“Yeah but … the only thing she really cares about is ‘due process’ and getting her cousin out of Azkaban to make a point. I mean, she is nice and all, but I can’t really help her in what she’s after, so I don’t really think she even notices I am there most of the time,” he paused, rolled his eyes and continued, “Unless we are playing cards or something and I’m her partner because Draco always wants to be on Moony’s team and Sev always takes you because you usually start hissing after a while. It gives him an excuse to leave the table before losing face.”

“Pfft -” Harry scowled, wondering why it could not just be that Severus picked him as a partner because he was a better player. Why did Dudley have to ruin everything remotely pleasant with logical argument and explanation?

“Stop!” Dudley demanded, evidently assuming he had just heard Parseltongue.

“I didn’t – that wasn’t,” Harry flustered. “Anyway, we wouldn’t lose. Not against Lucius Malfoy, and you and Cissy, and Draco and Moony. I’m good at cards even if Sev isn’t.”

“Well, Tom is.” Dudley corrected without inflection.

“Who is Tom?” Harry blinked.

“I don’t know. It is just what Draco calls you when you get like … you know.”

Harry focused his eyes into a hard glare. “So ‘Tom’ is the reason no one is willing to admit you are -”

“Cool bloke,” Dudley interrupted. “Draco probably made it up though.”

“Yeah, probably,” Harry shrugged. He did not like Draco, not exactly, but it felt odd learning that Draco and Dudley talked about him behind his back, even if nothing was meant by it. He was not sure if he was injured, exuberated, or just angry. If he did not get such bad headaches whenever he went to Malfoy Manor, he would not have to go to bed early, and the others would never have the chance to call him weirdly pedestrian names.

But then if not for these early bedtimes and corresponding bedside care, he would probably never have to feeling that Severus Snape wanted to be his friend at all. Sev would usually cradle him when the hissing got too loud, relaying every Quidditch match he had ever seen at school or otherwise in excruciating detail without a hint of emotional attachment to what he described. This always worked to silence the snakes, who Harry joked must all be girls because they grew so bored with sport-talk, but usually he did not say anything and just let Severus continue his coverage. He seemed to know somehow when Harry was feeling himself again. He smiled more and could sometimes be quietly cajoled into retelling every pass and play from a cup match to have taken place years before Harry had been born – back when his father, his real father, had been playing for Gryffindor. Sometimes Harry would rub at his forehead when it did not hurt at all just for the single hint of affection which he could rely on from the wizard he had gambled everything to meet.

Not that he was sure of it anymore.

“You know … that thing you said about Aunt Cissy not really noticing you in all the noise. It is like that for me, here, with Sev. With Moony, too, but not as bad,” he admitted. Dudley looked taken aback. “Just … just go stand over there if you don’t want to help. We don’t have to say anything at all. We can still fix it. I can still fix it.”

Harry was resolved to do something nice for his makeshift parents, especially because he and Severus had been in a standoff since Halloween.

As neither of them knew how to say they were sorry in so many words, breakfast had seemed a nice enough gesture towards normalcy, especially given that Severus had met Harry’s latest math quiz with something closer to satisfaction than he had previously shown. So now it was his turn and –

The spell was correct, the casting was flawed. We have to move the wand twice in a circle, once clockwise, once in reverse.

Harry blinked. His head suddenly hurt the way it always did when he suddenly knew something he suspected he should not.

“I mean. It is not that big of a deal,” Harry said, mostly for want to hear is own voice rather than this hissing his mind was making. “You are better at potions. You knew the thing about soy milk. I am sure when we get to Hogwarts -”

“I am not!” Dudley asserted vehemently. “And I won’t go!”

“Dudley -”

“I’m not like you, Harry!”

No, Harry supposed. He really was not.

Harry raised the wand he had borrowed. Rather than utter ‘Tergeo’ had Dudley had, as something deep within him said had been the correct incantation if faulty in its execution, he screamed “Expelliarmus!” in hopes of driving the batter soup from the walls. As soon as he had done so, his head stopped hurting.

His back, however.

“Ugh,” Harry, grunted, realising he had fallen. As he struggled to sit up, Dudley screamed. Harry, who meant to reassure him, was quick to realise that the shout came from anger rather than concern.

“What did you do?!” Dudley bellowed. Harry looked around. It did not seem as though he had done anything at all.

“I’ll try again,” he shrugged. “Calm down.”

“How do you mean to do that?” Dudley countered, pointing at the floor.

Harry turned around to find Remus’ wand broken in half.

When he looked back up at Dudley, he knew them to both be wearing the same expression of dread.

“I guess I’m grounded again,” Harry muttered.

“But we’re playing Fallowfield!” Dudley answered, plainly panicked. Was he that thick?

“You are playing Fallowfield,” Harry countered. “I quit the team months ago, or have you forgotten?” Their fathers certain seemed to. Harry was a fast runner, but this skill was rendered useless when his feet were confronted with a football, over which he had always manged to trip. He had, for a while at least, enjoyed training all the same, but got bored at the games in which he never played.

If he had known quitting meant that he would instead have to sit on the bleachers while Remus and Severus marvelled over how good Dudley was in goal, he might have treated the reserve bench with more respect and dignity.

He wondered if being grounded meant he would get to stay at home as Dudley seemed to think it might.

Since quitting, Dudley, maybe owing to size, maybe to skill - or more probably to the sorcery no one was willing to acknowledge - had been invited to join another boys’ team, and because Harry no longer was a contention when it came to scheduling, their parents had consented to the promotion. Now Harry had to watch Dudley play with nine- and ten-year-olds, and the matches were a half hour longer than they had been at the level at which he had decided football just was not his thing. It might have been more interesting if Harry had something to watch, but Dudley mostly just stood there unless the other side had a shot, which he would invariably block, usually to cheers.

Sometimes, Remus, maybe out of kindness, maybe out of genuine conviction, would comment for Harry’s benefit that he preferred rugby himself.

Sometimes, Severus, who understood and casually followed the sport, would give Harry as suspicious look when Dudley had kept a clean sheet against a superior side, as though he suspected Harry had contributed to this success. This never came with smiles or congratulations, and Harry thought, reasonably, that it would not, even if Severus had confirmation of his theory.

Severus never said anything to Dudley, of course, but it was not as though Dudley’s confidence would take a hit if he did. Dudley liked that everyone was under the impression that accidental magic was all of Harry’s doing. He relied on the widespread error in judgement. It was not fair! Harry was vaguely aware that he was famous for something he could not remember doing involving a wizard whose name he did not know and would not be allowed to say even if he did. Because of this, he was met with reverence and sometimes fear by nearly every witch or wizard to whom he was introduced.

This made him deeply uncomfortable.

In reality, he was no more magical than his cousin.

If Dudley was afraid of being sent to Hogwarts full stop, Harry had his doubts that he would be particularly impressive once he got there. He wished they could just tell everyone the truth. Maybe then Severus would only be openly disappointed with his grades in Potions.

“But you have to come,” Dudley begged, echoing Harry’s dread. “What if, what if it happens again? If people start asking how a fat kid can make those kinds of saves? What if I fly?” he whispered, his eyes threatening to water.

To be perfectly fair to him, Dudley practiced more than anyone else Harry knew, often forgoing after-school invitations from friends to protect a net in their backyard from a ball Remus had thought to enchant for that very purpose. Harry was not in the mood to be fair to Dudley, though, especially as Dudley was never fair to him. His eyes narrowed as he told him as much.

“It isn’t fair! Why do we always – always! - have to say it’s my fault?!”

“We’re not! I’ll take the blame for Moony’s wand, they will believe me if I say it was an accident. If you try to own up -”

“Sev’ll just hate me more,” Harry agreed, sighing. He could not really imagine Remus Lupin raising his voice, even though it had been his wand that had been broken. Severus Snape probably would not do much shouting either, but then he did not need to. He had perfected the ‘I’m not angry, I’m disappointed’ speech years prior on the countless students he had to practice it on, and this to the point that such stung with a more damning, dangerous venom than the anger he was apparently long since passed. Harry had only heard him shout once. It had only been half as horrible as the look of hopelessness Harry had been offered in the immediate aftermath.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Dudley said, again stressing the verb that seemed to afford him personally a great deal of stress.

You would know, Harry thought bitterly.

Severus did not have to hate him. It was enough that he liked Dudley so much better.

“He doesn’t let me call him ‘Dad’ either,” Harry scoffed, trying to conceal his hurt. Severus was supposed to have been his mum’s best friend. His!  

Dudley shuffled his feet slightly. “You’re the one always reminding him he’s ‘not your real dad.’”

‘Always’ was a stretch. Harry had said it once in the heat of anger. He felt the same rise again in the shared memory.

“He answered ‘thank God for that!’” Harry spat.

It had been Halloween, a Friday and a full moon and Dudley had brought home a ‘satisfactory’ in spelling with which Severus had been satisfied, a custody Harry had not been shown for the same grade on his maths quiz, despite the ‘A’s he had achieved in everything else. Remus was not feeling well, and Severus had promised them that he would take them to Hogwarts for the Halloween feast, that they could wear the costumes from their school party, and that they could spend the night with Hagrid afterwards while he came back to check on Remus.

Harry had been eager to go; Severus had been eager to ask his dumb questions about apples and eggs and gallons of milk in double-digit quantities.

Dudley had been upstairs, counting the candy they had both collected at school and dividing it into piles of Reese’s, Snickers and Mars Bars, asking Remus which ones he liked best and being told in response that they had better try them all to be sure, when Harry had asked Severus if they could not do this tomorrow instead. When Severus answered that they only had one more answer to work out, the voice that Harry sometimes heard when he was upset told him what Severus wanted to hear, and Harry repeated what he heard.

Only he had not bothered to first translate it into their common tongue.

“He was pretty angry. You told your snake to bite him,” Dudley defended.

What Harry in fact had said, was that Michael had twenty pumpkins, a statement Severus had met with a hiss of this own - ‘What did you say?’ Before Harry could answer, his pet had slithered down from his shoulders onto the table and attempted to sink its fangs into Severus’ finger, feeling Harry was being threatened. It had not succeeded in so much as breaking the skin. Even if it had, it was not venomous. Harry, hearing Severus’ surprised scream, had admonishingly asked the snake Tarquin what he was about. He was still speaking Parseltongue when he asked after Severus’ state, to which he received yet another reproach.

At the same moment Remus and Dudley had run downstairs. Dudley had screamed ‘Dad!’ in his worry, and hearing this set off something in Harry he had not yet fully recognised in himself. He could not stand how much closer Dudley was to Severus than he was ever allowed to be. It was not fair! Severus had been his mum’s best friend, not Dudley’s. He really hated Aunt Petunia, too – but he never spoke badly of her within Dudley’s earshot that Harry knew of, not like the slights he offered against Harry’s dad. And how long had Dudley been calling him ‘Dad’ anyway? It was not fair!

Harry had begun sobbing at the nomenclature, and had, in fact, told Severus that he was not their real father and that he was a sorry replacement for the distinction. Severus had echoed his anger and Remus had stepped in to scold his partner for his ‘power trip’ – reminding him that Harry’s parents had died on this same night several years before.

No one had had a good time at the party that night.

Severus had barely looked at him the entirety of the week to follow.

In the five that had passed since, things had not gotten much better. Professor Vector, who had babysat the last time Remus was not feeling well, had shrugged off Harry’s concerns saying that her work-buddy was probably just ashamed of his behaviour, hinting that he had already spent the winnings he was anticipating from the office-pool around how long the latest Defence Against the Dark Arts appointment would hold the seat to buy him, Harry, a real broom for Christmas. The Potions Master could not be that mad, she had claimed. Not really.

Vector had then given him more maths problems to work out, telling him that Severus was probably just angry that he had not studied Arithmancy after Hogwarts, assigning him extra maths at every turn out of envy and regret. Harry did not really consider this an indulgence and could not be sure about the broom, either. He knew for a fact though that he would not take up Arithmancy as an elective when he got to Hogwarts, and that he would have to get better at Potions since Wolfsbane - or whatever it was called that Severus always made - was clearly not cutting it as a medicine.

Harry hated that Remus was sick as often as he was regardless, but he especially hated when his preferred parent was ill on nights when his regular minders were otherwise occupied, when Uncle Hagrid had something that needed taking care of in the forest and Aunt Cissy had just gotten a new dog – which had for some reason been an argument against babysitting. Maybe it had three heads like Hagrid’s did? Harry had wondered if she knew to sing to it, but supposed she must have figured it out since she had asked Severus to borrow a bunch of records a few days later, before he, Harry, could ask Remus to help him send an owl letting her know what ought to be done.

Instead, he had asked if Draco could visit soon. Not that he really wanted to see Draco. The prat would probably just brag about having a dog, something which Harry and Dudley had asked for multiple times and which Severus would never consent to. Dogs, even otherwise well-mannered ones, usually barked and balked when Remus walked by, and singing never seemed to help in this situation. Severus claimed to be allergic, but Harry suspected this to be a lie invented to protect Remus’ feelings, because he bought dog biscuits sometimes and even though he never brought them to Fang, the bloodhound liked and liked him all the same when they visited with Hagrid, and Severus never sneezed.

Remus was not greeted with half so much courtesy.

Maybe dogs could smell that he was sick and they were scared?

Harry had heard once that animals could do that, and his snake, who did not even have a nose, had confirmed it to be true. They could never get a dog of their own. The pets they had were only kept with the upmost trepidation. Likely with good reason.

“I didn’t though. I didn’t tell Tarquin to bite. He did that of his own accord. But if I told the truth, Sev would make me get rid of it,” Harry frowned.

Dudley nodded as though he understood. This, Harry knew, was misleading.

“Do you ... do you like talking to snakes?” his cousin asked hesitantly.

“You talk to Pebbles, too,” Harry reminded him. Pebbles was a Shetland Pony who, by Harry’s estimation, was utterly useless as a pet, save for the fact that he was the sole reason Harry was allowed serpentine company. Pebbles had been Dudley’s fifth birthday present from Aunt Cissy and Uncle Lucy who had decided among themselves - without discussing that matter with a furious Severus and Remus at any point prior - that the pony was a suitable gift for a muggle boy they did not know, especially seeing as it was already at home on Spinner’s End and might have difficulty integrating itself into their unicorn heard. Dudley had come to love it as soon as he had been told it was his, and when Harry’s birthday came around a month later, their new parents could hardly say no to a snake.

But there was a difference. When Dudley talked to Pebbles, it was mostly to say ask if the little horse saw the save that he just made, as though it was of any consequence to the poor creature. Harry needed to talk to snakes to quite the hissing in his head, to make sense of it. Severus knew how to make it go away, but it always came back.

Dudley did not understand at all. No one seemed to.

“I don’t neigh though, and he doesn’t answer me. You scare people.”

“I scare you; you mean,” Harry corrected.

“Nah,” Dudley shrugged, smiling for the first time since Harry had ignored his advice about correcting for the milk substitute, “I’m used to you.”

Harry followed his cousin’s eyes over the mess they had made, and was almost on the verge of laughter himself before he saw the wand broken on the floor before him. Poor Remus. He would probably never be able to make it up to him. Maybe he could give him his own wand when he was old enough to have one or alternately give him Dudley’s if his cousin continued in his ambition to be ordinary at eleven.

“Why don’t you want to be a wizard?” he asked hesitantly. “Why are you so scared of magic, in general I mean?”

Dudley snorted and gestured with a wide armed gesturer that made it look like he did not know which way to dive. Harry forced a smile, and Dudley forced himself to think, which seemed uniquely painful for the larger lad.

“Because I have this thing, I’m really good at,” Dudley answered slowly as though he was considering every word, trying to sound them out in his little mind, “and I don’t want to have to give it up because I might be able to say ‘hocus pocus’ and make something happen. I don’t ... I didn’t defeat the most powerful wizard to ever live as a little baby, I’m never going to be as powerful as you and I think Dad would come to resent me for it.”

“But I’m not powerful!” Harry protested. “Everyone just thinks I am because you won’t own up to the fact that you do magic all the time, too.”

“You know how Aunt Cissy is really good at one kind of magic but rubbish at everything else?”

“I guess?” Harry really did not know if Draco’s mum was special in this respect. Adults seemed, for the most part, to make light of or otherwise exaggerate their weaknesses by way of mocking one another’s talents. Remus was not particularly good at potions, but he was excellent at defence. Uncle Lucy was well versed in the dark arts themselves, reasonably good at predicting the stock market and knowing when to stay his bid to avoid charges of corruption, but he could not care for the magical creatures he spent so much to acquire for his menagerie. Aunt Minerva could turn herself into a cat but could not foretell as much as the next day’s weather from a crystal ball. Even Severus admitted to being shite at transfiguration – something he seemed to take as much pride in as he did his skill at potion making. Harry rather suspected it was the same thing as his being good with letters and Dudley being good with numbers. People were just mean to and about Aunt Cissy because, as a royal consort, she was not allowed to show offence and people made a game of it because her maiden name had been Black. The Blacks were a family famous for hot tempers. At least that was how Moony had defended a laugh he had had at her expense.

“Well, everyone acts like she is a joke and she has to just smile like her feelings aren’t hurt,” Dudley continued. “I don’t want to be like that. I can do this one thing really well and as long as everyone thinks I’m a Muggle, it is enough.”

“There are a lot of things you’re good at, Dudders,” Harry protested.

Dudley shook his head. “Draco says he was happier when everyone thought he was a Squib, too. It was enough that he was just himself and now it’s like, they want him to be his dad. I will never be like Moony. Or Sev. Or you. Especially you. I don’t know why I can’t just keep on playing football and having a cousin who is a famous wizard. And if I sometimes do things that make you seem more powerful, I don’t know why you have a problem with it. Just adds to your legend.”

“But it is a lie! And Sev and Moony aren’t stupid. They are going to catch on someday and yeah, I mean, Moony might forgive you, but Sev will take it personally – you know he will! – and when he does find out he probably will hex you to hell and back like you used to be so afraid he would before you guys became bestest-best friends,” he could not help but to slight, much as he wished for the same sort of understanding.

“It doesn’t matter just as long as it happens after those stupid Hogwarts letters go out. Anyway, I will just give it a day or two. You’re bound to do something that makes him even madder,” Dudley snorted.

The worst of it was, he was probably right.

“Glad to be of service,” Harry answered ruefully.

“I won’t be home at Christmas,” Severus announced whilst there was a lull in the din, suggesting, worryingly, that Dudley and Harry were plotting among themselves to make improvements to their chaos rather than ask for help sorting it. Remus supposed they would have to get up eventually, and now seemed as good a time as any. Even holding Severus, he could not help but feel the distance between them, a distance his partner seemed to want to give physical dimension.

“What?” Remus blinked.

“It is fair,” Severus answered blandly. “Some of the staff has to stay back each year. Last year I had two weeks at home with you lot, this year you’ll get to have the quiet Christmas you deserve. Think of it this way, it will give you a reason to refuse Cissy’s invitations.”

“I already RSVP’d. Anyway, she said she is only planning for a quite family gathering this year. I don’t think the Malfoys have many friends after all that Rita Skeeter has been writing.”

“Begs the question of what Cissy’s definition of ‘quiet’ is. I assume Dora will be there?”

“One might hope,” Remus sighed. “Otherwise, without your snide comments, the hight of my entertainment will be listening to Ted and Lucius argue about money in sport.”

“I don’t know. Harry and Draco might both fall off their new brooms and that one elf in particular could always turn the application of ointment into a Greek tragedy in three acts,” Severus suggested.

“Dobby? I can’t imagine why you would be willing to miss it.”

“I prefer my Yuletides to be a religious experience,” Severus said dryly. “Trelawney has duty this year as well, and with a bit of encouragement we might well get her to recite the entire Book of Revelations.” 

“But Slytherins usually all go home at the holidays. Why should you stay?”

“They usually go to Malfoy Manor,” Severus shrugged. “But that’s off, evidently. No, I’ve only two staying at the castle and I’d venture their only intent is to snog the whole time. Still, the charter states I have to be there to leave them to it. They are both seventeen, old enough to make their own errors.”

“You make it sound like a holiday,” Remus gaped. He made it sound as though anything was preferable to witnessing his children’s joy. “You have two here in case it slipped your mind.”

Severus shook his head. “Flitwick and Sprout are on again and booked a trip to the Maldives. Between their two houses, eighteen pupils are staying behind. I’ve the two, and there are twenty-three total if you want to include the Gryffindors and Vector’s visiting brat. Vector, McGonagall, Trelawney, Quirrell and I are hanging back to keep on eye on things. Everyone else has something better going on or has overtime that either has to be paid or taken by the year’s end, and you know how cheap Hogwarts is when it comes to its staff.”

“You have something better to do. You have a family,” Remus stressed. It felt to him at times that the only reason he and Severus stayed together was for the sake of the children.

But ‘together’, lately, was relative at best.

Severus was far too hard on the boys – on Harry in particular – and Remus was not able to do enough to care for them to give him grounds to argue when the issue came up. On Halloween, when Severus had reduced Harry to tears and tantrums, Remus had been so angry that he had nearly bitten his partner in spite of the Wolfsbane. Severus, calmly, coldly, told him in response to the animal aggression that he did not understand, that he could not understand for all of his supposed ‘privilege’, but that Harry had to learn to control himself before the best of him was lost entirely. He was still too young to learn occlumency directly, but that by adapting to stress in a controlled environment he might develop the basics of the skill. Remus had growled. Severus had smiled. ‘We both know that there is not a court in this country who wouldn’t grant me full legal custody. Bite me. Go ahead. I’ll make damn sure you won’t even have them at weekends under supervision. I love those kids, despite what you think. Don’t think to test me, Wolf. We both know who would be found wanting.’

They did not talk about it the following morning.

Outside of schedules and household chores, they hardly seemed to talk at all.

“Family,” Severus snorted. “One, I’m ‘lucky’ enough to get to see every day, or so I have been told. It is what it is, Remus. Filius and Pomona do enough for me – for us – that it would be wrong to deny them a favour, and anyway I don’t have overtime to act as an excuse. Besides, Cissy sorted the whole staffing issue. She was actually pretty insistent that I was not to come around to the Manor this year. Just cancel. Stay at home and watch telly and eat ice cream for breakfast and enjoy the fact that I won’t be here to interrupt your ... fun.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to talk to Harry than to exile yourself?” Remus tried in vain. If Severus did not think it prudent to have a conversation about his plans with the man whom he had kept waiting at the proverbial alter for two years before making other promises, the idea of convincing him to talk to a child was grasping at best.

“No. Remus … I don’t know how to fix this.” Severus actually had the nerve to sound indignant.

There had been a time, not all that long ago, when Remus would have found this amusing.

Now, he could not help to resent his partner’s perceived suffering. Did Severus honestly think that he did not wish he could share equally in the responsibility of raising the boys? They he did not know how unfair it was that Severus had a sixty-hour work week to the thirty-five Remus spent moonlighting, that Severus still got up in the middle of the night when Remus was exhausted from his shift at the pub cum-town hall to change a bedspread or fight an imagined monster lurking beneath one of the boys’ doubles? Did he think for a moment that it did not hurt that it never so much as occurred to either Harry or Dudley to ask him, Remus, for help instead?

He felt sometimes that the boys were somehow afraid of them both. They were just honest about it when it came to Severus.

“Ice cream, telly – your instincts, are in fact, in the right place if you would but act on them,” Remus smarted, unwilling to acknowledge the real issue if Severus was himself refusing.

“I’m hoping he’ll become a bit less active in his anger as time progresses, but he is Lily’s son,” Severus scoffed.

“Usually, he is James’ when you’re in a row,” Remus observed, slightly more intrigued.

“Downstairs, whatever is going on? That is James. Holding a grudge and refusing to tell me what exactly I did in the first place or could do to improve upon it? All Lily.”

Remus fought the urge to smile. He did not particularly want to examine why, but the suggestion that the memory Severus venerated was not entirely immune to his regular critique was comforting on some level. Perspective, he thought. Perhaps Severus might be open to it.

“Yeah. That is fair,” Remus agreed. “I think though … I think it is the fact that you are so much harder on him than you are on Dudley. Harry’s jealous and does not know what to do with it, since we otherwise take measures to make sure we treat them equally.” It could not be any easier for Dudley being the only non-magical member of their household than it was on Harry featuring on Chocolate Frog cards for something he – rather thankfully - could not remember, but it still seemed that they were somehow getting it wrong. If Severus was too strict, Remus himself was far too indulgent – but what other options were open to either of them in this strange constellation? 

“That is because if the two encounter something potentially dangerous, Harry jumps headlong into it without wait or worry. Dudley is sufficiently terrified of magic until you and I explain its workings, and then he just shrugs it off,” Severus evaluated. “The second time he saw Minnie transform into a cat, he just looked at her, bored like ‘that’s cool, but could she put it into the back corner from outside the box?’ She was fuming and I about died. I … I just wish Harry could be as indifferent to the wizarding world as he is anything else. He doesn’t yet understand what it means to be famous. He understands that people know who he is because of what happened when he was a baby, but we won’t be able to shield him to the same extend when he gets to Hogwarts and … I know what it is like to be let down by expectation from my own school days. I don’t want to see him suffer the same.”

“Being that he is not an insufferable git like you were -”

“Are,” Severus corrected. “My reputation has not much altered.”

“You take pride in it now.”

“True,” Severus smiled, then stiffened. “At work. Here I … can you imagine what I would give for either of them to share a joke with me for once?”

Remus sighed. “They are good kids, Sev. They just need to be reminded of it sometimes. When they come up, regardless of what they have done, just shrug and offer to help them with whatever they were trying to accomplish in the first place. Be a good parent even if it extends your capabilities to actually be a good person.”

They could hear the boys hastening up the stairs. Severus gave Remus a pained look as he bent over to pick his shirt up from off the floor. Remus sighed as he slithered and shimmied back into his sweatpants under the sheets.

“But coming up with creative punishments is the only aspect of parenting I’m capable of finding pleasure in,” Severus moaned, burying his face in the nape of Remus’s neck.

“I still can never tell when you are speaking in earnest and when you are having a laugh,” Remus marvelled.

“Nor can I. That is something that I lost in puberty with my ability to sing the high notes and my will to live,” Severus offered.

“Oy! Sod off!” Maybe they were fine. Maybe their problems were all a product of Remus’ imagination, of self and sexual frustration, of realities easily altered, of -

“Dad? Moony?” Dudley called as he knocked.

Remus frowned. “Why are you ‘Dad’ again?” he asked after bidding the boys to give them a moment.

“I neither have a cutesy pet-name nor a habit of rewarding mediocrity as you yourself do,” Severus answered simply. “Besides, I’m ‘Sev’ unless something has really frightened them, or they otherwise have a sense that they are in real trouble.”

“Bets on what it is this time?”

“Sure. I’ll go with them having figured out how to get into my lab while looking for their Christmas presents, sneaking down accordingly and letting themselves get distracted enough by mason jars to lose sight of Tarquin, who likely found his way into my mice and succumbed to his nature.”

“Plausible,” Remus assessed. “My money is on them not being able to find your lighter, correspondingly attempting to use my wand to light the oven and accidently having turned it into a Ficus in the process.”

“A what?”

“It’s a common houseplant. Are you as shite at herbology as you are at transfiguration?”

Severus seemed to give the insult more critical consideration than it truly required. “I’ve no great skill at keeping plants in a living state, ergo if you are right, it will fall on you to either change it back or remember to water the thing.”

“Deal, as long as you can try to be nice about it for once,” he smiled. “Come in!”

As loudly as they had knocked mere moments before, the door took its time to creak open. Severus gave Remus a look as though to say that whatever they were about to hear was sure to prove fictious. Remus gave a slight nod to signal his agreeance, still determined to meet the little mischief makers with an open heart and mind.

“Um,” Dudley swallowed. Harry glanced at him nervously. When he started it sounded oddly rehearsed. “Harry and I … we wanted to make breakfast for everyone, waffles, you know, as a treat. You taught us how, remember?” he asked, looking at Severus as though the narrative required confirmation. Remus bit his lips together to keep from smirking. The two spent too much time at Malfoy Manor, listening to Narcissa prep Lucius for whatever debate he was intending to force the Ministry into having. Maybe he would cancel at Christmas. Had she not just bought Draco a dog? Canines could always smell the wolf on him and tended to react poorly. He could always use that as an excuse.

“I do,” Severus answered.

“Well, we measured out the ingredients fine, I think, but when Harry was using the electric mixer, I was looking for the waffle-maker and not holding the stool for him, and he slipped, and the batter went everywhere. So I said, well, maybe he could just wave Moony’s wand and clean it up like it never happened, and he said no, he wasn’t allowed – but I, I sort of forced him to take it and when he flicked it, instead of disappearing there was suddenly more, a lot more, so I grabbed the wand back and as I did I slipped on some of the waffle batter and fell back and well … I fell on your wand, Moony. I’m sorry.” He produced a half in each hand.

“FUCK!” Remus screamed before he could stop himself. Dudley’s eyes grew round, and Harry took half a step back.

“No matter, I still have mine,” Severus answered. “Waffles, you say? I’m famished. Shall we go and -”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Remus hissed. Really! Today, of all days, was the one in which Severus had decided to be open to his advice on how to foster understanding between himself and their wards?

“Language, Remus! Language!” Severus scolded. It was all the man could do to keep from laughing.

No, Remus decided. The problems that had come to define their relationship were insurmountable.

“How can I … without a wand, how -”

“You’ll get a new one when I get paid in January,” Severus assured him.

“January?!” It was tenth December! How did Severus expect him to help the boys build half their gifts without one? How did he expect him to boil water or start the abandoned car they were ‘borrowing’ to bring the boys to school and extracurriculars or confound the coppers if they ever came around to ask about registration or even to summon public transit if all else failed? He might live in a Muggle neighbourhood, might head their local municipality, but that hardly meant he was prepared to actually live as a Muggle for any extended period of time. How did one even turn on a television without magic?

“You know that we’ve no spare cash this month, what with Christmas coming up. Besides, I get a small bonus for working over the holiday. We will find you something pretty.”

“You what? You’re not going to be here?” Harry asked, seemingly injured. Remus doubted it was on his behalf.

“You’ll have enough distractions, trust me,” Severus dismissed. He turned to Remus with a cruel smile, apparently unwilling to abandon this particular amusement to offer himself for any real reassurance.

“You expect me to just -”

“Does the Mayor of Cokeworth really need to use magic to pull tab while telling the town’s drunk and downtrodden to rise and unite against the capitalist system?” Severus mocked. “If so, I’d happily lend you mine, but -”

“There is nothing wrong with being a Muggle, Moony. Like you are always telling ickle Duddykins,” Harry said. Bloody hell! The kid spent far too much time under Severus’ tutorage.

“You understand the assignment, Harry,” Severus smirked. “Well done.”

“Does … does Moony need that Wolfsbane stuff?” Dudley asked, not to be outdone.

“I think he’d be better served by a calming draught. Do you boys know how to brew one?”

“I know that every time one you your teachers gets injured, Madame Pomphrey sends you to a muggle clinic first so that you can get normal pills for when someone has been having a bad day. I know we still have some Oxy from the time Aunt Minerva turned into a cat so she could push a crystal ball onto Professor T’s foot.”

“Cheeky, but well-reasoned, Dudley,” Severus approved before continuing as an aside, “That was an amusing mandatory staff meeting, Remus. It also became grounds for staff meetings no longer being mandatory. Next time Albus or Cissy approaches you with the intent of making the DADA post sound enticing, it might be something to consider. At the very least, you’d have insurance against this kind of thing.”

Remus felt his eyes narrow. The latest Defence appointment had lasted a record low of ten weeks in the job and had only been appointed to it in the first place because Narcissa had needed a favour from her sometimes-friend Melina Zabini, and the infamous Madame Zabini had felt – for a fifth time after saying ‘forever’ - that death was simply more tasteful than divorce.

Narcissa had offered the post to Remus three times since Severus had manipulated his superiors into hiring a permanent secretary. He strongly suspected that rather than homicide, she was hoping to have him resign from local government with the thought that whoever should take over in the by-election would not block her bid to purchase a derelict row of block housing on their street. All arguments against gentrification aside, did Severus not see the practical benefits of not having adjacent neighbours? Harry could hardly play on his broom – hell, Dudley could hardly play with his ball! – if anyone was around to bear witness to the enchantment. Or was he simply suggesting a wish for Remus to meet his own mortal end?

“Insurance … against my wand breaking?” Remus scoffed. They were definitely due to have it out. Why was Severus so determined to do so in front of the children? And why was Remus allowing himself to be so easily baited? The moon’s apex was weeks away.

“It’s thirty-five quid for a new one. Hogwarts can afford it, and even if it were an issue, no one ever thinks to check my bookkeeping, trusting that my figures all add up. I’ve an order to place with the Apothecary at Diagon Alley this week, we’ll stop off at Ollivanders on the way to pick it up. Apropos, Harry – how you’ll one day use numbers in real life: If my fifth years need thirty-five leeches for their Polyjuice lab at two pounds apiece, how many do I need to tell my employer I am buying to make up the extra we need to buy Remus a new wand from Uncle Lucius’ ill-gotten gains?”

“Fifty-three,” Dudley answered.

“Dudley,” Severus warned.

Dudley looked flustered. “Well, fifty-two and a half, but you can’t buy half a leech, can you?”

“That’s not … no one likes a show off,” Severus rubbed his temples. “I was asking Harry.”

“So, we’re not … we’re not in trouble?” Harry turned the question.

Severus sighed. “If one coffee costs ninety-nine pence, how much do you need to take out of my pocket to buy two?”

“That is just … two hundred minus two, so one-nighty-eight?”

“Units?” Severus pushed.

“One pound, ninety-eight pence.”

“Adequate. You two can run up to the petrol station and get us both a coffee before ‘Moony’ agrees with my prior assessment that you are both devil-spawn and that it is best to ground you. Dudley -take Pebbles. He needs the exercise. And seeing the pony tends to make the neighbours forget that Harry has that weird albino snake.”

“Thanks?” Dudley tried, unable to believe their luck.

“I need a pack of rolling papers too. Take a tenner. Find something fast for breakfast. I’ll help you clean but I’m in no mood to cook.”

“Will they let us buy them? The papers?” Harry asked.

Severus shrugged. “If you bring your weird snake along as well, I don’t see why not.”

“Dad … thanks.” Harry tried. Dudley smiled. Severus looked stunned. Remus wondered at the scope of his own personal failings where it came to the lot of them.

“I hate you so fucking much,” he told Severus when the oddly unmistakable sounds of two boys trying to lead a miniature horse though a messy kitchen, into the living room and out the front door revibrated in their chamber. “You have ten quid to drop at the petrol station, but you led me to believe we are on the cusp of financial ruin when a genuine emergency presents a necessary cost?”

“In all fairness, I never once argued that I had any skill in personal finances beyond getting Lucius to pay for my eccentricities. We are broke as all fuck, to be sure. But I can replace your wand. Consider it an early Christmas present.”

“You ever get the Governors to approve the lab goggles you keep applying for?” Remus baited.

“I have no doubt that they will be in my supply cabinet come September. Did I tell you who Cissy is training to replace her?” Severus smirked.

“No. Though now that you mention it, I am surprised I was never approached to apply for the post.”

“Molly Weasley. It’s brilliant. The only thing Lucius fears more than a nuclear holocaust is the tiny Ministry department her husband heads. He and his acolytes will acquest to anything if it is Molly doing the asking, and she’s a mean one, to be sure. We might even be able to find the funds to get the second-floor girl’s bathroom in operational order. Say what you will, but Cissy is clearly on the school’s side in our on-going fight against our financers. Could not have left us in better hands.”

Remus nodded his begrudging approval. “Narcissa is kind of an evil genius. I’ll give her that. You learned from the best.”

“Relax, Wolf. As you never tire of reminding me when you are not the one being harmed by their misdeeds ‘they are just kids,’” he mimicked, crawling on top of Remus once more. “And in five years they will be Minerva’s problem. Harry, at least. Dudley will probably have won himself a spot at The Firm or The Farm by then. Shame really, of the two he’d be better in Potions, but then I’d be obliged to reward Gryffindor a point or two, which would be more than I could bear. Hard enough being the ‘fun’ parent for five minutes, it was. Don’t know how you stand it.”

“You sarcastic piece of shit,” Remus said, shoving him back. Severus landed with a cold laugh and Remus shifted to straddle him between his thighs. “And they take after you, the children. That was the most pathetically Slytherin-ass explanation of whatever actually went down that I ever fucking -”

“Oh please. It took real balls to break your wand and own up to it. They are little ‘marauders’ in the making. You must be so proud,” he cooed, reaching up to pinch at Remus’ cheek.

“Shut up!”

“I dare say I won us half an hour of privacy. So,” Severus challenged. “Make me.”

Chapter Text

Wand still extended in his right hand, Sirius Black struggled with the pockets of the too-thin jacket his cousin wore, hoping to find some substance to revive her within them. Some distance runners, as far as he knew, brought along full lunches in plastic packaging, but the best Narcissa seemed to offer herself was a small package of powder which Sirius had been disappointed to discover was a crushed, expired tablet of glucose sugar with added zinc as opposed to the cocaine that might well have been as useful as chocolate in this instance. More the pity. He could have done with a bit of humour and validation.

Sirius closed his hand around the parcel as Narcissa again threatened to close her pale eyes, transfiguring the powder into a Chocolate Frog, which he remembered her having a fondness for in their childhood. It would not metabolise the same way and the effect might therefore be temporary, but it would buy them some time, at least, while Sirius tried to figure out what to do. He had tried calling out for Kreacher, but the cursed elf was either dead, deaf with age or unwilling to disobey an order given by his former Mistress disinheriting Sirius from even the tired sycophant’s otherwise unwanted presence. He had tried calling for Dobby, too, but Lucius’ servant would have no reason to hear his call.

He looked down at Narcissa, helpless against her own horrors and wondered if she was experiencing anything comparable to what she had brought upon Bellatrix. He did not himself feel a burden of pity for either woman. What was it to him? He had turned his back on his name long before either of his cousins had personally offered him cause for offence. Still, his stomach wrenched as he bore silent witness to his cousin’s suffering.

He should have left her to her fate.

He still could, he reasoned, but honour held him here, holding Narcissa while she involuntarily shook, for he knew that were their roles reversed she would have stayed though she would not have stood half a chance against their assistant.

Sirius felt guilty at his own limitations and looked around again to see if the attack was not yet ended. Finding the area secure, he looked back at his cousin to see that her eyes had shut.

He dropped the wand and rapidly began patting at her cheek and he moved to cradle her.

“Cissy! Cissy! Don’t pass out on me. You have to stay awake,” he barked.

She moaned. That was good.

“Here, eat this. You’ll feel better.” Narcissa attempted to comply, but Sirius quickly found himself covered in chocolate, spittle, and the yet undigested remnants of something called ‘avocado toast’ that his cousin and her husband took for breakfast (itself a decent argument for remaining in his Animagus form and being denied food from the table by the elves who did not know any better.) He looked into the eyes she could not seem to focus, suspecting she had suffered a serious concussion when she fell. Fuck. He had to get her out of here. She could not be apparated in her state, and though she was worryingly thin, he doubted he would be able to take her weight for the twenty or so miles that separated them from the Manor house.

Merlin! What had he been thinking?! Of course, the Azkaban guards would be stationed at the property line, hungrily anticipating an escape attempt. As a dog he might well have slipped past undetected, but with Narcissa keeping pace –

She coughed again. He hugged her close to him, considering transfiguring her into an animal he could easily carry by the scuff of the neck. He still had to get to Harry. He still had to figure out what was going on. But he recalled vaguely from his school days that involuntary transformations could worsen pre-existing injuries. Remus had suffered constant dental problems on account of the amount of chocolate he consumed to keep his continence, and Sirius had personally thus needed to pull several rotting teeth prior to a full moon, minding the timing of when his friend could drink a potion as to stimulate the growth of a replacement that such not interfere with his ‘furry little problem.’ He did not know what steps to take to adjust for a traumatic brain injury.

“Cissy, Cissy,” he whispered. “Just stay with me. It will be alright, I promise,” he lied.

“But Harry,” she said weakly. “Where is Harry?” Was she reading his thoughts and confusing them with her own, or had she set out with an agenda?

“Harry is fine,” Sirius lied again.

“Sev?” Narcissa attempted as her eyes struggled to focus, finding the sick on his coat. “Oh Sev, I’m sorry.”

“You better fucking be,” Sirius growled, though, truth be told, he was so relieved to hear her speak, she could have afforded him any insult she chose without any real reprimand or retribution.

“Sirius?” she blinked.

“Yeah. It’s me. Okay? Just stay with me Cissy,” he ordered.

“I thought you had gone.”

“I almost did.”

“Coward,” she coughed before succumbing to yet more sick – this time, thankfully, directing it from his chest. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and then tried to take her jacket off, forcing Sirius to tighten his grip.

“It’s cold. Keep it on.” His voice was rougher, rawer than he recalled it having been. He wondered if this was the effect of the years he had spent in his other skin or if memory’s kindness was simply being undone here by existing evidence to the contrary as it was in all too many instances.

“Where are we?” Narcissa asked, her speech blithe and benign as he recalled it had always deceptively been.

Sirius forced a smile. “I don’t know. Northwest of the Manor. I had a mind to make it to Cokeworth and know vaguely that it is somewhere in that direction. Manchester or Merseyside. However Snivey used to talk before you and Lucius made him posh.”

“That was Regulus -”

“Figures. Snob,” Sirius grunted.

“And how could you possibly confuse those particular accents?” she frowned.

“Same general direction, innit?”

“And you were just going to run the whole way? To think, people say I’m mad!”

“You might be. You were keeping good pace for one restricted to two legs. Do this often?”

“Helps me clear my head,” she tried to smile, and Sirius was suddenly struck with a sad realisation.

“You run ... you run because you can’t fly anymore, can you?” he asked. Narcissa had spent six years on the Slytherin Quidditch team including two as its captain. During her tenure, the Serpents had taken the Cup four times, once under her leadership. She had been good, and may have been considered  great with the benefit of another surname, for she never had quite achieved the acclaim Bella and later Regulus had enjoyed. Even so. There was something Sirius was only now recognising as disconcerting about seeing her on the ground.

Narcissa smiled weakly. “What gave it away?”

“Your patronus changed.”

“Did I manage to produce one?” she blinked in surprise.

“Briefly.”

“Hm.”

“You can’t perform any sort of emotional magic anymore, can you?” he pressed. “Did ... did what happened to Bella -”

“It’s not what you think,” Narcissa assured him before he could ask if their familial magic could be fully spent. “Bella, Andy ... all my happiest memories are of my sisters. Everything to have happened since Andy left, since Bella … since I ... I look back and I can’t help but to mourn their absence at moments I might otherwise have smiled. You wouldn’t understand,” she said, perhaps invading his mind even now to find it blank. “Family never meant anything to you.”

“I never thought like the rest of you,” Sirius dismissed her gruffly. He was glad that she was cognizant, but he was most assuredly not in the mood for a lecture around loyalty, especially from such a blatant hypocrite. Whatever Narcissa had seen in her nightmare, she likely deserved it. She had let Andromeda go. She had crippled Bellatrix. Why should he be inconvenienced by it? He had left home. He ought to have left Narcissa to her self-inflicted suffering.

“For a Legilimens you assume quite a lot.  ‘Like the rest of us’! As though we were ever of one mind,” she scoffed. “I lost Bella to darkness and Andy to light if you care to see things in those terms. Reggie sided with Voldemort and you with Dumbledore, and you left me, you all left me to sort it all out. And I thought... I thought you were your own man, Sirius. You have no idea of how very much I need you to be. How much we all do. Harry – oh, God! Harry!”

All criticism aside, she began to weep onto his shoulder. This move might work with Lucius and her precious Snivellus, it might have even worked with Bellatrix and Andromeda at one point, but Sirius was having none of it.

“So that you can force the Ministry to examine a single miscarriage of justice?” he demanded, adjusting himself that she was forced to meet his eyes. “Cissy ... to borrow a figure of speech, you weren’t outside. You don’t know what the fighting was like.”

“Don’t I?” she demanded. She had fought one battle against a single belligerent and caused incalculable civilian casualties with a moment of mercy she afforded one of the people she had loved best. It was horrible. But it was not the same. And it did not excuse her attempts at correction. Why try to involve him in her penance? Why Harry? He should well let her die for her sins, for the Greater Good.

“We didn’t all have the luxury of staying neutral. Your so-said morals are performative at best, and I cannot for the life of me understand what you really hope to gain in forcing me to act in accordance with them. If you cared about me at all you could just get the charges dismissed.”

At this Narcissa defiantly shook her head. “Sirius. This has to be done publicly. Mistakes were made, even if a significant percentage of those sentenced without trail after the war were guilty of the crimes they were accused, mistakes we made. The Ministry needs to acknowledge that or else, or else – Sirius, if Harry is made to face justice in the current climate, none of us will ever be free. I care. I care enough that I’m willing to ruin my name to face this head on. And you … how can you not? Aren’t you meant to be the brave one? You are the boy’s godfather! Stand up and act like it!”

“What in heaven, earth, or hell could Harry Potter possibly have to answer for?” he roared. “Cissy, you are not making any sense. I think you had a concussion; I think -”

“Try, Sirius,” she whispered. “Try. I won’t block you. But don’t make me say it aloud. Voices carry.”

He nodded. He knew what she was asking.

Sirius met his cousin’s cold, focused gaze until her pale blue eyes bleached away with the rest of the world.

He was frightened, desperate, and facing down a friend whom he had to actively force himself to identify as such.

Narcissa was nowhere. Sirius spoke in a voice not at all his own.

“Get out of the way, you stupid girl!”

“No! Not Harry! Please!” Lily begged in an ugly, hysterical sob.

He was trapped. He could not kill Lily Potter without inviting his own demise, such had been the price of a promise made to a prince. If, however, he failed to destroy her son, the prophecy would come to pass. It had to be tonight. He would have no second chance.

Had he been betrayed?

No. No!

It was not possible! The prince would not gamble the life of the woman he professed to love.

A dark realisation overcame him. Dumbledore was not bound by such moral constrictions. Had Dumbledore manipulated the situation, compromised his spy by offering the man a solution he had neither expected nor intended to work in full knowledge of what had already been spoken?

No. Severus was sentimental, but he was not a fool.

“Please! Take me instead!”

Why would she not simply step aside?!

Sirius wanted to scream as he unwillingly lifted his wand, understanding where he was. Who he was. What was about to happen. But how had Narcissa -

The nursery was engulfed in green, and his head began to ache. He continued to shout and sob, suddenly finding himself at the other end of a now darkened room.

The scene was now blurred but the pain remained acute. His head. Merlin-fuck! His head! It was pain as Sirius had never known it.

And without knowing why, Sirius suddenly felt the urge to laugh.

It was still dark, but he was conscious that something was different. He sat up, reaching, finally locating a long string which he pulled to illuminate a certain nothingness. Everything remained blurred and he could hear his pulse quicken as someone screamed “Boy!” – a distinction he understood as his own.

He fumbled for his glasses, putting them on to reveal a small space infested with cobwebs which shook as the sound of stomping feet seemed to reverberate in the slanted ceiling. He swallowed, hastening to open the door, to flee this space before –

A purple faced man with a thick moustache ripped the door open and began bellowing, seizing Sirius’ thin wrist with a meaty hand, and pulling him from the camp bed in this strange cupboard. Sirius heard the pop before feeling the pain in his dislocated elbow, apologising for his apparent ingratitude while trying to repair the damage done to him for the sin of oversleeping. He knew how. This had happened before.

“Cissy, what the fuck?!” he managed to shout. The purple-faced man, a bony, blonde woman, and a heavyset toddler who must have been the product of their union all stared at him but not of them responded.

Again, Sirius found himself trapped, this time by a holster in a child’s car seat, the man with the moustache still raving and ranting in the seat in front of him while the woman with a rather long neck looked back at him and her son in clear terror.

“Aunt Lily was a witch?” the other boy asked, eyes widened with excitement.

“That is not what your father said,” the woman snapped, plainly flustered, “and no, you should not say that word, you should not say ‘witch’. Ever. Witches are bad, Dudley. They are ugly and evil and that is why people in the Middle Ages used to burn them. They don’t exist anymore.”

“But you said that there was a wizard who lived around where Gran used to,” the boy began to contradict. Sirius wished he would drop it. Who cared about magic when -

“But you said my mother had no friends,” Sirius accused. Who had this boy been, he wondered, this friend of his mother’s? And was he really still in Cokeworth where they were headed? He had never felt quite so anxious or excited.

No.

Harry had felt these things.

Sirius had never felt quite so impressed or imposed upon.

He tried to orient himself. He was alone now. Alone, exhausted, and clinging to disparate phantasy. He had been looking for a wizard. He had been looking for Severus Snape.

No. No!

The only person, the only person in the whole world Sirius wanted to see was Narcissa.

As all of his line were able, he could see into the minds of others without effort, but this was something that failed his capabilities and frankly his understanding.

When he personally happened upon a memory, accidently or even within the scope of intent, his role within it was that of an indifferent observer. He could hear what was said but remained ignorant to the intention behind it. He did not share in the subject’s momentary emotion to the extent that he was lost to himself.

He had heard it said that Narcissa was exceptional, but he never had any understanding of what was meant. He had always assumed it was the sort of thing adults offered to excuse failure, imagined even that the reason that he could not enter her mind was that it was too small and vacant to offer quarter. No, he now realised. He could not enter because she was never entirely present whilst in company. The fact that practical magic proved so challenging for her made so much sense in this context. How could one cast with concentration so compromised?

Poor girl. He blinked. He could not … he could not quite picture her face. Harry did not know her, he realised, or he had not, at this point, whenever and wherever he was.

He was lost. Lost! How was he ever going to find Severus, and failing that, how was he ever going to make it back?

He felt desperate as he tried to shake off the fear of failure. He refused to pity himself. He had to keep trying he had to –

Sirius, for his part, pitied Harry every bit as much as he admired him. He had to help him escape from this, from whatever hell had come to replace it since Lucius and Narcissa had become passively involved.

And suddenly, there she was.

Sirius, as Harry, raised a stick he was pretending to be a wand and Narcissa took a knee and extended her own with an upwards facing palm in a gesture of peace. Harry, understanding intent, mirrored her.

“Who are you, little one?” she asked softly. “And here I thought it impossible for Severus to keep secrets from me. Another budding wizard in Cokeworth, hm? How he must delight in you! Or rather,” she paused as she seemed to study him, “how very much he will. I take it you have not yet met, but how terribly alike the two of you are.”

Did she plan to fulfil the child’s ill-informed wish? Had she since handed his godson to that accursed, unscrupulous bastard to whom she had promoted the throne he, Sirius, had acquitted himself of?

Sirius found himself in his anger and knew he was revealing more than he meant. Narcissa was besting him and there was nothing he could do to stop her, but knowing her weaknesses, he could lead her on, misdirect her as much as he might. She did not know that he and Regulus had ever spoken after his, Sirius’, dramatic exit from Grimmauld Place, not for certain. If she knew why he had been banished to Azkaban, might she have cause to send him back?

He was eleven in his own memory, in one of the greenhouses laughing with Peter over something that had happened at lunch when he heard Lily singing to herself as she worked, apparently inventing forgotten lyrics to her best friend’s immense amusement.

Sirius did his best to listen, but resentment got in the way. Snivellus listened to music he, Sirius, was desperate to hear, but he knew they two would never be able to discuss an album together because Snivey was the sort to disown anything of his muggle heritage when met with blood pure. If Sirius were to turn around and ask about The Velvet Underground, the Syltherin would doubtlessly imagine mockery in his tone and respond in kind, which would inspire Sirius to genuine insult.

Greenery gave way to stone walls and the result of one such instance was that the two had come to blows in a corridor as a certain prefect was passing by.

Hesitation was quick to turn to hubris. Sirius found himself smirking. He had known Lucius Malfoy for as long as his memory had served and knew that he could act with relative impunity, even against a Slytherin first year. He had Lucius’ measure – the lad had been in love with his cousin since she first came to Hogwarts, famously fumbling the Sorting Hat and announcing to the hall with a giggle that if it was all the same, she was predisposed to where she would prefer to sit for the next seven years.

His heart leapt and laughter escaped him. He was still eleven, but he was not himself. Narcissa was showing off, both within the scope of her prior conscious and to him personally. She crossed her arms and kicked her legs back and forth, but reading something in Professor McGonagall’s confused expression that reminded her of the better manners her father would expect, she adjusted her posture and apologised for the break with tradition, such had not been her intent.

“What are you, child?” the Sorting Hat asked aloud for the hall to hear.

“I’m a Black,” she answered. “And ... if it is all the same, I would rather like to go sit with my sisters now.”

From the Slytherin table, Andromeda broke into laughter at the same time that Bellatrix began to whistle and cheer, “Couldn’t help yourself, could you?!”

Narcissa blushed. She really could not. It had not been her intention to use occlumency against an item Salazar himself had enchanted and she worried that she had done something wrong. She looked up to Professor McGonagall apologetically, willing her to understand. McGonagall gave a curt nod. “Slytherin!” she announced.

Narcissa ran to her sisters as quickly as her feet could carry her, wanting to escape the stage and stares as much as anything else. At the same time, third year Lucius Malfoy sprinted down the length of the cheering table to formally introduce himself – a feat that Sirius considered had to take considerable nerve, giving that Bella and her acolytes were laughing at him all the while.

Cissy had been polite enough – likely to her detriment – offering her hand for a kiss and declaring that he would have her favour if he could manage to surprise her, a request, which by Sirius’ own first year, Lucius had failed to fulfil.

Half a dozen of Lucius’ attempts filled Sirius’ mind before he was returned to his own buried memory.

Personally, Sirius was surprised Lucius was so persistent, but then maybe he should not have been.

No one ever said no to the Malfoys, and he supposed Narcissa had not either, not really.

Not that she had said yes.

It worked to his advantage though. As long as Lucius mistook that there was anything about Narcissa worth loving, he would do nothing to reprimand a member of her own famous family.

He could thus undo Snape with impunity, and Sirius found himself rather cherishing the prospect. A cruse formed at the corner of his lips -

But then Snivellus did something to surprise all present. He raised his wand, said ‘Legilimens’ and blocked Sirius’ coming spell.

At this, Lucius intervened. He gave Sirius a warning look – one, in hindsight, he suspected he should have found more meaning in – before taking a protesting Snape by the shoulder and leading him back to the Slytherin dorms.

The next day, Andy and Cissy were in a major row. Sirius had never been particularly interested in family politics, but then his cousins have never so much as argued amongst themselves at any point prior. Cissy would not speak to him full stop; Andy, to his horror, demanded to know why he always had to be such a cunt when they saw each other between classes, but walked past without elaborating.

It was not until Slytherin lost their opening Quidditch match against Hufflepuff that Sirius gained any sense of what had happened.

Everyone at school had gone to the game with the sense that the Serpents’ undisputed dominance had ended when Bella left school and Slughorn, for reasons known only to himself had overlooked Andy as her natural successor to the captaincy and appointed Lucius Malfoy instead.

No one went into the match expecting a Slytherin win. No one, however, thought they would lose by a two-hundred-point margin.

From their seats high up in the stands, Sirius, Remus, Peter, and James heard the fight between the two remaining Black chasers bleed across team lines when Ted Tonks pulled his wand on Narcissa to horrified shouts.

“See?!” Narcissa had demanded – likely the only thing she could have said in her defence. Even if she had been armed, Sirius considered, she would have posed little challenge to the Hufflepuff seventh year. Andromeda bid them both to go fuck themselves and fled the pitch. Sirius and his friends followed under the cover of James’ invisibility cloak.

Eventually, they revealed themselves when they caught up to Andy by the lake where, still sobbing, she had hidden herself behind a shrub. At first, she told them to go away, but Sirius was unrelenting.

“It is a long story,” Andromeda said finally.

“It was a short game,” James answered. “We have all afternoon.”

At this she laughed bitterly, cried again, and finally collected herself enough to ask Sirius if he remember the time Lucius found him and Severus fighting outside of Transfiguration.

He did not. Not exactly. He and Snape came to blows whenever an opportunity presented, or the issue could be forced. He nodded all the same.

Apparently, Lucius, impressed at a first-year dabbling in a complex form of magic against House Black’s Heir Presumptive had thought to introduce Snape to the young woman widely regarded as the world’s best. Sirius snorted. Andy scowled. “It’s different for her than it is for you and I,” she swore.

Fifteen years would pass before Sirius could accept the assessment as having any bearing in fact, but at Remus’ silent urging, he left his rebuff unspoken and let his favourite cousin continue.

Lucius had found the sisters sitting together in the common room, Andromeda doing NEWT revision, Narcissa ignoring her own essay in favour of a personality test in Witch Weekly meant to tell her what sort of Honeyduke’s sweet she ‘was’ based on her self-reported opinions and tendencies. When Lucius explained what Snape had done with more success as would be reasonable to expect, Narcissa perked up and Andromeda listened with interest, warning Snape not to play poker with her sister no matter how nicely she asked – everyone in the common room could attest such never ended well.

Snape simply looked bewildered when Narcissa asked him to tell her what he saw in her, assuring him sweetly that he could use his wand and would not be met with her common defences. She was not angry that Sirius had his own best trick turned against him, especially as he had started the fight in the first place. ‘I never said that,’ Snape replied awkwardly, almost apologising. ‘I know,’ Narcissa teased.

The lad glanced back at Lucius nervously.

‘Anything?’ he asked. ‘Go ahead,’ Narcissa encouraged.  

He told her that Lucius surprised her all the time, that she laughed it off and refused to let on because she was worried that if he got too close, he would realise that there was not much more to her than what she freely presented or allowed others to project. But she would miss him nearly as much as she missed Bella when he left school at the end of term, and that was obvious even without legilimency. Lucius liked the way she wiggled her nose when she told a joke, how she flew as though wind were of no factor, how she refused to extend her considerable charm to anything that did not immediately capture her interest, how she could recall the most random facts from Binns’ class and drop them in conversation to exaggerate her argument.

Narcissa, in turn, liked that he was so well read, that he was a skilled administrator whatever he lacked as a battlefield commander, that he sought beauty for its own sake in everything he undertook and that he did not allow this to become a subject of embarrassment however his classmates might treat it.

Hearing this, Narcissa nodded curtly, then turned up her nose, likely to hide her embarrassment from the impertinent boy. It would have been wrong to claim that Sirius, hearing this, had felt sorry for Snape, but he certainly would not have wanted to be in his place in that moment.

‘Also, you’ll say no if he asks you out again. You’ll accept no terms but your own, but you don’t trust yourself enough to define them. It’s sad. I mean, that none of you are quite so confident as you act,’ Snape had claimed, accurately, probably. Narcissa returned that he had a lot of cheek and demanded to know how an impoverished half-blood from some muggle backwater dared dabble in these arts.

Snape choked and Narcissa took enough to test his nerves. ‘I’ll teach you how to do it properly,’ she said shakily as she stood. ‘That isn’t an offer, it’s an order. But first I’m going to find Dolohov. Someone ought to teach you how to throw a proper punch and I’ve my nails to consider. Malfoy,’ she had nodded, collecting herself. ‘Thank you, this has been rather enlightening.’

Andy, trying to take the edge off, apologised and said that maybe next time they should just stick to card games as she gathered up her sister’s things.

An hour or so would pass before Andromeda would have any compression of what her sister had seen, though she admitted she might well have guessed.

Narcissa had come to her dorm later that same night, ordered the other year sevens from the room and told Andromeda what she had witnessed by way of telling her that under no circumstances could she continue to permit her to see that ‘Mudblood’ she was dating.

‘They are horrible! Simply horrible!’ Narcissa warned shrilly in Andromeda’s retelling. ‘Every bit as much as we were always warned and I don’t want that for you, Andy! I refuse! I won’t see you hurt! That poor boy – his mother taught him the basics of occlumency because his father drinks and beats them both senseless and she is too afraid of the implications of going to hospital. Or was. She's fucked off somewhere, too. Oh! Maybe she is dead! Maybe her husband killed her! You don’t think -’

‘You are being hysterical,’ Andromeda had coldly cautioned, clutching her wand behind her back in case her sister lost control.

‘And you are being mislead by some dumb romantic notion! I won’t sit back and watch that happen! I’ll tell Mother and Father if I must - if you refuse to end it. I swear I will. Tonks seems nice now, sure – but they always do at first, don’t they? Remember that Mudblood DADA teacher we had who got fired because he fucked Melina Zabini? We all liked him at first, too -’

Andromeda had wrinkled up her nose at this. ‘He got fired because she photographed them in the act and sent the whole roll of film to The Daily Prophet -’

‘She was fourteen! It was rape!’

‘On whose end?’ Andromeda challenged. ‘She seduced him with a love potion! Anyway, Cissy, be logical. You can’t look at two unrelated, isolated incidents and form an opinion of an entire culture with only that as a basis.’

But Narcissa believed otherwise.

Andy continued to let Ted secretly court her, and her sister began mentoring the first year to block out more than just physical pain and absorb beyond an opponent’s topical woes.

They bickered about this, too.

Andy saw no good coming from it. Severus’ fully understandable, however unrealistic, phantasies around the magical world would only be enforced by the seeming kindness born of Cissy’s perceived isolation.

For her part, Narcissa continued to tear up at the Owl Post, Bella’s correspondence a poor substitute for her company. She hated that Andy was seeing someone – and she hated Ted in particular giving that her only interaction with Muggles came from borrowed memories of bodily violence and books about witch burnings centuries past. She hated that Sirius had rejected all of her invitations and overtures and was finding consolation in forcing the kind of relationship she had hoped they two would continue to have at school on a strange boy who did not know any better.

Andy had explained all of this to Ted when she was crying about her sister refusing to speak to her, and his reaction had been to pull a wand on Narcissa when this resentment had presented itself on the pitch. “And now Cissy is never – never! –  going to accept she is wrong!” she told Sirius, James, Peter, and Remus. “Because she isn’t! Not anymore! How fucking dare he!? My sister! He threatened my sister and in my name! How dare he!’

“We could … help them see the errors of their ways,” Peter had suggested. “It sounds bad, sure, but it is not really anything a well-placed dung bomb wouldn’t sort. Do you think you can get them in the same room?”

“So, you are saying this is all Snivey’s fault?” James had interjected. “I’m with you, Wormtail, but I rather think the Misses Black would be better served if we attacked at the source.”

“Don’t you lads have anything better to do than pick fight after fight with a kid with literally nothing to lose? Seriously, how stupid are you? Snape isn’t the problem; he is as much of a victim of circumstance as any of the rest of us are – just now we’re all victims of precisely what he went through to get here because you lot just can’t leave it alone.”

Except it was Snape’s fault. All of it and all to follow.

Sirius was returned to Hogwarts, to a room he did not recognise, and it took him a moment to register that them memory was not his own.

“Tonks, there is something that I have to do, something Professor Snape thinks I am wrong to even try, but once it is done, it is done,” Narcissa said, slightly nervous but formal nonetheless. “Now, I know Mr Lupin gave you that magical map, I know that you can move around undetected, but just this once, I need you to get caught.”

“Doing what exactly?” Andy and Ted’s now teenage daughter smiled.

“I’ll leave that to your discretion. I just need a plausible distraction, something to keep him from his office for at least an hour during the regular school day. I will deal with the fallout.”

Why was she showing him this? Had Narcissa come around to his way of thinking about how best to deal with Snape? Had she and Andromeda patched things up?

“What are you going to do, and what are you offering that is going to be worth more to me than the perks of a standing detention with the Potions Master? He lets me play Sirius’ old guitar in the greenhouse while he has a smoke and reads The Quibbler or The Rolling Stone and usually lets me have it afterwards if he’s finished, and! Whenever I get in trouble with another teacher, they just let him deal with it these days. Which he doesn’t. I don’t want to risk having to write lines.”

“Then be creative,” Narcissa suggested.

“Tell me what you are doing and how you are going to make it worth my while,” Tonks attempted to negotiate, leaning forward in her seat.

“I’m going to steal a restricted substance he should not have stocked in the first place – and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is or why I need it, because believe it or not, I don’t want to see you hurt. That said, you want some contraband explosives, fifty Galleons, and a ticket to see The Weird Sisters in New York City with me next month?”

“Oh. Fuck me, then. I’m in. Shall we say … lunchtime on Thursday?”

“Oh my, my, my,” Narcissa answered. No. This was another memory. Sirius was returned to the Manor, desperate to know what his cousin had been after, if Dora had been successful in her prank, and how she had meet Moony in the first place.

This was far less interesting, whatever it was.

Draco was complaining about having a bedtime. The boy, the one from the other car seat, was explaining to Narcissa and Lucius that their dads usually read to them before they went to sleep. And Harry, looking far healthier than when Sirius had seen him last was looking between his mates and Lucius Malfoy, who had suddenly stopped tucking him in and was scratching at his forearm with a bewildered expression.

Seeing this shift, the other two stopped their chatter abruptly.

Something was off. Harry’s eyes, he noticed, were not quite as much like his mother’s as Sirius had once believed them. He knew that babies eye colour could sometimes change – but he had only seen this vivid shade of green once before. In Harry’s memory. No. In Voldemort’s.

Was the Avada manifest inside him somehow?

Draco looked to his mother as though to say ‘It isn’t Harry’s fault, you know. I can’t explain it, not exactly, but it isn’t Harry, when stuff like this happens. It isn’t Harry.’ – ‘I know,’ Narcissa answered him without speaking. What the fuck, Cissy?! Sirius wanted to scream. Instead, he hissed. “Shh … sss … hissh,” she whispered with a wink at Harry. “Did I say it right?” she asked.

“Yes, and no, I’m fine. Thank you,” Harry answered politely.

“What did you say?” Lucius asked, still grabbing at his forearm with a wince.

“She asked if Harry needed a potion to help him sleep. Sometimes when he … he gets headaches and then he can’t close his eyes,” the boy – Harry’s cousin? – explained. “Moony started writing down what he says when he speaks in Parseltongue – like, phone-net-ly,” he attempted.

“Phonetically,” Narcissa corrected. “Yes, Remus really has an ear for language. It took him what – three years to learn Mandarin?”

“He taught us some,” Harry offered. “Sev hates it though.”

“Yes, he’d have a negative association,” Lucius remarked. “But Parseltongue?”

“It helps with my reading because it is simpler to sound out, and sometimes it is the only thing Harry will respond to, so we have all been learning.”

“I’ve just always known,” Harry said. Draco was right. Something about him was off. Narcissa tensed.

“I know how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’,” Draco piped it.

“Well. I, for one, need a potion. Or a drink,” Lucius said.

“It is the same word for both,” Harry said, perhaps trying to be helpful but coming off as pedantic. “Hissh – but seriously, you guys. I’m fine. I promise.”

“You need to put some Nivea on it, and you need stop using that accursed book to do your calculations. That is why it is bothering you, you realise,” Sirius, as Narcissa, scolded Lucius in a low voice that might well have itself been serpentine in tone. “Draco, darling,” she adjusted, “why don’t you tell Harry and Dudley all about the players Falcons are targeting in this transfer window. Sport-talk helps, too, doesn’t it?”

Harry nodded. “But my head really doesn’t hurt. Seriously, its fine.”

He was lying. Or learning. Narcissa wondered how long they would be able to keep the beast at bay. “Dudley, do they have transfer windows in football, too? Is Sir Alex bidding on anyone you and Sev rate?”

“Yeah and I mean, I’m sure he is, but I don’t support Manchester. In all fairness I don’t think my dad does, either. He just likes winning.”

“And hates Liverpool,” Harry smirked.

“Really! No sense of loyalty from you lads at all. This is why I’m convinced you won’t be sorted into Hufflepuff.”

“With respect, my Lady, I won’t be going to Hogwarts at all,” Dudley said. Draco sniggered. Harry shot him a warning glance.

“And no ambition! Tisk! Tisk! That’s Slytherin out. I hope you are as smart as Severus and Remus swear to, otherwise its to be – no, I’ll not condemn you to nightmares so shortly before bed.” Sirius saw what she was doing without entirely comprehending the necessity of the action. She was reminding all three of them of who they were in relation to one another, of interests they held, secrets they kept and arguments they must somehow cherish.

“What do you know that I don’t?” Lucius asked upon being ushed out of a room whose laughter promised a long night to come.

“What secrets can a few six year olds have that would possibly merit your concern or esteem?” Narcissa smiled.

“Whenever I touch Harry -”

“I told you! I’ve told you repeatedly. It is that damn diary you insist on keeping.” She was lying by way of revealing a certain truth. Sirius was intrigued.

“It’s a calculator,” Lucius dismissed. “I write equations and it provides solutions faster than I would otherwise work them out.”

“It is a curse!” Narcissa accused, again ear-splittingly shrill. “Why would you choose to compile your budget in a misdated student timekeeper the Dark Lord entrusted to you? Honestly – whatever titles and laurels the man afforded himself, did Voldemort ever manage an estate? Why would you entrust your own to one of his artefacts?”

“You can’t just say his name like that,” Lucius said, horror stricken.

“Why not?” Narcissa asked, crossing her arms. “I’m entitled. For the time being at least. When Her Majesty absolves me of my role I might start feigning respect for or finding humour in this mockery of our nomenclature. Now. The Diary, if you please, my Lord.”

“It’s a calculator, Cissy.”

“Then why can I see your Mark?” she demanded. “Come, let me show you. The thing is stealing at your very soul!”

He must not have acquiesced.

It was night and Narcissa was tiptoeing through a blackened room, with naught but the limited light of her wand to guide her.

“Alohomora,” she whispered, crouched before a writing desk. It gave way after a few more attempts and she shook her head, considering how she might discreetly invite Professor Flitwick around to help her increase security. There were children here in this household, for goodness’s sake! How could Lucius be so very negligent?! Finding what she was looking for in the drawer, she took a quill from the tabletop and replaced her wand in its stand to act as a makeshift lamp.

Dear Tom, she wrote on a blank page. I’ll not waste your time with pleasantries or platitudes. My name is Black and I do not imagine you ignorant to what I can do to memory.

Hello, Narcissa, the page answered. I was wondering when I might make your acquaintance. I concur, let us not waste time. Tell me, how is young Harry?

I rather suspect you well know. You are one and the same, are you not?

I’ll warn you, if you proceed with whatever ideas that you harbour around trying to destroy me, that statement will prove truer than it is at present.

Sirius choked. His cousin considered. Snape had warned her against her operation, and while it would be foolish of her to imagine that she knew more than her former foster-son about the Dark Arts themselves, too much of her life had been lived in half-truths meant to conceal for her to take Tom’s treat seriously. Were she a preserved memory whose only purpose was to endure unto herself, surely she would make similar claims. No. She had to do this. Lucius was too close to knowing, as it was. What might happen if he ever thought to write words as opposed to numbers in this leger? Would this memory of his master confess his present whereabouts to him as well? What might he ask? Narcissa did not want to risk finding out.

I feel it fair to warn you in return, if you do anything to harm that child –

But before she could finish, the ink faded only to reform once more.

If you meant to break me as you did dear Bellatrix, you would have done so when we first became reacquainted at the river’s edge.

Narcissa was livid. Within her mind, Sirius felt as though he were on fire. He wondered if she was not visualising those witch hunts from the Hogwarts classes that she alone had found interesting, if instigating a satanic Black Mass to evoke Muggle misogyny seemed a tempting course to take to be rid of this particular shadow. Sirius grew vaguely conscious that Remus worked in a bar that existed to launder funds for and traffic arms and munition to Catholic separatists across the narrow sea and knew Narcissa to be debating asking him if he had any contacts in the Vatican she might tempt into a new Inquisition. No, she decided ultimately. Remus was weak and if he had any convictions, he lacked the courage to stand behind them. Besides, the Dark Lord had cared for himself far more than his purported cause – and she was hardly Barty Crouch. This was simply how Voldemort operated. She smiled. He had shown his hand and she had dealt herself one better.

Let us be clear. I knew you then, she underlined for empathies. I did not know him. He’s family now, and you were undone by a mother’s love once before. Fear me, Tom. If Harry continues to suffer, if his head hurts from so much as a bad sinus infection, I will find you in his mind and mutilate you beyond your deepest mortal dread. Her handwriting had grown quick and rather sloppy. She was holding the quill like a knife.

If such bears any relation to the truths that you hold, it pains me to think that I was so ignorant to your talents. You might have done more for the cause, the book seemed to mock.

As I had hoped we had established, I’m a Black. I’d have never taken the knee, or the needle for that matter. Like I’d date myself with a tattoo that had been in trend? It’s been five years and the only people doing sleeves are professional athletes, everyone else is altering their lower back. Tacky, but not yet tasteless like the Dark Mark.

Sirius barked back a laugh. Of course, his pretty, petty cousin would be so shallow in her critique. Or – was this strategy? This ‘Tom’ did not seem to know how to respond the way he evidently did to numbers and other outright assaults.

And as to talents, I don’t delude myself. Narcissa continued to scribble. But I was able to accomplish something you yourself were not – you ready? Dumbledore actually hired me to handle Hogwarts’ bookkeeping. I know right? Laughable. But the part-time post did give me access to, oh, the Potions store cabinet and I am certain you cannot be ignorant to who currently holds the seat of Master?

She produced and poured a vessel of translucent yellow liquid into her ink quell, dipped her quill, turned it for a few rounds as she was mixing a potion, then resumed writing tracing over the S Tom had already written in response. Was this what she had stolen when Tonks had gotten Snape to look the other way?

Sectumsempra - ♡ !!!, she wrote. The book began to bleed ink. I know right? Basilisk Venom is like a Category A Banned Substance that the little bitch just keeps it next to his Bezoars where students could theoretically access it, but he won’t snort a line with me at parties anymore because to quote, he ‘has kids or something’. Disappointing.

She looked at what she had written, waiting for it too, to vanish, but nothing happened. “Well, that seems liable,” she frowned, ripping the page from the binding, insinuating it, and writing on the next - And people say I can’t do magic. Learn some maths, Lucy. XOXO – Bl.#3

Sirius smiled. Regulus had left a note, too. He wondered if Narcissa knew this.

And then he realised.

Even if she had not, it was now too late.

“HA!” she grinned. “Knew I would get it out of you eventually! So that is what the two of you were up to, what Dumbledore and the Ministry wanted to keep quiet. Oh … oh I get the motive, but when you think of the damage done in the name of political expedience. Bet we can turn this into a Class Action – ” Narcissa rambled excitedly.

Sirius could feel his own cold sweat in the frosty air of the field in which they had fallen.

“Are you insane?” Sirius barked, “You openly assaulted Voldemort, and now he … and now Harry might well -”

“Don’t say it. Don’t. Secrets like this don’t tend to stay that way. You know that.”

“Who knows?” Sirius swallowed.

“That I am sure of? Just me, Severus and yourself. Draco knows something is off, but as you saw, he cannot name what it is. Lucius knows nothing for certain and is easily misdirected. Dumbledore might well suspect.”

“And that scares you?” he inquired.

“Tell me it shouldn’t.” It sounded like a plea.

Sirius wished it were not too late for words. Regulus had been wrong. In the worst-case scenario, Tom Riddle had not been lying when he promised to take more from Harry should Narcissa proceed with her plan as she had; and the alternative was far removed from truly being preferable. Voldemort would try to kill her through Harry, and had she not insinuated that Snape was also his enemy? It was more than Sirius wanted to consider. He knew from experience that Snape could fight back and could hold his own.

“Sometimes you have to become the monster you are trying to defeat,” he said, resigned to the ruin.

“No chance of that happening in my case,” Narcissa countered, perky and probably still imagining insults framed as courtroom arguments. “I’ll never be a great witch by any stretch. But I can read the runes in which our laws are written, and I can read minds, and maybe, just maybe with a bit of help I’ll be able to change a few of both.”

Sirius shook his head. “I still don’t like it. How could you have involved Snivillus in this?”

Narcissa shrugged. “He knows how to play to and off both sides. He is naturally on Harry’s, even if he struggles to show it.”

“He is the last person James would want raising his son.”

“He was Lily’s first choice.”

“I hate it. I hate him, always have, before he even gave me reason I’d expect. Though he has never ceased. Harry! And Remus! How did it happen?” he demanded.

“Must I enlighten you? You hated him because the world you were born into only exists from the outside. Because he craved it, because from your position you felt comfortable judging that he was wrong to, because you hated finding that in yourself.”

“That is not what I was asking, and you well know it,” Sirius spat.

“How does anyone hook up?” Narcissa bit. “Bants and booze and – have you ever been with a man? Do I need to explain the mechanics of sex or is that something you had sorted by the time you were like twelve? Now shut up and listen to something that might actually benefit you to hear!”

“Cissy,” he said flatly.

“You hated him because he was poor, ugly, painfully lonely, because these are qualities we are collectively given to fear, which we thus despise when so blatantly confronted with though we all prefer to imagine ourselves as empathetic. You hated him because he was good at something we grew up believing made our family unique, special, because that concept reminded you in itself that you were and are a Black. You rejected us, you rejected me, but you were jealous of the attention I gave him. You hated that Reggie came to admire him as a result. You hated that he fought back, you hated that sometimes he won.

“In summary, Sirius Orion Black, you never truly hated Severus Snape. You hated yourself. It’s a shame, really. Something else neither of you will ever admit to having in common. You might have otherwise been famous friends. He’s like you in all the best ways. He’s cunning, brave, terribly witty, and selfless when it really counts. I know it hurts,” she stressed, feigning or finding sympathy. “I know, but you’ve been gone a long time. Remus is where he wants to be, and Harry is where he needs to be right now.”

“But I’m his godfather.”

“Half of him,” Narcissa dismissed, then paused. “Anyway, you may well get your wish soon enough. That part of the property belongs to Lucius in name, but it is no longer attached to his title, and as such I’ve no claim on it.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It is where they keep the bomb.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, it is,” Narcissa affirmed. “And the fact that we were attacked there stands to indicate that when I surrender my title to conform to your stupid request, Malfoy Manor will no longer be my property either, strictly speaking, and Dementors are nothing is not pedantic.”

“You are a better solicitor than Corban Yaxley.”

“Yes, well never mind that. Your parole agreement states that you are not allowed to leave my domains, not Lucius’. Don’t fret, I’ve made several investments in my own name, its only ... the sole residential property I own the mortgage to, Severus and Remus are leasing it from me, Severus not wanting me to pay off his father’s debts outright when we took him in.” She paused to breathe. “I’m robbing him blind. Sort of,” she winked.

Sirius could not give a damn about any of that. This was the first good news he had been given in five years. “So, I will get to live with Harry?” he grinned.

“You may have to is what I am saying. They have two kids, a pony and a snake in a two-bedroom townhouse. You had more space at Azkaban. You’ll have to get over your hatred and hesitations fast.”

Sirius nodded slowly, realising that in all of the memories he was shown, neither Snape nor Moony had once directly featured. What was she not saying? It did not matter. He had not liked the fact that Snape had so easily usurped a life he had not wanted – but now that he seemed to be living one he might himself have once craved? No. He could fix this. He would fix this. He was a Black, after all, and though it was far from his most attractive trait, Sirius was used to getting his way in the end.

Narcissa gave him a knowing look but said nothing.

Chapter Text

“You already know what you are getting?” Remus Lupin inquired over Severus Snape’s indifferent remark around the gift exchange at his place of employment. In truth, he did not care much about the answer in and of itself. He was simply determined to turn their discussion into an argument prior to their arrival.

This would allow for things to feel less awkward when Severus invariably left him at the punch bowl to seek McGonagall’s company, spending the entirety of the evening at his rival’s side exchanging wry insults, whilst Remus himself fell into boredom, reminiscence, and mild seasonal depression.

He hated office-dos.

Lately, he hated Severus – or at least had come to resent him for reasons that sounded ridiculous when he tried to name them in his mind. It was tempting to simply cite his condition, as he often did in such incidences where control was difficult to maintain, but nothing had altered so tremendously of late as to upset his cycle. Perhaps that was the problem.

“It was rather curious,” Severus drolled, ignorant to the sum of Remus’ silenced complaints which experience told would soon be reinforced. “A few weeks back, Minerva circumvented me on the way to the Great Hall, stating that Miss Tonks had expressed a concern that my office did not inspire the sense of intimidation I otherwise work so hard to instil in students and staff.”

“She said that?” Remus softened deceptively. “I think it is sweet that you hang up all the drawings Harry and Dudley make for you. If anyone asks, tell them they were all done in therapy, that the stick figures most recognisably you are their boggarts or something. Or own it. From what I’ve read most mafia dons are doting fathers.”

“You truly cannot stand that I have a life and identity outside of this household, can you?” Severus named the problem meanly, without recognising the truth in what was said. “Well, evidently, you are not alone. I am of course paraphrasing. What Tonks said was that my desk didn’t fit with my ‘fake ass vibe’, and upon losing the standard two points for her poor vocabulary selection, she went to pains to explain that her uncle had a series of photographs of himself with the petty despots he endeavours to emulate in his dealings with the Ministry, and would it not be a good idea for her to metamorphosise into various guises that I might do the same. Minerva loved it for Secret Santa, and I spent about an hour in the company of Kissinger, Umbridge, Crouch, Saddam, Castro, Lockhart, Thatcher -”

“Lucius?” Remus suggested. Severus threw another one of his, Remus’, coloured cardigans on the bed, and unfolded another bright – almost festive – sweater, squinting as though this act would make it shrink to fit. This occurred every year at the holidays, and Remus was always of the mind to buy his boyfriend one of his own when such things went on sale in January, but he suspected that part of him liked the idea that Christmas made Severus feel small and insignificant as well and had thus never acted on the kinder impulse. How long had these problems been simmering under the surface?

“No,” Severus frowned, slipping the sweater over his head, swimming in it, “for some reason he escaped their list. Perhaps because I absolutely refused to be photographed with Miss Tonks’ approximations of her Aunt Bellatrix and second-cousin Black.”

“Pity,” Remus remarked, crossing his arms as he evaluated the figure his partner cut, wondering how he had ever wound up with such a whiney little twink. “The contrast to actual pictures we already have of you with both of them would surely have proven jarring.”

“We’ve not,” Severus puzzled. “What are you on about? When was I ever in a picture with the two of them? When were they, for that matter, ever in such close proximity to one another?” He paused, considered, then added dryly, “Aside from Azkaban. That must be awkward for all present.”

“Harry’s first birthday party?” Remus mocked, conscious of how offensive Severus would find the reminder. “We literally have half an album of the two of you smoking and shooting one another death glares over having shown up in the same band shirt.” ‘Half’ was reaching, but the amount was not insignificant on the whole.

“Strange artistic choice for an album that ought to be preserving pictures of delight over new playthings and overpriced cake,” Severus quipped.

“You have no idea how hilarious James and Lily found it,” Remus smiled. For a moment, Severus looked taken aback at the idea of the perfect Lily Potter who existed in his mind laughing at his expense, but his features quickly returned to their practiced impassive.

“Was Bellatrix also present?” he sneered. “That must have proven a right laugh as well.”

“Narcissa has a group picture on the mantle in her study where you both feature. From Christmas. Presumably the one where you fucked her on Sirius’ bed.”

“When I was … sixteen,” Severus squinted, seeming truly perplexed at the mild aggression on Remus’ part. “We’re still ten nights from the full moon,” he remarked – not, Remus noted, disdainfully. “Did I do something to cause you offence?”

“You ordered your prefects to circumvent the mystery of the little gift-exchange by having them ask all of their other professors whom they had selected in the draw, and then forcing poor Professor Quirrell to trade his pick for whoever you got who was not McGonagall.”

“Your point, Remus? She did the same thing - or would have if Sprout had not sought her out to surrender my lot in accordance with tradition. We’ve done a version of this every year since I started.”

“That is the point, isn’t it?” Remus snapped.

“Clearly,” Severus agreed, “though I will admit I am struggling to see yours.”

“You spent an entire weekend inventing a battery for that … what is it again?”

“It is a laser pointer. You’ll understand the entertainment value as the night progresses, I’m sure,” the Potions Master smiled darkly. “Remus, you can’t in any seriousness be suggesting that you are jealous of my office banter.”

“You baked – or at least melted and repackaged – Every Flavoured Beans for her,” Remus continued.

“Those are edibles. They are meant to share.”

“With your colleagues. Over Christmas! It isn’t fair. We are going to this party; it will be the last time I really get to see you for two weeks and I know you are going to ignore me the whole time. These things are miserable for me.”

Upon the exchanging of presents, Severus would surely take pain to explain to his colleague what a laser pointer was and what it was good for, in such a fashion that they two would find cause to spend the entire evening playing with the damned thing, ignorant to or uncaring of how very rude this was.

Remus would be left to his own limited devices, and the isolation would prove the best moments of the evening.

Eventually, he could assume based on experience with such affairs, Dumbledore would offer his regular overtures that Remus would make a fine addition to staff, which Narcissa would echo in such a fashion that her own ambition remained plain. She wanted him to step down as Mayor. On what grounds he could not begin to fathom. Not that it mattered. She would never get her way if he could help it.

Hearing what was up for topic, Vector and Sinistra would assuredly then begin making ‘predictions’ over the next appointment’s demise – ‘predictions’ that had an odd way of sounding like death threats to everyone save for Trelawney, who was herself either ignorant to the war the two women were willing to wage over fractions and factions, or who simply would not be undone by the pair.

In due course, the discussion would be dropped when McGonagall, annoyed by the Seer’s dirge, would rightly snap at Vector that it did not matter if both the school’s secretary and Defence professor were replaced by former Gryffindors – House Slytherin’s numerical supremacy hardly equated to the Serpents proving a voting bloc. Hagrid invariably sided with Dumbledore, sentiment the half-giant would echo with a tipsy ‘Great man!’; the DADA seat, who had in fact come out of their accursed House in his last two incarnations, never stayed long enough to vote on anything of consequence; Mrs Malfoy neither understood nor accepted the democratic process enough to play along with it; and Snape put up a decent show of protest, but always sided with her in the end, sometimes even prior to engaging in his routine theatrics.

This would prompt Severus to remark that death indeed seemed preferable to company, announce his ambition to teach Defence (if only for the fringe benefits), before returning his attention in its entirety to whatever spat he had been having before Minerva McGonagall dared imagine that someone else at this school could prove half as taxing as he himself.

Remus would be left to feel dejected, his presence again forgotten at the point he had ceased to be the punchline.

Not that he wanted to teach Defence.

He just wanted his boyfriend to pretend that he could, that he would be up to the task if ever it were offered in earnest, and not for ulterior motives.

“Hardly!” Severus snapped at the sum of Remus predictions.

“And do you know what the worst of it is?” Remus demanded. “I have this sinking suspicion that you don’t think I’d be able to handle it.”

“Teaching?” Severus clarified, insultingly bewildered.

“Defence Against the Dark Arts, specifically and in general. You act as though my contributions to the cause are of no worth whatsoever, not only in the context of tacitly allowing your colleagues to make me the punchline of their long running joke. I risk my life reporting on pack activity, and you pretend – ”

“Has it ever occurred to you that your skills in argument and oration contribute to my ability to oculate myself to the dangers you face?” Severus returned silky. “Remus, you cannot both contend common prejudice and contradict yourself by stating that the work you do amongst your kind puts you at risk in any way. I was terrified when I learned your secret. Terrified. To the point that … do you realise why Minerva forced me into making an Unbreakable Vow?”

“Because she suspected you would attempt to break it immediately?” Remus guessed, precisely as he had at fourteen.

“Because she knew you would never let me come to harm on account of the bias and bigotry you were forced to suffer,” Severus reworded. “And she was right. About all of it. I ran to find Lily immediately, worried that your association put her in physical danger, only to discover that you had just risked your personal safety to save the life of someone more than willing to ruin yours with his last breath. That was probably the most humanity I’d ever been shown to that point in my life. So, understand for a moment that when you say that lycanthropes pose no great societal danger, I take you at your word. Everyone who knows you is bound to. If you feel we make light of your missions for the Order, it owes only to the fact that you cause them to sound like the bloody Sino-British Society, where we will go and I will be frankly lost to something that supposedly defines some part of me, having no real cultural context for it beyond the ability to say duì bu qǐ wǒ bù míng bái wǒ nán péng yǒu yǒu,” he recited with more elongated pauses than were common to his English, and to far less effect. Remus smiled in spite of himself.

“Sorry, I don’t understand, my boyfriend however – that actually was not bad,” Remus translated. “Proud of you.”

“Want to hear my Parseltongue? Hsspht ssh siii, sh sh ach.” Severus had shut his eyes as though this act would help him visualise the words he had once read, rather than heard and comprehended. Small wonder he bragged about his abilities in Latin when his efforts towards linguistics were otherwise so faltered.

“Harry is your son now?” Remus asked.

Tossing another sweater to the pile of those that had no come close to fitting, Severus replied snidely, “I don’t know the word for ‘child of my dearly departed childhood friend whom I have been forced into fostering because my boss is a megalomaniac and my own former foster-mum is a meddling cunt.’ I’ve not your gift for linguistics, Wolf. But I got the part about not understanding, or?”

“To be fair, I don’t know that particular translation either. We’ll stick with ‘son’,” Remus said, suddenly wondering if there were not more to the sentiment than his partner’s inability to be scathing in a foreign tongue.

“What?” Severus asked, having seemingly decided on a festive pullover that he thought suited him. It did not.

“I think … I think you understand something about Harry that I do not,” Remus confessed. “It is not just the way you treat my contributions to the Order. You always … whenever something questionable, something concerning comes up, you shut me out rather than ask my opinion or expertise. It is as though you do not respect – ”

“Fine,” Severus gave. “There are certain aspects of Harry’s – we’ll call it ‘condition’ –  that I feel escape your capacity. It is not a matter of respect, it – with Harry’s headaches, the only thing I’ve found that really helps him recover is to remind him unequivocally of who he is. At times you treat him as though he were James.”

“As do you, albeit in the worst possible manner,” Remus bit.

“I treat him as I would any child in my care,” Severus dismissed. If that was true, Remus thought, it was terrifying. “You encourage his darker impulses without having any understanding of the possible ramifications. It is not some complex incantation. Even Cissy can manage with her limited magic. Hell, even Dudley has a general grasp of the idea.

“When Harry isn’t feeling quite himself,” Severus continued, now slightly annoyed, “I talk to him about Quidditch, about school, about playground occurrences, about whatever argument he is in with Dudley or one of his little friends, about anything that conforms to his personal scope of experiences and thus self. When you regale him with your fondest memories of Lily and James, I do not claim to understand why exactly, but something within him breaks, and then it is back to tears and hissing.”

“There is something you are not saying.”

“Only because it is not my intention to critique, and you seemed uniquely determined towards offence. Remus, I’m sorry about Christmas. You are right, I ought to have discussed it with you before agreeing, but I still fail to see how it would have made a difference. At some point you are going to have to accept that I work in a profession that occasionally requires sacrifice. That I can’t fuck off from whenever I’m not feeling it – ”

“Perhaps I’ll accept the DADA post when it is inevitably put on offer,” Remus spat.

“Out of spite or genuine conviction?” Severus nearly laughed. Remus wanted to strangle him. “Honestly, Remus! That is a level of petty that I aspire to. What is going on with you? You needn’t prove to me that you have it within you to fight back against would-be oppressors. But if you are so determined, do us a favour and take out a life insurance policy before applying, and do your upmost not to be struck by lightning while attempting to smuggle a copy of ‘Hogwarts, A History’ to the Securitate via a Portkey in the form of an IKEA hexagon on the evening when the first cherry blossom comes into bloom. That was my prediction for how the next guy gets it,”he explained, “and, you know, in cases of possible homicide, the first suspect is the spouse. It would be a bit awkward is all I am saying.”

“You actually put money on that?” Remus blinked. Little wonder they were always broke.

“It is not something you can abstain from. It ‘fosters a sense of community at Hogwarts’,” Severus seemed to recite, “and we are all obliged to participate on these grounds. Everyone puts five Galleons into the pot, which is divided three ways at the end of term. First for whose prediction came closest, usually Trelawney, which is insane because all of these are made before new applicants are even being considered, though Vector and Pomfrey have both won it once apiece since I started. Then for timing – the victors here being as random as the occurrences themselves – and finally for whose prediction made everyone laugh hardest, so either Flitwick or Hagrid, though I suppose in the communal sprit of things ‘we are all winners here.’”

Remus shook his head. “You are all going to hell, you are.”

“Are you sure you want to join the festivities?” Severus smirked.

“Fuck, I don’t even want to attend the damned Christmas party. But I think I would own this competition. Let me rewrite yours?” Remus gave a mischievous grin.

“Can’t, I already submitted it.”

“Goddamnit, Snivey. You’ve a Marauder at your immediate disposal and you deny yourself my gifts! And here I thought Slytherins were ambitious. That is ninety Galleons a term we could be raking in.”

“Eighty-five, DADA does not participate in the pool for reasons I would think obvious. Proud of you all the same.”

“Your influence is beginning to have an effect,” Remus admitted. “More the pity. I doubt you and I could work together.”

“I would not be too concerned,” Severus shrugged. “I should doubt Dumbledore is preparing to ‘surprise’ you with another request.”

Remus frowned. “Why else would this affair be open to immediate family? Usually, you celebrate Christmas amongst yourselves and only invite children and partners around at the end of term when the post is open to applicants. Most of them last more than ten weeks. I suspect Cissy is behind it.”

“As do I, though not to lure you in as you imply. I mentioned that Vector’s brat is up from Uagadou? I have no doubt that Lucius is dying to meet the girl.”

“Why is that?”

“Her father is Ali Bashir.”

“The carpet guy who brought the Falcons?” Remus snorted, disbelieving.

“The same.”

“Vector certainly gets around.”

“Not really. The two were together for four hours during an economic conference where she was presenting a paper and he was presumably engaging in blackmail, extortion, and whatever else qualified for ‘business as usual’ before he coined the term ‘soft-diplomacy’ and ruined sport in the process,” Severus explained dryly.

“It is pointless to try and bait the product of this unholiest of unions into conversation about Quidditch or business, though,” he continued. “Uagadou students are all Animagi, Sana’s takes the form of a rhinoceros, and though I cannot yet prove it I’ve reason to suspect that Tonks has been the one setting all of the fires for her to stomp out. I imagine I have you to blame for her ability to sneak around the castle, but I have no idea how she got her hands on quite so many fireworks. I talked to Filch and he did not have anything of a collection she might try to confiscate.”

At this Remus beamed. “I am pleased my legacy is being so honoured.”

“If you get bored at the party you can always offer your assistance in her schemes. I’ll warn you, though, she is half in love with you.”

“No.”

“The number of times I’ve heard you referred to by some variation of my ‘super-hot boyfriend,’”  Severus taunted.

“How uncomfortable for both of us,” Remus grimaced. “I expect I’ll confine myself to a place by the punch bowl as per tradition, then.”

“If you spike it –”

“Always,” Remus confirmed, in no real mind for caution, “go on.”

“Use the Muggle stuff,” Severus advised. “It has a milder taste which encourages everyone to overestimate their tolerance, which always proves amusing.” Ever the prig, he could not help but to add, “But warn me once you’ve done it. There will be children present and I don’t want to risk –”

“It’s a simple evaporation charm,” Remus dismissed, “being that alcohol turn to gas at a far lower temperature than any of the other additives.”

“Stupendous, Lupin. You are full of surprises tonight.”

“You are belittling as ever.” Remus crossed his arms. Severus turned away in frustration.

“I give up. You can stay at home.”

“So easily?” Remus baited. He was just beginning to enjoy their banter.

“The office in near unto its entirety is reading Lockhart’s latest,” Severus answered as though this were a subject of genuine concern. “It is sure to come up in conversation and you are obnoxious and infuriating when mildly offended.”

“Why would I be offended by a piece of quality young adult fiction?” Remus asked, still unable to properly gauge when the Potions Master was having a go.

“Wanderings with Werewolves?”

Remus’ amber eyes widened with excitement. “Please, please tell me you are planning to surprise me with a copy for Christmas.”

“I did not realise you were a fan,” Severus sneered.

“I’m not!” Remus swore, actively combating a fit of laughter. “I did, however, once meet the man. Naturally I felt compelled to do everything within my power to ruin his promotional reading. Apropos, I was wondering why his name came up on Minerva’s list of despots – has she also had the pleasure?”

“No idea, “ Severus answered. “I just know she has been reading it like near to every other member of staff. For my part, I refuse to give that man money.”

“As well you should,” Remus confirmed. “Even so – ugh,” he paused, evaluating Severus’ sorry attempt to dress like someone ready to celebrate the birth of their alleged Lord and Saviour rather than show up his usual priest or dark, eastern mystic demanding penance for one’s mortal sins ensemble. Colour, Remus decided, did not suit him in the slightest. Severus looked miserable and misplaced in a cosy sweater, like a House Elf who had just been fired and forced into clothes. “Just swap those trousers for leggings and it will look cute,” Remus advised, receiving a rude hand gesture in return which he met with a grin. “I, for one, want to go fulfil my social potential to its furthest extent and hide in the corner of a party I don’t want to be at with my nose in a book.”

“Not without first telling me how you once ruined that asshole’s reading.”

“I’ve never had a great employment record. Owing to my condition, I’ve often found myself dismissed during the standard six-month trial period, but in one instance, at least, I cannot make any claims to racism proving a factor.”

“That has likely been the case on more than one occasion. You forget you were taught by most of us, and the rest know you socially,” Professor Flitwick chided, however correctly. Remus raised his glass with a smile of recognition.

The party was beginning to settle after supper. Their patchwork family had arrived when it was in full swing, Harry and Dudley darting off the moment it became plain they were not the only children present, wanting to join in the games in which the others were engaged. Severus found Minerva immediately and amused himself for a while with the Laser Pointer he had purchased for this expressed purpose, leading her along the wall with a light that seemed to vex her particularly, until Arthur Weasley’s question of the item’s power source led to a conversation about the combustibility of alkali metals used in Muggle Batteries that Remus could not follow and had no cause to try.

Making the rounds, he had joined in Vector and Sinistra’s game of suggesting all of the Muggle locations Quirrell might visit if he was serious about taking a sabbatical to take a Lockhart-esque voyage to deepen his understanding, ranging from a hot-dog eating contest in New York, to various centres of martial conflict, to ‘the most magical place on earth’ – which was either an amusement park or an LSD trip in Belgrade, depending on who was offering the description. Remus, for his part, had recommended the vending machine outside of the corner laundry in Cokeworth which continued to fascinate him. He was not certain if these things existed elsewhere.

Professor Trelawney found him in a panic, evidently she had been consulting her crystals (as one does) and saw the Grim in his immediate future, which Remus interpreted to mean a looming job offer he half planned to accept if only to spite Narcissa, reasoning that while he might have to cut down his hours at the pub, his civic duties, limited as they were, would not interfere with fulltime employment and he would thus be able to keep blocking her bids to gentrify the town he had adopted as his own. He nodded at Dumbledore from across the room, who had been sharing a pint with his brother Aberforth and the groundskeeper Hagrid, but did not approach him to make good on his lingering bad mood.

Eventually, he had settled himself beside Narcissa and her trainee Molly, who were collectively crooning over the Celestina Warbeck playing on the wireless, occasionally braking their odd duet to remind the sugar-filled children running amok of their better manners. ‘Bookkeeping can be taught,’ Narcissa insisted. ‘Bossing either comes naturally or it does not, and when Molly’s interview was interrupted by my impertinent  niece bursting in, without missing a beat, she turned around told her to leave, knock, and try again, this time phrasing her desire as a request and remembering to say please. I hired her on the spot!’

Remus was amused by their office-friendship, for Narcissa was otherwise the sort of women to appear in glossies women like Molly openly mocked, but whose make-up tips the followed religiously when time allowed. Molly, for her part, was the kind of woman Narcissa would otherwise – insensitivity –  assume was in need of charity, who would either be victimised by good intentions or scorned as someone lacking initiative were she openly unreceptive. Now, the only argument that seemed to exist between them was if Gilderoy Lockhart was warranting of mockery or respect.

And this was something that Remus felt he could settle for them with surprising ease.

“Likely,” he addressed Professor Flitwick, “but let me wallow in self-pity. Tis the season as they say. At any rate, I was about two months into temping at Flourish and Blotts when I was grabbed from my regular duties of stocking shelves and manning the till for what I was told was the ‘honour’ of seeing to Gilderoy Lockhart’s personal needs by none other than the great man himself.”

“Oooh,” Mrs Weasley cooed girlishly. Trelawney leaned forward in her chair. Narcissa, likely satisfied with what she had already borrowed from his mind, leaned back with a smug smile, awaiting fiasco.

“These included finding and mixing coloured ink to perfectly match his ‘periwinkle blue eyes’ for the book signing – an activity that involved an odd amount of winking I might add, running to three separate pastry shops to buy him a raspberry tart well out of season – something for which I was not reimbursed, keeping his teacup filled to his particular liking, and this all whist listening to him wax poetic his perceived greatness, quoting his books all the while – again, with a wink, expecting that I had read them. He went on to offer fully unsolicited life and career advice. In other words, Lucius,” he addressed with a nod, “you are not the first person to have seen my collection of cardigans and imagined me to have literary aspirations.”

Lucius raised his glass, commenting that at this point he would settle for Gilderoy Lockhart fanfiction.

“You sure about that?” Remus laughed with half a mind to pen a piece to read at the Manor on Christmas Day, borrowing heavily from the book he had spent that past half hour skimming. “Needless to say, I decided quickly that I could not let the good people of London suffer this same fate, so prior to the reading, I ran over to the Apothecary and purchased a jar of dried beetles, recalling from a particular potions mishap in my third year – ”

At this, widespread laughter broke out, confessing whom among his boyfriend’s colleagues had taken Potions at a level that they remembered any of it in their adult lives. Poor sods. “Apologies, continue,” Severus bade him, clutching at his sides as though it were a struggle to contain them. Remus smiled, glad he had made the bastard wait; a practiced planner and prankster, Remus had only been willing to recall this episode once when it might have the most effect.

“Cause a certain noxious gas in the most offensive way possible when consumed in quantity,” he explained to those who were confused as to what Snape, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Pomfrey and Sprout all found so amusing. “Giving that they are virtually tasteless, especially when contending with the amount of artificial sweetener the man took in his cuppa, I crushed the whole lot of them to look like tealeaves, added them to his imported Ceylon-grown-in-rosewater-bullshit and waited for them to take effect.

“By the time of the reading, he could not get a word out between farts and ended up shitting himself in front of a Daily Prophet reporter and the two hundred or so witches who had purchased tickets to attend – profits, I might add, that my employer was not sharing in. Lockhart had to refund the lot of them, and since he was hardly in a condition to be interviewed about his new release, I offered myself instead, telling Rita Skeeter everything I had gathered the reading would have otherwise contained had I not acted, keeping the discussion purely academic, insofar as Lockhart’s books can claim such a distinction. I gave a pseudonym,” he shrugged, “but ‘Romulus’, apparently, was not enough to conceal my identity from my employer and the disciplinary action to follow, but sales of ‘Holidays with Hags’ suffered, and to date there a few things of which I am prouder. Still, let’s see what this asshole has to say about lycanthropes,” he announced, opening the book to a random page.

It was a gem, but then, knowing Lockhart, they likely all were.

“Oi! Sev – how could you keep this gem from me?” he asked with faux indignation.

Severus shook his head. “I told you; I won’t give that man any money.”

“All questions of morals and tastes aside, you’ve no idea what you are missing,” McGonagall seemed to scold.

Remus cleared his throat.

“The cold wind swept through my golden hair as I approached the beast, wand and cabbage at the ready,” he read, commenting, “someone is going to have to explain the cabbage thing. Okay. With a dashing smile and a wink to the clouds threatening rain the following morning, I bid them to gather before the shining, silver moon that paralysed the soul of this otherwise kindly fellow. Suddenly, the only light to engulf us was that of my wand, which I held above my head to best display my chiselled features, and, standing like a statue to the small Greek village’s Gods of old – so we can assume he was naked from that – I cast such a spell as to make the man forget the moon’s hold, convincing him instead that he simply had an affinity for cabbage juice, having studied this particular cure under the masters of Alchemy in Alexandria whom I was quick to surpass in skill. He never transformed again. Oh. Well. Now we know. Severus, is cabbage juice an essential ingredient in Wolfsbane by chance?”

“It is not, I am sorry to say. Being that I maintain something of a correspondence with a former student who currently is studying in Alexandria, I’ll have to ask Orchard if he can obtain the literature on the subject which I’m certain Master Lockhart has referenced in his bibliography?” the Potions Master suggested sarcastically.

“You mean the acknowledgments which he begins ‘I would like to thank myself …’? Merlin’s tits!” Remus exclaimed. “This is fucking golden. Sorry Sev, it looks like you are going to have to figure out the cabbage juice portions by yourself, preferably naked, with your wand held at such an angle as to best display your chiselled features.” McGonagall burst into laughter and Severus thanked him with an ugly look.

“You can have my copy,” Professor Dumbledore offered, “I’m finished with it.”

“I finished in like a day,” Madame Pomfrey gave.

“So you are saying cabbage doesn’t get rid of werewolves?” Professor Quirrell frowned. Lucius looked at him as though he meant to have the Governors deny any budgetary request coming from the Muggle Studies department so long as Quirrell held the seat. Sinistra rolled her eyes at Vector, and even Trelawney buried her face in a palm.

Though Remus could see why the stuttering Professor always had the piss taken out of him, such had not been his intent. “Ironically,” he continued the joke on Quirrell’s behalf, “as with the dried beetles, if you consume enough of it, I would tend to think it would get rid of most living creatures in the vicinity.”

“You see, this is why I keep saying you should teach defence, … Moony. Do tell, what does get rid of werewolves then?” Narcissa said. Remus knew she was trying to rile him, for she never called him by his childhood nickname unless she intended to injure. For his part, he could not with any degree of earnest call a woman in her thirties ‘Cissy’. Between them, cosy names were quite the opposite.

“They tend to have the same problems with Daily Prophet reports as viscountesses have been said to. My answer is no, ... Cissy,” Remus smarted.

Flicking het wand at the wireless to silence its hum, Professor McGonagall  announced with an air of authority, “On behalf of the general staff, Remus, Narcissa Malfoy is no longer permitted to entertain the idea that she is personally allowed to make decisions of any sort with regards to how this school is run. But seriously, you ought to apply for the post.”

“I’m here until the end of June.” Narcissa straightened slightly.

“Cissy. A few weeks ago, when you came to me asking to borrow twenty odd albums, I assumed we’d be treated to something other than Celestina Warbeck tonight,” Severus clarified the complaint half of the staff seemed to share.

“You know what they say about assumptions, Love,” Molly Weasley chimed.

“Isn’t she perfect?” Narcissa marvelled, adding in an aside to Molly, “We’ll have to get the kids together again over the holiday at some point. Anyway, Sev,” she redirected her attentions, “if you’ll recall, I mentioned within the same conversation that I had just gotten a new dog. What. Did. You. Think. I. Had. Meant?”

Remus’ heart stopped. She could not possibly have meant to imply –

“Why would I think those statements were connected?” Severus frowned, finding no reason why a dog would need to be exposed to a host of new releases.

“Is it working for you then?” Hagrid piped in jovially.

“Yes, Hagrid, thank you. Music has really helped Snuffles to relax a bit.” Lucius gave her a prying look from across the table where he sat with their niece and her friends, including, presumably, the Animagus with blood ties to a profitable sporting franchise. “I mean, he’s still awful, ungrateful, and ill-mannered for a beast of his particular breeding,” she admitted, “but at least he stopped trying to eat at my shoes. So – that is something. Baby steps, right?”

“Maybe he would respond better to Celestina?” Professor Trelawney suggested airily.

“I doubt it,” Remus remarked quietly, though in his mind he was screaming. Sirius! She had gotten Sirius out of Azkaban! He felt he could well kiss her! Padfoot was back! After five years, his best friend was as good as free!

“Oh! I’m parched! After that reading you must be as well. Shall we go to the punch bowl and have that conversation you have been dreading then, Moony?” Narcissa suggested with a wink that told him he was right whilst she verbally cautioned his silence. “The one when I extend Dumbledore’s offer of placement, you respond that you are happy being underemployed at the pub and serving as honorary mayor of a town that doesn’t even pay you for holding the distinction.”

“I get six hundred quid a year for administrative costs,” Remus answered. He knew this game.

“That is a hundred some odd Galleons,” she answered blandly.

“That is a lot of money to most people.”

“Is it now?” Narcissa challenged.  But before Remus could win the hearts and minds of the comfortably middle class collective with left-leaning morals they would never risk living by in arguing Marxist ideas against a woman to have added bureaucracy to what had been a cooperative workplace, Narcissa’s son Draco shouted from the other side of the room, loud enough for all other conversation to cease.

“Oh come on, Tom! Stop it! We were all having fun!”

“You stop it!” Harry shouted back. “Why do you always –”

“Dad!” Dudley called to Severus, “Harry is doing it again!”

Remus’ heart sank as his partner rose to answer this summons without a look in his direction. They were his sons, too, Remus thought, at least as much as they could be said to be Severus’.

“Tom?” Dumbledore looked between Remus and Narcissa.

“Dumb,” Narcissa quickly corrected. “He called Harry ‘dumb’ and we’ll be having words about it.” She, too, got up and marched over to where the children had been playing chess. Lucius, likewise, left to see what the commotion was about.

“I should go check,” Remus began, embarrassed that he was the last to leave, for all present demonstrably the last person the children would call to in stress or strife.

“Remus,” Dumbledore said, meeting him with a kindly smile as he, too, rose. “Let us try that potion of yours in the punchbowl. I believe there is something we two have waited too long to discuss.” The Headmaster gave Harry a sidelong glance.

Remus nodded, wishing suddenly that Severus would return to contend whatever Dumbledore thought this an appropriate moment to voice.

Nymphadora Tonks sat with her back against the wall, lackadaisically engaging in a game of fetch with her cousins, one of whom had transfigured himself into an enormous hound for this expressed purpose. Heavy rain beat against the long, crystal windows of her aunt and uncle’s stately home and beside her, little Draco watched the weather as though willing it to change.  He did not notice when Snuffles dropped a wet and ragged Quaffle in front of him.

“Your go,” Tonks said as she picked it up. Snuffles gave a small whine and nuzzled Draco, who was present enough to pat him, though his eyes remained fixed on the storm. Tonks assumed it had nothing to do with the weather itself, though it could hardly be said to be helping. Draco had been like this since she had found him in the Dungeons at Hogwarts two nights before, having to employ the Marauders’ Map when he had not been in the Gents where he had told Dudley and the gaggle of younger Weasleys he had gone.

Tonks frowned, trying to piece together what might have happened. Ron had been teaching him, Harry, Dudley, and Ginny how to play chess when Draco had called Harry, who had been playing on his team, ‘dumb’ and Aunt Cissy had completely abandoned her veneer of seasonal joviality to leave the table and yell at him to mind his manners.

Tonks, who had been sitting with Sana Bashir and Bill Weasley at the time, had fought to stifle her giggles at watching her otherwise obnoxious cousin get what he had likely deserved, while Bill kept glancing at his mother, afraid that Narcissa was setting some example she would soon find cause to follow and Sana continued to skim the book Remus Lupin had discarded, disinterested in interpersonal drama between individuals she only encountered when their respective holidays coincided.

Eventually, Tonks, too, lost interest and resumed plotting with her cohorts, ready to actualise her plans only when Uncle Lucius announced that they needed to leave for Hogsmeade shortly if they wanted to make it to the Manor that evening, wondering – not yet with worry – where Draco had gotten off to.

At first, Tonks was not concerned. It seemed to take adults an age to say goodbye for they all seemed to realise midway through their well-wishes that there was a great number of things that had gone forgotten in the festivities. With the entire staff and their families present, she was in the process of reasoning that she probably still had time to sneak into the Astronomy Tower for a spot of mischief when she felt a hand hazard her shoulder.

She turned around to the best news she might have received. In two weeks’ time, at the resumption of Term, Remus Lupin had informed her, he would not officially be able to ask these kinds of favours as her Professor, but did she, per chance, happen to have the map he had bestowed upon her two years prior when she had come round to his home to serve as a distraction for the then-Slytherin Quidditch team? She had pulled it out with a cheeky smile, seeking her aunt in the crowd to give her a thumbs up on whatever act of scheming had finally been met with success. Narcissa was nowhere to be found, however, and Remus explained that Draco was also missing.

He had kept his tone light, playful even, but Tonks could tell he was worried and attempted to approach the matter as maturely as she might – pretending at once that Mr Moony of the Map in fact fancied her even half as much as she fancied him, that she was a sexy, mysterious private eye on a Top-Secret Mission with Remus, whom she had cast as a secret agent, and that Draco was some dark, destructive force threatening the safety and sanctity of the entire Wizarding World instead of her bratty kid-cousin who had thrown a fit when Ron and Dudley had presumably crushed Harry, Ginny, and himself at a game he had never played prior.

The phantasy had been fun until she and Remus had been met with reality when Draco was retrieved.

The boy had been sitting in the chair behind Snape’s desk (an item Tonks was half-surprised to learn had a function as she had never seen the Potions Master sit anywhere during lecture other than the desktop itself) frowning at a paint-and-macaroni picture Harry had made of a snake.

‘It’s not …’ Draco had murmured, then looked at her as though willing her to know something he did not want to say aloud. Tonks smiled awkwardly. She had had all of three secret legilimency lessons with Snape, and none of these had been met with resounding success.

She had no idea what Draco had been trying to tell her.

Two days later, she was growing rather concerned.

Tonks had been taken back to the Manor after the party, her mother and aunt having arranged that she would stay until Christmas and return home with her parents the following day, which meant she only had a few hours left to solve the mystery of what had Draco so down. Lucius and Narcissa were content to ignore it, presumably under the impression that Draco was angry that the weather was keeping him from having a go on his new broom – his first that would lift him more than six feet. Her parents, for their part, were not concerned at all, content to focus their conversation on dull topics like work, politics, and taxes, eager for commiseration which Uncle Lucius, in particular, was only too happy to provide as host.

It should not have been all so difficult to get Draco alone, and would not have been, had their cousin Sirius not recently moved in. Like Tonks, he seemed concerned about Draco’s well-being. As Draco expressed more of an affinity towards him in his Animagus form, he had spent the majority of the holiday thus far as Snuffles, acting for all like the guard dog he mistook Draco as needing.

But Tonks was sure that Draco would talk to her if there were not any grown-ups around. She picked up the ball and threw it as hard as she could, only for the hound to rebound. Could Sirius not take a hint?

“Lucius, I hate to say it, but you are losing your touch,” Tonks’ mother Andromeda complained. “I spent four hours and my very last nerve enduring this blow out, and for what? Cissy, you should have mentioned in the invite that you were excluding the event to family. I could have come in jeans and a jumper with my hair pulled back and my face au naturelle.”

“You wouldn’t have though,” her father coughed. Uncle Lucius snorted back a laugh as Dad covered for himself by remarking that the bottle whiskey which they were slowly killing at the fireplace mantel was of particular quality.

“Well, I could have hardly invited the Twenty-Eight with our new boarder not fully house-trained,” Aunt Cissy quipped in Sirius’ direction. His ears perked upwards as though he were debating if he cared to respond or not but thought better of it when Tonks threw the Quaffle again, causing him –  perhaps out of what had become instinct – to dart after it.

“Why? He’s hardly making much company of himself,” Mum remarked. “Kids are entertained though, for what it is worth.”

In the two years that her mother had resumed relations with her sister, the extent to which politics played a role on perception had become plain. People seemed to think that her mother was the ‘nice’ Black sister (as though such a thing existed) because she had wed outside of her social strata, whereas Aunt Cissy was publically regarded as an ‘ice princess’ because her husband had a title and estate. In truth, the two matched one another for meanness. Their respective partners were right to be weary of the two of them together and were keeping their distance.

Sirius, however, seemed to have been absent too long to have a care. At Mum’s comment, he reverted into his human form, spitting the ball out to retort, and spitting once more on the marble floors in displeasure. If he meant this to be a challenge unto itself, he had failed in his objective. Uncle Lucy raised an eyebrow but failed to remark, return his attention to Dad and their debate over Ali Bashir’s Falcons.

“That is because Narcissa won’t let me put my feet up on the couch in my human form,” Sirius said, sauntering over. “How else am I supposed to get comfortable? These things are stylish, I’ll allow,” he said of the rococo sofas adorning this particular salon, “but hardly meant for sitting. And I’m not alone in thinking that. Lucy and Ted have spent the whole morning standing by the fire, and the kids are more comfortable on the floor.” Draco caught Dora’s eyes long enough to roll his own. Sirius was probably fun and fine company once one got used to him, but she could see why her little cousin preferred Snuffles.

“They are keeping their own company,” Mum gestured toward the men with a wide sweep of her arm, “because I told Ted that if I was forced to hear one single thing more about Ali bloody Bashir he’d spend the rest of the season in my unit at St Mungo’s on a low sodium, no carb diet.”

“Damn, Andy. That is cold,” Sirius grimaced as he settled himself into an armchair, purposefully placing his dirty feet with their overlong toenails upon Aunt Cissy’s upholstery. Aunt Cissy looked bewildered at this behaviour, Mother looked bemused, and Uncle Lucy simply looked like a man who had been around the Blacks long enough to know to pick his battles. Sirius’ determination to offend their conservative sensibilities with his efforts to appear derelict and deranged clearly was not the hill Lucius was willing to die on, much, Tonks sensed, to the cur’s disappointment. The corner of her lip rose slightly into a smile while she began to wonder if Professor Snape would have been proud of her. There had been a time not all that long ago when her uncle had been of the mind to scold her for her own unconventional appearance, and it was perhaps owing to the waste these efforts had been that Sirius was not now enjoying the reception he seemed to crave.

He did not seem to make an impact at all, Tonks saw as Narcissa took up the worn-out topic of professional Quidditch. Yeah, she thought. Snape would probably get a kick out of this. She would have to make a point of telling him next time she was in detention.

“The problem isn’t that he’s all but bought himself a triple by buying up all of the best players for impossible sums, or what the price hike is doing to the internal market, or how close he’ll come to accomplishing his long-term goal of making brooms so heavily associated with sport that they cease being seen as a form of transportation in Britain, opening a market that does not currently exist for his carpets,” Narcissa claimed before falling into contradiction. “The problem is that no one is capable of talking about the game anymore. Post match referees were preferable to pretend MBAs.”

“A pretend MBA? Like what you just transfigured into?” Mum snorted. “Cissy, the problem, if there is one, is that Fifi Volpe was cited as being a transfer target and, giving the fee for breaking the five-year ban from the British leagues, there is a chance that all this could find us in court again.”

“I’ll be a lawyer again by the time it does,” Cissy shrugged.

“And Corban could well testify against you out of the spite which we all know he is capable. No. I am declaring this order of business concluded for the remainder of the holiday. Don’t think for a moment I’d not extend you the same hospitality at St Mungo’s, sweet sister,” Mum hissed.

“And?” Cissy smiled, unthreatened. “I can deal with your diet. I do a juice cleanse every year following Christmas. It saves me from worrying about my waistline when it is time to make resolutions for the coming year, which allows me to focus on meaningful improvement.”

“Meaningful improvement,” Mum repeated, then sighed. “Dora! Uncle Sirius was right. Come sit on the couch like the young lady I know you are capable of being.”

Tonks, wondering where on earth her mother had gotten this impression, shot Sirius a glare, rose and turned to retrieve Draco, at whom she winked and wiggled her nose, turning her choppy pink bob into her mother’s chestnut brown, four-hour blowout in a matter of seconds. “I’m a beauty queen,” she announced, taking her cousin by the hand and tiptoeing to the sofa in an imitation of the heels mother always – and only – wore when in her sister’s company.

“Your hair truly does look fabulous, Andy,” Narcissa smiled after having given an ugly snort at the poor impression on offer.

“It was not worth it!” Mum swore. From the look on Dad’s face, Tonks could tell that he thought the topic was as tired and trite as she seemed to rate his and Lucius’ whiskey-induced transfer-window divinations. “Seriously, four hours and the whole time she went after me ‘You are doing nothing for upkeep! You have not been caring for your curl pattern! I’m going to have to take an inch from the length, your ends are all finished!’ – honestly, she was worse than my dental hygienist.”

“Your dental hygienist?” Aunt Cissy frowned. Tonks wondered if she understood the term. “Mine always high-fives me?” Tonks, now certain there was some kind of misunderstanding, did her best to focus on her posture, on crossing her ankles rather than her legs – if only to keep from laughing, all but certain that Cissy was out of her depth. “It is the closest thing I get to positive affirmation,” her aunt went on. “Really! I’m out here fighting the good fight, practically all on my own, and the only people who bother to congratulate me on anything I make an effort towards are the muggle dentists who do my cleanings twice a year. Dobby!” she shouted. “Precure their card for my sister – you need more of that energy in your life, darling,” she told Mum, “as we are speaking of meaningful improvements.”

“No, there is no point,” Mum fell into a self-ironic pout. “I don’t floss as much as I know I should. Can you recommend a stylist though?” she asked, twisting the end of her hair unconsciously as she shot her daughter a forlorn look. Tonks had the sense of grace to return her hair to its regular bubble-gum shade.

“Fleamont Potter,” Lucius answered without pause enough for anyone to mistake the statement as being ironic. “I’ve been growing mine out for twelve years and have never had a stray hair or a split end.”

Sirius gave a snort that sounded rather like a bark, but again, everyone was either too occupied in their own thoughts to pay him any mind or feigning the act of being so. It was exactly how the adults had all contrived to treating Draco’s bad mood, Tonks realised. Perhaps she was making too big of a deal about this and he would get over whatever had upset him in short order.

“The two Galleon stuff you can get at any Apothecary?” Mum squinted. “I feel I have been so cheated. What I just put out for salon quality products to save me from the shame!”

“If it please you, you can replace the cheap stuff in the expensive packaging,” Lucius remarked, adding, “It’s how I get Severus to sort his basic upkeep. He wouldn’t touch Potter’s Hair Tonic otherwise, even after taking Harry in. Psychology,” he winked at his sister-in-law. She responded with finger guns and a clicking sound. Cringe, Tonks thought.

“When did you all become such dorks?” Sirius demanded of them.

“Childbirth,” Mum answered plainly.

“Gainful employment,” Dad muttered, sounding reserved and resigned.

“Ascension,” Uncle Lucy gave with a circular hand-gesture and a small bow.

There was a pause in which everyone looked at Aunt Cissy with a certain expectation. “What?” she sneered. “I’m still cool.”

“You never were!” Sirius barked in protest.

“Fine, childbirth, too, then. I suppose.”

“Apropos, birth,” Dad knotted his brow slightly. “You see a muggle for your teeth after the scare you had with Draco?”

Tonks bit her lip. Her father could be fairly tackles, but then Tonks had not known her mother’s family until she was twelve owing in large part to their fear and trepidation where it came to the non-magical world.

Because all Mum would say on the subject was that thinking Draco was a Squib had mellowed Lucius out, Snape had explained when she put the question to him that no single party had been at blame for the schism. Her parents had certainly done nothing wrong. As to the Malfoys, Narcissa knew nothing of muggle society beyond the prejudices that had been instilled in her from a young age; Lucius, by contrast, owing to his position in society, was privy to far more of an understanding of world affairs than would ever be made public knowledge and was equivocally paranoid.

Dad was not really one to hold a grudge, so Tonks doubted that this was a manifestation of the same. Still, there had to have been a better way of phrasing whatever it was that he was trying to ask.

“It is far less evasive,” Aunt Cissy dismissed. If she was offended, she did not show it, but then she rarely ever let anything of her inner-world slip.

“Because she flosses,” Mum explained, exasperated. “Fucking nerd,” she said, turning back to her sister. “If you didn’t, it would be every bit as awful as IVF.”

“Perhaps,” Aunt Cissy considered. “Remus is certainly afraid of the place. Can. You. Believe,” she shook her head indignantly, “that he purposefully scheduled a check-up for the boys when he knew that he would be in no condition to take them?!”

“I don’t think the NHS lets one decide,” Dad remarked. “At least the way I remember it.”

“Severus has private insurance through Hogwarts,” Uncle Lucius negated. “It would not have been a factor. The boys can get an appointment whenever, probably outside of business hours.” Seeing something in his wife’s impassive expression Tonks herself missed, he added quickly, “It was probably a medical emergency and the boys had to be seen as soon as possible, in Remus’ defence.”

“Forced me into rescheduling my whole morning when I went to check up on him and bring him his little care package,” Aunt Cissy continued to complain, “which is how I became aware that Muggles had healers that specialize in teeth to begin with. And the dentists weren’t surprised at all, that Remus had come up with an excuse and had asked a friend to intervene. He sent them with Sheila from the darts team at the pub where he works once before – can you imagine, driving all the way into Manchester in a muggle car? How irresponsible!” she exclaimed. “Anything could have happened to the boys because he can or will not face his own fears. The last time the Grangers saw him at their surgery, it was nearly a year ago – he had a rotting canine and wouldn’t let them sort it even though your … NHS evidently covers the procedure, and they were offering to treat him straight away.”

“He has an illness which is spread via saliva and a related sweet tooth. He was acting responsibility in that situation,” Sirius growled.

“Well, regardless,” Aunt Cissy dismissed. “He ought to take more care lest he set a poor example and,” she smiled. “I was the one to have the last laugh. The two, the dentists, they are a married couple, and they have a daughter around the boys’ age whom they signed up for ballet in hopes that she learns to be more sociable,” she began to ramble.

“You have to stop reading people’s minds and motives. It will age you prematurely,” Sirius slighted.

Tonks frowned and Draco shifted on her lap. She wondered if he had a better understanding of this particular constellation than she herself did. She knew that Remus had not made the best impression on Narcissa, owing to the fact that he and Sirius had been best friends at some point in their childhood, and that this friendship had effectively ended when Sirius had been sentenced to Azkaban. Sirius, for his part, seemed ready to defend Remus, who had believed all of the lies and Ministry lines, against Narcissa, who had fought tooth and nail to secure his own release. Tonks liked Remus, fancied him even, or at least would have if the fact that he was wed in all but name to her favourite professor did not hinder her pseudo-erotic phantasies. Maybe it was the same way for Sirius. Maybe he fancied Remus in a vague way he could not act on as well. Or maybe he just really did not like Narcissa. It did not seem entirely fair, though.

“But you’ve nothing against mum-talk?” Narcissa quipped. “Both Harry and Dudley had cavities, I had time and the girl was there in her little leotard and tights ready for class. Dudley’s football coach wanted him in dance lessons to help him coordinate his footwork –  apparently this is common. But there is nothing in Cokeworth of the kind and most of the schools Severus tried in the greater Manchester area were not accepting students in the middle of an ongoing course. Anyway, they had all been playing well together so Dr Granger, the wife, gave me a number when I mentioned this and now Remus has to see her or her husband every Thursday evening when he brings Dudley to Twinkle Toes.”

Two truths occurred to Tonks at exactly the same moment. The first of which was that she could not wait until Harry became conscious of exactly what ‘ballet’ entailed, for the bants would surely prove glorious. The second was that his jibes probably would not top the ridiculous distinction the school had given itself. “Mum,” she announced, “I want to go just for the name.”

“Good, I would attend the recitals just to see you trip in a tutu. I’d take the whole wing. Laughter is said to be the best medicine.”

Tonks considered this for a moment. Perhaps a moment too long.

“Dora, I was just teasing. I thought you were, too,” Mum apologised.

“It is not that,” Tonks explained. “I was just wondering since Sirius mentioned the saliva thing … Does Harry have the same thing as whatever Professor Lupin has? Is that why he is always ill? Should we be making him care packages, too?”

“No. It is not the same thing,” Draco answered bluntly. Tonks blinked in surprise. “How do you use it, to help people, I mean?” he asked of their mothers. “Mother, you use people’s secrets to make sure the real bad guys get in trouble, and Aunt Andromeda helps people with the secrets they have to hold on to. I tried to help Harry, but I ended up getting him in trouble even though it is not his fault, not most of the time, anyway, and now, now … I’ve no one to race brooms with,” he shifted. What did he not want to say?

“I will go out with you if the weather improves,” Mum answered, having exchanged a glance with Aunt Cissy that seemed to decide that the legitimacy Draco referenced would not be addressed. “Is that why you are so down, Sweetie?”

“No. Dora and I can’t think of how to help, but she only just started learning legitimacy and occlumency and I … I wanted Uncle Sev to come so he could teach me, too. But now Harry is sick again and it is all my fault.”

Tonks paled. She had not mentioned her tutoring to anyone, and could not fathom Professor Snape bringing the subject up with his six-year-old godson, especially since the only time he had seen the boy in the few weeks since they had started had been at the staff Christmas party, where he had allocated most of his time to making fun of everyone with Professor McGonagall in a corner where they thought they were being coy. Or did not and likewise did not care. Regardless, it came as a shock to hear Draco casually if cautiously announce his knowledge of these meetings.

Mum, Dad, Uncle Lucy and even Aunt Cissy certainly seemed to share in this surprise.

“Harry’s not coming?” Sirius asked at the same time Mum repeated, sounding somewhat perturbed – “Professor Snape is teaching you mind magic? I thought you didn’t want to learn.”

“Desperate times, Mummy Dearest,” Tonks answered without elaborating, hoping she would not be asked to.

Aunt Cissy peered at her and then gave the very slightest of nods. “Ah! Does he know you mean to use your talents to get out of revision?” she accused. It was unjust, but it offered Tonks the escape that she had sought.

“Not cool, Cissy,” Sirius scoffed.

“Fine! I’m not cool. I’m old and fussy and prudish and – get your gross feet off my sofa, heathen!” she snapped.

No, Aunt Cissy, you are the coolest grown-up I know, Tonks thought, looking at her meaningfully and hoping she understood. She gave a minimum inclination of her head once more, and though Tonks suspected this told that there would be a conversation to come, she continued the cover for her parents’ benefit. “Um, Snape said he understood the impulse, but unless I brought mine under control, I would never master the art anyway, so he found no conflict of interest,” she lied, paraphrasing a number of dismissals he had in fact given her over the years into something she hoped sounded concise and accurate to the magic it addressed. “You all know how he is.”

“Fucking tool,” Sirius responded.

His statement was admittedly accurate and added empathies to her half-fiction, but it annoyed Tonks none the less. Snape was her favourite professor and she had a suspicion that she was his favourite student in turn, if only for the fact that he never put much effort in to reprimanding her when he caught her entertaining her classmates. As such, she had gotten particularly good at imitating him in particular. She wriggled her nose, elongating it, and turning as a perfect copy of the Potions Master, replied smoothly, “Language, Mr Black. Two points from Gryffindor.”

Narcissa laughed, but whether at her impersonation or the fact that Sirius had fallen from the stool in which he had not been properly seated, Tonks could not decide.

Draco tugged on her robes, returning Tonks to her normal state. “I thought he might help me, too,” he said imploringly. “Mother says I am too young.”

“She’s not mistaken,” Mum agreed before Aunt Cissy could respond. “Bella was too enthusiastic when she began learning herself, started teaching me too early, and your mother far too much so. It isn’t a net positive for one’s development. You want to be a great wizard like Papa someday, don’t you?”

Draco looked to his father, uncertain, but was quick to rediscover his resolve. “I don’t care about ‘someday’ when I can’t do anything now,” he stated.

“IVF aside, I’d be damned if that were not Narcissa’s kid,” Sirius remarked, seemingly to himself.

“You can be his friend,” Tonks told Draco. “I’m sure that would help him loads.”

“I can’t though. He, well not him, but ... he – ” he stopped, looked around, and shook his head.

“What is it, Champ?” Uncle Lucius tried.

“I don’t want to say,” Draco answered.

“Perhaps, perhaps you might talk to Uncle Moony about it, then? Whatever it is?” Sirius suggested, almost helpfully.

“I don’t want Harry to get in trouble.”

“Yeah, Moony, not Snivellus,” Sirius could not help but to scoff.

“Oh, come off it!” Mum shouted at him, tossing a decorative pillow from the couch.

“No, Severus scares me too, sometimes,” Uncle Lucy admitted upon impact, trying to disguise his pleasure at the assault in and of itself.

“Cerce, Lucius. What doesn’t?” Aunt Cissy moaned, burring her head in her arms.

“Speaking of Remus, shouldn’t he be here by now?” Dad interjected. Tonks shot him a smile, thanking him for changing the subject. Draco clearly did not want to talk about it right now, and his resolve would only strengthen with everyone communicating in empty criticisms.

“I think they wanted to take the car,” Uncle Lucy shrugged.

“In this weather?” Mum frowned.

“They’d be flying above the cloud coverage. I doubt it would make much difference,” Dad said.

“Hey,” Tonks whispered to Draco. “You know you can always talk to me – whatever it is, right?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Draco whispered. “But not here. And not anywhere where we have portraits. They are never really sleeping – Mother told me.”

“They would not really need to, would they?” Tonks considered. “You want to show me your new toys?” she asked, recalling vaguely that Narcissa had ordered all of the long-dead and yet somehow still demeaning Malfoy ancestors from Draco’s chambers back when everyone had believed him to be a Squib. “I’m not super good at chess, but I bet I could show you a few tricks that would let you get one up on Ron Weasley.”

“Good idea,” Draco whispered. “Mother, may we?”

“Tea will be served at four,” Aunt Cissy nodded, “regardless if Remus and Dudley have decided to grace us with their presence at such time. Make sure you are both downstairs in the Blue Room.”

Draco thanked her and Tonks, thinking it might be the manners her mother only really attempted to instil when her sister was around, tried to curtsey and nearly fell in her attempt.

“Twinkle Toes,” Dad remarked with an eyeroll as Draco, seemingly embarrassed, led Tonks from the room as quickly as he could without seeming rude and impertinent.

Malfoy Manor was always dark and dimly lit, and the storm was doing it no favours. Though barely midday, it felt like midnight in the halls and corridors, and it took Tonks a few minutes to realise that they were not going in the direction of Draco’s chambers at all, but rather towards the front of the house.

“There is an alcove in the atrium that is fairly hidden,” he explained. “Sirius is probably on his way to my bedroom. I think he wants to help, but I don’t think he knows how. At least – the way he talks about Moony, I think he would tell him if he overheard, and then Harry would probably never be allowed to come over to play again – they might even send him to Azkaban!” he hissed in a panicked whisper. “But they can’t do that, it really isn’t his fault, and he tries to fight it, but I mean – how could he? He did not win the first time. Everyone thinks he did, but he didn’t.”

“They don’t send kids to Azkaban, Draco,” Tonks tried to assure him.

“But he’s not … Dora, he did not defeat the Dark Lord. He became him. Or at least, he does. At times. When he is stressed or upset or angry. That is what is wrong with him. That is why he always gets headaches when we play board games. And my Mum knows, and Sev knows, but they don’t know how bad it is because they aren’t there when it happens. And sometimes he lets it happen! Knowingly, he lets it happen – whenever he is losing. And it is painful, and he cries about it afterwards, or pretends it is fine when he is still … when he is still half him. And I don’t know how to help. How to make him stop. I don’t think he can.”

Tonks frowned, considering. She would not put it past her cousin to make something like this up for want of attention but were that the case he would not invent an air of secrecy around matters.

She knew from what little her mother was legally allowed to say about her job that it was not helpful to contradict delusion when a patient was having an episode.

She knew from Snape that it was easy to mislead yourself when beginning with legilimency, which was why it was critical to shut oneself off to emotion when casting the spell. She was not particularly good at it – yet, and had tried to lie to him, saying that it seemed like it would be a helpful skill to develop if she was going to be an Auror someday, to which he asked calmly what it was that he Aunt Narcissa wanted from his office, satisfied when she admitted that she did not know, but she hated the amount of secrets that existed in her family. Some of them, she worried, might well get in the way of a ministerial career.

Now that Aunt Cissy had gotten Sirius out of prison and intended to turn what might have been a simple acquittal hearing into a countersuit, she was more certain than ever that her worries were not misplaced.

But what of Draco’s demons? What had he seen – or thought he had seen – in Harry’s mind to inspire such dark premonitions? What is he was right somehow? What if she was the last to know?

Not really certain what she was meant to do, what Draco expected from her, she stated – not untruthfully, “My mum has a lot of books about this kind of thing. I’ll do some research over the holiday, and let you know what I find out, okay? I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“But you can’t tell your mother because she will tell mine how bad it has gotten and –”

“I won’t say anything!” Tonks swore, not entirely certain how that conversation would even begin but sure that she did not want to have it. “I promise, okay? It will be fine. Harry will be fine.”

“You promise?”

“I do.”

Tonks was about to suggest that they go upstairs and play a few sets, but before she could speak, they heard a knock at the door and almost as instantly, a series of lights came on in quick succession as Sirius Black ran towards it. Tonks froze, fearful of what might happen if she and Draco were discovered in their hiding space, but if he had seen them, Sirius paid no mind.

“Sorry, I overshot the exit by several miles and had to take the road back. Visibility is minimal and … Padfoot?” Remus Lupin wheezed, unseen from their limited cover.

“Moony, it is really you,” Sirius grinned in profile.

“Padfoot! Holy fuck! When Cissy said she – I didn’t dare hope, but you’re here. Merlin and Morgana! It is really you!” Remus came into view and the two men embraced. Dudley shuffled in afterwards, awkwardly looking around. When his gaze landed on Tonks and Draco, the latter put his finger to his puckered lips and Dudley redirected his gaze to his feet, awaiting introduction.

“Yeah. She’s good for something, my cousin. Sometimes. Quote me though and I’ll deny it.”

Remus took a step back and looked at him inquisitively.

“Curious ... Albus Dumbledore said much the same thing with regard to Narcissa not two nights back. Let me in to make my greetings,” he said calmly but with a slight hint of conspiracy to his tone. “We need to talk.”

Draco and Tonks looked at one another, in unspoken agreement that they were going to make themselves privy to whatever needed to be said in private.

It was the very least of what the grown-ups deserved for all of the secrets they let become lies.

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin awoke to near giggles as Harry’s garden-snake slithered across his torso in search of his master in the mess of pillows, blankets, and twisted limbs. Remus supposed that the lads were getting a bit old to seek the comfort of the bed he and Severus shared, but he could not bring himself to complain about the lack of space. He loved waking up surrounded by all of his favourite people. In fact, it did not happen nearly enough for his liking, and he suspected that rather soon such incidences would be reduced to memory.

Remus took hold of Tarquin before the snake could reach Dudley, holding him by the back of the neck as he whispered to be still or he would have to feed him to ‘Snuffles’, which served to stifle the creature’s movements. Half of the household reserved their hesitations around this particular pet and Remus could do without the commotion recognition of its presence might cause. Severus remained convinced that Trelawney’s prophecy would come to pass, that the ‘giant serpent’ (who, in reality, was barely the length of his forearm) would bring about his mortal end. Sirius, although he would voice his anticipation of this outcome whenever it came up in conversation, himself avoided the animal physically and socially, refusing to learn Parseltongue even as a practical measure. And Dudley refused any responsibility for it, though evidently, he enjoyed bragging to his class- and teammates that he had a snake and that it slept in his room – which in reality neither he nor the serpent did if such could be helped.

Dudley had sought the perceived safety of their bed the night before upon noticing that Harry had neglected to put his snake in its tank for the evening. Harry, for his part, had followed around half an hour later, not wanting to be left out. And ‘Snuffles’ must have settled himself at the foot of their bed sometime after, for Remus vaguely remembered being woken up yet again by half-supressed grunts, growls, and a statement as to where dirty mutts were meant to sleep, not that Severus had made much of an effort to remove him.

Sirius had had a bed of his own when he first moved in nearly a year ago, and technically still did.

Or might.

Remus was not sure if the charm remained intact and had no reason of late to test it. The idea to measure the efficacy of his own magic flitted and fled when met with the realisation that using the pull-out bed that he had made of their flatpack sofa would mean more laundry, which would be unfair to everyone. He personally did very little in terms of housekeeping these days, barely being able to keep up with a full-time job at Hogwarts, civil responsibilities that were growing ever more demanding as Cokeworth continued to expand, and the irregularities of family life. Harry, likely for sound reasons, refused to go into the basement where the washer and dryer were kept, its entrance being concealed in a cupboard under the stairs. Severus and Sirius, who spent half of their time in the ever-expanding lab sharing this space, never seemed to remember to empty the machines when they had finished their respective cycles. Which left Dudley, who really did not need to concern himself with another set of sheets when the alternative was to everyone’s liking, or, at least, begrudging acceptance.

Sirius had moved in a few days before Narcissa had relinquished her title, set of responsibilities, and associated incomes for the right to stage a complaint about the lack of due process in the Wizengamot in the form of a succession of suits against the body. Remus had understood the urgency of her bid to buy the block housing too late when he found himself hosing her cousin on a couch that he had needed to enchant. Within a few nights, however, Sirius had grown resentful with these accommodations and had relocated himself to the floor in the room he had spent his first few weeks at Spinner’s End referring to as ‘Harry’s’ to near collective aggravation. Harry had to keep reminding him with increasing discomfort that he shared the space with his cousin. Dudley, in contrast, had grown so accustomed to adult wizards ignoring him that he did not take offence to his omission; which had caused Remus and a not altogether inconsiderable amount of concern; which Severus had met with the unhinged resentment he seemed to reserve for realities that caused him to relate to a pass he would rather repress than process.

It had not seemed like an arrangement that could persist indefinitely.

But on that point Remus was no longer sure.

He had since convinced the council to sell a number of properties it was holding, both to Narcissa directly and to a number of shell companies which Remus had discovered too late her money had been behind.

Not that this in itself had solved Sirius’ housing situation as of yet.

Not that it ever would.

Cokeworth was now simply ‘under works’ and would remain so for the foreseeable future.

Because the Malfoys were clever enough to hire locally, the path to the gentrification Remus had predicted was being paved in a literal fashion by a local population with its prior existential needs more than met. He still could not entirely believe the shift. It had taken Remus months of community organising to stop people from dumping their waste by the river. Now the same populus welcomed cafés, flower boxes and public benches. By the time the housing projects were completed, they might even have their own grocer again and not have to rely on knowing someone with a car to take the two towns over or sustain on crisps and pork rinds from the petrol station.

For some it was too much.

Severus hated it. He hated the very idea of Cokeworth becoming a rather charming little village.

For his part, Remus hated that gross capitalism claimed responsibility for all that he might have campaigned to create.  Thinking about it practically might well force him to examine the politics he conflated with morals. Greying hair and premature, lycanthropy-induced arthritis aside, he was still too young for that particular sort of existential crisis.

At least, he supposed, the Malfoys were not profiting from the venture in any fiscal sense. Lucius planned to find and relocate the families who had fallen into squalor after being removed from his ancestral lands during the height of the last Muggle war to his wife’s Cokeworth properties once the town had shed itself of the same distinction. Narcissa was happy to let him, likely glad of the fact that she had gotten herself out of the business of estate management in name and deed.

Almost.

There was still the matter of Spinner’s End.

Sirius, whose parole agreement had begun this entire circus, had since staked his claim on the home next door, which Remus took to mean that he did not much entertain plans of moving out. Ever.

This was not to say that he was not welcome, quite the contrary.

The children loved having a dog, to the point that they were wilfully ignorant to the fact that ‘Snuffles’ and Sirius were one in the same, even when the reality could not be ignored. Giving the restrictions on his movement, Sirius was forced to transfigure in order to accompany the boys to school and various activities of interest in the general vicinity, extending the illusion that they were grown up enough to go to the places they were meant to be all on their own. Sometimes, this translated into a more general sense of responsibility – the boys completing their chores and school assignments without complaint, reminder, or attempts at negation. More often, however, it gave the two something to laugh over together, which Remus saw as being equal in terms of importance.

Remus, for his part, loved having his best friend around – most of the time. Sirius had an annoying habit of interrupting intimate moments with Severus in an unspoken objection to the relationship itself, but the rivalry that had existed between the prisoner and the Potions Master was beginning to give way to respect, however rueing and resentful.

Secretly, Remus thought the two liked having one another around.

When, some months ago, Sirius announced his intention to move in to the long-abandoned house next door during an argument that had begun with all of the statements particular to his odd relationship with Severus as adults (‘He’s my godson!’ and ‘I’m his legal guardian!’  respectively) Severus had commented, however smugly, that if he were serious, they could remove the fence separating the two lots beyond their properties that he, Severus, might finally have a corner to go stand in at parties without being crowded into being hospitable.

Hearing this, Harry suggested that they would also have space for a trampoline – something Dudley seconded and Sirius, upon learning what a trampoline was, was quick to consent to. This had led to another round of Sirius comparing his credentials in make these kinds of decisions against Severus’, causing Remus to marvel at how two people could cause general agreeance to sound like grievous strife.

Regardless of who had ‘won’ the argument in the end, Sirius and Severus had annihilated the fence that same night.

They had since bought the trampoline, built a small obstacle course to occupy and exercise Pebbles, and begun a quartered-off vegetable garden which only Remus cared to maintain, though the children would, occasionally offer their assistance when they could think of nothing else to occupy them.

Encouraged by the succusses of this combined venture, the two had decided, perhaps drunkenly, that they could just as well do away with the wall separating what would be their basements, doubling the size of Severus’ lab, which Sirius had started assisting in (either out of general boredom, genuine conviction, or just the fact that Remus had banished hip hop and heavy metal to where Harry and Dudley would be less likely to repeat what he regarded as bad language or take any lessons in conduct from the lyrics.)

Sirius had explained that it would suit everyone if he and Severus had more space to keep out of one another’s way and focus on their own projects. Remus, however, sensed that they just wanted to pretend to their public that there was nothing fulfilling about having someone else to play nerd with when no one was otherwise watching.

Though there was little chance of that happening now.

Sirius had taken out the wall with a spell, and with it a foundational pillar and several pipes he had not counted on being there. He had been able to halt his future home’s collapse with several additional incantations, but the muggle workmen could not be allowed back in until wizards had first seen to the extent of the damage, and hiring a handyman in their world was near-unto impossible, even for a Black.

Narcissa had been livid, so livid, in fact that she had demanded of Remus to be told how he could have let this happen, the implication being that he was meant to be the responsible one (whatever that meant in practice.) Remus had no idea why so many people made this mistake in evaluating him. He still had not finished writing all of his finals, though prior experience might have served to instruct that such was best not left to the last minute. Merlin, he thought. There was still that to contend. Best be on with it.

With the hand that was not occupied in keeping Tarquin still, he reached over the snoring Dudley who slept between them to Severus, running his fingers through his partner’s long, silky hair – half admiring, half envying the absence of greys, until Severus made a slight stir.

“Migraine?” Remus asked, nodding to Harry, who was hugging himself to Severus in his sleep.

Severus gave a small shake of his head. “Just did not want to be alone in his room, evidently not rating his godfather as company. Can’t say I blame him.”

“I found – uff! Sirius, stop!” Remus grunted as the large, black, and evidently conscious hound who had taken up residence across the length of their bed decided that he was no longer content keeping their feet warm. He wagged his tail as he went about nuzzling Dudley and Harry to wake. The boys gave one another a dreary but mischievous look and made way, crawling over to Remus to allow ‘Snuffles’ to lay the whole of his weight upon Severus, pinning him that he could not reach his wand from the nightstand as he began to like his face to a string of curses of the expletive kind. Remus made a show of getting the boys to cover their ears.

“If I did not know better, I’d be jealous,” Remus remarked blandly. Sirius did so love to put on a show. Had he not slept in their bed, he would have forced entry at sunrise to encourage Severus to do the same. Sometimes Remus wonder the extent to which this was instinct as opposed to intention. Sirius had spent five years in his Animagus form in Azkaban; Severus had spent likely the entirety of his life finding excuses to sleep in. Nearly every morning began in such high fashion.

“Kindly remove your mutt, Remus,” Severus answered in lazy annoyance. “You know how revolting I find his misplaced affections.”

“I think he just wants to give you a bath,” Dudley smiled. Snuffles gave a bark of approval, and his tail went into wild motion.

“You hear that, Harry?” Severus asked dryly. “You are the undisputed favourite now. Congratulations. Sirius,” he shifted. “You are a grown man. You can open the door for yourself, or better yet, use the damned toilet. Take The Prophet, make a morning of it! I swear I’ll hate you all the same, but for the love of what little you consider scared, it is Saturday, let me sleep,” he whined.

“Don’t you have Apparition to supervise?” Remus asked unhelpfully, looking at the clock on his bedstand and questioning why he had not set an alarm.

“At ten, and in Hogsmeade. I wasn’t planning on swinging by the office first or even getting out of bed before nine.” How nice it must be to have scheduling down to an art.

“I still need to write a few finals,” Remus confessed. A ‘few’ was an understatement. McGonagall had advised him to simply reword questions from the quizzes he was meant to give throughout term to gauge his pupils progress, which would be sound advice if Remus could bother with that much continuous paperwork. Defence, he thought, was more of a hands-on subject. He never gave quizzes. Perhaps he would spend what little time he had left to plan structuring his practical exams and use the written portion the school required to remind his students of the things they would be defending should the need ever arise – ask them their favourite candy-bar and ice-cream flavour. Os for everyone who did not scribble some bullshit answer like Liquorice Wands which all could agree were simply atrocious. Did Hogwarts keep a record of written exams? In other words, could he get away with it? Remus did not dare ask Severus. If Flitwick or Quirrell were around later, either of them might be worth a shot.

“Want me to take the boys to the castle for breakfast, set the up with their old Atari in the Muggle Studies classroom and meet you in the village at lunch? I’ll let the dog out before hoping in the shower,” he offered to the boyfriend he found staring at him sceptically. Was Severus using legilimency? In bed? Remus could think of a few better uses for the skill and Severus blushed slightly, confessing his intrusion. Remus grinned. Severus tried to look askance but being that his only other option was staring up at Snuffles, he simply closed his eyes again.

“Yeah!” – “Yeah!” Harry and Dudley echoed one another in response to Remus’ suggestion, but Severus’ knitted his brow.

“Hagrid needs his vegetable patch degnomed and you wanted a few for your Year Two practical anyway. Have them help with that before sitting them in front of the counsel and then they will have more than earned a trip to Honeydukes,” he instructed. This was precisely why Remus never asked his teaching advice. Severus always came down too hard. “But, yes, please, get your dog off of – Sirius! Sirius!” Severus called at the mutt he had been so eager to be rid of only a moment before. “Come back here with that!”

It took Remus a moment to realise that Sirius must have gotten at Severus’ wand again. The dog, as per his usual, was hastening from the room with the Potions Master hastening after.

“Put a kettle on then?” Remus called after them, shaking his head and smiling in spite of himself. Exams and the reality of their attached house only being held up by the incantations of a madman aside, he really loved his life.

“Why do we have detention even though we aren’t Hogwarts students?” Dudley asked.

“It’s not detention, it is doing a favour for a friend,” Remus answered, unconvinced.

“It is ‘doing a favour for a friend’ in the same way that Dad always gets up to let Snuffles out in the morning,” Dudley snorted. He had a point.

“I don’t mind,” Harry said, sliding towards the edge of the mattress. From downstairs, muffled cries could be heard. If puppy-dog-eyes truly had no effect on Severus as he claimed, he certainly reacted to Sirius sniffing around at the floorboards as though he meant to do his business there.

“No!” Dudley retuned, grabbing Harry by the shoulder. “If you go down now, Dad’s not going to be in a properly foul mood. Wait until he’s had his first cup of coffee, until Sirius has been right smart with him. Then he’ll say ‘yes’, either because he thinks Sirius will say ‘no’, or because he won’t want your godfather to get credit for agreeing.”

“To what, exactly?” Remus asked hesitantly. Because the boys had yet to come up with a scheme for which he had not met with a smile and suggestion for improvement, they had never looked to him as a particular authority figure. He was admittedly fine with this set up, though he suspected Severus rather hoped he would prove a voice of opposition every once and a while.

“Dudley finished the guest list for his birthday party yesterday,” Harry smiled. Remus blinked. Between exams and the eagerness with which he was avoiding them, he had quite nearly forgotten that they had given Dudley the assignment of making written plans to encourage him to overcome his deficits. Perhaps Remus ought to read over his homework more often. It had certainly taken the lad long enough.

“How long is it, exactly?” he asked.

“Thirty-eight,” Dudley answered, almost sheepishly. Oh. Remus thought. That explained it.

“Well, I can answer that right now – cut it by the half. Your birthday is in two weeks, there is no way we can arrange – ”

“Um. Well,” Dudley swallowed. “The thing is, I already invited most of the people I plan on hosting, and it will be rude if I back out, and since Harry doesn’t want a party this year, we thought we could just have a big one a month before, and then in July –”

“You would not even have to get me a gift!” Harry explained eagerly, interrupting, and waving his arms. Dudley looked at Harry as though he were mad to offer concessions before they were being asked but did not say anything to this effect, likely reasoning that Harry extending this particular surrender did not necessarily adversely affect the chance of his own plans being approved. In another life, perhaps, Dudley Dursley would have made House Slytherin proud.

Harry, still bouncing, would prove a Hat-stall. Sometimes Remus could not understand the boy at all. Not that Harry had a habit of making himself clear.

“Why don’t you want to have a birthday party of your own, Harry?” Remus puzzled, hoping the answer was not that he was convinced no one would come. Harry had friends, of course, but he was not nearly as popular as his cousin – likely owing to the reality that he was less involved, writing off a goodly number of non-magical pastimes as he awaited his admission to Hogwarts. He would grow out of it, in other words.

“Remember when we went to Falcons v Canons for Draco’s birthday and Vito Noto met us after the match, saying that Rabies would be furious if he didn’t invite us to a summer training session of the Italian National Team,” Harry blabbered without stopping for breath. “Well, I thought, maybe we could go see them on my birthday.”

“I doubt that Noto meant a week before the Euros, and moreover I doubt Volpe has the kind of authority in the squad to invite foreigners into their camp whilst preparing for a major competition. She only just got the call up.” Remus hated to have to be the one to disappoint him, but he reasoned Harry would have been regardless. Remus was happy the international sporting schedule provided an excuse to shield Harry from the sad truth that adults often made offers they had no intention of following through on in the normal course of conversation.

Remus, personally, prided himself on his ability to get out of plans, and he did not hold anyone he knew causally to higher standards than he felt himself personally capable. Noto was nice, nothing more. His teammate was volatile, nothing less.

‘Rabies’ – Fifi Volpe to everyone who was not Severus Snape or the children he was charged with raising – had made it her personal and professional goal to embarrass British Quidditch at every opportunity that presented. She had gotten a call up to the English squad, gone so far as to make sure she was photographed showing up for training sessions, only to declare her allegiance to Italy the day she was expected to sign. When Ali Bashir had manged to negotiate around her ridiculous buy-out clause from Aachen Bahkauv, she negated the move to the Falmouth Falcons in the final hour, citing the miniscule fee that would need to be paid into the Ministry’s coffers to recuperate the costs lost in an unsuccessful bid to ban the then-Slytherin Quidditch team from professional sport as ‘moral objection’. Extending an invitation to her former Head of House was likely a symptom of the same, for she had no memory of the cheating of which she had in fact been guilty – ironically owing to Severus’ own scheming.

It was funny how good intentions had a way of playing out.

“But Noto’s been keeping for Italy for-ever, like, twenty-years! And he is the captain! And it was him who actually invited us,” Harry argued, “and Dad thanked him, and Noto said he would hold him to it, so I think he took it as a ‘yes’ even though it probably was not meant that way, so again, it would be rude if we didn’t go.” Odd how manners only factored into his children’s calculations when their mention could be used to manipulate. Harry would likely do well in Slytherin, too. Lily and James would have been horrified. God rest them. Remus had to find a way to put a stop to this.

“It is not as though Italy isn’t going to win regardless –” Dudley continued in the same vein.

“Don’t count your owls before they come. Germany has a strong side,” Remus remarked, however weakly. From what little he followed of international Quidditch, if Italy did not win it would be the biggest cupset in a century. Still, Severus would say ‘no’ to Harry even if he had said ‘yes’ to a Keeper with probable mafia ties and likely as many hits as saves. The boys were only (almost) eight. They would have to deal with some measure of disappointment however he hoped to lessen it, but disillusionment could wait.

“But Germany have never beaten Italy in competition,” Harry said. “Come on, I thought you would be on my side! It is not like we will be that distracting. Dudley only means to watch, and they probably won’t let me in the air for more than a few minutes, but I could learn so much just from being there. And you – you and Dad could have a romantic weekend in Rome, and Sirius could watch us the rest of the time, when we aren’t watching Quidditch. He said that the Azkaban guards have no … no, that they would not attack him outside of the UK.”

“Jurisdiction,” Remus tried. “Sirius knows?” Of course he did. Much as it pained him to admit it to himself, Severus was right. They simply could not trust Padfoot to babysit.

“I had to ask him how to spell Hermione’s name for my list, so we talked to him a little, yeah,” Dudley confirmed. “And then he told us about what a great chaser Uncle James was, and that … we were both, in our own ways, celebrating his sprit, and that you could not possibly object to that?”

It was a stretch and Dudley knew it, but Remus smiled. It would probably do them all a world of good to get out of the house. He had never been on a proper holiday, and he doubted if Severus had either. How they were going to afford it, however –

“So, who all are you planning to invite to this party of yours, Dudders?”

“My football team, and everyone from our class, but only a few people from ballet, and I doubt most of them will come all the way to Cokeworth. And then Draco, obviously, and Tonks, and Harry wants Ron to come so we have to invite his whole family, too. And then I thought we should invite Harry’s dart’s team from the pub because all of my teammates are coming.” The list was so long Remus had not been concentrating until – “And then Sirius wanted that I invite Blaise even though I don’t know him all that well. He said he is in the mood to go on a ‘proper witch hunt’ and Aunt Cissy and Aunt Andy both refused to introduce him to Mrs Zabini. I mean … probably because she is their friend and he wants to burn her alive, but Blaise is nice enough and … I think, there will be enough other wizards and witches there to stop Sirius if he really means to do his mum in – ”

“That is not what he meant,” Remus interrupted, annoyed. “Padfoot and I are going to have a conversation about the inuendo he uses with you, among other things. But seriously, Dudley, where are we going to host that many people? Even with the two yards, we don’t have near to enough room.”

“Wouldn’t magic help with that?” Harry asked.

“Most of the people you plan to invite are muggles. There are laws against that sort of thing,” Remus shrugged. As a teenager, he would have found a way. As an adult who had to pay for such fun, he was finding himself agreeing with the Ministry and its restrictions, which suddenly seemed quite reasonable. Fuck. Maybe he was getting old.

“You guys all use magic in front of me and I’m not fussed,” Dudley crossed his arms. “Moony, please! I already told everyone. If I suddenly don’t show up with invitations, I won’t have any friends anymore and Harry won’t either.”

“We could have it at the pub,” Harry suggested.

“I’m not throwing a child’s birthday party at a pub on principle.” Yup. Definitely old. He would have to come up with an alternative before one of the lads thought to mention this statement to Sirius. He would never let him live it down.

“Why not?” Dudley pouted, arguing, “You use it to host Town Hall meetings. Anyway, it would be free,” Dudley stressed. “We could just order one or two pizzas, and then use ‘Germino’ to make however many we will actually need, and do that for drinks, too. In the kitchen, where no one can see.” ‘Free’, Remus thought. Muggle or not, Dudley did seem to know a goodly number of magic words.

“Sometimes I’m not so sure you aren’t a wizard yourself, Big D,” Remus joked, tousling the boy’s blond hair. Dudley, to what should not have been his surprise, looked as though he might cry. Poor child, he thought. It could not possibly be easy being an effective Squib in a family that included one of the most famous wizards alive. He had to help him where he could. “Okay, I’ll see what we can do, but you are right, Sev needs to think this is happening on his authority.” He beckoned both boys closer as if he meant to include them in a bit of mischief. “So, when you ask –“

Severus Snape had just poured himself a cup of coffee when Sirius Black entered the kitchen from the back door, drenched from a warm summer rain. He reached around Severus for a tea towel with which to dry his hair, and when he meant to return it, Severus warned him against the act, advising that in instead take it to the hamper upstairs. Sirius whipped the rag over his bare shoulder. With a cheeky smile, he bid the Potions Master good morning, returning his wand still dripping with spittle, and, taking advantage of Severus’ momentary distraction, took the mug from his hand.

“Black, would it kill you to feign civility?” Severus asked, reaching for another mug rather than retrieving the one that had been stolen. Sirius had a disgusting habit of cracking a raw egg into a cup of black coffee, creating a cocktail he referred to as ‘Two Birds’ – something Severus had long lost the energy to question or comment upon. If Black wanted to poison himself and call it a proper, balanced breakfast, so be it. The cur grinned at him again – this time, Severus noticed with mild satisfaction – the expression seemed at odds with the ill that had overtaken the rest of his visage.

“Protein,” Sirius announced smugly, poking at Severus’ slim physique. “Wouldn’t kill you to build a bit of muscle.”

“No, but such might well prove counterproductive to my ambition of fitting into Narcissa’s wedding dress when Remus and I do eventually tie the knot,” Severus replied. “Something borrowed, as they say.”

“I don’t,” Sirius rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know where to start unpacking that.”

“Really?” Severus asked in silken tones. “And here I was under the impression that all descendants of House Black were so vain as to confuse their abilities in legilimency with a degree in clinical psychology. I confess, I find the humility welcome. Mm-mm,” he shifted, taking a slip, as Sirius tried to reach behind him for the pot of coffee, “Ask politely.”

“I take it Dora’s tutoring sessions are going well, then?” Sirius asked instead with a hint of worry.

“Ted and I agreed that I suspended her lessons in legilimency and occlumency until she’s sat her O.W.L.s, which … has proven ill-advised,” Severus answered. “She’s taken to directing her theories at Remus, who will no doubt at some point provide an answer that extends beyond his refrain of ‘nothing we have not covered in class will appear on the exam’ and start asking questions of his own. I think it is time we told him.”

Sirius’ gaze fell unconsciously upon Severus’ Dark Mark – blackened from several hours of cuddling with Harry. He folded his arms, trying to hide it, though his efforts only called more attention to the reality with which they were faced. Without discussing it, both he and Sirius had arrived on the same conclusion of how to best proceed, which largely amounted to saying nothing. Severus had wanted Harry to have at least one parent with whom he could have a normal, healthy relationship with, and had not been keen to announce to his partner that their all-but-adopted son was a kind of living horcrux. Sirius, whom Narcissa must have confided in upon his release if not prior to, had intended to let Remus in on the secret, but had decided in the course of their first conversation in five years to shield his friend form a horrible truth. Remus and Severus had been in a bad place at the time. Sirius, blessedly, had enough foresight not to make things worse.

Draco knew, but at eight he was worldly enough to know that no well-intentioned individual would believe him and had sought to enlist his criminally minded cousin in helping him to gather evidence to support his too-often ignored pleas for help. Where Draco could prove timid, Dora was tenacious. Luckily, like near-to everyone else in their cursed line, she regarded Draco’s obsession as a simple crush and sought her own leads – not wanting to accept that a little boy who never failed to laugh at her duck bill and pig snout shared a soul with the wizard who had instigated genocide and destroyed a generation.

That there was something odd about Harry was becoming increasingly difficult to deny. Dora was bound to figure it out eventually. As was Remus. As, for that matter, was Harry. Severus sometimes wondered at and worried over the implications about how much the boy he secretly regarded as his younger son already knew.

Infuriatingly, the only person he could raise these doubts to was Sirius Black, meaning very little was ever said. They could agree on omission as they could little else. Even so, Severus lately found himself wishing he could talk about the Voldemort problem with someone who understood him, even if the particulars of the situation might allude them. He needed Remus, but knew he would never, could never slip up. He had lived too long as a double agent to allow for clumsy, emotionally driven errors.

Narcissa was ruthlessly calculating and would not say anything without expecting results, the likes of which Severus was not sure he would want to see materialise.

Nymphadora regarded the whole affair as a game and to Severus’ mind was entitled to the happy myths of childhood for as long as they might persist. She yet to realise that in order to win, someone else had to lose, and if she found out what Harry was before having learned that crucial lesson of adolescence, Harry would surely suffer.

Draco worshiped Harry in the same sense Severus had once worshiped the boy’s mother, and, like Severus had regretfully done in his youth, cautioned his affections with insults. It was painful to watch and likely should not be encouraged on any level.

But Sirius was brash and dangerously bored. Severus had to determine if he could in some way use this to his own selfish ends.

“Are you asking my opinion or permission?” Sirius furrowed his brow. Severus realised he had been keeping eye contact with the other man too long for it to seem purely social.

“The former I do not value and the latter I do not need,” he answered coldly. “If I am asking anything of you, it is that you start talking more personal responsibility. I … need a favour. Fret not, it fits your ambitions, what little they amount to.”

“Ah, Snivy, admit it – you like my efforts to animate you in the morning. It is a good thing we have going.” Sirius patted his shoulder. Severus tensed. His obnoxious, unwanted flatmate let out a bark of a laugh.

“You certainly raise alarms. Black I need to you be …” he frowned, the word failing on his tongue.

“Should I find you a thesaurus to save you from an uncomfortable homonym?” Sirius asked, taking his meaning but finding little value in it.

“Contronym,” Severus corrected.

“Fair,” Sirius gave. “What is it then that the grave professor requires of his humble freeloader then?”

“I need you to take charge of Harry for a few hours next Saturday under the pretence that you are his godfather.”

“I am his godfather.”

“And rather than use that as a refrain to be repeated in every difference of opinion in which you cannot otherwise defend your position, I just need you to bloody act like it,” Severus continued smoothly. “Remus and I have to take Dudley to something which Harry can under no circumstances attend, and asking anyone else to babysit would lead him to question why his cousin was not extended the same invitation.”

“Is Dudley okay?” Sirius asked, still frowning. “I know I … I hope you don’t think that I don’t care about the boy.” They never discussed Dudley, it was true, but Severus attributed this to the fact that of the two, Dudley left far less opportunity for conflict. That was not to say that he did not come with his own set of difficulties, it was just that he was better at arguing his own case than his cousin. Sirius and Severus had enough in common in their shared past that when Dudley found himself in some playground scruff, both could freely admit they would have slipped the little burk Dudley had been bullying as well. Harry, by contrast, would trick his would-be tormentors into following him into the abandoned mill, leaving them lost and locked inside. If Sirius found sympathy for such impulses, he had matured enough not to let it show.

Severus shook his head. It seemed, even to him, senseless to become sour over the Shrieking Shack incident now that he intended to marry the monster he had nearly met at the tunnel’s end.

“There is a recital at Twinkle Toes in which he is to dance the role of a robin in a twenty-minute ballet interpretation of The Secret Garden that no doubt misses the majority of the book’s important themes,” he told the mutt with a sigh. “At least it will be over quickly.” And then he would have to sit through renditions of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and for reasons he could not begin to fathom The Buddenbrooks all set to music and movement. Remus, master of creating the convenient excuse, would slip out early on to attend the Town Hall he had scheduled for the same day, leaving Severus to sit uncomfortably with the Grangers when the protagonist of the final piece in the student showcase died after visiting the dentist. That would certainly make for fun conversation during the afterparty.

“Ooooh,” Sirius grimaced. “Yeah. You are right. You could never take Harry along to something like that. He would not let Dudley live it down.”

“As is his right, and I don’t intend to fully deprive him of it,” Severus acknowledged, “but rehearsals have proven a fiasco and Dudley should be given time to recover a bit of his bravado before being made to put up with Harry’s teasing. I’m going to take pictures to hang in the pub when they have both reached an age where drinking begins to have its appeal in order to discourage the behaviour,” he explained with a smirk.

“You are a great father,” Sirius said, almost approvingly.

Severus shrugged. “I’ve been Head of House nearly as long as I’ve been teaching. I hope I understand something of pubescent development. Besides, it is a Cokeworth right-of-passage. I can hang it next to the Polaroid of Lily and I holding brooms between our legs – the kind meant for, you know, sweeping – chasing her terrified sister as though she were a snitch. Which, I suppose she was in a better example of a homonym.”

“Merlin, wait till the lads see that one!” Sirius howled, then gaged, hot coffee having misdirected itself to his nasal cavity in his amusement. Severus had to fight to keep his features from betraying his own.

“They have seen it, the just lack any real context for how actually embarrassing it is in hindsight. I had to show them something to explain why everyone here refers to me as a wizard whilst forbidding them to talk about magic with their peers.”

“Were you made fun of at school, Snivellus?” Sirius asked in mock-concern.

“Are we discussing primary or are you simply trying to recapture a bit of your past glory? Honestly, Black, giving the gravity of what I ask of you, one would assume you might approach the matter with a bit more maturity.” Good. He thought. ‘Mature’ was a close enough approximation of ‘serious’ and one that he might employ more often in conversations with and about his annoying flatmate.

Sirius crossed his arms and looked at Severus appraisingly. “You mean to take pictures of your kid in a tutu in hopes of humiliating him with the memory in a decade or so, and you accuse me – moi! –  of immaturity?! Sometimes I almost think we two could have been friends.”

Never.

“Oh, less than that. Five, six years tops,” Severus speculated. “But that begs the question of when Gryffindors start up with libations? Its common knowledge that Ravenclaws are dull in that respect and that Hufflepuffs primarily crash, but I’d always assumed that our great and noble houses were on par where it came to hosting parties.”

“Are our points still significantly depleted after every Quidditch match?” Sirius grinned after considering the matter for a moment.

“To the point that I’d almost be rooting for your side to win if I didn’t sit with Minerva to watch.”

After a few moments of Sirius reflecting on a past lost to him and Severus consoling himself that he was leading in House Points, the former asked, “What do you need me to do with Harry, then?”

Severus had not really considered that. Sirius did not exactly have that many entertainment options. “Just … anything to stop him from getting stuck in his own head. I’m sure you can figure something out. Nothing criminal,” he warned, more out of concern that Sirius would risk a run in with Dementors in an attempt to take Harry out for a Happy Meal than –

“So, tagging up something Cissy owns is off the list?” Sirius asked in what Severus had to assume was earnest. “Pity. It’s how I spend most days.”

“What do you plan to do once she clears your name?” He wondered, shaking his head.

“Vandalise something else, I’d imagine.”

“Right.”

“No,” Dudley moaned from the doorway. “We’ll have to try it some other time.”

“It is not what you think,” Sirius said, raising his arms and taking a step back. It was only then Severus realised just how close they had been standing to one another.

“Good. I was wondering if I ought not be jealous,” Remus smiled. “However nice it is to see my suspicions confirms that the both of you get on well enough when no one is around to preform for.”

“Wait until I get my wand back,” Sirius smiled, patting Severus on the cheek.

Severus scowled.  “Ask what you were going to, and I can but guarantee the once and future convict Black and I will again be at odds.”

“As is proper,” Sirius added.

“Quite true,” Severus said, looking at Dudley expectantly. Dudley, however, had taken to hiding himself behind Remus as much as he might at the word ‘wand’. The boy was such a pathetic wimp whenever magic was mentioned threateningly that Severus was beginning to suspect it an act on some level. It was becoming difficult to excuse. Maybe he should take Lucius’ approach and ignore the behaviour entirely.

“Dudley’s invited forty-off children to his birthday, meaning we’ll have to plan for a hundred or more counting adults as well, and Harry thinks the best way to offset the estimated costs is to visit the Italian National Quidditch Team in Rome five weeks later,” Remus explained, amused. He had likely already told them that it was alright – or implied as much as he hated making such decisions, happy to let his boyfriend and his best friend fight out and over the specifics.

Severus narrowed his small eyes to slits. “With such mathematics you could both pressure careers in the public sector,” he remarked with a nod at Harry.

“Portkeys and … what was the spell, Dudley?” Harry answered, rising to the challenge, and finding himself wanting.

“Germino,” Dudley answered in a barely audible whisper.

“Germino!” Harry shouted.  In the same moment, a second, identical mug appeared in Severus’ hand which he offered to Remus with a shrug. Dudley jumped back, blinking.

This is what I mean. He has too much control for a boy of his age, and he did that without a wand. Severus said to Sirius with a stare. The cur gave a slight nod that he had heard him. Sirius, Severus had learned to his shock, could not project his thoughts unto others. But the he had learned legilimency from his parents, and, to a lesser extent, from Bellatrix and Andromeda. Severus had asked once recently while they were waiting for a potion to mature (as though staring at a cauldron would to anything to aid the passage of time) if he wanted him to show him how it was done. When he was eleven, it had taken him months under Narcissa’s tutorage to master the trick, but Dora had picked it up in a few weeks. Sirius, who never seemed to have to work at anything, would likely have it down in a matter of hours, but he had refused. ‘I won’t explain myself as you wouldn’t understand, anyway, but I’m happy that a half-blood is better at a magic I was brought up to think was almost unique to my line.’ – ‘How can you assume I’m better if you won’t even try?’ – ‘Something Bella mentioned once. Don’t worry about it. You wouldn’t understand. I’m a decent enough Legilimens to know that much. I don’t intend offence and I hope you won’t seek it. You are lucky, that is all.’

In truth, Severus was not offended, but he was irritated.  If Sirius would just work with him, they might have the whole Voldemort matter well and sorted!

“Uh … never mind the cost or how we might cut them,” Remus said, opening the refrigerator to pour over-sweet almond milk into a cup of coffee that likely did not contain half as much dark magic as whatever witchcraft went into getting juice from a nut. “As it happens, I expect I’m about to come into a small fortune come the end of term.”

“How is that?” Severus asked, turning to hand Remus the sugar bowl, keeping his gaze fixated on the counter. He could deal with the other complications of lycanthropy, but watching his fiancé prepare a cup of coffee for consumption made him physically ill.

“I’ll have made it to the end of my second term at Hogwarts,” Remus announced. “I’ve broken the curse.”

“You’ve broken a modern record, but I hardly see how that equates to a bonus,” Severus answered. “If anything, the Governors might have cause to argue to pay you’re the going rate henceforward.”

“You really can’t stand that I make slightly more money than you,” Remus teased, hugging him from behind. Severus was about to allow himself to relax into the embrace when Remus took a slurp of his milk-substitute-conjured-coffee with what was probably far too much sugar, putting him again on edge.

“I hate that it is on par with our deputy who has thirty years more experience in education,” he answered.

“I … didn’t realise,” Remus gave bashfully.

“Neither did I!” Sirius beamed. Severus spun around quickly on instinct if nothing else. Sirius, content, always had a way of proving problematic. “I take it that negates any arguments against throwing a stupid big party before going on a Roman holiday?”

“It certainly makes my designs around asking for the pot seem selfish,” Remus said. Remembering that Minerva had once made him a prefect for empty statements such as this, Severus no longer cared that his boyfriend earned nearly as much as his mentor cum mortal enemy.

“How would you have any right to a pot you did not contribute to in the first place?” he frowned.

“Technically, in taking the position, I bet against all of you, and as you can see, I’ve won,” Remus smiled.

“Not quite,” Severus informed him. “Trelawney said you’d last nine years.”

“Did she not understand the criteria?” Remus wondered.

“She teaches Divination,” Severus shrugged, “she never does.”

“This the running bet on how the up-and-coming DADA seat is going to kick it?” Sirius speculated. “What did she say then?”

The real question was why he, Severus, had said anything.

“Don’t pursue this,” the Potions Master cautioned.

“Now I have to know, too,” Remus smirked. Severus swallowed.

As mockingly as he could make his voice in imitation, he answered in his colleague’s airy, almost absent manner, “She said that you’ll surrender the post of your own accord two nights after siring your first cub, when by common means your cherished children are made bothers as the second dies and the first but bleeds.”

It was not enough. “No … no, I wouldn’t, not ever …” Remus began to mutter, looking at the children who were seated at the table, discussing the best methods to throw a gnome that they might get to spend more time fighting monsters made out of pixels.

Sirius stood with his mouth open, but, for once, no words emerged.

“The predictions are made well before anyone is even in consideration for the post and giving the brevity which we all seek to mock in this, they usually rely on topical references,” Severus explained hastily. “Lockhart’s werewolf treatise had just been released. Trelawney, like nearly everyone else on staff, was reading the thing at the time. It is coincidence, nothing more.”

Fucking Christ! Sirius Black thought, exhausted on the couch after half a day of taking charge of his godson. No one had warned him that childcare was quite so difficult. Remus and Severus, Lily and James, Frank and Alice, Cissy and Lucius –  everyone he knew to have kids, they all made it look so damned easy. At least Andy had been sympathetic to his struggles when they had crossed paths that afternoon, but then, she had wanted something from him.

He closed his eyes. He wanted something to occupy his hands with to making him less conscious of the oils that had served to soften them at hospital, something besides another cigarette. Smoking would just cause him to think of the last time he had been made to cure scrofula; when he had been thirteen and adventure had come without cost or consequence. He did not want to remember Regulus and Bellatrix in any context that would cause him to mourn and miss them. He did not want to cry. He did not want to feel. He did not want to talk about it, mostly, because he knew was starting to lose portions of his vocabulary from time spent in his Animagus form. Sometimes, he drank to disguise the real causes of the deficits he feared would soon be too plain to conceal. But he hated drinking along. He hated being alone. But he would not venture upstairs.

Not tonight.

He had failed Harry too much to stretch out as Snuffles on the floor beside the boy’s bed.

He would sleep on the couch, or more probably, he would lie awake wondering if he were not one of the evils the blood protection Dudley’s presence ensured was meant to protect against.

Harry had been hurt – badly! – on his watch and owing to his encouragement. And rather than staying at his side, Sirius had left him to go play hero in another hospital ward.

He wondered if he could not stop thinking about his baby brother from the same sense of guilt he now felt with regard to his godson; if Andy, perhaps, had called a series of related memories to the forefront of his mind while meeting him with a painted smile, if she had done no such thing and this was just the way the human mind worked, fixating on past horrors to alleviate the immediacy of the waking moment.

Narcissa had told him – accurately, as it happened – that he hated himself. He wondered if he was special in this regard or if such was a common human trait. He wondered when he had stopped considering himself human and how the implications of such extended past stunted speech and simplicity of thought.

Fuck it.

Reaching into his jeans for his papers and a lighter, he leaned forward, fumbling on the coffee table to roll himself a fag without any feeling for something he used to be able to do from muscle memory. He wondered if it was the result of the oil still present on his fingertips, the result of nerves or, if he was losing control over his movements in his human form – long having ceased with allowing it to be his familiar. Suddenly, as though by his own will, a soft pack of Gauloises and an ornately decorated ashtray appeared in front of him. He looked up.

“I don’t care,” Severus Snape informed him, reading a textbook upside down as though to illustrate this point. “That is more of Remus’ rule than mine. I’ll just open a window. He won’t know the difference.”

Severus had just put the boys to bed as his darkened Mark told. How could he be so calm, even cordial in his address? Perhaps it was a ruse. Perhaps he just needed a nicotine rush to really be out with it. Sirius moved slightly to the end of the sofa to make room. He produced two cigarettes from the half-empty pack and handed one to his oldest enemy. Severus lit his. Sirius hesitated.

“I used to smoke these with your brother in our dorms. In the dungeons. Under the lake. Minnie’s taken to indulging on catnip in my current chambers since I’ve all but vacated them. Trust me, I know how to get rid of the smell,” he informed him lazily.

“How much do you understand about blood magic?” Sirius asked.

“Am I to take that your afternoon was much of an unmitigated disaster as my own?” Severus surmised.

“St. Mungo’s,” Sirius gave. “You?”

“Mad Eye.”

“Okay. You win. Shit. How did that come about?”

“Kids will probably be asleep soon. Want to reinforce the wards and head to the pub for the remainder of Remus’ stupid Town Hall meeting?” Severus suggested rather than answering directly.

“If you are asking me if I need a shot, I stole this beauty from Andy’s office,” Sirius answered with a nod towards the half-emptied bottle of single malt of which he had yet to take a single sip. “Want to kill it with me while I fix that for you?”

Severus looked down at his regrettable tattoo. “With a fine liner?” he asked sceptically.

“I don’t have a wand, do I?” Sirius shrugged.

“Why not?” Severus sighed. “Won’t be the dumbest thing that I’ve done today. At least the effects won’t be permanent.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Want to monologue without the threat of interruption on my part about what I’m assuming amounts to a minor inconvenience that grievous past mistakes all but ensured?” Sirius rephrased.

“That … actually sounds lovely,” Severus admitted as Sirius took a pen from where he had fixed it to his sketchpad and began to doodle on his skin. The Potions Master had an oddly calming voice and was so full of himself that Sirius knew he would be able to take his mind from everything that was haunting him if he really got him going. He did not like the man, not exactly, but he liked him for Remus and was being to understand why the wolf wanted him around. “Alright,” Severus started. “You know how we teachers all have to make trips each summer to Muggle-borns within our respective districts to explain magic and offer placement personally?”

It was rhetorical, but Sirius, feeling somewhat more of what he might happily recognise as himself could not resist. “I can’t believe anyone trusts you to uphold – ”

“Without interruption?”

Tom Riddle had been warned that there were fates worse than death, and perhaps if anyone had bothered to mention in this moralistic drabble the possibility that he could be forced to live as one of his would-be murder victims, he might have taken pause in creating so many horcruxes.

“She had landed the jump a few times before in class,” Dudley continued to fluster. Tom was barely listening, though Harry, he sensed, was more than attentive. So much the pity. “It’s how she got the part in the first place. All the other girls in our age group were jealous … because, I mean, its Hermione. You know what she is like. She doesn’t even want to be there to begin with and almost takes pains that everyone know as much.” Well, at least the little girl sounded relatable.

“Anyway, before the show started,” Dudley continued, “I saw her trying to compose herself, so I asked if Tiffany and Melanie and Chantal and Courtney had been awful again, because it wasn’t too late to make sure that they didn’t get to perform at all.”

“You can’t hit girls, Dudley,” Tom heard himself say. He did not agree with the statement, in the first place because muggles were always fair game, in the second because he considered himself a fair minded individual and the insinuation that girls – especially ones engaged in regular sport – could not hit back seemed like the sort of chauvinism that too often got confused with chivalry. It was something else about Harry’s upbringing he would have to do better to correct, but for now he let it slide.

“I could curse them, and no one would be any wiser.” Dudley, at least, seemed to get it. Such a pity it was that he had not marked the stronger and smarter of the two lads as his equal.

“If you carry on – ” he began.

“Look, I didn’t do anything, okay?” Dudley interrupted, insisting. “I just told Hermione that I think she is a witch, and that it is probably good that she was nervous, because it would help her to effect something she keeps messing up in class. Then she really started crying, telling me that was a terrible thing to say to someone and that she thought we were friends and how dare I and I tried to explain and then … then she had to go on for her part and she absolutely nailed it!” Dudley seemed to cheer. Well.

“Afterwards she was willing to talk about it, so I told her about Hogwarts and our dads and how she would probably get an owl in a few years and she … well, I don’t know if she believed me or not, but at the after party she went to ask Sev about it, and he was talking to her Mum and Dad at the time, and then he looked like he wanted to kill me. Like – ”

“How he looks at me, then,” Tom suggested. Of all of his Death Eaters, he had loved Severus best, for the talented half-blood had reminded him so much of himself. Now, trapped with and as this awful boy, he hated the reminder. Suggesting that ‘Sev’ (or ‘Dad’ as he was sometimes known) shared Tom’s sense of animosity usually shut Dudley up on the topic.

“Nah,” Dudley dismissed, “like he really meant to do it. The way he looks at Snuffles.”

Fine. The greatest Dark Wizard to ever rise could always find a backup to achieve his ends, however simple and simply human. He was tired from the calming drought even if Harry was awakening from its effects. Tom wanted, desperately, to sleep after the day he had had. Why was his final horcrux, his only error, so keen to put them in the path of danger? Was it the effects of the Avada that had failed to kill, or were all children so fucking difficult to keep alive as this one seemed to be? If so, the Prince was an even more powerful wizard than Tom had long credited him as being.

Now that was a frightening thought.

He rather hoped he could return him to the cause.

He hoped he would still have one by the time he and Harry came of age. If Narcissa Malfoy won all or even most of her cases, people would not have enough to be angry about to cause them to seek a radical alternative to elected leadership and the rule of law.

What a ridiculous notion!

People were people, they could always be divided on matters of politics, not matter how little the issues at hand affected their lives. He was being silly. Tom cursed himself, why was his mind so often preoccupied with notions he recognised to be so … childish? Nearly all of the benefits he might have found in being Harry Potter were negated by the fact that the child was all of seven years old. When Tom had told him about the Chamber of Secrets, Harry had sought it out with excitement – not because of the ancestral magic he could employ as Slytherin’s true heir, but because there was a big slide hidden somewhere in Hogwarts and if he found it, he could show Dudley and Ron and Ginny and Draco, maybe, too, if he was not being such a prat and –

It had been a bad idea. There was no way he would be able to control the monster within in his present state, and he had spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to confuse Harry and thereby, himself, about where the entrance was and how it could be opened. Harry was decent enough at finding near-death experiences without Tom’s assistance or encouragement.

The problem, Tom found, was that he could not remember exactly how he had found himself in this sorry state.

He remembered something about a prophecy, about a baby he had to kill and a woman he had sworn he would not harm until she had shown neither the decency nor the sense to obey the Dark Lord when ordered to seek her own safety. He remembered having a sudden sense of his own mortality and a sensation of brilliant green light. And then – nothing. He had not really seen anything at all for the four or so years to follow until a routine school physical had sent him to an optometrist.

Then, about a year ago, something had happened to return him to his senses, but he could only guess at what. He clearly remembered his time at Hogwarts, he remembered his grandiose plans and he had a sense – a real sense! –  that he had been able to force them into being. But how? And what else had transpired between his rise and fall to have left him so diminished, so lost to himself?

“Is Hermione really a witch, or did you just say that so that you can do magic without anyone suspecting you when I’m not there to take the blame?” Tom suggested meanly. He could not help it. He was so jealous of ‘his’ cousin whenever their paths crossed consciously. Dudley was better at potions and spells than Harry, something that Tom suspected owed itself to the fact that the other boy paid close and careful attention, whereas Harry could not concentrate at all. This likely resulted from Harry having to share his consciousness with an angry sixteen-year-old who had grown up to become the greatest Dark Wizard to have ever graced this cursed world with his magic … only to be killed fifty years later by a fucking pen – but even still. He wished he could have been incarnated as Dudley instead. Dudley might have proven more useful to his ends. He might yet.

“That is what the Auror thought, too, but Dad sat Doctor and Mrs. Doctor Granger down well before any of that happened and said that being that she and I are friends that waiting would only make this more uncomfortable for all parties, he told them that witches and wizards still exist and all that rubbish and asked about all manner of strange and scary things they couldn’t account for.”

Auror? Now Dudley commanded his full and undivided attention. Tom sat up.

“She, Hermione, didn’t believe him because I think she did not want to, and … beside you, I mean, who would?” Dudley snorted. “So, she asked for proof, and I don’t know if Dad expected that something like this would happen or not, I mean, you figure he does this kind of thing enough to avoid it becoming an incident.”

Who the fuck cared about what some Mudblood thought about magic? Had Dudley lost the plot or just missed the point?

“Just tell me what happened!” Tom demanded. “Why did Aurors get involved?”

“Well, Dad conjured a number of items to Hermione’s parents’ delight, but then looked at her, smirked, and told her that he took it she wanted proof and not parlour tricks, so we all went outside to the car where he had his dragonhide apothecary bag and a number of student samples he said she could help him mark, and he showed her swelling and shrinking serum, explained the science behind them and then asked her if anything could truly be considered magic if it required intellectual understanding as opposed to suspended disbelief to produce.”

 Yeah, Tom thought. Leave it to Severus Snape to ensnare eight-year-olds with questions of philosophy in the middle of a makeshift science lesson.  Fucking teacher-of-the-year right there. Small wonder he did not yet have tenure. Tom did not agree with Dumbledore on much, but he firmly believed that every authoritarian regardless of setting of scope should reserve the right to dismiss a subordinate for being an insufferable cunt. He could respect Dumbledore’s decision to keep Severus under the threat of caution. Merlin! How lucky he had been to have been taught by Slughorn. If he ever again rose to power, he would have to thank his erstwhile Potions Master for being exhausting as opposed to insufferable.

“Dad was banging on about how he could teach her to brew glory and bottle fame,” Dudley explained.

At this, Tom buried his face in his palms, both embarrassed for his dad by a few degrees of separation and wanting to weep out of frustration.

Why did Dudley think it was appropriate to bother the Dark Lord with so much unnecessary detail? When would he again be at a point in his career where he could offer correction? When he would not have to? Merlin! To what depths had he sunk? The worst of it was, he still had puberty to look forward to, which meant even more meaningless small talk and pimples besides. Tom wondered if his voice would change this time around or if he would still sound as high-pitched as he presently did, as disassociated memory told him he had when speaking his final curse in his own, adult body, free from the whims and intrusive thoughts of a child, from the incoherent ramblings of –

Oh. Dudley was finally getting on with it. Tom wondered vaguely if he really was as dramatic as Draco Malfoy always accused him of being.

“When the scariest man I have ever seen in my life came out of nowhere!”

“He apparated?” Tom surmised.

“He accio’d Dad’s wand – which he didn’t even have out at the time – and pinned him against the building, just like, six feet or so off the ground. Then he said something about eating death and Dad being scum, so he was probably a vegan.”

“That is not … continue,” Tom commanded.

“And not everyone in the ministry believing the lies Dumbledore told to keep him out of Azkaban and that this was the end of the road, he had attacked his last muggle.

“I hid,” Dudley admitted. Tom wondered if he was supposed to meet this with credit or scorn. “Hermione, who had been happy with being a witch just a few seconds before, presumably came to her senses. Mr Doctor Granger went on the offensive, yelling at the Auror to ‘see here!’ while his wife tried to comfort us, but Dad … Dad was pretty calm. He just explained that I was his kid, Hermione was my friend, and that if Mr Wizard Cop Man wanted to check the list in Dumbledore’s office, he would find she was already registered on it. And then he threatened to call Aunt Cissy, saying that while it is standard practice to tell Muggle-borns when they are around ten, there is no law saying that this was the only time to do so, that he wasn’t in conflict with some statue – ”

“Statute?” That was another thing that bothered him about being a kid. Dudley likely really had been imagining Dad – um, Severus – fighting with a statue. He probably imagined Mudbloods were people deserving of respect, too, but Tom anticipated that failure in nomenclature would prove more difficult to correct.

“What?” Dudley blinked. “Anyway, Dad was warned to be more discreet, Wizard Cop twisted his arm and made him squeal, warning again that he always had an eye on him, which was a thing to say because his eye could not seem to focus at all.”

“What did Dad do?”

“Nothing. I mean, before the cop left, he said that he would alter their memories of the episode, the Ministry need not send anyone else. But um. Also. He didn’t. Because Mrs Dr Granger asked after all of this was done if Aunt Cissy is a witch, too, and then kept telling her husband that she knew it because of something in one of those magazines they have in their office and how Aunt Cissy had responded when asked what the Norwegian princess is like in real life.”

“I guess Cissy will modify their memories even if Dad didn’t see the point.”

“Maybe,” Dudley considered. “Hermione’s mum also said that no one could be that pretty without resorting to some kind of black magic, and Cissy likes people to tell her how pretty she is, likes them to remember that she is a Black, and likes, probably, when people mistake that she can do practical magic, so she might just let it be.” Yeah, probably, Tom thought. “Anyway. You asked me why I don’t want to be a wizard,” Dudley continued. “Stuff like this, pretty much. I really don’t think Dad wanted to be a wizard today, either.”

“I … sometimes I wish our roles were switched,” Tom admitted. “You don’t have to hide who and what you are, not really, not as long as everyone around you is perceived as powerful. Perhaps we are all mistaken as to what true power really is. You can learn things without … you know more spells than me.”

“You’ll learn loads more when you get to Hogwarts,” Dudley shrugged, unimpressed. “I’m just there more because Dad doesn’t trust Sirius to look out for me when I’m suspended.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he shouldn’t,” Tom spat.

“What happened to you today?”

“Nothing particularly interesting.”

“Tell me!”

“Dudley … there is something I’ve been wondering about, something you can ask, but I can’t,” Tom changed the subject before Harry saw an opportunity to tell his cousin how he shattered both his kneecaps playing Quidditch with Sirius. “No one tells me anything, but Dad just runs afoul of the Aurors when you are around like it is something he does every day.”

“If Dad was a dark wizard during the war?” Dudley guessed.

“No. I know he was just pretending,” Tom dismissed, hoping he did not sound too bitter or disappointed in doing so. “But … do you think there is a chance that he knows anything about dark magic? Really dark magic? Like … if you had pieces of yourself, of your soul, scattered among various objects, and if against all precautions those objects were destroyed, what would happen?”

“You would die, wouldn’t you?”

Tom had thought so as well. “What if, instead of dying, you just remembered things that you had forgotten, but instead of it being any use, you just had to accept that that stuff you did … you might not ever be able to do it again? But if you didn’t destroy these objects, you might risk becoming someone else entirely, so even if you lived, you would be lost forever? What would you do?”

“Ha! Personally, I’d just do everything in my power to avoid ever having to fuss with that kind of stupid to begin with,” Dudley answered as though it were that simple. Tom wondered what he had expected.

“Yeah, but because of that, because you’re you and no one ever thinks otherwise, could you ask for me?” he tried again.

“Who do people think you are then?”

“You Know Who,” Tom answered. At this, Dudley looked sufficiently terrified. Tom found himself smiling, perhaps for the first time in his life. This incarnation of it, at least.

Chapter Text

“Scrofula,” Snape repeated for the third time since Sirius Black had opened his memory to him. They sat awkwardly on a cupboard in Dumbledore’s office, still enjoying the meagre comforts of the couch as much as they might manage – Snape holding the nicked bottle of Scotch in his right hand, Sirius continuing to doodle on the Potion Master’s left forearm with a muggle fine liner, happy to focus on his growing mural while a scene he well knew played out from the depths of his own recollections.

Sirius had realised nearly as soon as he had lifted the threads of memory from his mind that he did not want to be returned to this particular moment any more than he had wanted to be there when made to live it. He supposed it had nothing to do with present company, but rather with the clarity of distance, the way a double shot of single malt clouded judgement, the reflections that only manifested in dark confessions on sleepless nights –  

His family, God rot them all, had understood him, once.

He, in turn, had never bothered extending them the same casual effort.

“It’s a form of tuberculosis that manifests unsightly blisters,” Sirius answered a question he was certain he had not been asked, shaking his head in response to the one that had put to him by the gesture of a raised bottle. Snape shrugged and took a swig. Sirius wondered blandly if Snape had prior experience partaking in libations in the headmaster’s quarters or if this was an opportunistic act of rebellion. He might have accepted either answer could he bring himself to ask. Which he would not, on principle if nothing else.

There was nothing he particularly disliked about Snape’s presence beyond the invitation it silently offered to self-examination. Sirius was cruel because such had been permitted to him by blood-status, by his surname and the circles in which it was spoken of with awe. It went in contrast to all of the truths he personally held, invalidating everything he claimed to value. He often found himself wondering if he allowed the behaviour to continue out of pure inertia, or if he had convinced himself that empty insults were easier for Snape to contend at this point than anything approaching honesty.

Sometimes, in quiet moments of no real consequence, he caught involuntary impressions of his flatmate that usually resulted in Sirius escaping to the small slab of concrete behind the kitchen that he now unironically referred to as ‘the back porch’ to scorch his lungs and shut his eyes. Snape rarely smiled; had Sirius been made to endure a single moment of the Dementor’s Kiss of the childhood his best friend’s partner had suffered, he sometimes doubted he could have brought himself to stand.

It was a constant series of nothings of the sort that could consume mind and soul. It was, on his part, involuntary, yet had the same effect of the particular torture his cousin Narcissa had come to specialise in absent of other options. Memory was a kind of anti-Magic when the present was not worthy of its promises.  

In the year or some since moving to Spinner’s End, he had ceased complaining about his own childhood, ceased conflating his relatives’ politics with character, ceased pretending for the sake of his own sense of security that he had nothing in common with those with whom he had come into conflict with during his youth.

He did not want to know Snape more than necessity demanded; but for reasons he could not name he wanted Snape to know him. If he hoped for denouncement, absolution, or mere perspective he could not say. Connection, however, was too much to ask.

“It is easily cured by penicillin,” Severus commented of Scrofula, unimpressed. Before them, Professors Dumbledore, Slughorn and McGonagall were explaining to plainly crestfallen younger versions of Sirius and his brother Regulus that a goodly number of refugees from a former overseas possession had arrived at St Mungo’s with the illness, and that given the strain on resources the situation was creating for the hospital, arrangements were being made for the pair to join their father at the weekend to assist with the healing.

The Blacks were descended from a bastard line of Frankish kings, a fact that came with a number of genetic complications and minor magical inconveniences that time had a way of magnifying.

At twenty-eight, Sirius hated having otherwise pleasant interactions with those with whom he lived rot when unintentional legilimency told more than Remus, Harry, Dudley, or Snape would ever volunteer, even if the vocabulary existed for such impressions.

At thirteen, faced with the prospect of a full moon and his first (permitted) trip to Hogsmeade against the sort of familial magic he had to force himself to preform, Sirius was filled with indignation he could not contain. Regulus was, predictably, stoically resigned. They had both been taught how to administer their inborn gift the summer prior. Perhaps, he thought generously, Regulus had actually been paying attention and was therefore approaching the mater with a certain respect. Thirteen-year-old Sirius crossed his arms and shuffled in his seat.

Sirius frowned. He had, in part, defended his choice to help out at the hospital when he ought to have been staying with Harry by stating that the touch was the only time in his youth, perhaps in the whole of his life, in which he had been proud of the ‘most ancient and noble’ Black name and all who had born it. He had forgotten what a disappointment his brother could prove in his passivity.

“How many healers, we’ll expand that to mages more generally do you know who place any value on muggle medicine?” Sirius posed to his friend-by-proximity.

“Discounting myself? Four.” Snape answered. He, too, was watching Regulus as though he expected him to act. Or, as though he did not. The corner of his lips rose into a self-satisfied smirk. Sirius hated how much closer the two had been as children. He, personally, could not use legilimency whilst examining a memory of itself. He did not know if Snape could, if this was a skill Narcissa could have taught him, too, had he not scorned her company when he first came to Hogwarts, when she had been lonely for her sisters and desperate for an ersatz. Sirius frowned.

In truth, there was nothing particularly magical about any of it.

Snape seemed to know what Regulus was thinking because the two had studied and roamed the corridors together. Because they had had similar interests and inside jokes, had likely shared moments Sirius would fail to understand even if Snape permitted him into the depths of his mind. It was not fair. It was ultimately his, Sirius’ fault. He felt like a fraud.

“That is actually far higher than I would have anticipated,” Sirius gave airily. “Who?”

“Remus takes Paracetamol to help with the pain of his changes. It is the only thing we’ve found that doesn’t adversely affect Wolfsbane,” Snape answered blandly.

“Does he know?” Sirius pressed.

Snape shrugged. “I honestly can’t say. He doesn’t pay all that much attention to what he puts in his body as you well know.”

“Okay, then three,” Sirius corrected. “Who else?”

At this, Snape smiled slightly. “The Matron at Hogwarts has a stock for recreational purposes.”

“Do you partake?”

“Before I had kids.”

“That fun, huh?” Sirius grinned. “Still, not medicine.  Next.”

“Arthur Weasley,” Snape returned flatly.

“In private or just within the context of his ministerial role? If he had, say, a head cold, would he – ”

“Pepper Up,” Snape answered before Sirius could fully state the question.

“Four?”

“Cissy. Obviously,” the Potions Master drolled.

“Yeah, okay,” Sirius consented. “She’s a weirdo, that one I can accept. Still, pretty decent argument not to teach Draco how it is done.”

“How ‘what’ is done? What do you ‘do’, exactly?” Snape frowned.

“Ahh, Snivellus,” Sirius straightened, replacing the cap on his pen before his sketch could be ruined by an onslaught of  painful reflection. “This is exactly what I hate about you and the worst of it is, it is not even your fault! I could explain it, you’re objectively smart so I am sure you would understand the theory, but you would never be able to replicate it yourself because you don’t have Capetian ancestry. It just is so. You, or rather I, just dip my hand in oil, touch the inflicted, and then it goes away. It’s exhausting to preform, but not really a big deal.”

“Why do you hate me? Because I asked?” Snape seemed too confused by the ascertain to register any offence he might otherwise have found.

Sirius hated him because, of the two of them, he was the better man. He hated how woefully ignorant Snape was to this fact, how every compliment, spoken or otherwise, seemed to genuinely take him by surprise. He hated how responsible he personally felt for Severus Snape’s crippling sense of self-doubt; he hated how these moments caused him to share in the same.

Snape had not owed anything to the kids of women who had once been his neighbours. He had not wanted to be a parent, but he had taken the boys in without complaint. Sirius did not know if this had to do with blood magic, the inertia of unreturned affection, or Snape’s sense of hubris – that he would sooner or later free himself of the responsibility and return to what seemed a comfortable absence of personal pressure, but whatever it had been, time seemed to have corrected his misconceptions. Snape had never – and likely would never – say it, but he had come to love the boys. He was conscious enough of his own emotional deficits that he made certain they were exposed to people capable of filling voids they might otherwise internalise – and he still did not really seem to think he was enough. Sirius had been charged with one of them – his own godson! A boy to whom he had promised a debt to before he had even been born! – and had not been able to withstand the responsibility for the course of a single afternoon.

When Snape accused him of doing nothing, he had no idea how right he was beyond the scope of something called ‘chores’ in the home which Sirius suspected he had opened to him for Remus’ sake more than anyone else’s. But Sirius was not doing Remus any favours either. He wondered, often, if the two would not have long since been married if he were not there at the foot of their bed with snide comments, empty threats, and other attacks born of envy.

He was the worst of everything he hated about his family name because he was arrogant enough to pretend towards enlightenment.     

“Because answering forces me to reflect that I did not manage to completely inoculate myself to my family’s pure blood bullshit,” Sirius answered, hoping this would serve as an apology he would never otherwise be positioned to offer to the man. “Some of my happiest memories of childhood centre around being called on to heal this ancient and fully treatable disease.” He paused. “In truth, I am loath to teach Draco how, even though the magic would otherwise die with me. Though I suppose I owe it to Cissy. Sort of. Actually no,” he shifted, indignant. “I don’t know how she can stand it.”

“He is a clever kid,” Severus defended, matching Sirius’ shift in tone. He sometimes forgot the man was Draco’s godfather.

“He’s a Malfoy. He has no right to it.”

“How do you figure?”

“Now, this is where I am going to sound incredibly petty,” Sirius admitted. “When our brother Louis staged his invasion in twelve-hundred who-the-fuck knows – ”

“Cissy, presumably.”

“Doubtful.”

“She’s one of the only people I know to have an N.E.W.T. in Magical History.”

“While that might be a decent argument as to why she has so few friends, it is irrelevant here. She wrote her damn thesis on the Women’s Quidditch Rebellion of the 1870s when they were banned form the sport and responded by attacking the Ministry with Bludgers on Broomsticks. She only likes the stories she can romanticise. The Malfoys aren’t like that. They were and in a lot of ways still are Breton pirates who lucked into a false alliance for long enough to get a title out of it. A title, mind, that a lot of my ancestors and otherwise relatives, living and deceased refuse to recognise. They benefited at our disgrace – ”

“In the Middle Ages?” Snape recounted dryly. “When Prince Louis’ occupation became untenable anyway because his father refused to support it?”

“And after! You know that portrait of Queen Isabella we have at Grimmauld Place that everyone used to say looked so much like Cissy that she insisted on having it hung in her room when she was little? Hasn’t visited since having it out with her over Lucius. They. Betrayed. Every. Crown. We. Ever. Wore.”

“I’m certain the She-Wolf of France has better things to do in death than hang out in the now empty room of a teenager whose boyfriend she did not approve of,” Snape sneered.

“I don’t know. I’d imagine museums to be fucking boring even for those on display.”

“To clarify, you are angry about something or some series of things that happened hundreds of years ago to the point that you struggle to recognise Draco as your own blood because of his last name?”

“I told you it was petty. But how can a Malfoy be taught to do that which helped to legitimise our right to rule? In all fairness, they are not even properly French.”

“No,” Snape elongated. “They are English. So are you.”

“They are not even ‘Pure Bloods’ when judged against the standard everyone else seems agreed upon. But here, watch. Cissy once knew where her loyalties ought to lie,” he gestured, smirking.

To everyone else’s legitimate surprise, the door to the Headmaster’s office swung open. A seventeen-year-old Narcissa Black marched in, acting for all the world as though she had every right to be there. Sirius watched his younger self intently, surprised that the arrogance of this did not seem to register the way it had with the collected teachers, who suddenly all seemed incensed at the interruption.

“What precisely is the meaning of this?” the teenage Narcissa demanded, slamming a stack of books on varied and seemingly unrelated subjects upon Dumbledore’s desk. “You can cease with your planning,” she informed him directly. “I’m in the process of making other arrangements. We are playing Gryffindor at the weekend and you’ve no right to deny this fine institution the best Seeker House Slytherin has produced in a generation. I’m sorry. I simply won’t have it.”

“Miss Black,” Dumbledore addressed her cordially, folding his long fingers together. “Might I inquire as to how you got past the Gargoyle?”

For a moment, all three Blacks seemed confused by the question. Actual doors could no more be closed to them than metaphorical ones. It had evidently yet to truly occur to any of them that such was unique. Narcissa, who seemed to gather what was being asked before either of her cousins, explained with a slight embarrassment that might well have sufficed the need for apology, “I found someone who knows the password and extracted that information without said party being any the wiser. Alice,” she added to McGonagall. “She was with Frank when I went to ask if he would support my argument with his expertise.”

Snape frowned as McGonagall softened slightly. Sirius was sure that all teachers tended to favour their own house, that McGonagall remained guilty of this behaviour and that Snape had adopted the same mannerisms without consideration of his time as a student.

“Then please, take a seat,” Dumbledore offered pleasantly, extending his wand, and producing a third chair with a wave and a flick.

“If it is all the same, I don’t think I shall – no, leave it open, Sir,” she said of the door Dumbledore was in the process of lifting is wand towards. “This will either be a short conversation and I’ll soon be taking my cousins to bed, or, alternatively, I shall be required to call on the series witnesses I’ve arranged to wait outside.”

“Oh-ho!” Slughorn beamed, again, demonstrating a sense of blatant favouritism. “I take it you enjoyed your summer internship, then? Corban was pleased – yes, best pleased when I suggested your name to him.”

“Very much so, Professor. Although, not half so much as I’m enjoying the captaincy you were so generous to afford me,” Narcissa flattered. “It is in that role that I seek to –” she had begun pacing the length of the table as she would eventually do before the Wizengamot.

“Miss Black. There is a pandemic and your cousins – ” McGonagall started.

“Can just as easily contend with matters some other time. Regulus has his debut to make and Sirius,” she squinted at him, hesitated, and returned her attention to Professor McGonagall, “I’m sure you are conscious of the situation without necessitating that I name it in extended company.”

“Is she actually standing up for Remus?” Snape asked, smiling slightly as though he would have to tease her about it at some point.

“That is to say nothing. Just wait. Narcissa would have run wandless through the heat of battle after openly betraying every fraction with the slimmest hope of being able to field her full first team on Saturday. But yeah, she goes as hard as she can without ever naming the problem in front of Regulus, which was pretty decent of her.”

“Was this after the match against Hufflepuff where she flew for three hours with a broken arm and cracked ribs as to not give them the satisfaction?” Snape inquired.

“Yeah, the start of the following season. Ted wasn’t at Hogwarts when this happened.” Sirius answered.

“He wasn’t when his former teammates decided to jump her in full view of the entire school out of solidarity, either.”

“Amazing how few people ever truly learn not to fuck with the Badgers,” Sirius remarked.

“Is it something you ever forgot?” Snape frowned. “Sometimes Sprout will ask me to help her with something plainly miserable and I’ll consent without a second thought, knowing the possible consequences of saying no. Even Tonks – the little one – scares me, sometimes.”

“Fucking same,” Sirius smirked, thinking fondly of his second cousin and the hell she must prove herself in the classroom.

“Much though we can all appreciate your show of concern,” Professor McGonagall addressed Narcissa with a put-on air of diplomacy, “the afflicted party has been well provided for by this institution in the past and will continue – ”

“To enjoy the support and comradery of his friends in his time of need, which the literature on the subject suggests is as important to treatment as whatever is being done to ensure that the infection is not spread,” Narcissa continued, pulling out a book from the pile she had brought along. “I am glad we are in concurrence,” she smiled, opening it to the relevant passage and handing it to McGonagall for her review.

“You are all the same person,” Snape remarked. “You, Narcissa, Bellatrix, Andromeda, Regulus, now Dora and Draco. It is discomforting.”

“I don’t see it,” Sirius gave.

“You aren’t a teacher.”

“The afflicted has other friends, as you have an assortment of substitutes you could just as well field. Miss Black,” McGonagall said sharply. “I don’t think you understand the urgency of the situation.”

“She won’t win this fight,” Snape said. “Minerva. You can already tell. Even if she was in the right – which she is plainly not – whatever Narcissa does is going to be so exhaustive that in the end she will just give in. Like I said, I don’t bother much with attempting to discipline Tonks anymore. Or you for that matter,” he snorted. “The trick of it is, with pupils like that,” he gestured vaguely towards Narcissa, “to shift their focus to something less potentially destructive. Same way with the Weasleys, curiously enough.”

“Planning on sharing that insight?” Sirius smirked.

“I get a hundred Galleon bonus when Slytherin wins the cup, paid out right before my boys have their birthdays,” Snape answered by way of explanation.

“Probably for the best, then.”

“Which situation? Fiscal, logistic, or medical?” Narcissa challenged. “Regardless – the defence calls Dilys Derwent to testify.” A little picture of the eighteenth-century hearer cum headmistress opened her eyes, blinking in surprise at the address. Several other portraits ceased feigning sleep to whisper amongst one another, each wearing the same wrenching expression Snape did watching from the distance of time since passed. “Oh, fuck all of you. Your entire family tree. Branches and roots.”

“You see why I left home?” Sirius inquired.

“It is a reality I never once blinded myself to. I lasted all of a year living with Narcissa before returning to this shithole town. It is only too bad about the neighbours,” Snape answered with a nod towards Sirius. The two shared another shot.

‘The defence’ went on to call Madame Pomfrey to testify on the efficacy of modern treatment, Madame Hooch to complain about the logistical difficulties of rescheduling a Quidditch match, the groundskeeper Hagrid, who was asked about magical beasts and their need for companionship, Professor Binns for historical context if not colour, and repeatedly upon Antonin Dolohov to read passages to underline her various arguments as to why the coming weekend would not suit. Narcissa stated when the would-be Dark Wizard asked her why he had to do this that everything she had to say sounded more material in an ‘Iron Curtain accent’ than in an Essex one. At this, Slughorn had fought to stifle a laugh. Dumbledore seemed to have long since been won over by Hagrid’s testimony and the repeated suggestion that Narcissa gave a damn about Remus Lupin’s fragile sense of stability.

McGonagall still looked irate.

Sirius did not think that his former Head had gone into the meeting caring particularly about the ramifications this might have on the Quidditch Cup, but she alone was unmoved by the arguments, angered at Narcissa’s arrogance and at her own inability to deduct points for correction for fear of undermining Dumbledore’s authority. Their eyes met. Narcissa again stopped pacing. This was clearly personal.

“Whose failure is it, Miss Black, if you are, as you state, unable to field a team in the absence of your cousin?” she challenged, seeing the theatre for what it was.

“On a practical level, I believe I ought to take the issue up with the governors,” Narcissa answered calmly. “Why is flying covered in fall term of first year and not even offered as an elective thereafter? A system has essentially been created in which sport is only available to Pure Bloods of particular means, which I would dare imagine you to be fundamentally opposed to.”

“I hardly see how Slytherin is affected,” the younger Sirius snorted to himself. Regulus gave him a mean look.

“I just really wanted to get her to admit on the record that she only picked her favourites,” Sirius commented. “That you were shite, in other words.” Snape was impassive and did not comment. Sirius, again, was left wondering what precisely compelled him to be cruel without aim or real incentive.

“We’re less than a month into term, we’re affected the same way every other house is,” Narcissa insisted. “Half of my reserve squad has barely been airborne since June. Even if I did have a backup who could play Seeker – ”

“Snape is ambidextrous, put him in as a four, move Greengrass to centre and take the seven yourself,” McGonagall suggested.

“I’m five-eleven,” Narcissa answered flatly with the same disbelieving expression she had worn when asked how she managed to enter the office without password or permission.

“It is why no one wants to snog her except for Malfoy,” Regulus said to Sirius under his breath.

“Well, it is a factor,” Sirius answered.

McGonagall, either because she was uncomfortably tall herself or because she would have fallen in with any woman reduced to a single physical trait, shot both of them a glare and softened when she returned to Narcissa to talk sport, “Then make Carlyle – ”

“Doesn’t have the speed or dexterity, especially with the absence of preseason and are you just ... aren’t there better uses of your time than sitting the same group of thirteen-year-olds in detention?” Narcissa frowned, her practiced composure momentarily fractured. “I mean, there are three quality pubs in Hogsmeade,” she held up her fingers for empathies.

“Miss Black!” McGonagall barked.

“Fine, there are two quality pubs in Hogsmeade and one I am being generous towards in present company,” Narcissa corrected with a slightly apologetic nod towards Dumbledore. “Point is, it can’t possibly be in your or anyone’s interest for me to field the formation you suggest. Even if Snape were match-fit, I would forfeit before playing him against Gryffindor. The game would be a series of fouls broken up by the occasional penalty. The entertainment value would expire after twenty-minutes.”

“I think we’d have gotten a good half an hour out of it before cheers and jeers gave way to collective groans,” Snape assessed the untestable hypothesis.

“I’d second that,” Sirius said, reaching for the open bottle they had brought. “How many times did you wind up subbed in?”

“In seven years? Three. None of them under a Black, though, and never against Gryffindor.”

“It wasn’t personal, I’m sure,” Sirius offered emptily.

“Then perhaps you should forfeit,” McGonagall surmised.

“Perhaps you’ll have to,” Narcissa returned, turning then towards the open door, and raising her wand to amplify he voice. “The defence calls Frank Longbottom to testify.”

Longbottom shuffled in a minute later, awkwardly looking everywhere but at the professors assembled before him, evidently never having been in enough trouble to warrant a meeting with the headmaster, fascinated with the room unto itself. After allowing him a few moments of wonder, Narcissa took his arm and pulled him to the chair that had been conjured for her, which she had taken to using for cross examination. “Uh. Hi. Yeah,” he said when Narcissa asked him if he would be able to field a team against his Head’s feeble suggestions for an alternative Slytherin side. “If Cissy has no option but to play Snape, I’m pulling Potter,” Frank answered. They had clearly discussed this in advance. “Neither of us lost a match last season, our own match was a draw and Gryffindor was afforded the Cup on a thirty-point goal differential which sit doesn’t sit well with me. We each had to play very different Hufflepuff sides. Cissy and I … we are both sitting our N.E.W.T.s next June, this will be the last time we ever meet on the pitch,” he said as though making his own plea. “I want the chance to beat her fair and square.”

“I’d forgotten the two of them were friendly, once,” Snape commented almost absently, the considerations of the past fifteen years weighing on him. So, too, had Sirius. He had wanted to show Snape his single recollection of the time that everyone in his generation had proven the best-worst versions of themselves, had gotten him out of lecture and taken him on a midweek adventure to his first-ever concert where he had figured out the secrets of human transfiguration as though the factors leading to might prove as pleasant as own his feelings around the affair.

No. Of course not.

Narcissa had since come so dangerously close to killing her own sister at the hight of hostilities that Bellatrix had been driven past madness, had delivered others – people they had played with as children – to the same terrible fate. The Dementors had largely ignored her at Azkaban, for there was nothing left to take. He wondered the extent to which Narcissa knew this; if she knew that Bellatrix had screamed in agony whenever she had seen him, Sirius; if Frank and Alice gave Narcissa a similar reception when she visited them in the wing of St Mungo’s which her pirate-husband’s money had financed; if she heard her sister in their anguished cries.

Snape’s sudden expression left little room for doubt.

“We left with Bella at three-thirty the following morning as Cissy had arranged with her, my folks and the hospital before thinking it best to get the school on side,” Sirius said, if only to take his company-by-circumstance’s mind from the aftermath it seemed to revisit. “Well. She picked us up from the front gates at three-thirty in the morning. We left after she flew her brand-new enchanted Aston Martin to my dorm room window because I wanted to show my mates the car I was in, and then around Gryffindor Tower a few times more to make sure everyone else woke up, too. Bella was horrified that that was the first time I’d ever been exposed to Goblin Metal and said that she would simply have to make an exception and extend the favour to the rest of my house.”

“Generous of her,” Snape said.

“She had her moments.”

One of the realities around the odd Scrofula pandemic the thirteen-year-old Sirius had failed to consider was the prospect – nay, implicit promise! – of seeing his favourite cousin again. Andromeda had left home after leaving Hogwarts two years prior. She continued living in London, though where Sirius had not known and had known better than to ask – the whole of his family scandalised into something of a blessed silence around the affair as she was living (‘in sin!’) with a Muggle Born whom they could not refer to in anything save pejorative language.

She had met them in the lobby, hugged Sirius warmly, shaken Regulus’ hand when he had hesitantly extended it, and engaged in a bout of mockery with her elder sister for show if nothing else, though truth was inherently always present in jest. Andromeda had not been aware that Bellatrix was back in country. She had seen in the society papers, of course, that she was doing the Season, but she could not accept that any sister of hers would come to shun what had been their favourite London haunts for the prospect of impressing a pool of suitors who held no interest for her. Bellatrix had countered that she had a hard time imagining that Andromeda still had to go to Muggle clubs to slum it, as she had heard that her sister had moved into a SoHo flat with such accommodations as modern plumbing and something called ‘electricity’ – which neither had elaborated on enough for Sirius to properly imagine.

Eventually, their row gave way to wonder and a shared sense of envy. As women, they were not gifted with the Touch. Sirius had often wondered if this was really true or if no one bothered to teach the women of his line the particulars, but watching them in hindsight, he decided that they had both individually at least attempted it for themselves at some point prior. Andromeda was arrogant enough to think that she could save the world; Bellatrix, plainly the most gifted in their family and painfully aware of that fact, likely had medical knowledge to rival her little sister’s, albeit born of the field experience she was accumulating breaking curses for Gringotts whilst not playing to men’s phantasies and her own marital ambitions, such as they were.

Snape had lost interest in Sirius as he now was and had taken to following his younger self around the ward, watching intently as he interacted with the inflicted, muttering a Latin incantation without enthusiasm, Regulus preforming the same task with positive conviction. Sirius wondered who among them was vainer in their individual approach.

“You are identical,” Snape informed him as though borrowing from this thread. Was he also obvious? How could Snape probe his passing thoughts whilst looking through a pensieve? He did not resent the Potions Master his abilities. Knowing the hell the private doubts of other wrought upon him personally, Sirius pitied the man his talent.

“The more impressive bit of familial magic is happening over there,” he gestured to Andromeda and Bellatrix, watching them bickering over a bill that was up for a vote, likely with more veracity than the ministers with something approaching fascination. “You’ll see it in a minute. There is a McDonald’s two block from our family home, we had never been, and Reggie pestered Bella until she took us. The entire drive from Scotland he was at it.”

“Bet you learned some creative curses in the process.”

“And how to swear fluently in Gobbledegook,” Sirius affirmed. “Gave a bit of context to her record selection.”

“Sure. Because one needs a translation to put themselves in the mood to burn a church. Otherwise, it is just noise.”

“We’d ought to go to a show together sometime,” Sirius snorted. He had forgotten how woefully poor Snape was at modern linguistics.

“Best not,” Snape eyed him with suspicion.

“Anyway, what she is silently telling Andromeda: we went to the drive through where she was told that they were only serving the breakfast menu, so we parked, went in, waited in line – and Bella was in the process of explaining to them under the imperious curse that she had been driving for the past twelve hours. That her brat cousins wanted Happy Meals and that the clock had absolutely no bearing on the operation of friers and grills, when two blokes with crowbars came in demanding the registers and safe. Bella turned, told them she was in the middle of something, and when they again demanded that she get on the floor, she transformed said crowbars into foam pool noodles and informed them the cops were already on the way, bidding them to go sit in a corner and have a think about their life choices, she might yet be able to smooth this over. Then she collected out order, sat herself down in a booth as we worked to erase everyone’s memory of the incident. When Kingsley Shacklebolt showed up, she explained a version of what happened – a version that did not offer her threatening violence to obtain a pair of hamburgers and, after telling him to consider whom he was addressing by way of stating that the muggles had no recollection of anything that had transpired, offered him a sip of her milkshake. She didn’t even get a citation. It was –”

“Batshit but kind of brilliant!” Andromeda doubled over laughing. The response did not comply with the conversation they had outwardly been engaging in at all.

“Shut up! Seriously – stop!” Bellatrix hissed. “You are meant to be defending Fudge in all of this!”

“Oh, sod off,” Andromeda returned, neither collected nor feigning any attempt in that regard.

Young Sirius turned and smiled. Regulus gave him an uneasy thumbs up. Maybe, he remembered having thought, they could return to being best friends someday, too.

It had not quite worked out as once hoped.

“Can I ask you something? Could my brother, could he do that, too?” Black asked when they had returned to their couch with a significantly depleted bottle of what had probably been expensive whiskey, courtesy of St Mungo’s in the modern day. For a former convict who had likely spent half of his energy and efforts at Azkaban fermenting whatever he could get his hands on in a cell-room lavatory, Black certainly had a particular pallet. Severus was, however, too busy admiring the linework his tenant had done on his arm to answer him immediately, wondering if this was another skill Black had picked up in prison or if he had always been able to draw. Black had certainly acquired enough tattoos to support either theory. Severus wondered if they were all his own work if he would be wholly opposed to making his work permanent if Severus were fool – or drunk – enough to lend him his wand. Realising he would be better off waiting for Remus to inform him if he would regret the impulse come morning, he resigned himself to answer.

“No with me, I’ve still yet to master the art. But with those born to the gift? Certainly. You never –”

“No. At first, with Andy and her sisters, really until she went and eloped, it was like what you saw in my memory. They would put on a show of fighting publicly while at once catching up and making secret plans. Reg and I … maybe we were too young, maybe it was that it was no single thing that caused the split, but since he started Hogwarts, or since I did, I don’t know, we just slowly fell apart. It seems cheap to say but … I’m glad he had you, at least.”

Merlin, they were both bloody wasted. Severus had always counted on the inevitability that the topic would one day be addressed, but in his imaginings the two had always been sober enough to deny themselves and each other any sense of closure.

“He didn’t,” Severus answered honestly, attempting to circumvent further question and comment by stating, “I can’t tell you how your brother died, Black. I can tell you I wish I had done more but that was the crux of the problem. When we were Death Eaters, we had conflicting ideas about how to bring the organisation to an end. I wanted to help as many people I could on both sides of the conflict into hiding; he wanted to break Voldemort by indirect assault. I would not have been able to save him if I had tried. And I did – for what little it amounted to, I did. In the end we wished each other luck and agreed to stay out of one another’s way.”

Black was silent for what felt a long while. “Did you know it was goodbye?” he asked without meeting Severus’ gaze.

“Dose anything ever feel like goodbye when you are twenty?” Severus returned. There were still days when he woke up, unconscious that the friends he lost were gone forever, when he would try to remember when Lily said she would be by to pick Harry up, or when he would wonder if Barty had read the mad shit the Quibbler had gotten past the censors with regard to his father, or when he would walk through a crowded Cauldron on his way to pick up supplies for his students, surprised not to find Frank and Alice at the centre of the commotion –

Or when he would walk downstairs flipping through an old copy of Hogwarts, a History with a mind to ask one of its previous owners if he could give it to an eight-year-old who was too clever by the half or if Regulus had scribbled some curse in its margins out of boredom in Binn’s lectures that might put the Granger’s off to the whole idea of their daughter being a witch. Except it was not Regulus on his sofa, however the mind might try to tease peripheral vision with familiarities lost to times past.

“I suppose not,” Black answered. Severus wondered what insignificant occurrences caused him to miss his brother particularly, what reminded him of Potter and Pettigrew, whom else he missed so much as to necessitate an occasional self-reminder that they were really gone.

No, Severus thought. They were not going to do this.

They were doing this before he could properly yield to his own caution.

“He was a lot like you,” Severus heard himself say. “Brave. Conflicted about what that meant. Suffered illusions of grandeur, albeit silently. When we were kids … I resented him, in a way I recognised as unjust even at the time, mind, because he so resembled you. It is the opposite now in a way. You are not him, but this whole, strange constellation – in another world you might have been. I’m comfortable where I shouldn’t be. It isn’t fair to anyone, least of all you I suppose.”

“This is you comfortable?” Black snorted.

Severus merely held up the bottle of spirts.

“Atta boy,” Black smiled, patting him on the back as he helped himself to another swig. Severus returned the grin, then looked away before this Black brother could have a go at his slightly crooked teeth, both annoyed and embarrassed. The cur did not seem to notice.

“You know what the worst of it is?” Severus posed rhetorically. “He was right. In the end I did more harm than good. If I hadn’t convinced Cissy to turn, Bella’d have never had cause for confrontation … I’d forgotten Cissy and Frank used to have a more of less respectful rivalry. That almost makes it worse, does it not?”

“War has no winners, regardless of what history otherwise tries to instil,” Black remarked, almost sagely. “I’ve always considered that the reason Cissy is so haunted is that she never truly had a side. She understood on some intellectual level, maybe, why Lucius was receptive to Voldemort’s rhetoric. Honestly, in his positioned I don’t know that I wouldn’t have been swayed – it’s the same instinct that caused me to join the Order. He wanted to protect those his hereditary title had indebted him to, wizarding families forced from their homes in his father’s extended absence so that the muggle government could house a weapon. I would have been incensed. Cissy, however, bought too much into the promises of the court to consider that wands might be drawn. She just got caught up in it. The law let her down afterwards. That is what haunts her most. Not the single battle she ‘won’ and the horrors that resulted from said victory, but the ones she couldn’t stage in court as Lucius’ consort. She’s vain. We all are. You are, too, by the way, if you really think you are to blame for all of the lives you couldn’t save.”

“You can’t say that,” Severus negated. “If I hadn’t sold out the entire movement for the hope of saving Lily from a prophecy which I’d too late realised might well apply to Harry, it might have never come to pass. I wonder, sometimes, if Reg was right – if the Dark Lord already had a horcrux, or a number of them – or if he had given him the idea and for reasons I cannot myself fathom he decided on Harry as a vessel.”

Black was silent for a long while.

“You are a better Legilimens then me,” he pronounced, staring intently at the unlit fireplace as though he intended to travel.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Severus bade him.

“I’m not,” Black insisted, hesitated, then inquired, “Have you ever searched Dumbledore’s mind?”

“Only far enough to find that his suspicions around Harry are merely suspicions,” Severus answered.

“And the other horcruxes my brother alleged?”

“Speculation. I’ve yet to encounter definitive evidence either way. Only … ” No, he had decided before the words could leave his lips. Narcissa knew nothing of the Dark Arts. She had once asked Remus in all earnestness why Karkaroff’s acquittal was not being covered in the N.E.W.T. level Defence curriculum, given the jurisprudence it established. She had thought everyone at the table was having a go at her when they explained as gently as possible while stifling laughter that Defence Against the Dark Arts aimed to teach young wizards and witches how to protect themselves against dark magic, not, as she seemed to think, how to argue on behalf of those accused of grievous war crimes.

It was impossible.

“What is impossible?” Black asked, sifting when it had become clear to him that Severus had no intention of continuing his thought aloud.

“When Cissy was still working at Hogwarts, she told me that she knew where one was and that she meant to destroy it. I told her to bring it to me, but she refused, stating that if she was right, he’d have a far harder time turning her to dark magic as she can’t even really manage with the soft stuff. And that was it.”

“You never followed up?”

Severus shrugged. “There was nothing to follow up on. You would figure we would have noticed something by now if she had been on to something. Or that she would have asked you or Remus what to do about it.”

An expression of horrified realisation overtook Black’s handsome features.

“What?” Severus demanded. Had she asked him how to go about shattering the soul of an inanimate object? Severus wondered darkly if the two had insulted it until it had found a dark closet to go and cry in as seemed to be a modus operandi the whole family could execute with devastating efficacy. Clever and conventionally attractive cunts, all.

“Do you happen to know if she has a diadem – Narcissa, I mean?” Black asked, his voice shaking.

The question, admittedly, threw him. “Maybe? If she does, she’d have to class and tact never to wear it. She surrendered her title at your insistence.”

“I wonder … they just might have. Did you ever see her wearing … it kind of looked like an eagle made of diamonds?” Black took his notebook from the floor, hastily sketching an image Severus thought he recognised from the five years he’d spent in the muggle educational system.

“No,” Severus answered flatly. “That looks like the Reichsadler. Abraxas would have gone berserk if something of the like ever entered his home – ”

“Its not a damned Reichadler,” Black said, though Severus was not certain he understood the reference. “There is something else I want to show you,” he said as though such were urgent. “Same night, more or less. After we had finished at St. Mungo’s, Andy gave us some potion to revive our energy and strength, and then met us in some ally on the other side of the city after she got off work, where we all got a portkey to Shkodra to go watch one of the Goblin bands Bella had introduced us to on the way down to London play an underground set.”

“Where?” Severus squinted. Now, he knew, it was his turn to appear comparatively ignorant. Black had seen half the world by his sixteenth birthday; Severus’ knowledge of geography was restricted to cities with first division football or quidditch clubs. Black blinked, his face otherwise expressionless. Severus found himself hoping that Shkodra was not some London club he had never been cool enough to get into, that he was not confirming his loser status by confessing he had never even heard of the place.

“In Albania,” Black answered.

“Oh. That is sobering.”

Taking an entirely different meaning from his statement, Black continued, almost with offence, “Well, it was bloody awesome at the time. And I’m not even sure Bella met Voldemort at that juncture. It never occurred to me until just now when you mentioned Narcissa maybe having gotten her hands on a horcrux, and it was not as though,” he paused. “She wasn’t evil, yet. She wasn’t even misguided she was just – ”

“Unsuccessful I take it?” thirteen-year-old Sirius grinned, climbing through the guardrail up to the secluded table at which his cousin was seated, scribbling on a cocktail napkin, ignoring the drink it was meant to accompany.

“What are you on about?” Bellatrix asked without looking up from the notes she was making, batting his hand away when he reached for the far-too-colourful mixed drink, handing him a bottle of water instead. Young Sirius sighed but seemed resigned to the refreshment as he sat down at the other end of the booth, unknowingly placing himself directly beside an older version of himself, who, in ways he recognised just enough to know himself incapable of properly contenting, had been stuck in this moment in too many to have transpired since.

“I thought you and Andy wanted to buy drugs,” his younger self continued obnoxiously.

“You saw what she did with the cocktail, right?” Sirius remarked to his companion in defence of his cousin. “She wouldn’t let me have coffee of soft drinks either.”

“In all fairness to Bellatrix, I wouldn’t allow you caffeine or sugar if poisoned to ban such substances,” Snape returned, paying him as little mind as the memories themselves, transfixed by Bellatrix’s scribbles. “It is a counter curse,” he commented, impressed either with the spell work itself or the fact that Bellatrix was capable of such creation in a crowed club. “Or one she is trying to invent. Fitting soundtrack.” Part of Sirius wanted to lean over to take a closer look, but he knew better than to intrude into his cousin’s mind. He could guess that her endeavours would prove successful. They nearly always had.

“I can’t wait till you get old enough that everything you say doesn’t have the singsong-y quality of ‘I’m telling Mum’,” Bellatrix mocked.

“You just seem tired is all,” young Sirius returned without hostility.

“Fucking knackered,” Bellatrix gave, sighed, and shut her eyes. “And now I’m stuck babysitting.”

“Oi! I’m not a baby!”

Snape snorted. Sirius swallowed. Bellatrix ignored the assertion entirely.

“My little sister seems to be enjoying herself,” she corrected his assumptions, gesturing vaguely to the dancefloor where Andromeda could be spotted truly proving herself an embarrassment to their family name. “It was worth it, I guess. Ugh, Sirius!” she shifted, reaching across the table with both arms to take his hand in hers. “I’ve spent the whole Season feeling sorry for myself, but goddamn. We are so lucky that we’ll never have to go through the motions of dating. I don’t know that I could stand it! I don’t know how anyone does.”

“I am not doing the Ton,” Sirius told her, his tone absent of empathy.

“No, but you will,” Bellatrix replied flatly. “Fuck around as much as you might before, after. Whatev. I suppose such matters less when you get to keep your own name.”

“It isn’t fair, is it?”

Bellatrix shrugged. “No, but it is fine. Like I said, preferable to the alternative. You have no idea what I went through so she could take that hit.”

“Am I about to be treated to a drug prevention lecture from an international banker? That is rich.”

“Pun definitely intended,” adult Sirius informed his companion. Snape seemed annoyed by this omission, which caused Sirius to smirk.

“Not exactly. I’m about to teach you how to do it properly. You’ll thank me when you are old enough to need to escape,” Bellatrix puckered her perfectly painted lips. “Now listen. You know when you see someone scanning the loose thoughts of a room and it is way too obvious? I saw Andy doing that between sets like a bloody legilimency novice, asked what was up and she mentioned for like the fifth time that she wanted a bump to keep her going. And I am like, alright,” Bellatrix said, stretching. “It’s clear that you have never had to buy your own junk in a foreign country, watch and learn. Really,” she leaned over to Sirius as though she were about to impart something crucial to his continued survival, “you need only your eyes for thus one. I searched the periphery for someone shady, someone plainly not engrossed in the set, and I spotted him in a matter of seconds, pointed him out, but then Andy kept giggling that he kinda looked like that guy who used to work at Borgin and Burkes. We used to call him Elvis because of all the gel he used. I forget his name now if I ever knew it, but you know who I mean.”

“I guess?” Sirius squinted.

“Anyway, good that my sister was out of sorts with old inside jokes because this creep! Ohmigod,” Bellatrix shuttered. “Right, I go over, inquire as to what he’s stocking. He smiles, pulls out his wand and casts a nonverbal Imperious. Impressive, had I been anyone else, but no, no, fuck no,” she said definitely. “Now my only objective is getting this guy the fuck away from a party where my little sister and kid cousins are in attendance. I can hear him in my mind telling me to kiss him hard, so I play along, press my body against his, lean forward and whisper that that isn’t how this works. He picked the wrong witch, but I was right about him.” Even in the angered retelling there was something undeniably sensual about her.

“I will kill him,” Sirius swore as though daring anyone to say his cousin had been asking for it.

“I handled it,” Bellatrix smiled darkly. “I reached into his back pocket, took the first vial I found, and pinched his ass for good measure, just so he’d know how subjugation feels. I told him I wanted to dance without worrying about some creepo checking me out all the while, so he was going to slither back to whatever pit of hell he emerged from, and for my troubles, he was going to give me his diadem. Kind of kitsch,” she wrinkled her nose teasingly. “I fancied it. He then actually had the audacity to inquire after my name. I laughed, tried the mind-fuck trick Cissy’s been working on, knowing that if I had pulled my wand there would have been blood. I took my prize when his eyes went red from fighting tears, and he is there choking, asking if I realised who he was. ‘Irrelevant’, I answered. He. Kissed. My. Hand,” she said as though this were the single most offensive thing a man might have done in this situation, “Said in a weirdly high-pitched voice – though maybe it was the effect of Cissy’s spell,” she gave, “can’t say, I’ve only done it the once – he said, ‘I am certain we will meet again, Bella Black.’ So, I slapped him, told him to get my name out of his filthy mouth, a Mudblood like him was plainly not fit to speak it, and stormed off whilst he sank away.”

“You told him your name?” young Sirius gaped. “You robbed an Albanian drug dealer and Told. Him. Your. Name?”

“Well,” Snape assessed. “I have to say that I’ve always found it somewhat endearing how your entire family seems to over-enunciate when emotionally provoked.”

Sirius shook his head. “That guy she met. You agree, he could have been – ”

“You think the Dark Lord worked in retail as a young man?” Snape frowned.

“Would certainly explain the murderous rampage if Remus’ recollections are anything to judge on,” Sirius replied flatly. “He ever tell you about Gilderoy Lockhart?”

Snape’s dark eyes flickered. Sirius knew he absolutely had heard the tale. Perhaps when Remus returned from his Town Hall the two of them could cajole him into a retelling, something to help them forget the urgency of their wider situation and the fact that they worked rather well with one another. He was about to suggest as much when Snape asked, “Have you ever worked a day in your life?” It was a criticism, to be sure, but delivered with less vitriol than Sirius was accustomed to hearing from his flatmate.

“I did some ink in prison in exchange for fags, food, porn, the occasional blow job,” he answered.

“Hm. I had been wondering. This is ... not a complete waste,” Snape offered, admiring his arm once more. He was practically gushing, Sirius thought, suddenly grinning.

“Aw! Thanks, bestie,” he said. If looks could kill. In that moment Sirius Black resolved to try to actually befriend Severus Snape – not because he thought any efforts that he put in would prove effective or because he really hoped them to be, but because he was finding in Snape’s expression that general pleasantness on his part proved as amusing as any prank he was capable of pulling without a wand.

“Honestly, Sirius, I have never needed an introduction in the whole of my life. What, have you?” Bellatrix asked, shaking her long black curls free of the bun that had been containing them, scratching at her scalp until her mess of hair resembled a crow’s nest.

“No,” young Sirius answered honestly. “Still, we can’t … should we leave?”

“Not so brave now, hmm? My little lion?” Bellatrix purred, leaning over again, playing with his hair until it was as wild and unruly as her own.

“I just don’t want –”

“I was worried about Andy and Reggie,” Sirius explained. “I see what you mean here, a little. Bella and I had enough in common that if we had been closer in age, we might have been closer in fact, but the others?”

“You really think that Dr Andromeda Tonks would not absolutely have injured and humiliated a stranger who tried to have his way with her? Or that your baby brother wouldn’t have likewise sat there and promised murder had any girl, or guy for that matter, whom he so much as knew in passing been assaulted? You really didn’t know him,” Snape dismissed.

“I told you. It is taken care of. But still. Can you imagine, really, if I were anyone else?” Bellatrix frowned, again angered by her own imaginings. “If that would have worked? I could have woken up with a banging headache tomorrow afternoon in some bunker, thinking I made some horrible decision of my own accord. I prefer courting. At least we are all playing by the same rules.”

“Any forerunners?” the younger Sirius asked miserably.

“I have no idea,” Bellatrix replied airily. “That will be up to your father. I will do my duty. A partner is no more than a prop for people like us.”

“Your sisters think otherwise,” Sirius murmured.

“My sisters are naïve. We’re a family of certain means, of cultural and historical significance. Do you think that I’ve ever taken a man to bed who wasn’t acutely aware of that? Do you think I wouldn’t be even if legilimency was something we could just turn off? I don’t want to be with someone who is going to pretend otherwise. If my sisters thought about it, they wouldn’t want that either.”

Sirius swallowed. “You can’t turn it off?” Snape asked, his expression again fixed in a curious frown.

“No. And she was right. Bella. About what was going through the mind of every girl I ever bedded, so much as kissed.”

“Maybe you’ll have more luck living as a tramp on my sofa,” Snape shrugged. “Or, maybe, you should go harder. Make your lovers forget their own name while they scream yours.”

“Marry him. Remus. Seriously,” Sirius replied. “You have my blessing. I always kind of fancied he’d prove himself and absolute beast in bed and he needs a freak like you who’d be into that kind of thing.”

“Black,” Snape said flatly. “This is the first time I’ve had a proper buzz since Dumbledore told me that Cissy put Harry and Dudley into the foster care system and that I had to apply for custody of both on behalf of the Greater Good. That said, we are both going to church tomorrow to find out when they have their AA meetings because we are never getting drunk together again.”

“Yeah. You better go to church. Bloody sinner,” Sirius grinned.

“Black!” Snape hissed before turning back to the conversation between his younger self and since-convicted cousin to avoid meeting Sirius’ gaze. Was he blushing? Was that why he always wore his hair to half-cover his face even though he was almost attractive when it was pulled back? They were definitely making this a regular thing, Sirius decided with a bark of a laugh.

“I don’t think Ted thinks about that sort of thing.”

Bellatrix seemed to consider this. “I think that might be the root of the attraction. It won’t last. It can’t last. Muggles cannot love. It is known.”

“It’s a lie,” Sirius objected. “Some of my best friends are muggle born, and they – ”

“It could be that Cissy doesn’t keep me as updated on the Hogwarts rumour mill as she might, but tell me, does this Lily – whom I imagine you are referring to – give your mate James the time of day?”

“Well, no, but –” Sirius stammered.

“Yeah, yeah, she has Cissy’s little charity case chasing after her, too. How is that working out for him, hm?”

“With respect, you’ve never seen the kid.”

“Fine. We’ll keep things shallow,” Bellatrix quipped. “Look at Lucius then. Even you can’t deny he’s practically Adonis. All the Malfoys are gorgeous for what little it serves them. Even still.”

“You’re going after Cissy, too?” Sirius gaped. “Cissy? The family darling who gets all the culture shit right with near clinical precision? I feel bad for you, Bella.”

Bellatrix shrugged. “I meant, his mother was a muggle. A squib, if we are of the mind to be generous as politic requires, but being as the House of Glücksberg hasn’t produced a Mage in a century, for all intents and purposes, muggle. I’ve said before that all of the Malfoys are little more than Breton pirates with slightly better manners, but Lucius is – objectively – a fucking monster, and that had to have begun in his mother’s womb.”

“Why would Abraxas want to marry her then?” Sirius frowned.

“Political expedience?” Bellatrix suggested blandly. “Desire had nothing to do with it. He needed an heir and a high-born partner to secure his seat. We all do our duties. The woman he loved, a witch, but one of humble means whom he would never have been permitted to wed, died a decade prior in the war. The occupiers wanted her to help them find and obliterate the resistance within her village, and likely being one of them, she refused and was tortured. Abraxas complied with their demands in an appeal for mercy only to be un-wanded afterwards, beaten, and brought back to a barn where he awoke to find the love of his life hanging from a beam, imprisoned there as he watched her rot before being sent off to somewhere in Austria for the remainder of the war.

“I don’t know if he’s spoken her name since or told the story more than twice in all of his life. Once to Lucius when he was around fifteen, once, presumably, to Lucius’ mother, who hung herself in protest of her loneliness in our world when Lucius was there or four. He found her.”

“Fuck,” young Sirius said. His adult self paid the conversation no mind, focused rather on the curious expression Snape wore, as though he almost wanted to take Bellatrix at her word. Sirius could not conceive of why. There was something odd in his cousin’s manner as she spoke, as though she were romanticising the affair. Perhaps she hoped that whomever she herself would be forced to marry for duty and honour after her uncle, his father, had reviewed the various prospects, would be so kind to her as to kill himself at the first possible juncture, leaving her a wealthy widow, free to continue gallivanting for Gringotts in Egyptian tombs. Perhaps she was imagining a roving band of London skinheads continuing the work of their ideological predecessors to the same personal ends. Bellatrix could not admit it, likely could not even conceive of the notion, but Sirius was certain that that summer she had come to hate her family name and its implications ever bit as much as he did.

Snape would never understand how lucky he was not to have been born rich.

“It was him, really, whom she abandoned. I think that is why he fancies Cissy so much. It is oedipal,” Bellatrix mused. “She’s a pretty girl with a famous name who can’t preform regular magic. He’s a better man than his father, there is no doubt, but there is also no fair means of comparison. I think Abraxas experienced too much of muggle culture to ever be a functional individual again. Lucius was spared that. Only good his mother ever did him. Still, you would hardly know it. He’s been in power for all of two years and already has a body count that would embarrass Gellert Grindelwald by comparison.”

“Lucius?” Sirius snorted, disbelieving.

“And through Divination rather than anything that could be classed as dark magic,” Bellatrix told him with wide eyes. “Our currency is stable as we never abandoned the gold standard, the Muggle markets though? Oh boy. Lucius takes a not insignificant portion of his savings, transfers it into any muggle market at favourable exchange rates, then withdraws, disrupting economies and therefore emerging nation-states in the process, sometimes at the bequest of the MI five or six, I can never remember- they are something between muggle versions of the Aurors and Dementors at any rate. As one of the only human members of Gringotts board, I’ve had to sit in on a few of their meetings. He’s toppled like four separate regimes in the global South because the muggles he answers to didn’t want to do trade or diplomacy with a democratically elected socialist. Respect the hustle, but still.”

“You don’t think Cissy will be happy as his bride?” Sirius asked. Observing as an adult, he gathered that at thirteen he had not understood what Bellatrix was saying, above all because this part of the conversation had not consciously stuck with him. Perhaps he should not give Lucius quite so much credit for genuinely caring about his own constituents.

“Bride yes, countess no,” Bellatrix answered after considering the question. “I think she will find the role too limiting. It’s not really a crown if it means you have to take the knee. Especially to a damned Muggle.”

“She really knew Narcissa, at least,” Sirius muttered miserably.

“You are all the same person,” Snape answered.

“Maybe next time you can invite her to skive off with the rest of us and she can steal a tiara from a local dealer. Maybe that would satisfy her need to play princess like she is her stupid doppelganger, the She-Wolf of France.”

“Oh!” Bellatrix brightened. “Do you want a turn with it?”

“Wearing it?” Sirius laughed. “Think I’ll pass.”

“Oh, but you must give it a try,” Bellatrix insisted. “I think Andy has had it on long enough for it to work its wonder.”

“It is enchanted?” Sirius asked, now interested.

“It is goblin made. I’d take it into the office to have it appraised, but being that it is ill-gotten, however deserved, I doubt I’d be able to get it back. Clever little thing, really. I’ve been stumped for months about how to get through this cursed chamber, and I put it on, and all of the pieces fell together,” she explained, thrusted the cocktail napkin into Sirius’ hand. “I lent it to Andy when she confessed that she couldn’t follow what I had written. She put it on herself and then she could, and then she did not want to give it back so perhaps it is helping her solve her own conundrum.”

“It isn’t helping with her dance moves,” Sirius observed, turning his attention from the cocktail napkin to the dancefloor.

“No, but we always knew that one was a lost cause,” Bellatrix laughed. Sirius pressed his lips together and Severus covered his mouth, commenting that Dora was no different.

“I’m trying to become an Animagus,” Sirius told Bellatrix quietly when their giggles had subsided.

“Oh, naughty boy,” she smiled approvingly before whistling for her sister to joint them.

The room at once became a blur as Andromeda and Regulus returned to join the festivities, Sirius and Severus having to stand up to make room for the pair of them. The crown was passed around as service staff passed by, bringing food and beverage as the Blacks spoke animatedly with one another.

“Slow down,” Snape insisted. “I’ve barely gotten a look at the thing. It is what we came for.”

“Wait. Andy and Bella are going to leave for a cigarette in a few minutes. That is when things get interesting. Now we are just talking about quidditch, or do you really care for my kid self to explain to you that James Potter is going to score so many goals that that lot is wasting their time working on strategy for Cissy?”

“Oh, I’d be up for that. How many points did Slytherin win by? Do you happen to remember?” Snape asked snidely.

“Two hundred, but only because Reg caught the snitch,” Sirius answered to a self-satisfied smirk. He was glad when the girls left to light up and Regulus’ critique saved him from response.

“Take it off!” his brother demanded of the tiara which the younger Sirius now wore.

“You’ll have your turn,” he dismissed him.

“I don’t want one,” Regulus insisted. “Seriously, take it off. I think that thing is cursed. Bella and Andy have been weird since wearing it and they didn’t have it on for half the time you have and they are, it is like something of them is missing, and what has filled its place is contempt and doubt.”

Sirius looked up at him blankly, hesitated, then spoke. “I mean ... probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but they both did lines. They are probably just coming down from it.”

“I’ve seen people do drugs, Sirius,” Regulus stated flatly. “This is different. Take it off, please.”

“They could both be menstruating,” Sirius suggested.

“They would have mentioned it. You know I’m right,” Regulus stated, then, without warning, lunged to remove the diadem from his brother’s head, elbowing him in the ribs when Sirius made a move to fight back.

“Hey!” Sirius shouted.

“Look, it’s weakened you, too,” Regulus said, observantly rather than accusingly.

“I spent the whole day curing Scrofula!” Sirius protested but made no effort to continue fighting physically.

“So did I,” Regulus pointed out. “Sirius, this is dark magic. Whatever you are getting from it, it is not worth the price.”

Sirius shot him a mean look. “Yeah, but you’d know all about dark magic, wouldn’t you? You and your loser friends and –”

“I am not doing this with you when you are under its influence,” Regulus answered sharply as he rose. “I am going to find who owns it and give it back.”

“You can’t!” Sirius stood, grabbing his brother’s arm as tightly as he might.

Regulus winced, “Look at yourself, man! Get a grip!” he barked as he struggled to free his arm from Sirius’ tight clutch.

“No, I mean, You. Can’t. Bella stole that thing from some guy who tried to sexually assault her, like, with the Imperious curse. I don’t want you seeking him out,” Sirius explained.

Regulus sat back down, hiding the diadem from Sirius behind him as he did. “Maybe he wasn’t the owner?” he reflected. “Maybe he was just under its influence, too? That is just such an odd use of the spell, especially given how easy it would be to get your hands on a love potion in a place like this, how much easier Incarcerous or Petrificus Totalus would be to cast as a means to an end. Okay. I won’t go looking for the guy. But you can’t have it back and we can’t just leave it here though where anyone could find it.”

“Is it a little worrying how quickly and calmly a twelve-year-old assessed the logistics of date rape?” Sirius asked Snape in genuine curiosity. “Do you think my brother was affected by simply touching it?”

“No,” Severus answered, still focused on the scene at hand. “Twelve-year-old boys are monsters. I doubt it has anything to do with the crown or could be taken as an indication of your brother’s wider character at any point. Ask Remus about teaching Year Two. Ask Minerva. Ask Molly. It’s everyone’s least favourite year.”

“Bellatrix said she could bring it to Gringotts for appraisal,” Sirius suggested.

Regulus shook his head. “She’s a curse breaker. She knows better or at lease, she should. If it got to her, I would hate to see what it might do to a goblin, greedy like they are.”

Little shit.

“That’s racist, bro,” the younger Sirius echoed his older self’s inner thoughts.

“Yeah?” Regulus challenged. “Well so is not being permitted to carry a wand when you’re forced to working in fields that one would think require heightened protection. I just don’t want anyone getting hurt. What would happen if ... I don’t know,” he shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“I know exactly how to get rid of it,” Andromeda Black announced from behind dark sunglasses the following morning despite the heavy clouds covering the London sky. Bellatrix was wearing the same pair, Sirius a cheap knockoff they had bought him putting fuel in Bellatrix’s Aston Martin on the way to pick up Greggs for breakfast. Because Bellatrix was the sort of person to disallow food or beverage in her new ride, they were standing in a car park, accordingly miserable with the respective sausage rolls, orange juice and cigarettes. Only Regulus seemed well rested and relatively fit. And boy, Sirius thought, was he ever smug about it.

“Kids, you want a new DADA professor?” Bellatrix moaned, glancing toward her boot where they had secured the diadem as she took another drag.

“No, I rather like this one,” Regulus gave cheerfully.

“Almost makes up for the fact that we don’t have Sex Ed,” Sirius smirked before high-fiving his now-appreciative little brother. He tried to remember who he had had for the subject in his third year – if it was the big breasted Bavarian who had misjudged the false step on the moving stairwell and fallen to her death trying to free herself or the suave Spaniard who had made the error of giving Melina Zabini an ‘E’ rather than an ‘O’ on her Werewolf essay only to find himself in bed with her, the victim of a love potion and a roll of film. Either, Sirius thought, would have fit the description his younger self offered. Fuck. Maybe it was not twelve-year-old boys, maybe it was men in general. He was glad that age invited censor as he continued to let his mind wander to all the things that he would let Zabini do to him at Dudley’s party next week should she be so inclined.

“Remember when they used to be cute?” Andromeda asked Bellatrix.

“No,” Bellatrix answered blandly.

“What are you going to do with it?” Regulus asked.

Andromeda shrugged. “Get rid of it. I told you.”

Sirius and Severus waited as the conversation rotated to everyone swearing to never tell Narcissa that they had all gone out without her as to spare feelings none of them intended to injure. They way the sisters spoke, Sirius had the feeling that Narcissa got left behind rather often on account of her talent and resulting tendencies. He had really ought to make more of an effort. Dora and Draco had both already surpassed him in legilimency and occlumency, but maybe as the only Black to have never worked to develop these skills, he could figure out a way to help her work around it. It would probably be a better use of all his free time than tagging up the abandoned mill.

“She never elaborated?” Snape asked.

“I … guess not,” Sirius answered, frowning. “When we got back to school, classes were still in session, Regulus went to take a nap, Bella went to surprise Narcissa, saying that she would tell her how to plot for tomorrow’s match, I went to steal James’ invisibility cloak, feeling that he’d forgive me if I could report back with plays and formations. And Andy … Andy just went off in a hurry. I found them, Bella and Cissy, under the tree by the lake, and then Andy came a second later, and I never found out what happened to the diadem because the three were talking about school quidditch the whole time. You’ve seen it now, had time to access. Do think it was a horcrux and that they gave it to Cissy? Do you think that was what she was trying to destroy?” he demanded.

Snape shook his head. “No … no I’ve never seen it before. The entirety of my knowledge on horcruxes comes from plots Regulus was unwilling to share when he realised that I had designs beyond helping him, so I cannot claim it to be anything but incomplete. But … perhaps? It isn’t at Malfoy Manor, Lucius keeps a careful catalogue of everything in his procession and Arthur has had the place raided enough times that if it had ever been there, it would have been collected and confiscated. I’ve never seen it at Hogwarts, not that I can now go off and search for it without raising the suspicions of my colleagues. You never found it in your – ahem – project to map the school?”

“No, but it is not as though I was looking. Where would Andy have hidden it, though? She had to have given it to Cissy, that is the only explanation that makes sense,” Sirius groaned. “Someone would have found it if it has been at school all this time. I can’t believe you didn’t press her when she came to you!”

Remus Lupin was so engrossed in the literature that he quite nearly could have ignored another of the unfortunate requirements of working in education, but yet again he was being mistaken as responsible, again by someone who ought to know better based on prior experience.

“Remus, care to do the honours?” Professor Quirrell gestured towards ‘Professor Snape.’

“No,” Remus replied flatly. Calling Tonks out could only result in two possible outcomes, and with his luck he’d likely be made to suffer both. Pointing out to her that Severus never put a pot of coffee on in the office – never brewed it whist humming full stop – would distract the impersonator from the task at hand, meaning that the teachers who came in for the four o’clock rush would wait around longer, giving them more of an opportunity to ask about the finals he had still yet to fully write. Addressing Tonks as such would make the task harder when he finally set himself to it, for her questions of late had become so advanced that he found himself genuinely confused about what a fifth year ought to know.

“D-Detention, Miss Tonks,” Quirrell stammered. Remus groaned; Tonks spun around dramatically. Had she been scowling the imitation would have been spot-on.

“How did you know?” she asked, thankfully continuing the task of measuring coffee grounds into the filter.

“I’ve been working with S-S-Severus for the better part of a decade. Not once have I ever seen him put another pot on after taking the last cup of coffee,” Quirrell asserted as best he could manage. For a moment, Tonks’ borrowed eyes had widened, and she fumbled for her wand before collecting herself in context. ‘S-S-S’ was the hight of insult in, Parseltongue describing indecent acts done to the intended’s mother. Remus fancied the idea of writing a translation dictionary from the notes he had made over the years and shared with those who had babysat for Harry. At least, he fancied writing that more than the finals he was sure most of his students were looking no more forward to than he was.

“He usually does the thing where he will leave just enough to create a semblance of plausible deniability,” Remus added. “Quarter of a cup or so.”

“Ten points to Hufflepuff for trying?” Tonks suggested, reverting to her natural form by wriggling her nose. Remus would have to ask Sirius about that one come evening. He had always assumed her metamorphic abilities owed themselves to Ted’s line, but he had never thought to ask. It occurred to him that his best mate and all of his relatives wriggled their nose in the same way when they were about to suggest something certainly mental and probably brilliant, and this gave him pause. What are you up to now, Tonks? He wondered.

“I can do two points if you can conjure up a spot of herbal tea as well. I’m trying to limit my caffeine intake,” Remus consented. Tonks turned, and still humming, complied without complaint. Quirrell shot Remus a look of disgust he thought maybe he was not meant to catch before returning to a pile of papers for grading. Remus returned to his reading until Tonks appeared at his side with a tea tray, seeming as though she planned to settle herself in now that she had been given detention and had no real cause to leave. Quirrell was a bloody idiot.

“What is that?” Tonks asked of the book Remus had been reading for the better part of the past week in every spare moment he could find or create.

Realising the closing the cover would do nothing to disguise the contents, he answered simply in a refrain common to their interactions of late, “Don’t worry about it. It is not going to be on the O.W.L. Not in Defence, at least.”

This did nothing to dissuade the girl. Leaning over to read the heading on the open page, she asked conversationally, “Did Trelawney tell you how you are going to die then?” At this Quirrell looked up, looked as though he wanted to say something, but thought better on it and returned to his grading.

“No … she wrote a prediction for an office pool two years ago around the circumstances in which my employment might be terminated,” Remus answered.

Tonks studied him intently, then leaned back and laughed. “I wouldn’t take it too seriously. You look okay to me.”

“I’m meant to last nine years in the post,” Remus told her. His fear was not for himself, but rather for his children upon whom death had been pronounced. And then there was the matter of siring a cub. The only fate Remus could imagine that might be worse than burring one of his boys involved watching their bones break at the moon’s apex with the knowledge that their lives would be painful, short, and in all likelihood impossibly lonely. But then, that interpretation was influenced by the circumstances under which he had heard the prediction repeated. What if it did not refer to Harry and Dudley at all, but rather to one of his students – a witch or wizard who did not have a trust fund waiting for them when they came of age? He had barely scraped by before meeting Severus as adults, and Fudge’s party had not been in power at the time. Would his ‘cub’ survive even their first transformation should Umbridge get anywhere with the anti-half-breed measures?

“You’re growing pale there, Professor Lupin. Do you need some chocolate or something? I think I might have some in my bag if – ”

“I doubt it is that,” Quirrell inserted. “Nine years, huh? That s-sounds like a career. In s-some ways I think I would have p-p-preferred a classic beheading were it me they were betting against.”

“So, you wouldn’t worry about it, either?” Remus tried.

Quirrell shook his head. “Three weeks ago, she told me in all earnestness I was going to be murdered by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named when I asked if she could p-pass the p-p-potatoes, so no. I would say you are s-safe.”

“I’m going to be killed by a werewolf,” Tonks gave cheerfully, before projecting But like, the only werewolf I know won’t even give me detention, so I’m not fussed.

Remus could barely breathe. “No …” not you! Please! Please, not you!

Tonks wriggled her nose again turning it into a wolf’s snout whilst laughing, “No, duh. Of course not! Those predictions are just for fun, or to fill up an hour of teaching, or to eat more carbs. Anyway, if you are freaked out, you should probably talk to my Uncle Lucius about it.”

That might help to make sense of at least some of the horrors Trelawney had foreseen. “Does he still maintain casual relations with Fenrir Greyback?”

“I’d hazard to think I’m not really his type. Bit mature for his tastes,” Tonks’ smile quickly transformed into panic when realisation set in. “Oh! Merlin! Sorry, Remus! That was … I wasn’t thinking. I just meant … Uncle Lucy is pretty good at Divinations, and he is bloody great at overthinking things, so he’d probably be able to help more than ‘Unfogging the Future.’ I think predictions, they say more about the person than the actual situation. What Trelawney told me was that I would meet a werewolf after I had accomplished all of my career goals, and if you look at the symbolism, I think she just meant that I would lose something of my innocence in trying to reach them, which is worse in its way, but basically just something everyone has to confront growing up.

“Snape is supposed to be killed by a giant serpent when you guy’s kids grow up,” she continued, “but Uncle Lucy said that was an easy one, snakes are symbolic guardians and he’s just not going to know how to cope with the boys out of the house.”

“No,” Remus smiled. “I suppose he won’t.”

“Trelawney told my Aunt Cissy on her last day working here that she died in her dream the night before – Trelawney did, I mean, but that she saw when she awoke that when Cissy meat Death in her own dreams, she would know how to answer him. But all death-dreams are just about change, and everything you don’t change, you choose, so it was probably just about her winning Sirius’ case and not, you know, dying. Not that she was worried. About either eventuality or inevitability. She would have cared if it was clothes or something.”

“Mine was pretty specific,” Remus gave, though, he supposed ‘werewolf’, ‘giant serpent’, and ‘death’ all were as well if one were not well versed in symbolism.

“Everyone’s is when it addresses them,” Tonks confirmed as though she had read his thoughts. “Uncle Lucy, he was told that he would be the greatest of his line to hold his title, but that such came at the price of him also being the last. He thought when he first ascended that it had something to do with the bomb, and then when he got married that he wouldn’t be able to have kids with Aunt Cissy, and then when they finally conceived that Draco was a squib, and now it is the bomb again despite it being pretty obvious to everyone else. I mean, you’ve seen the way Draco looks at Harry. Even if nothing transpires from that particular infatuation, I don’t think he’s going to grow up to be the kind of guy capable of ‘closing his eyes and thinking of England’ if you know what I mean, and I think Aunt Cissy would fight Uncle Lucy or anyone who tried to force the issue.”

“To be perfectly fair to your uncle, I don’t think he is so much of a hypocrite that he would force his son into what he considers ‘muggle’ views of heteronormativity. Severus had a student, few years back now, who pretended to truly disastrous outcomes that he fancied a female teammate of his, who for a lot of fascist Pureblood reasons he could never date, being muggle born, all to hide the fact that he fancied blokes from his religiously conservative parents.”

“Oh, you mean Orchard and Volpe? She was on board with it as far as I know.”

“Even if she was, she shouldn’t have been. Lucius found out about this the day the whole team came round to help get the house ready for Harry and Dudley and lectured the poor lad for some two hours about self-acceptance. It wasn’t even directed at me, and I never felt so proud, orientationally speaking.”

“Dude has his moments,” Tonks admitted.

“Orchard was gay?” Quirrell asked. “No one ever s-shares student gossip with me.”

“I’ll tell you who is hooking up in Hufflepuff right now if you wave my detention,” Tonks offered.

“'Was gay' and in all likelihood still is!” Remus snapped at Quirrell, “And no, Miss Tonks, that is not how this works. You’ll go when Professor Quirrell requests to write lines or do whatever needs doing in the Muggle Studies classrooms and that will be the end of it.”

“Can’t I just serve it in Potions? Snape and I have a good thing going. Or at least we did before my Mum and Dad got it into their heads that I was better off not taking any extra courses until after my O.W.L.s. Ugh! What is going to help me more to become an Auror than extracting crucial memories?”

“Defence Against the Dark Arts?” Remus suggested.

“Well, yeah, but.”

“For the record if she wants to do her detention with S-Severus, I’m open to it. It was him she was impersonating, after all.”

“No,” Remus replied flatly. Fuck. Maybe he was getting a hang of this whole responsible-adult-and-educator thing. How particularly awful for him.

“But it was for a good cause!” Tonks swore to them.

“What could possibly –” Remus began. But at that very moment, the door to the Teacher’s Lounge swung upon, revealing a particularly haggard looking Professor Sinistra, fully robbed but still in her bunny slippers, which appeared to be preforming most of the mechanics of walking for her as they hopped along. Remus had forgotten that there was meant to be some meteor shower at sundown she wanted all of her students to witness, requiring her to get up ‘early’ to supervise the set up of six hundred telescopes out on the lawn near the lake.

“You are a blessing, Tonks,” she beamed, looking at the full pot of coffee rather than the girl who had brewed it. “Ten well-earned points to Hufflepuff.”

“Can you get me out of detention?” Tonks tried.

“No,” Sinistra answered. Remus raised an eyebrow. Technically speaking, only her Head of House could officially object to a penial measure, and while Remus was not surprised that Tonks would try to get around this complication, he thought her a better judge of character than to try it with Sinistra. The woman was not what he considered pleasant at the best of times (i.e., midnight in her example). Even in his heyday, he would not have tried his luck when she had just woken up. Tonks would be lucky to keep the points she had just earned for effort.

“But I only got served with it for sneaking in here, making sure you had fresh coffee,” Tonks explained.

Sinistra shrugged. “You probably deserve it for something or other.”

“You have detention, Miss, for impersonating a teacher,” Quirrell informed her.

“Poorly,” Remus felt the need to add.  “You have detention for getting caught in the act.”

At this, Sinistra brightened. “Snape?” she guessed. “You’d have to talk to your Head to sort it, but if your up to do it again I’ll give you another 5 points.”

“Um,” Tonks started, apparently not trusting herself to either continue or comply.

“No? No bother, it is the Teacher’s Lounge after all. I’m certain something daft will happen here to make my getting up at this hour worth the trouble.” When he had first hooked up with Severus, Remus rather considered it inconsiderate of the Potions Master to constantly be complaining to a homeless drifter about the co-workers he had at his steady, salaried dream job. Remus now knew that his partner had been perfectly within his right.

“Remus is letting a Trelawney p-p-perdition undo him,” Quirrell gave.

“Brilliant!” Sinistra exclaimed, hurrying in frenzied hops to join their group at the table.

“Um, well, I was wondering, kind of hoping that Professor Vector would join you, since you guys are always together?” Tonks interjected before Sinistra could ask for details. Remus would have to think up some entirely arbitrary reason to award her points for this act of kindness at some later juncture. “There is something I need to ask and there just isn’t time in class with all of the revision.”

“She’ll make time,” Sinistra assured her. “We teachers want you to succeed, too, you know.”

“It’s about DADA though,” Tonks said in a small voice.

“Ask me,” Remus bade her, trying not to take offence. Professor Vector was, somehow, the primary substitute for Defence Against the Dark Arts, which meant that for up to two days each month she set his students A-Level maths from a book she had found in the library’s Restricted section, telling them that they were fighting boggarts. This meant that when Remus returned to work from a full moon, it was often to questions of how it was possible that everyone in their class had exactly the same fear (“It is common to fear the unknown, but entirely unwarranted.”) and questions about some wizard called Pythagoras (“I don’t know. Ask Sinistra the next time she subs, or Snape after he’s given his instructions and set the day’s assignment.”) Perhaps Tonks had a problem that involved a triangle which he truly could not help with.

“You don’t tell me anything lately,” Tonks complained. “And this you might not know. I was writing to Sana about a problem I just can’t solve, and she told me it was probably just a simple case of Djinn possession, but there was nothing in her letter about how to sort it. I guess it is just so ubiquitous Uagadou that she didn’t think to give me instructions, and since correspondence takes so long between England and Africa, I just thought her Mum might know what to do.”

“Don’t ask Septima about Djinn,” Sinistra warned sharply.

“S-Seriously, if we impart nothing else upon you in the entire course of you education. Do not,” Quirrell echoed.

“She’s incredibly superstitious in that respect. But then she was born in Tehran where that serves as a catch all for all dark magic. Even naming them creates panic.”

“Like Voldemort?” Tonks asked. Quirrell and Sinistra shuttered. Remus saw something change in her face that had nothing to do with her abilities as a Metamorphmagus.

“Like Voldemort,” Tonks repeated. “The Parseltongue. The migraines. My uncle’s tattoo … it all makes sense. Fuck. Fuck!” She looked at Remus, and searching him for something and falling short, stated meekly as her bubble-gum pink hair turned a mousy shade of brown, “I know. Four points from Hufflepuff, got it. I’ve um … I gotta bounce. I’ll find Professor Snape and see if I can sit my detention with him instead, okay?” she sniffed.

Remus rose from his chair at this sudden shift and placed his gloved hands on her shoulders. Looking at them intently, she began to sob. “Merlin, Tonks, whatever is the matter?” he asked, pulling the poor girl into a hug.

“It’s … it’s Draco. He knows something without truly knowing it and now that I know what it is … I, I’m really worried about him. He could get himself and his friends into a lot of trouble. He could get us all into a lot of trouble and I think … I think my Aunt Cissy is kind of counting on that. She knows everything about everyone and I … I just have to talk to Snape. Even if he doesn’t … even if like you, he just doesn’t know,” she choked, “I know he’ll know what to do. He always does, right?”

Chapter Text

It was too hot. The local beer was shite. And although Remus Lupin was not quite certain of the conversation rates from Galleons to Pounds to Lira, he suspected that everyone who spoke a word of English was set on robbing them.

The worst of it was, voicing these observations got him branded as a Typical English Tourist, possibly the hight of offence to a Welshman. It was not as though he had gotten blackout drunk at the Quidditch, puked on and possibly punched a policeman – though, to be fair, he could have gone for a bit of that right about now.

Remus had not embarked on the holiday with lofty expectations, in fact, he had been denied those the night prior to setting out, when a pounding on their door whilst the entire household was in the midst of panicked last-minute packing alerted him to the possible necessity of making their home invisible to their muggle neighbours. Technically, as an unpaid, honorary civil servant, his was ‘always open’ which spoke against the plan, but perhaps they could strengthen the wards. Severus had given him a look that communicated that his neighbours had never been so bold when he had lived alone. Grumbling, his partner had gone downstairs to greet Mick Mitchell, the pharmacy student cum local meth dealer, who sometimes sold grass which they sometimes bought when student efforts in Greenhouse Five had not proved successful – at least, they had before Mick had gotten oddly into something called Warhammer that escaped Remus’ comprehension more and more with each explanation.

Remus found himself wishing they were only facing a lab explosion when the lad had finished relaying the urgency of his visit.

Granted, he could not think of there being anything pleasant that might come from the only drug dealer he knew (who was not a particularly entrepreneurial Hogwarts student) beating down his door, but being offered a hundred quid to take the Portkey with them to meet up with his wizard boyfriend on the other end of Europe the following morning might have been the worst thing to come out of the lad’s mouth. The worst thing that came out of Sirius’ mouth had been ‘Sure, the more the merrier, but payment up front,’ – payment which Mick had immediately handed over for the privilege of touching a half-emptied bag of Walker’s Prawn Cocktail, the worst flavoured crisps.

They had arrived at Fifi Volpe’s villa, not to be greeted by the famous chaser, but rather by her additional guests – Elliot Orchard, her best friend from school who was passing through on his way up to Yorkshire to visit his parents during the holidays; Melina Zabini, who had a summer ‘cottage’ around the corner which she had decided to spend the week at after leaving a child’s birthday party for a few hours in the company of a man her friends had all warned her against; Horace Slughorn, who seemed to have invited himself and seemed to be helping himself to the entire contents of the villa’s kitchen; and Zed Moretti, another Roma Lupe chaser who shared the residence, albeit one who had not gotten the call up to the national side and seemed rather content to create waterslides and spitting fountains in the pool for little Blaise Zabini’s amusement in his off time.

When Sirius and Melina immediately made excuses to go back to hers (he simply had to see her hydrangeas!) and Harry and Dudley had shuffled off in search of the room that had been set up for them, Remus did a headcount, knowing that Severus’ tolerance for his fellow man petered out at around five people. Being seven, the Potions Master immediately started in on Orchard, asking him if the Black sisters had taken more from his mental capacity than intended, only to find that the boy had gotten better at sticking up for himself then he presumably had been when Volpe had bullied him into brewing Liquid Luck years earlier.

Dudley came back downstairs mid ‘I’m concerned about your life choices’ versus ‘You are not my teacher anymore’, throwing a fit of his own that the witch who was hosting them did not have a television. Remus, rather than be annoyed, took the opportunity this outburst presented to calmly suggest that they three seek out a local pub. He, Severus, and Dudley had found a nominally ‘Irish’ one with ease, though aside from the Guinness which it was too hot to drink, there was little of home about the place. Remus doubted that it was even a storefront for running munitions to the liberation movement like the place in Cokeworth where he used to moonlight. Hearing this critique Severus smiled for the first and only time on their holiday –

For the following morning, they were told by all present in no uncertain terms that they would be getting married before the week was out.

Sirius, perhaps wanting to do a bit of good, perhaps just wanting to prank his former nemesis in the only way he could without processing a wand, had explained the situation of Remus’ rather long engagement to a woman who had more experience with failed marriage and the ceremonies to precede them than perhaps anyone else regularly featured in fashion spreads and gossip columns.

Zabini had, in the course of a single night, secured a location, catering, and Papal Dispensation for the union, the latter on the condition that Remus convert to Catholicism. This he was unwilling to do, especially given that Mass was just something that Severus threatened the kids with when they were being naughty, and neither had managed to evoke such anger in him that he had ever gone through with it. The eternal widow had looked scandalised at his words, causing Remus to wonder just how much time she spent conversing with her invisible friends – the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, reasoning that she had been to enough funerals to have found religion if one were to take the position that she had not herself murdered all of the men whom she had buried. Which was another phantasy that Remus was just not able to extend himself to.

Volpe, another former Slytherin, albeit of the coldly practical as opposed to purely disingenuous variety, dismissed the Church to which she was likewise nominally a member as unnecessary in this transaction. Her parents were friends with the Italian Minister of Magic, and she was sure she could call a favour in. Zabini’s favours expired with an appeal to His Holiness, she had contacted her solicitor to write a prenuptial agreement, but they would be footed with the bill.

Aside from commenting that he rather wished his former foster mother practiced family law, Severus, paler than usual, said nothing. Sirius patted him on the back, stating that they would be getting drunk together again. Slughorn was already in the process of inflaming shots of Sambuca as he jovially passed them around. While Remus was left wondering about the efficacy of the Hogwarts house he otherwise thought little of – how had the former Slytherins organised all of this in a single evening without a word to those affected? – Mick slipped him a joint and wished him luck.

He had smoked it with Sirius several hours after the fact, which in hindsight had been an error.

Remus could have rather used it about now in the same way it would have suited him to have been blackout drunk, puking, punching, and quite possibly singing some old off Broadway hit adopted at some far-off stadium as a rallying cry. The holiday was quickly turning from a mistake into an unmitigated disaster.

Severus Snape was in the process of telling him exactly what he had suspected for years. He could not, would not marry him.

Well, it was almost as he has suspected, at least, as like as it could possibly be without changing to thesis of Severus’ statement. There were a lot of factors Remus had imagined this assessment drawing upon: his lycanthropy, his friends, the history they shared, his sense of humour, the fact that he could never remember to take the rubbish out when asked to do so –

Harry being Voldemort, however, had not really made his list.

This was a prank, Remus tried to tell himself. And a pathetic excuse for one at that. He would have to avenge himself on Sirius at some point. He doubted that Severus had come up with the idea or was a fully willing participant.

“My best working theory is that in swearing to me that Lily would not come to harm, the Dark Lord inadvertently made an Unbreakable Vow, resulting in his own physical demise when he murdered her to get to Harry,” Severus explained, not making eye contact.  The two were sitting on a park bench, as they had been since Severus had announced that he could not wed with this secret weighing on his soul. “The Avada, were it cast, most likely backfired, and in his last moments – having just committed murder in cold blood, he sought sanctuary in the most powerful vessel he could find, which unfortunately happened to be Harry. If Voldemort had others, other horcruxes, a theory certainly supported by the fact of Harry’s condition, for how else could the Dark Lord have mustered enough reserve to pour the remainder of his soul into an infant? – I, we, have yet to determine.”

“Define ‘we’,” Remus bade him. As an Order member, he had heard the horcrux theory previously, but never with Harry placed at its centre. Was Severus working for Dumbledore or against him? And did Sirius know? He frowned. When would Dumbledore have enlightened him? Had he even told Severus? Remus certainly had not.

“Regulus died operating on that theory, Sirius seems to merit it. Narcissa, too, was working under the same speculation, at least for a time, but I have not been able to follow up on that avenue of questioning, busy as I’ve been attempting to dissuade her niece from pre-emptive action.”

“And you are only just telling me? Severus, how long have you known this? Who else is in on it?”

“It is something I’ve been slowly placing together since we took custody of the boys. Narcissa knew from the moment she met Harry and only decided to tell me months after the fact, after he was already in our care. She explained the situation to Sirius upon securing his release from Azkaban, and Draco came to it on his own, having inherited his mother’s … gift, for lack of a better term,” Severus said as though it were distasteful. “I myself cannot perform legilimency on the boy, and I have reasons to doubt that Narcissa herself truly can, either. It is fully possible that she does not know the extent to which he is conscious of the situation, as quick as Dora might be to assert otherwise.”

“Godric help us,” Remus sighed. This truly did complicate matters.

Why could Severus not have had an innocent flirtation or an exorbitant gambling debt or something else awful in the normal way?

No. Severus’ sin of omission had to include Lord Voldemort, the boy to have survived him, and the living descendants of the Accursed Kings in their entirety.

Probably. If Andromeda and Bellatrix featured somehow it would read enough like a Gilderoy Lockhart adventure novel that they could sell hardbacks of this bullocks for five Galleons a piece.

This had to be a bit. It had to be.

Fuck, he needed a beer. At this point he would even settle for the local stuff pretending at the distinction. He looked at Severus and forced a smile, hoping to have it returned when he confessed that he had had him going for a minute.

Instead, Severus simply continued. “Draco shared his fear with Dora roughly a year and a half ago, and she has been working since to find an alternative explanation – a task she admitted to me shortly before the end of term she failed to accomplish. I’ve … requested that she exercise caution, but she sees this as her crime to solve, and I’ve a sinking feeling that she’ll wind up the sort of Auror to cast first and question later if you take my meaning.”

“Unfortunately, I do, and I share it.” Merlin’s pierced nipples! Was that what her questions had been leading to all this time, why she had wept and then left in such a hurry? It explained so much. Remus felt his shoulders sink. So that was her ‘loss of innocence’, he took it. Just as Trelawney foresaw, she had been undone by a werewolf, in reality not owing to predatory instinct but an all too human reluctance to get involved. That almost made it worse. She was right. Poor Tonks. That made something else he would have to make up to her somehow.

“I’ve gotten her fixated of horcruxes as they distract from Harry directly,” Severus confided. “It is a theory Dumbledore holds – closely, it would seem, as he has never shared it with you, Sirius, or myself, and I cannot say how widespread this is in the Order. At any rate, it will prove nearly impossible for her to research, the literature on the topic widely banned, but anything she does come up with could prove to our advantage. And that … I suppose that is really the gist of it.

“Flashes of Voldemort emerge when Harry is emotional, confused or under threat. It is why I spend so much time setting him extra assignments, to help him control these impulses. It is why I’ve no objection to his playing Quidditch at altitude, and why I do not do as much as I otherwise ought when he gets himself in a scruff with Dudley or one of their friends. It is why I had this done,” he rolled up his sleeve to reveal one of ink. “Whenever I hold him, the Dark Mark emerges. I wouldn’t be able to live a normal life and he wouldn’t be able to have a truly normal childhood otherwise. That is why we didn’t tell you. We –  I, Sirius, Narcissa, even Draco and Dora, had hoped Harry could grow up with a father who was just that, and not – not some reluctant copper waiting on the next sign of procession with paranoid caution. He’s a kid, Remus. He needed a dad. He still does. And I can’t fill that role for him. I’ve … I’ve become my father for all of my better efforts. I won’t do magic in front of the boys if it can be help, not because it frightens Dudley but because it awakes Harry’s worst impulses. I deny that part of myself by means of denying him. It is not what I want, but I see no way around it.”

“That … to the extent that I can accept that it is true, I understand. I, the impulse I get it. I’m to some extent guilt of the same. What you said, about Dumbledore not sharing his suspicions with Order members, the thing is, that is not entirely accurate.”

“Well,” Severus said, turning to meet Remus’ gaze for the first time since beginning his narrative. “Fuck.”

“No, it is not … I am sure he has his reasons, though, to be honest, I am not sure I understand them fully. That night, the Christmas party when I decided to take up the D.A.D.A. post, we took a walk together, after my usual banter with Narcissa got broken up by Draco calling Harry, rather, calling ‘Tom’ out. You … took Harry down into your own quarters shortly after.”

“I recall,” Severus said coldly. What nerve, Remus thought in spite of himself.

“We had been fighting earlier. We fight about Harry a lot, but I don’t think that is unique to just us and, knowing what I know now, I don’t think it is a reaction to him but rather to, well –“

“Agreed.”

“At the time, I attributed all of my built-up anger and angst to the coming full moon, and while that certainly might have been a factor, in dissuading me from this particular bout of self-pity, the two of us had a little talk about Narcissa. He told me that when he hired her, he had done so in full knowledge that she meant to spy on him to the ends of seeing Sirius freed from Azkaban. He, Dumbledore, had provided a statement that had seen Sirius convicted without trial, something that had haunted him since. Remarkable wizard though he recognises himself as being, he said –”

“Under the caution of first acknowledging his own conceit?” Severus interrupted, frowning.

“Always, he cannot admit to limitations otherwise,” Remus shrugged. “It is something everyone who works with him in any capacity recognises. Why must you always call attention to it?”

“Annoying is all.”

“So is the fact that you never refill the coffee canister.”

“I never empty it?” Severus squinted. “How is that comparable?”

“How is it even relevant?” Remus returned, stiffening. “You don’t trust Dumbledore. Fine. It isn’t as thought I don’t understand, but it may … it may be or at least play into some wider design of his, Sev. He told me that night, he said that it does not exist in his power to change the minds of small men, but that Narcissa is among the few uniquely suited to the task. Rhetoric is its own sort of magic. Much though he wants to see her succeed, he cannot help her to this end. She needs an enemy, some manifestation of all of the evil done in the name of the law she so loved, and he was happy that she had settled on him for that role. The alternative he foresaw was her directing her considerable talents at prosecuting a man named Tom Riddle, who I, in time, would realise that I knew all too well.”

“Harry’s other half. You don’t think, you can’t think that Narcissa would bring a case against Harry.”

Remus hesitated. “I don’t think that, not exactly. I think her husband is good at Divinations and that she possesses information she doesn’t share when he interprets some kind of nuclear winter beginning in Wiltshire from his dream-journal. I think she suspects, maybe even knows – one can only imagine what their bedroom talk is like apocalyptic as he is and single-minded as she has proven herself – that the truth is going to come out eventually. If Harry, the Chosen One, the Saviour of the entire Wizarding World is so much as charged, imagine what the implications would be for the rest of us, rather imagine what Narcissa thinks they could be. We could all end up imprisoned without trial like Sirius, like so many others, and with far less evidence. I think … I think she wants it to get out that she can punish those who broke everything she ever loved back during the war. I really don’t know if she is up to the task. Dumbledore does. I think. He never named Harry in the discussion we had about horcruxes. Perhaps I should have realised, but it is not a possibility one really wants to entertain, is it?”

Severus nodded, whether in agreeance or simple acceptance of what had just been said Remus was unsure. “What did he say then, exactly?”

“That he believed Voldemort to have created a total of seven, and that select members of the Order were attempting to identify and locate these objects before the Ministry put more funding into similar operations.”

“The bloody Ministry in on it?” Severus tensed. Why, Remus wondered, were they only having this conversation now? He had never considered the implications, having never considered that these might affect him. Fuck. He was as much of a coward as Narcissa had pronounced him time and again.

“Dumbledore said that the horcruxes needed to be destroyed, but if this was done absent of other preparations, rather than annihilating Voldemort, they would revive him. I asked him how I could help, and he told me to keep on, but maybe to do more to recognise that we are, ultimately, all on the same side in this. Thinking otherwise was not helping me to my potential in the same way it was serving Narcissa, and therefore the Greater Good,” he paraphrased. It was not nearly as convincing or inspirational as it had been when Dumbledore had delivered it. But then the man could cancel Christmas bonuses with words that caused everyone to feel individually valued as employees.  Perhaps rhetoric was a kind of magic. One he had yet to master or even properly appreciate.

“How are you just now telling me this?” Severus stammered. “Cissy had a horcrux – a tiara, we think, and she wanted to do away with it, but then she did not want me to get involved and it never came up again. Do you think it is protecting itself somehow? Or that we should be protecting it?”

Not giving much credence to any assertion that a failed consort made with regard to a greater crown, what could Remus say? That he had not said anything because he had been given no information to make him think it relevant to his day-to-day? Would Severus interpret that as blame? “We are about to enter the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony,” he elected to answer diplomatically, if not with a bit of cheek, “and proud atheist I am I find this a lot more sensible than confessing to a priest.”

Severus blinked. “I meant – Dumbledore told you that he thinks Harry is … Wait, sorry, you still want to marry me?” he shifted, disbelieving. He looked so vulnerable. It pained Remus in a way he struggled to define that his partner met the truly unthinkable with stoic resignation yet treated a suggestion that what little happiness he found in the life they had built together would last with unmasked shock.

That was how Voldemort continued to destroy people then. He saw Severus grasp at where his Mark had signalled him as holding despicable beliefs as though to conceal it, unconscious to the fact that Sirius’ work had rendered it unrecognisable.

“You did not tell me anything I did not already know,” Remus said, putting his arm around the narrow shoulders of his partner. “Let’s see. My dark, tortured soul of a lover puts the happiness and well-being of his children before any other consideration, and likewise wants to give me as happy and normal of a home life as possible and is willing to enter strange alliances and play every possible side to put all of that into being. Or am I missing something? Sev, you are so brave. You are everything I aspire towards. Of course, I want to marry you.”

Severus slowly relaxed into his embrace. “I love you,” he said into the nape of Remus’ neck. His breath was warm against his skin, yet Remus shivered with a rare euphoria.

He beamed, cupping Severus’ chin and cheek in his gloved hand, guiding his partner’s gaze to meet his own. “You know that is only the second time you’ve ever said that to me in so many words? And the first time when I’ve ever been well … me at the time?” Remus teased.

“That is not true,” Severus objected, slightly taken aback.

“You tell me you love me in everything you do,” Remus agreed. “I’ve never doubted it. But it is nice to actually hear every once in a while.”

Severus seemed to take a moment to genuinely consider this statement, weight it as a critique, and perhaps try to formulate somewhere in his overburdened mind a witty response that did not verge to near into blatant sarcasm as to make him seem vindictive. Eventually, he landed upon, “You are not going to say it back?”

Remus smiled to himself. Really, Severus, that is the best you can do?

“A little late to keep you guessing, isn’t it?” he returned, lowering his hand to Severus’ inner thigh, bringing a bit of colour to his lover’s sallow cheeks.

“Remus.”

“No, come I’m enjoying this too much. Incentivise me.”

“Compliment you?” Severus interpreted.

“You are capable of casting a nonverbal spell, I assume?” Remus asked with a mischievous grin. Tightening his grip on Severus as he felt his partner stiffen to his delight, he continued in a whisper, “Hm? Here, allow me to demonstrate.”

With that, he pulled Severus into a kiss and hesitation dissipated. His lover’s tongue was shattering regardless of the task to which it was set, and Remus crumbled as it waltzed in rhythm with his own. He pulled Severus closer still, slipping his finger just below the waistband of his tight black jeans as he did.

“Take them off,” Severus commanded.

“Here?” Remus wondered. He was not stranger to mild exhibition, but a public bench in a crowded square seemed recklessly in conflict with social norms and civil law, especially in broad daylight.

“Your gloves,” Severus clarified, “I want to feel your touch.”

For a fleeting moment, Remus thought to object, but, he reasoned, if Severus had no hesitations around his condition, why should he hide behind it in his company? Instead of voicing the concerns he was fighting not to internalise, Remus said simply, “I love you, too,” and received a rather soft smile in return. Every horror that might yet await them, every nightmare lurking in the corners of the mind felt immaterial in the truth of the shared feelings. They would make it. They would return to believing in their better expectations, they –

His hopes and the gentle thoughts in which they were manifesting fleeted at the unmistakable pop of apparition, the smell of smoke quickly overcome with that of expensive, citrusy perfume applied in excess as to mask the scents of dried sweat and wet dog. So, that was how Sirius had spent his afternoon, Remus realised with a grimace. Of all the sufferings of lycanthropy, heightened senses, and the inferences they offered were the worst of what he was made to contend in the course of what might have otherwise been a normal day.

“Dici sul serio?!” Melina Zabini scolded. Or simply said. Remus did not speak Italian. As such he let his mind translated every statement into admonishment, giving the amount of shouting that was often involved. He did not know if this was insensitive of him, or simply a reaction to the fact that his best friend was fucking a serial killer who happened to have heritage that easily lent itself to parody. Godric be damned, he just wanted this holiday to be over.

“Inconsiderate,” Severus answered dryly in greeting.

“Who appartes onto a busy street filled with muggles?” Remus frowned.

“A native who knows all of the tourists are looking at that fountain and none of the locals care much about the sudden appearance of another overdressed woman in a rush,” Zabini answered. “No one gave much of a damn in Cockworth either.”

“It is ‘Cokeworth’, and everyone there knows that I am a wizard. It’s a small town, anonymity is impossible, but everyone is accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of their neighbours to the point that these do not often draw comment. There is a difference,” Severus explained coldly.

“Take your own advice, Severus. Be discreet. You are both here in full view of the public you so fear, removing items of clothing as you cuddle, and you think that anyone who did not care before suddenly dose now that there is a girl involved? You know … when I first met your flatmate, he fingered me for around twenty minutes before so much as introducing himself, only giving me his name as he was licking my waters from his fingers, and this at a crowded party – a child’s birthday, a family friendly event,” she winked.

“You are repulsive, Zabini,” Severus scowled.

“Pots and kettles!” she dismissed. “Why haven’t you changed?”

“I … we had a series of demands that needed to be seen to. You’ll forgive me, Zabini, but shopping did not top that list.” Severus had not showered that morning and continued to don the fitted black jeans and band shirt he had been wearing the night before, not that anything else in his ‘muggle’ wardrobe would have proven much of an improvement. Remus himself was not much better off in cut-offs and a tee that marked him as a tourist with a drawing of the Colosseum and a bad pun underneath. Even though he had shaved that morning, he knew himself to look scruffy again in the late afternoon, a fate he had suffered since he was around fourteen. At least it had aided in the underage purchase of libations, which, he reasoned, would aid in negotiations at present.

“Did you meet with the priest, then?” Zabini pressed.

“Do you have any sense of the hypocrisy laden in that stamen in light of the fact that you just bragged about the acts you allowed a near perfect stranger to perform on you in public?” Remus inquired, genuinely curious.

Severus simply rolled his eyes. “Giving the multitude of reasons Remus and I cannot wed under the doctrines of Mother Church; I did not see such as pertinent,” he said.

“Did you at least sign the prenup?”

“What for?” Remus moaned. “I have no resources to speak of, we don’t technically own the house we live in, and Severus signed over the trust fund Lucius set up for him to the boys ages ago. We agreed not to touch Harry’s inheritance from his parents. Which I am fine with. We are getting married, Melina. Not divorced.”

“If you fail to plan you plan to fail, but whatever,” she scolded, at once impatient and aghast. “Don’t say I didn’t try. Now, we have about an hour before we are set to start. I’ll handle wardrobe. Remus – you need a shave and Severus, darling, you have to do something about that hair,” she winced.

Remus did as well. Severus’ parents had done nothing to provide for him. As a kid he had been forced to wear dresses his mother had discarded and had grown his hair out, accordingly, imagining the mockery might lessen if people thought he was a girl, at least from a distance. It had not worked out as hoped, but he found that wearing it to conceal as much of his face as he reasonably might disguised bruises and blushes from comment. Remus preferred his partner’s hair pulled back, but more than that, he wanted him to feel safe. He found he was offended that anyone, even unknowingly, would stand to threaten that.

“No,” Severus said flatly. “If I must do so, I’d frankly prefer to marry the man I wake up to every morning.”

At this, Remus felt a sudden warmth and wondered that it was not from the tears that were threatening at the corner of his eyes. Severus knew, or must have at least at some point reasoned, that his ‘fur’ as he put it in private, was a manifestation of his condition, and yet it seemed in no way to factor into any of his evaluations. How lucky he was, they all were, to have someone with the rare ability to recognise that the worst quality or characteristic a person processed was not the restrictive truth of them. Fuck prenups. Fuck pageantry. He was going to spend the rest of his life with this man and all of his secrets and schemes.

“Melina,” Remus said, “this is all, quite generous if unexpected, but we never asked you to do any of this. Technically speaking, the only thing we need to get married is a certificate signed by a Justice of the Peace, and that has already been sorted.”

“No,” she agreed, crossing her arms. “You did not ask me. Neither of you has anything approaching initiative, that much is plain. Sirius asked this favour of me.”

“He did?” Severus blinked, seemingly taken aback.

“In bed,” Zabini smiled. “When he brought me breakfast. I couldn’t say no, no one has ever done anything like that for me before, and I already had the location, though the prospect fell though, and it seemed too good to waste.

“Waste on you, too, though, but whatever. It is not as though we have to suffer each other socially. You are not a member of the Slug Club,” she told Severus meanly, “So I only have to make your acquaintance at parties Cissy and Lucy host, and it is not as though they are doing much of that these days, what with what Rita has been writing. Cissy probably won’t talk to me for months after she find out this happened outside of any control she might have hoped to exercise, but when we meet, I’ll simply tell her how you behaved during preparations and perhaps she’ll be thankful that she was not the one to have to put up with all of this. And then there is the matter of wardrobe! A bastard Prince getting married with a picture of the Queen’s face on the tee-shirt he elected in place of proper dress-robes. For shame. And Mummy-Dearest will surely take it as a personal slight now that she is effectively a republican.”

“It’s the Sex Pistols,” Severus said blandly, reciting a few choice lyrics that did nothing to awaken any recognition. “Ask Sirius,” he shrugged. “And I am a member of the Slug Club. One of such high standing that I am not forced to attend your pathetic, self-congratulatory salons. Ask him.”

“Oh no, I think I can take you at your word,” Zabini reposed, matching his sarcasm.

“You have been married five times and no one has ever brought you breakfast in bed?” Remus interjected. He was sure she had devised a tasteful, discreet, and yet at once romantic ceremony in a secluded garden or grotto that would be met with his wonder and gratitude when he got there, but for the moment he was set on tearing this bitch apart.

“I have house elves for that. He doesn’t. And I’ve had six husbands,” she answered as though this improved the situation. “Well, five and a half, number four didn’t quite make it to the alter. And that is why we have prenups, gentlemen.” She clasped her hands together as though high fiving herself for returning to another of her arguments.

“Six husbands,” Remus nodded to himself.

“Nearly seven now,” Severus remarked for consideration.

“Mm. Sirius isn’t exactly the marrying kind. Fun though. And no. I wasn’t the bride-to-be in this particular instance. I have experience planning other people’s weddings as I am sure you are aware. I’m quite good at putting these sorts of things together.”

“Having attended several such engagements – ” Severus began to contradict.

“Look Sev, do you know what a wedding is?” Zabini snapped. “It is saying ‘I love this person more than anyone else in world, but goddamn, do I hate everyone else in this room.’”

“I’m partial to our children and have nothing particular against the Italian National Quidditch Team as a whole,” Severus countered impassively.

“No, but how do you feel about me? Or Sirius? Or Slughorn? Or Elliot Orchard and that muggle neighbour of yours?”

“Fair arguments, all.”

“Now, do you trust me?” Zabini extended them her hands.

“What horrible fate are you planning on inflicting on my best friend?” Remus asked without moving to take it.

“Can I watch when you prematurely end his life?” Severus smiled. “For this … wedding, I feel I am owed a certain satisfaction.”

“I’ll probably just ghost him when my year-and-a-day of mourning has ended and I can begin entertaining actual suitors again,” Zabini clicked her tongue. “But for tonight, he is my date. To your wedding. Which I planned. And you are going to love. Now come on, ‘forever’ awaits.”

Remus placed the hand he still had gloved into her palm. She squeezed it, and for a moment his entire body felt as though it were being pressed through a tube too small to be particularly suited to the task.

He found himself standing in a clearing in the woods, decorated by ribbons, garlands, and illuminated by fairies kept in bell jars. Sirius looked up from the guitar he was tuning to give them a cheeky grin, while Slughorn shouted a salutation from the bar he was mixing drinks behind whilst noshing on hors d'oeuvres. Harry’s attention was diverted from the does he and Dudley had been in the process of feeding from the same table spread when the latter spotted their adoptive fathers, and, evaluating their attire, declared the event bullocks. Dudley removed his bowtie and proceeded to stomp it into the dirt before messing up Harry’s hair, which heretofore seemed to have been tamed with some mixture of product and dark magic for good measure.

“That took three of my hair girls four hours to finish,” Zabini complained. “I told you ought to have changed. Look at the example you set.”

“I think we’ve good,” Remus said lifting Harry into a hug as the boy asked him if it would be alright if he took off his bowtie as well. “I like my weird, messy family the way it has always been, thanks.”

Sharing his suspicions about Hermione Granger with the girl herself had proven the greatest of his tactical blunders.

Perhaps it was because he had been the one to tell her about magic. Perhaps it was because she had been his friend first. Perhaps it was because she had grown up with muggle parents and, as such, was not culturally conditioned to look upon Harry with awe, but the girl would just not leave well enough alone.

Dudley Dursley tried to count the fairies flying around in bell jars.

Ordinarily counting things proved calming to him, but now he was worried if he was meant to be able to see them or not. Suspecting the answer was ‘no’, he looked again to his feet, uncomfortable in the stupid dress shoes he had been made to wear for the wedding, hating them too.

He seemed to spend a lot of time looking at his feet these days.

After he had told Hermione about his suspicions, after Dad had confirmed them only to have a policeman come and leave no room for reasonable doubt about the existence of magic, she had been gifted with a book about the school she would one day attend, predictably devouring it with vigour.

At class the next week, she had begun asking him all sorts of questions about Hogwarts, questions which Dudley had not given a second thought to answering, happy to prove knowledgeable in front of someone who, though no great effort, had the effect of making nearly everyone in her immediate vicinity feel rather dumb. One would think she would have been grateful for the expertise he had established through years of misbehaving at his own school and having to go sit in a Hogwarts Potions class as punishment, but at his birthday party, in front of everyone he knew, Hermione had asked how he, a muggle, could even see Hogwarts. It was meant to appear as a ruin to those who did not possess magic. It said so in the book.

He did not have an answer.

Which was a problem because Hermione had far more questions on the matter.

Dudley had ended up spending the entirety of his party at her side, for fear that she would otherwise direct her question at his fathers or one of the other adult mages who might think to make mention of it. This led to everyone on his team joking that he had a little girlfriend, which led to everyone in Cokeworth and everyone who had been in Cokeworth that afternoon making the same assumption.

Tiffany, who had been his nominal girlfriend at the time, was no longer speaking to him.

Neither was Ron, who thought it was bullocks that Dudley got so many girls just because he was good at sports (‘which aren’t even Quidditch!’).

Dudley had come to thus suspect that Harry had told Ron his secret – their secret! – perhaps out of retaliation for the fact that he wasn’t about to help He Who Must Not Be Named find out more about dark magic, perhaps just out of sibling spite. Regardless, he and Harry were barely speaking to one another either.

Draco, reliably, had taken his, Dudley’s side in the argument without knowing any of its specifics, and had thrown hands with Ron until their dads and broken it up, only to continue the fight in snide comments around their differing political views. Dudley did not understand why the two were always arguing. It seemed to him that the only person who thought half as much about the muggle world as Lucius Malfoy was Arthur Weasley and that the two would be friends because of this.

But then maybe one of them had betrayed the other at some point like Hermione had betrayed him.

Hermione, for her part, had declared boys a waste when Ron and Draco had taken to punching one another, and had spent the last hour or so of the party in the company of Ginny, Pansy, and the Greengrass sisters, likely turning her theories into gossip, which seemed the only thing girls were good for.

Almost thankfully in the weeks since, none of the adults seemed to notice.

Dudley Dursley was growing increasingly irritable and introverted, his fears of being found out countered by his anger that Harry received so much comparative attention and concern.

He wanted to talk to someone who might understand and had considered confiding in Sirius, but never finding himself alone with man or beast, these intentions had not played out before turning into the same paranoia that governed much of what he did, namely, that Sirius would tell his parents, who frankly deserved a better son than he knew himself to be proving.

He was vaguely conscious of the fact that Sirius Black had betrayed his family, too, even though they were perfectly lovely people who seemed to love him very much. Dudley wanted to know why he had left, and more importantly, he wanted to know how. He had thought about running away, too, until it occurred to him that such would not help him achieve anything and may not keep him out of Hogwarts indefinitely. Anyway, where would he go? His birth parents were on probation, whatever that meant. He did not have many memories of Surrey and had no idea how to get there. Everyone else he knew or knew of knew his two dads in turn so that would not work out. And the places he had been outside of the Greater Manchester area sucked even harder than Cokeworth did lately.

Dudley looked up, not quite sure what he was meant to be seeing and what not, but he reasoned that people were a safe bet. He dragged his feet over to where Harry had a number of famous Quidditch players practically fawning over him, ruffling his cousin’s hair once more for good measure. Harry groaned but made no effort to retaliate, likely happy to look a bit more like himself again after all of Ms Zabini’s servants’ better efforts to tame his unruly locks.

“I am so jealous, Harry. This one promised me a practice, too, but failed to deliver,” Elliot Orchard, another former student of their father’s said of Rabies whom he pulled into an awkward embrace.

“That was before we drew England in the group stage,” she reminded him.

“You can’t think that I would ever betray your trust,” Orchard answered.

“Think it?” Rabies scoffed. “I know it in my bones! You’re my best friend, practically my soul mate, and that is exactly what I would do were our positions switched.”

“Um hmm,” he answered.

“Um hmm,” she echoed.

Dudley looked at Harry, suddenly not sure what he was seeking. He spoke.

“When you have a soul mate, that is like one soul that inhibits two people, right?” he asked the adults to clarify.

“Metaphorically,” Orchard answered. “Fifi and I, were not … we are just mates. Except when sport in involved, apparently.”

“You study alchemy in Cairo, right? Well, what is it when two souls have the same body? Is that … is there a word for it?” Dudley knew there was nothing right about what he was preparing to do. Orchard and Volpe would hear him out, write him off, and report everything he ‘unwittingly’ confessed to his dad to rid themselves of the responsibility of the situation they were being presented. He did not know that any of Volpe’s teammates spoke English but was willing to venture that even if they did, being Pure Bloods, they would not be listening to what an eight-year-old muggle had to say. This was for Dad and Moony.

While Orchard seemed to puzzle, either at the question itself or why his former Head’s kid thought an alchemist-in-training would have any particular expertise that might lend him to answer it, Dudley considered how best to continue his questioning that the outcome might comply with his ambitions. The Dark Lord could, under no circumstances, benefit form any information he might learn by virtue of Harry’s presence. Their fathers could not hold him, Dudley, accountable for the accusation, and yet he had to make it so convincing that his own magic would continue to be overlooked, no matter what stupid Hermione Granger had to say on the subject.

And then, Dudley realised he knew this particular spell. There was someone else he could justifiably cite as the source, someone who was a lot better than he was at saying things to get grown-ups thinking. Quietly. To themselves. Without ever coming on a plan of action or corresponding punishment. He knew it was awful of him, especially giving that he genuinely considered the lad a mate, but Draco had a way of weaselling himself out of everything, and he would survive this, too, if something should happen that caused him to be conscious of it.

“Well,” he said, looking at his feet again as they shifted below him. “Draco Malfoy told me that he thinks Harry is He Who Must Not Be Named, but that his name is actually Tom and that he wants to get his memories back from something or something. He can read minds, you see, Draco can. But that can’t be possible, right? The Dark Lord is dead, isn’t he?”

Predictably, Volpe and Orchard exchanged a look, the former excusing herself to hurry over to the newlyweds, who were in the process of pouring a shot of something forty-proof into a bonfire where Professor McGonagall’s face was offering admonishments masked as congratulations. Orchard bent down to offer empty assurances around that which he had no knowledge. Dudley did not meet Harry’s gazed, but he could tell his cousin was seething.

“Mum, please don’t feel the need to censor yourself on my behalf. I’m well over it,” Tonks taunted from behind a Butterbeer at a table at the Leaky Cauldron where they were having drinks with her aunt. They were embarking on the kind of shopping tour that required ‘sustenance’ – a double expresso for Aunt Cissy, an herbal tea with artificial sweetener (contraband in the Wizarding World) for Mum, and for Tonks, who hated shopping as a rule, an imitation of alcohol to take the edge off.

It was not that she was not grateful for the invitation. She had gotten her O.W.L. results the week prior, and Aunt Cissy suggested that they go shopping to buy her a present, or several. Tonks had agreed, half because she had hoped to see Draco to share the developments in the case, half because she wanted the attention of someone who was actually proud of her, someone who did not treat her success as a shock. Aunt Cissy and Uncle Lucy had both jumped up and down when she had told them via fire talking, squealing that they knew she had it in her and wanting a breakdown of all of her practical dissertations as though expecting the breakdown of a high scoring Quidditch match between two top-rated opponents.

Her parents, in contrast, had met her grades with surprise that boarder on offensive. Her mother had even gone as far as to suggest that she had used legilimency to obtain them, and though it was comforting, in a way, to know that Mum really had no idea what her lessons with Snape were like, Tonks had found herself crying at the accusation, accioing her extensive notes from her trunk and challenging her mother to ask her anything from her revision. Eventually, Dad had put a stop to the argument with an ‘of course we are proud, but’ – a codifier on which he had failed to expand. She had gone to her room, told her aunt and uncle who had given her the reception she thought she rather deserved, and then written to the one person who could testify to the fact that she was not yet at the level where she could scan several hundred minds at once for a single answer while writing out others.

Snape had responded the same day with a howler, delivered to her mother at her posh office at St Mungo’s and ignored for hours whilst she was in session. Apparently, the whole wing had heard how hard working she was despite her troublemaking tendencies, and that if Andromeda could imagine her daughter to have developed skills she plainly had not, and in such a short time at that, she ought also to be able to conceive of the possibility that her child was otherwise talented and intelligent in other ways that surpassed her meagre efforts.

‘And I’m not even in Slytherin,’ Tonks taunted her mother when she came home that night, late, and with apology-take-away. ‘You ought to have been,’ her mother told her. Before she could work out if this was intended to afford further offence or not, Dad began explaining that he had been a hat-stall as they unpacked their Pad Thai. Gryffindor. Yuck.

She had been warned in advance of the howler in a hastily scribbled letter that began by telling her she had achieved exactly what was expected without any further praise from Snape, though Moony, or Professor Lupin as she was meant to call him at school but never did, had been full of encouragement. The pair had sent her a mood-ring they had found in Rome with some street seller. It had a stone that could change colour based on what the wearer was feeling and had reminded them of her, though, they warned, she might have to get it reset. The cheap metal was already turning her skin green, but Tonks liked it and kept admiring it on her little finger as her mother shifted to the other big news of the week prior, namely that Snape and Moony had eloped at long last. Moony had written her this as well in the form of an apology. Not that he thought she would be undone by heartbreak after Dudley’s birthday party, but that he would find a way to make it up to her that she had lost her position as flower girl to Snuffles.

Tonks already knew exactly the form she wanted her ersatz to take. As teachers, the two would surely be able to distract Filtch and Mrs Norris for long enough for her to raid his store cabinets from all of the contraband of the previous year, she had about fifty galleons worth of Zonko’s up in that mess she was sure she could make better use of in year six now that she would not be stuck revising all the time.

Yup.

She could make the Marauders proud and live up to her mother’s low expectation all in one go.

It was what they all deserved.

“The wedding itself or the write up of it that Remus somehow got The Quibbler to print?” Aunt Cissy inquired following her mother’s outburst about the wedding. “Master stroke.”

“You aren’t offended?” Mum pressed, seeming disappointed that her sister did not seem to share her intrigue. Mum had really had it out for Snape since the howler, perhaps since he started tutoring her in general towards the beginning of her second year, perhaps just in any context that stood to illustrate that he knew her better than her own parents. But that was not really fair. Tonks was at school for ten months out of the year and even if she had lived at home, her mother was too busy at work to have much of a cause to care for her family, anyway. From what Tonks had picked up from phycology in the course of fifteen years of conversations with the head of the department, her mother probably hated that about herself and sought a third party to blame.

Aunt Cissy, too, seemed to give the line of questioning little credence. It served Mum right.

“Why would I be? I hate weddings,” her aunt insisted. “All of that sitting around followed by forcing pleasantries on an empty stomach and then being rewarded with cold quail and dry cake for the effort? No, I could do without. Besides, it is not as though it came as a shock. Severus wrote both Lucius and I individually the morning of, so it is not as though I had to find out that Hogwarts’ Resident Werewolf Weds Its Tenured Vampire in Ceremony Sanctioned by The Pope like the rest of Britain.” She had clearly read the article a number of times through.

“Do you really think that was wise of them?” Mum squinted, wrinkling her nose as though her rose-infused tea could suddenly no longer mask the scent of chemically processed powder she carried around in her purse, believing that pouring it in everything would return her waistline to what it had been prior to her own marriage. She hated that Aunt Cissy was still as skinny as she had been at school; where Aunt Cissy, in turn, also hated that she had never quite grown into her figure, that she did not share Mum’s cup size to say nothing of not having an ass that could stop traffic.

Tonks, for her part, was glad that she was a Metamorphmagus and somehow mature enough not to reduce herself to how she felt she compared against other women in some contest of performative gender. Fuck, she realised. Shopping was going to be awful. At least, if her mum and aunt were really set on starting out at Madame Malkin’s. Tonks raised her arm to order another Butterbeer, hoping to set the pace.

“For tax purposes?” Aunt Cissy blinked, nodding to the landlord Tom that she would have one as well whilst Mum objected that she was on a diet. “Remus earns more, but not so much so that he can rightly claim Severus as a dependent. If they split it 5-3 they might get 200 quid more each month than with a 4-4, but that would be taken up by account fees since they would have to file or face audit, and I don’t think Remus paid tax prior to Hogwarts, so it might all be a bit messy,” she evaluated. “We can as Lucius when he’s finished at Gringotts. It is not the area of law I majored in.”

“Narcissa,” Mum said flatly. “The Quibbler.”

“What? That was inspired! Everyone’s read it, and now the truth of the matter is a moot point given the association in which it was framed. Remus made everyone laugh, and now it is a joke. When last I was at Hogwarts during a Governors’ Meeting, the matter came up. Apparently, a number of students are speculating. Or were. Now they would just be laughed at if they ever brought it up in earnest.”

“It’s mostly because his name is Wolf-Wolf,” Tonks interjected. “And Snape makes fun of him for it sometimes. Or flirts. I can’t tell the difference when the two are talking.”

Aunt Cissy raised an eyebrow. “Legilimency not paying off, then?”

What Tonks, of course wanted to say was ‘not to the extent my dear mother assumes’. Instead, she offered weakly, “I think it is a bit of both. And anyway, Mum said I had to stop with my lessons until after the O.W.L.s.”

“And I was right to!” Mum claimed, seeming to congratulate herself more than her daughter. “Eleven Outstandings! My little girl is a genius. Even Bella only had ten.”

“We’re all so proud,” Aunt Cissy beamed. “So! I was thinking that we could start at Madame Malkin’s to buy your presents.  New robes, shoes and handbags are surely in order,” she winked.

It was now or never. Tonks looked at her second Butterbeer, whishing she had had time to finish it prior to making this request. “I was thinking, actually, instead I could get a few books.”

“All work and no play?” Aunt Cissy smiled.

“I mean ... don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really need bespoke robes. I usually just pick out what I like, and I can always make it fit. Instead, I... I would like a few books on horcruxes. Not, not how to make them,” she clarified to two horrified expressions, “I know that, but I need to know how they can be undone.”

“Is that what you are studying in Defence as opposed to the Karkaroff trial?” Aunt Cissy gaped. “I’m going to have a word with Remus when he returns from his holiday-turned-honeymoon.”

“No. No, it isn’t something that gets covered, which is why –”

“Dora, that is a banned topic,” Mum said sharply. Predictably.  

“But one I’ll need as an Auror,” Tonks argued. One I need now, she thought, catching her aunt’s eye. The best thing about Aunt Cissy was that she never shared anything that was not freely volunteered. Tonks was certain, absolutely certain, that she could get her onside.  

“The Ministry will decide that,” Mum quipped, taking the bottle of Butterbeer from her sister’s hand and helping herself to a swig. Aunt Cissy wriggled her nose but made no comment of protest.

“But –”

“There is a process,” Aunt Cissy informed her. “Our sister Bellatrix had to go through it several times in the course of her work for Gringotts as a curse breaker. You need an official letter from your employer as to why the literature is being requested, and then that has to be reviewed – ”

“Sometimes you have to sit a Psych Eval,” Mum added, not to be out done.

Aunt Cissy nodded. “Exactly. And more often than not, you are not permitted to own books like this, merely to read them under strict observation. Any notes you make are reviewed before being released to you, and that can take months. And then your name is added to a list, and you are subject to inquiry in every subsequent investigation that may involve or invoke knowledge that you and few others have.”

“Eleven Outstandings,” Tonks reminded them. “You both have jobs that could lend themselves to making such a request.”

“My patients are only half so mad as my child, and Cissy, you’re not defending Voldemort are you?” Mum asked with a forced laugh.

“Aren’t you?” Tonks repeated. Close, empty, she thought, not really intending to break her aunt’s considerable defences, but to alert her that an effort was being made. Aunt Cissy gave the slightest nod of acknowledgement, but if such was meant to convey more, she could not tell. She could close her mind now, too, and knew that Aunt Cissy would not seek for fear of causing injury. Tonks could not wait for the day when they would be able to talk to one another in private while having an unrelated conversation with other people, but Snape said that this was a skill he had yet to master and doubted he would thusly be able to teach with any efficacy. “Anyway, what about Uncle Lucius? He can just get anything he wants.”

“He can’t get reparations for the land his government annexed, and he can’t get caught so much as making injuries into such material,” Aunt Cissy returned.

“He’s a Malfoy. He can buy anything he wants and buy his way out of everything else.”

“That isn’t strictly true, Sweet Pea,” Mum said coldly. “Should your uncle pursue the practice of the Dark Arts privately, such would be criminal. When he does so abroad in the name of the name of the Crown, its ‘statecraft’.”

“Bitch,” Aunt Cissy said below her breath.

“Cissy do you think that they have any horcruxes in Lebanon and do you think, if so, they could be destroyed with sanctions?” Mum posed.

It might be a debate worth having, Tonks thought, if Uncle Lucy had much of a choice in the matter. She personally felt a little bad for the guy. She felt really bad for Draco, who unlike herself would have rather enjoyed a trip to Madame Malkin’s, being stuck in a business meeting in a miniature Muggle suit learning that money did not necessarily equate to power at eight years old. She hoped it would be over soon. The meeting, and the conflict, of course. Maybe she could appeal to her uncle’s interests if her aunt was not ready to support her.

“I would quite like to have a phone,” she suggested as an alternative before the sisters could start waging a proxy war over a proxy war in some place neither of them had ever been.

“She is boy-mad these days,” her mother said with a suggestion of mockery. “Been saying that since Dudley’s birthday when she met all the fit lads on his football team.”

“I didn’t know he was that good!” Tonks exclaimed, trying to ignore the slight. “I didn’t realise his teammates would all be the same age as me. It felt a bit awkward. They all asked for my number, and I had to wink and say, ‘why don’t you give me yours?’ Because it would be odd, for a Muggle, I think, were I to say I would just send an owl.”

Most unexpectedly, Aunt Cissy lit up. “I have used a telephone before! Remus explained it to me. You have to press the numbers before introducing yourself and identifying to whom you wish to speak,” she told her with the same matter-of-factness her voice carried when she spoke about the damned Karkaroff trial that so held her fascination. “Yes, we will buy you that instead. Where are they made?”

“Japan? Korea, maybe?” Tonks guessed.

“Which one? Do you think we could get one in Seoul, or would we have to go into Knockturn Alley to buy a Portkey?” Aunt Cissy asked in perfect sincerity. “I don’t much fancy going there without Lucius, the side street, I mean, I’ve never been to North Korea. It might be quite lovely.” Tonks tried to suppress a giggle. She supposed it really was not her aunt’s fault that she did not know that one could purchase a house phone in the electronics shop next door to the Leaky Cauldron on the muggle side of the street.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Mum frowned. “Some of those lads looked nearly old enough to apparate.”

“Oh, but Muggles cannot apparate,” Cissy stated plainly. “She will be perfectly safe.”

“That isn’t the point,” Mum frowned.

There was a slight commotion at the door which called Aunt Cissy to stand. “Arthur, darling! Please, come have a drink and settle a debate for us. A muggle phone, it is not a very dangerous thing, is it? I want to buy one for my niece, you see. Would you believe it, eleven O.W.L.s and all Outstanding to boot!”

At this point it became clear that she was really talking to Molly, who retaliated that Bill had achieved the same and had been named a Prefect besides. Bill flushed slightly, giving Tonks a small wave as he approached with his parents and ensemble of younger siblings. Tonks failed to respond in kind, wracking her brain to remember why Aunt Cissy and Molly Weasley were in a row, and thought it probably had to do with the fact that Draco had gotten into a fight with Mrs Weasley’s youngest boy – Fred or George, maybe, she could never keep any of the little ones’ names straight. Deciding she was on her cousin’s side in this one, Tonks was not about to hang out for long enough to be enlightened to the details of Draco’s most recent envy.

“Hey, do you want to do something with me?” she whispered to Bill as they had their laurels sung loud enough to draw the attention of the entire crowded pub.

“What then?”

“Break into an old and possibly haunted house and steal a book that my criminally insane aunt might have once owned? I know the address, I just need someone to help me navigate the Underground, and with your dad being who he is, I thought maybe you might know how to work it?”

“You had me at break-in, Pet,” Bill smiled.

“Hey, Aunt Cissy,” Tonks said as loud as she could without shouting. “I can actually buy a phone here, in London. Next door, I won’t be far. Can I have some muggle money? Bill said he could show me how to use them. We’ll just, we will be right back, okay?”

Without answering her directly, Aunt Cissy produced a few sheets of coloured paper from her purse, complimented the competition by likewise handing Bill a picture of the Queen for his good grades, and resumed her line of questioning. Both she and Mum now genuinely interested in what poor, put out Mr Weasley knew about telephones now that all conflicting parties thought themselves to have established for all present how spectacular the heir to their respective house was.

Maybe Tonks would have felt differently about the jockeying if she could accept any of it as genuine.

Whatever. She would show them. If this was enough for a phone, it was surely enough to get her to Grimmauld Place.

Chapter Text

The small office was engulfed in darkness, almost as thought its inhabitants meant to spite the sunny, summer afternoon the city was otherwise enjoying. On a quiet, once fashionable street, a young man sat waiting with his scattered thoughts and hapless expectations, isolated, but not, strictly speaking, alone.

“What can you tell me about them?” he inquired of an empty frame haphazardly leaning against an armoire that had once contained his wardrobe but now served the function of a pensieve, filled with scribbled ideas he had yet to organise, as was his paper-covered desk, as were various piles that has since been transferred to the dark wood floors.

Dipping a quill in a half empty inkwell, he crossed a line through the heading of a report he never got round to filing, prepared to note whatever he was afforded.

He knew the man had been paying attention even if he remained unseen. He suspected the former headmaster always was listening, which was why he usually kept the frame containing his ancestor’s portrait in a salon he rarely found cause the enter, that his house elf dusted but once a week.

“Rising sixth years,” a snide voice came from behind him after giving a small, forced cough in complaint of the office’s untidy state. Kreacher was not allowed to clean here and knew not to enter save for direct order or invitation. The portrait did not understand the aversion, and the agent under deep cover owed him no explanation. “The one is in Gryffindor, Prefect, has a famous surname but not one of particularly high regard,” Phineas Nigellus continued upon realising that his unvoiced complaints would be afforded no air. “The other seems to be the young man credited for apprehending the student charged with opening the Chamber of Secrets. Curious choice of attire.”

The Auror frowned, hunching his shoulders slightly as he continued to peer into the Foe-Glass, the would-be intruders now in focus. Down the road, a neighbour he did not know and would presumably never have cause to meet slammed her door in the faces of two smartly dressed young men, both wearing identical black slacks and white button up shirts. The first, a tall, freckled redhead whose long hair and earing might otherwise confess him as non-believer, held a copy of the Holy Bible or some supplemental text thereto. The second, an equally tall, pale boy with dark hair and sombre expression to match his sober dress held a number of pamphlets, presumably offering a condensed version of the beliefs they were pretending to espouse. The two left sniggering to pester the next neighbour with proclamations of the Good News, knowing they would again be turned away.

As ruses went, the Auror found this one particularly inspired. The pair were able to move covertly from door to door in search of the one that was not there without arousing any interest or attention from the Muggles who would not have known where 12 Grimmauld Place was if asked.

Were he fifteen, he might have attempted a similar ploy –

He likely would not have done so disguised as a teenaged Tom Riddle though, but to each their own.

He squinted, considered. He supposed the man he had spent nearly half his life hunting did look the part of a traveling preacher at every stage of what had been his cursed existence. As a teenager, the Dark Lord had seemed the dull sort who did not partake in substances so mild they could hardly qualify as recreational; as an adult, his horrendous acts in pursuit of black magic had rendered of his appearance that of one who stood screaming sermons about the end of days on an empty fish bucket at a crowded metro station, naked save for old combat boots and an open mac, likely lit since the night before or some other fifteen years prior. A rare smile crossed the Auror’s face at the analogy the student had forced upon him. Perhaps she would prove his salvation.

“They have been positively identified,” he told the portrait now present, assuming the role of confidant. “The Ministry put out an alert about an hour ago. You would do more to protect them by telling me what it is they think they are after.”

“Protect them? I’m protecting you, you idiot boy,” Phineas Nigellus scoffed. It did not escape the Auror’s attention that his great-great-and-yet-altogether-sorry-excuse-for-a grandfather refused to name either party. Despite Phineas’ protest, it seemed that his lie of omission had an odd, familiar taint.

“They have broken through my first line of defence. What is it they seek?” the young man pressed, expecting little in return save the dismissive bluster of a man long dead who had been clever enough to never confess honest sentiment in life, his rhetoric misleadingly blunt.

“Glory? Adventure? You are mistaken if you consider children particularly complex.” Phineas did not disappoint.

“Children do not typically figure out the way around complex memory charms,” the Auror drolled. “Can you be more specific?”

In the ten years since retaking residence at the home that had become his personal headquarters, the undercover agent had entertained no one to enter, even his ministry handlers had long since given up in their attempts. Their meetings, which were rare, were usually at his calling, always at his place of choosing, and never anywhere within a two-block radius.

In ten years, no which or wizard had so much as come down this street by accident or intent. The charm he had placed confused those who came into the vicinity, causing them to forget where they were headed, or simply how to get there in the route they had chosen lead past his concealed door.

The pair – Tom Riddle and the Weasley Prefect – having seen Muggles pass the barrier without consequence, seemed to have simply hired a car. Clever.

“The half-breed,” Phineas said with marked hesitation, “she is your flesh and blood as it happens. Andromeda’s daughter. I see her in Dumbledore’s office at regular intervals.”

The Auror nodded, studying his great-great-and-yet-far-from-imposing grandfather’s face for what he was imagined might qualify as recognition. Metamorphmagi occurred in their line on occasion, but few ever lived out of infancy, perversion as the gift was regarded by most of high society. It was one of the few genetic anomalies the Blacks had yet to render advantageous. Phineas’ painted features betrayed nothing of sorrow or regret for the older brother he had lost as a boy.

The agent attempted to rearrange his own features to match those of his ancestor, trying to banish what sympathy he had for his own brother’s plight. He had chosen to work for, or at least with, the Ministry that had sentenced Sirius without trial. Given the means in which the Auror had obtained his post, he could not have raised objection. But then, neither had Dumbledore or any of Sirius’ other alleged allies.

It did no good to dwell. Let Sirius’ defence team concern themselves with such matters; they were better suited to the task.  

“Is she an Order member?” he asked.

“She is fifteen,” Phineas scoffed.

“That is to say nothing,” he answered, looking down at his arm, at the Dark Mark he had been given when he was scarcely any older. He had heard that those of other former Death Eaters had disappeared after Voldemort’s alleged fall, but the locket and ring he now wore kept his own as black as his name.

He would never be rid of his bad decisions so long as the man’s soul survived.

A glint of the children he might have himself once been had he been born in better days danced across the stone of his ring. The agent began to lazily consider his own reflection in its dark depths. How pleasant, he thought, to be able to change one’s face at will.

He had seen a photograph of the girl earlier as she ordinarily presented when the alert went out to all of the London based staff of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Like himself, she was rather petite, that or she had not hit her growth spurt yet. Pale skin, bright eyes, a heart shaped face with unmistakably Black cheekbones, and hair that seemed a reflection of her nature rather than nature as it was known. How very pleasant.

“She takes private tutoring in Occlumency and Legilimency from Professor Snape, lessons that occasionally require the use of Dumbledore’s pensieve,” the former headmaster gave of the girl, still reluctantly, but with a hint of triumph in his tone.

So, the daughter of the blood traitor sought the secrets of her line from their throne’s greatest pretender. Fitting. Little wonder Phineas had given himself over to her enchantments. The young man already had half a mind to take her to wife when the war ended. He could afford her a crown if she held such ambitions and they could rule together, returning the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black to its lost glory. She had the requisite skill if from an unlikely source.

“From Snape?” the agent smiled, though his memories of the man still stung. “We came up together as you well know. That explains how she managed to break through my wards.”

“His favourite student by all accounts,” Phineas asserted, warning, “That might complicate matters for you.”

“It might, were he both in country and conscious of the fact that I made him my Secret Keeper.” The Auror unburied the most recent issue of The Quibbler from his cluttered desk, holding it up for his great-great-and-altogether-terribly-misinformed grandfather’s appraisal. He felt the locket burn against his cold skin. Snape, who had damned him, damned them all in his refusal, had been rather more successful in his personal vengeance, pulling his chosen from the pits of hell.

Sometimes, he wished he had taken the man up on his offer to see him into hiding.

According to Lovegood, at least, Snape had made the most of his second chance, marrying his childhood nemesis, raising two war orphans (one of whom Skeeter had hinted at being The Boy Who Lived in various Prophet pieces). He was harbouring Sirius Black until his long-awaited trail could be set (and wherever one stood on the question of guilt, the agent could imagine no better guard dog than a man appealing his conviction on thirteen counts of murder.) He had obtained tenure at Hogwarts and was serving as Slytherin’s head. He was teaching Nymphadora the magic of her line if not her name.

The locket burned hotter. Its wearer winced, then tried again to fix his features.

‘Remember boys, the best revenge is a smile,’ he recalled his cousin Bellatrix saying to Snape and himself between adolescent complaints and drags of a cigarette she had been letting them both share the Christmas shortly before his sixteenth birthday, ‘But sure, Garrotting Gas would probably sort this one for you. Cast an Arresto Momentum to prolong its effects against clearing and do give Potter my fondest regards,’ she had winked. And smiled. The Auror tried to. Snape, it seemed, was certainly having a proper laugh at everyone’s expense. He wished he still had it within him to be happy for his former friend, but the sentiment was fleeting. Revenge, he thought. Perhaps Bellatrix had had the right of it. She had gone on to laugh at her sentencing, too.  

Phineas’ painted eyes scanned the cover of the magazine and a smirk rose to the corner of his lips, “You are certainly confident for someone in the process of getting bested by a half-breed and her blood traitor friend.”

“Every moment of mine you waste gives me more incentive to welcome them both with open arms,” the agent cautioned. “My operation has been compromised; I need to know why. What is she after? What incentivises her? What does she fear? What does she love? What is she trying to escape? What does she want to be?” he asked, with each question growing more frantic. This was not just teenage kicks. The two had clear purpose, for why otherwise bother with an elaborate ruse?

“I believe the answer to all these, in many ways, is you, Regulus,” Phineas answered begrudgingly.

“Me?” the young man blinked. Hearing his name spoken caused him to feel a certain vulnerability he had lost the ability to identify in his long isolation. “We’ve never met. She doesn’t even know I am alive. No one does.”

“She wants to be an Auror. Perhaps you might talk her out of ever volunteering to do undercover operations. Shame. She’d certainly have the requisite skillset for it.”

“She wouldn’t know that about me either. No, this isn’t personal –”

“No, it is not,” Phineas agreed, “at least not in that sense. Professor Snape told her about horcruxes shortly before the end of term to save her from an even greater folly.”

“What then?!” Regulus demanded. It was a shame. Truly. The child had pluck and promise. She would soon be at his door. If obliged to let her enter, he could never let her leave, independent of what she sought and why.

“You are looking for the same thing and to the same end. Perhaps she will succeed where you have heretofore failed,” Phineas said cruelly, eyeing the locket burning hot on his bare chest. “Narcissa certainly did.”

“Narcissa? You mock me,” Regulus sneered. Of all of his relatives, of everyone he had known, in fact – certainly not!

“Not nearly as much as your stolen jewellery does,” Phineas remarked, aptly. “Basilisk venom,” he said after a long pause. “It is what Narcissa used. She stole it from Snape’s store cabinet. Perhaps you could ask him for a vile if you are so determined to rekindle your acquaintance. Your handlers, they are certain to identify him as your Secret Keeper if you do not shortly report the children’s whereabouts and lower your wards to allow their recovery,” he said, returning to the matter at hand.

“You know I cannot do that.”

“I know you are a fool not to. My fellows are talking at Hogwarts, oh yes, many have separate portraits at the Ministry and there is in quite an uproar over this one,” Phineas cackled. “You fail to grasp the politics at play, Regulus, you always have. Fudge needs Lucius to continue acting as a liaison between the two governments as much as the Minister of the Muggles needs his access to our markets. Whatever limited importance Scrimgeour has afforded your operation, he’s now putting all of his assets into finding Lucius Malfoy’s only niece before the disappearance can be interpreted as being politically motivated. It won’t take much for the man’s mind to make that leap.”

“Malfoy is a tool. Always has been. He doesn’t give orders to either minister and certainly not to Scrimgeour, whatever he may believe.”

“He effectively dictates terms and conditions, and you forget – he is a necessary evil. You, my boy, are not,” Phineas pronounced. “Return the children to their parents. They are doing better without you.”

He could not.

“The diadem,” Regulus closed his eyes, wondering if there was any truth to what he had been told or if it was all bluster. “She had it then? All along?”

“Narcissa? She had a fair few, I would imagine. You would have to be more specific. Lady Wiltshire. The best that can be said of your useless brother is that he forced her to dispense with that fallacy. That girl was born to ruin, not to reign. If you are not afraid of Lucius, I’ll caution you to fear his wife.”

Narcissa was clever, he could afford her that much, but owing to that trait he could not imagine her posing a serious threat. She could not contend consequence, and hunting Voldemort would be too much at risk without any requisite gain. It was not how she planned. Not how she worked. She had purchased her family’s freedom from prosecution by providing Crouch with the last known locations of a hundred Death Eaters, persons she had researched and determined that the underfunded and overburdened Department of Magical Law Enforcement would not be able to collect enough evidence to convict. Regulus’ own name had been on it. But then, he had been ‘missing and presumed dead’ at the time it was written. He could not rightly begrudge her the detail. And yet.

“Why?” he posed. “It would appear we are of one mind. She is after horcruxes now, too, to hear you tell it. As is our niece and her little friend. Do you intend to assist us or not?”

“Not if your goal is mutually assured destruction, as, I’ll note, it always seems to be.”

It was no good, as Phineas had the right of it. He would have to force his great-great-and-far-too-sentimental grandfather’s hand.

“Kreacher,” he said softly, continuing through the loud crack of elfish apparition, “I need you to go to Hogwarts and obtain the following: first and foremost, the frame containing my beloved great-great grandfather’s image.”

“Heresy!” Phineas cried.

“A vile of Basilisk venom from the Potions store cabinet should Snape still keep a stock,” the agent continued, ignoring the outburst, “One of Lupin’s bogarts if he has any under lock and key post term. And, finally, whatever you can conjure up from the kitchens. I’m famished and it seems we shall be entertaining this evening.”

“As Master requests,” the house elf gave with a low bow before vanishing.

“Someone is bound to notice if my portrait goes missing,” Phineas warned.

“No one will miss you, believe me,” Regulus said. “My concern is not that you would share my secrets. If you intended to do so, you would have already. Regardless, it would seem as though the powers, such as they be, are already after me, and as such, I need you here. I need to ensure you have nowhere to flee. You are the only one they all respect. Inform the rest of the family that they are neither to help nor to hinder Nymphadora and her friend William, merely to report their activities to me. I want to know my enemy before making her acquaintance.”

“You don’t need me for that,” Phineas spat. “Professor Snape has the measure of you lot. You are all the same person. Embarrassments all on the ancient and most noble name of Black!”

This was not fun anymore, Tonks thought as she tripped over a standing coatrack, falling to her knees with a thud.

Bill snorted back a laugh. “Maybe you wouldn’t trip so much if you didn’t transform your feet to fit every pair of trainers you fancy,” he observed.

It was not the ruddy shoes that were the problem, it was that these legs were so much longer than her own that she was having some measure of difficulty when it came to depth perception. After two hours of trail and error, she would have suspected a certain mastery from herself, but none had come. She wondered if this owed itself to the fact that the body she was borrowing did not belong to a real person, but rather something Draco had shown her from a nightmare he had been having a night when she had been persuaded to babysit by fifty galleons and the promise of at least two hours of hanging out in her aunt’s walk-in closet, surrounded by shoes she would never realistically be able to walk in, but which looked pretty on the feet she had, in fact, transformed to fit.

Draco had come in crying about an hour after she had put him to bed, looking for his mother to demand why she had done it – he would not leave Harry alone now, he never would.

‘Who?’ Tonks had asked.

Unable to answer her between chocks and sobs, his anger exterminated by his outburst, Draco looked at her with intent, projecting the image of a boy in Slytherin green robes, handsome in a bland way, but not really her type. She did not know him on sight and had assumed he was one of Snape or Moony’s advanced students, that Harry had gotten himself into some sort of trouble that prevented him from attending primary for a few days.

The kid in question probably had a parent in Azkaban and had made some snide comment in kind. Harry had probably asked Ron about it, who in turn told Blaise or Pansy, with whom he attended school himself, and one of them had told Draco, who had taken personal offence to some aspect of what was said or the way it had reached him.

As far as she could tell, that was usually how these things went.

‘Look,’ she had answered Draco for want of creating a distraction, indicating his mother’s red Louboutin’s. ‘Do you know why Harry and Dudley call your mum a Good Witch? Have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz? It’s Muggle, but it’s brilliant!’

She had spent the next hour or so telling him the story as she recalled it, casting people he knew in the rest of the main roles (she was Dorothy, obviously, and Snuffles was Toto, and Remus was the Cowardly Lion if Draco so insisted, and because Aunt Cissy was Glinda the Good Witch, Aunt Bella was probably the Wicked Witch of the West.) Eventually, Draco fell back to sleep in his parent’s emptied bed and Tonks had returned to more urgent phantasies of designer heels and being able to stand in them, forgetting the face she had been shown until earlier that same afternoon.

She and Bill had been at King’s Cross St. Pancreas, either because he truly believed it was the closest underground station to Grimmauld Place or because it was in the vicinity of the train station of the same name, the only bit of London he well knew.

While Bill tried to save face by burying his in a map along with a keyring with a little model of Big Ben, Tonks evaluated their plan of walking through the city, pretending to be disoriented tourists. Were Bill alone, he might be able to pull off the act, but she personally well and truly looked the part of a Londoner, further assessing that no tourist would be looking for a residential address excepting Buckingham Palace or Number Ten.

It would do no good to be questioned, especially with every notification of arrivals, departures, and delays causing Bill to glance at his watch, worrying over the prospects of what his mother might make of his long absence. Tonks was afraid that Charlie would again accuse them of have snuck off to snog and that she would return to uncomfortable overtures from Mrs Weasley, who preferred her to the sorts of girls Bill usually dated. Bill, on the other hand, envisioned himself becoming the victim of filicide.

Tonks wondered whom among them had a darker imagination.

And then she saw from the corner of her eye something approaching salvation.

A group of sombrely dressed, middle aged women had set up a table with books and pamphlets and were trying to grab the attention of passers-by. And were being ignored. By everyone. It could not have been better. Telling Bill (who seemed to have forgotten how to read a map as soon as he circled Grimmauld Place) to wait where he was, she walked over to the Missionaries, feigned interest in the Resurrection, accepted the paperback Bible she was given and asked if she could have a number of leaflets to pass out amongst her friends, who all needed to hear the Good News as much as she herself had. They had gleefully acquiesced, and she returned to Bill triumphant, explaining her plan. Because Missionaries went door to door without anyone paying them any mind, they could do the same until the hidden address appeared. ‘Innit?’

He looked at her and laughed. ‘You think anyone is going to buy two punks knocking to ask if some random hausfrau has invited Jesus into her life? They’ll probably send for the police long before we reach number twelve. And you know that there is a cooperation between the Aurors and the Met. Fuck! What if my mum already – ‘

‘I think,’ Tonks had corrected, ‘that my Aunt Cissy had absolutely no working concept of what a telephone costs and that she handed me five-hundred pounds to buy one. That is a lot, right?’

‘About a hundred galleons. She gave me the same. I’m kind of uncomfortable, to be honest.’

‘Then let’s burn some of it, yeah? C’mon it will be fun!’

And for a while, it had been. They had decided on suits without the jackets (‘Mum’s going to say that you’ll make an honest man of me yet,’ Bill stuck out his tongue, admiring his reflection) and sneakers, because they would be easier to walk in if they were going to pretend to canvas – something that might have been true if Tonks had not decided for herself that Utahans must look like the boy who had buried himself in her subconscious after Draco had seen him in a nightmare. Ugh! Damn whoever this was, him and his long legs!

When Bill had first seen her disguise, he described her as ‘too handsome not to attract attention’, something she warned him never to let his mother hear him say lest he wanted their next adventure to involve cake-testing and intensive comparisons of various shades of white. ‘Anyway,’ she chided, ‘do you know who I am? He is in your year, this kid. He must be. Slytherin. I’ve never noticed the bloke; this face is as good as an invisibility cloak!’

Bill had not been able to argue with her logic.

What they had argued about was how best to cross the street.

Whenever they seemed close to their goal, the map they were consulting ceased to be of any use. They would make a turn when they were meant to go straight, rebound, or try to go around what must have been a powerful barrier until Bill observed that cars were driving by without conflict. Hiring one with what was left of Aunt Cissy’s generosity, they had been taken to where 12 Grimmauld Place should have been. Not seeing it, they knocked on number 10 and cut through the garden when, again, they were turned away.

The path was longer than it had looked from the street.

The house had finally revealed itself.

To their shared surprise, the door had been left ajar. ‘For a place someone took so much effort to hide,’ Bill seemed to complain, perhaps disappointed that entry was not going to required use of his wand.

Tonks, which highted apprehension, had answered ‘It might be because I’m a Black by birth. My mum grew up here.’

Entering had been as simple, or as complicated, as walking through an open door.

These fucking legs!

“These are fly as fuck though,” Tonks answered Bill in defence of her shoes, accepting his hand to help her up from the floor.

“Don’t really fit with our whole Mormon Missionary get up, though,” he sniggered.

“I thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

“Do Jehovah’s Witnesses wear Air Jordans?”

“Don’t all Americans?” Tonks wondered, genuinely.

“Fair,” Bill gave.

They walked hand in hand down the corridor, unhindered but apprehensive. Something was amiss.

“The portraits,” Tonks evaluated, stopping to analyse their surroundings. “They aren’t moving. Not even their eyes are following us.”

“Perhaps they are otherwise engaged in another frame?” Bill suggested.

“Even my forefathers who hold such renown would return to ward off intruders. Something is wrong.”

“You said the place could be haunted,” Bill shrugged, smiling at this prospect. “Perhaps someone has suspended it in time? It’s fairly tidy for a place that hasn’t been entered in years, especially given the state of the house elves,” he indicated to the wall where a number of heads were displayed like hunting trophies.

“Yeah. One of my great aunts used to chop off their heads when they got too old to be of service,” Tonks answered, nonchalant.

“Charming.”

“Well, it’s not like I knew the woman,” Tonks hissed, then yelled, cupping her hands around her borrowed mouth to amplify the sound. “Hello? Hello?! Wotcher?! Is anybody there?!”

Only an echo returned.

“Tonks! Stop!”

“I mean if anyone was here, they would have heard me when I tripped, I’m sure. I just wanted to make sure. Now come on, before we are missed. Did you hear the echo? This place must be huge.”

“We don’t have to search the whole thing,” Bill evaluated. “My dad’s department, they do raids on estates like this all the time. There is a protocol. Families like your mum’s keep a ledger of all items of possible interest to the Ministry, a kind of insurance against seizure. From what you said about the books that you are looking for; they would certainly be on that list. We need only find the main office.”

Tonks shook her head. “If they are here at all, they would be kept in my Aunt Bella’s room.”

“You know where it is?”

“I know that it was next to my mum’s, and that she used to watch the owls atop the church steeple from her window, wondering why they congregated there. So, it has to be on, or near, the top floor.”

Wrinkling her nose, she transfigured her borrowed face into the of Sirius and turned to the next portrait she saw, a stern looking woman in corseted robes who might have lived at any point in the past two-hundred years or so. Merlin. Tonks was not one to plan a day around sipping champagne in showrooms and boutiques like her mum and aunt, but damn if there was nothing to be said for fast fashion. The muggles really had one up on them in these terms.

“Hey! Hey! Can you help me? Where is Bellatrix’s room? She’s uh … she is being released from Azkaban and I want to put a stink bomb in there, a kind of welcome home gift,” Tonks, as Sirius, lied. The woman’s eyes narrowed but her lips did not move. They did not need to in order to indicate disapproval.

“Maybe you would get further impersonating Narcissa instead,” Bill suggested.

Tonks contemplated this. “But then my shoes wouldn’t fit, and I would really fall on my face. Anyway, the portraits all hate her, too, from what I’ve been told.”

“What is the saying? Happy families are all the same?”

“Mmm,” Tonks answered, still looking at the woman, trying to take her measure. They were being watched, but to what end?

Bill shifted. “I still think we’d be better off looking for the office.”

“We can split up if you want.”

“Let’s set our watches,” Bill suggested. “I’ll find the office and you the bedroom and if we’ll meet down in the foyer in fifteen.”

“Minutes!?” Tonks exclaimed.

“Tonks, time is of the essence. Whatever horrors you have wrought upon us by bringing us here, that is going to be nothing to how pissed my mum will be if we don’t get back before they remember to miss us. Luckily the twins are starting Hogwarts in September, so that will be distracting enough for her and, frankly, everyone who happens to be on Diagon Alley today, but at some point, she is going to look at her watch, realise she hasn’t seen me in a while and every minute that then passes is just going to make things worse. I, for one, want to be able to go to Hogsmeade this coming term.”

“Lucky you,” Tonks answered. “My mum doesn’t notice me at all. Go then. Fifteen minutes. Got it.” Bill had been the one to get them here, but she should have picked a better conspirator. One who did not have to constantly rub it in her face just through virtue of comparison.

“Tonks, I didn’t mean –”

“Come on, we are wasting time,” she said, darting up the stairs as quickly as she could trust herself to without tripping. Fortunately, she had spent enough time around Sirius to know how he moved, which made things easier, but only just. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Keep your wand at the ready,” Bill cautioned.

Tonks stopped. “You too,” she answered without glancing back. They were finally here, and he was only giving them fifteen minutes before saying they had to bounce. She had no real intention of meeting this deadline, knowing that the consequences they shared were far more significant than simply being grounded should she fail. Poor little Harry. She had to find a counter curse. There had to be one. And if there was, where would it be but here where her imprisoned aunt had mastered dark magic to the point that she had invented ways to undo it?

Six flights of stairs later and Tonks did not feel anywhere near closer to her goal.

Stopping to spot that a door was ajar, she went inside to see how close she was to being able to see the top of the steeple where owls once slept. A rush of relief went over her as she entered. This was, or had once been, Sirius’ room, if the Playboy spreads and Gryffindor colours were anything to go on.

Yeah. For sure. Above an unmade bed – either someone was squatting here or the last house-elf who had simply had not bothered – hung a picture of Sirius and his three best friends from school. Moony she recognised as a young Professor Lupin. Harry was said to look enough like his dad that that one had to be Prongs. And Wormtail she could identify through process of elimination. They were all pointing at her, rather, at the adult Sirius excitedly, then frantically. Tonks squinted her borrowed eyes. Prongs spun himself around, Padfoot making wild gestures to draw her attention to the act, which Tonks gathered she was meant to imitate.

She swallowed. Was someone there?

Turning, she found herself face the face with a mural of four animals that her second cousin must have tossed up with spray paint and binding spells. It looked like him, or rather, the style she recognised from the Map, various trips to Cokeworth, and that one picture on the wall in Snape’s office that obviously had not been drawn by a little kid. The spell, at least part of it, she recognised as well. Her Uncle Lucy had once cast it on the wallpaper in the room that had once belonged to Draco at Spinner’s End causing the printed peacocks to move until Sirius had reversed it at Remus’ request. Trying to recall how he had waved his wand and working out the Latin of the reverse, she removed her own wand from her pocket and brought the Marauders back to life.

“Wotcher. Hey, can you guys help me? I um … my name is Nymphadora, but everyone just calls me Tonks, and I kinda inherited your Map of Hogwarts after pranking Professor Snape. A lot,” she claimed, however correctly, in an attempt to appeal to the sympathies of the wolf, rat, dog and stag now considering her with curiosity. “I don’t usually look like this,” she explained hastily, shrinking into her common form before deciding that the wardrobe was too much of a bother. “I’m not Sirius,” she said though she reassumed his form. “I don’t know my way around this place, and it would take too long to explain, but I need to find Bellatrix’s room, and fast. Can you lead the way?”

The animals darted into action, leaping over the doorway, and turning the corner of the room to disappear behind a bookshelf, Tonks following when she figured out its ruse. They lead her through a number of backways and shortcuts until she found herself outside of the door she sought, her aunt’s full name painted prettily, half covered with a note meant to warn off regular intruders.  

ANDY, CISSY – QUIT STEALING MY CLOTHS AND STINKING THEM UP WITH YOUR CHEAP PARFUME! I HAVE A SNEAKOSCOPE AND A MIND TO HEX THE PAIR OF YOU IF I HEAR IT, WHICH REST ASSUED, I SHALL, EVEN IN EGYPT! AS IS WRITTEN ON SO MANY TOMBS – ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! XOXO Bl.#1

But this door, too, had been left open for her. She wondered if Aunt Bellatrix could hear the sneakoscope from her cell in Azkaban, for she heard nothing upon entering. Perhaps if she opened the wardrobe?

Tonks frowned. She had to keep her focus. She had come this far and was only now being confronted with her first true obstacle. Bellatrix Black did not have a bookshelf; she had a floor to ceiling library that seemed to organise itself based on the size rather than the subject of the work, and Accio had done nothing to limit the search so far.

“Accio … Horcrux!” she tried again.

And then, something moved.

Tonks spun around. The Marauders had abandoned her to whatever fate awaited her in the wardrobe. Something was causing the small key to tremble in its lock.

Something was trying to escape.

“Alohomora,” she whispered. A sneakoscope’s siren, in fact, began to scream as the double-doors swung open.

What emerged was not a book, but a boy –

“Harry!” Tonks gasped.

Something was off about him. His eyes, rather than being green like his mother’s, were a blackish red like coagulated blood. He approached her slowly and with clear intent. She let out an involuntary cry.

She was being ridiculous.

This was nothing.

This was just like a Lupin final. Easy-peasy. “Riddikulus!” she shouted to no effect. “Riddikulus!”

The boggart drew ever nearer. Tonks winced. Why was the spell not working?! It always had in class! But then, when she had been thirteen, when Professor Lupin had first started teaching, she had not really had anything to fear. She wanted her mum. She wanted to go home. “Riddikulus!” she tried. Failed.

Fuck! What if she had it all wrong?!

“Harry! Harry! Stop!” Tonks screamed, shrinking back into her own body, no longer in control of her magic. “Please, you have to stop! You have to fight this. I’m here … I’m here to help you, don’t you see that? You’ve bested Voldemort once before and you can do it again just … please! Harry!”

Suddenly, to her great shock, laughter erupted, and the boggart turned to dust.

“Interesting. Illuminating even,” a soft voice – not Bill’s – came from behind her. “So that is where he has been hiding. Well, that certainly does complicate matters.”

She spun around to face Sirius. A shorter, elegantly robed version with a softer voice and a reddish glean in the whites of his eyes as though the man had forgone sleep for several nights. He observed, assessed her unblinking. Then smiled. Tonks felt a chill run up her spine. “My sweet Persephone,” he addressed. “Welcome to the realm of the dead.”

Chapter Text

History, Lucius Malfoy considered, would likely not be kind to him.

Without looking at the contents of the envelope he had been handed, he passed it to his eight-year-old son, knowing that the figures would fail to register any recognition with the boy, but not wanting to contend them himself just yet. Draco glanced up at him, then looked at the envelope, uncertain if he was meant to open it or not. He was, decidedly, not looking at their hostess – something Lucius recognised would not do long-term, much though he envied his son the little indulgences of youth.

“Lord Wiltshire,” their hostess addressed him sharply. He and Draco had been sitting in the brightly lit cosy of her stately home for the better part of the past hour, discussing particulars without plan or plea. It was time Lucius considered wasted, suspecting, in this, that he and the Minister were of the same mind.

While he did not personally agree that Britain and her allies had any more right to dictate how former colonial possessions handled their affairs then the same Muggle Government had in interceding into those of the Ministry of Magic, he had been born to uphold a solemn duty to protect the interests of his county and constituents. This, and the earnestness with which he approached his role, put him at an obvious disadvantage in negotiations.

Perhaps his young son had the better approach. Perhaps he, too, should be staring at the wall, at the odd paintings that did not move, making plain his desire to be anywhere else.

Before the end of this meeting, Lucius knew, lives would be lost. He did not want to know the who, where or why of any of it, fearing that a day would come when he would not be able to meet his reflection with the retort that he had kept faith with Wiltshire and all those who called it home or once had. A sorry business, all of this. He wondered when he met his God if He would punish him as harshly as those who had afforded him so little choice.

“My son, Draco,” Lucius presented the boy needlessly with a lazy gesture of his hand. He cleared his throat. “I know your conditions, Madame,” he claimed, hoping to sound dismissive. “You must in turn respect that the specifics are of little interest to us unless you are likewise positioned to meet our own.”

The Prime Minister gave him a smile of recognition. They two had had a version of this conversion at various intervals, never to any great effect. He might as well have commented on the weather, she might have asked about his wife, both might have answered with a noncommittal ‘oh fine, indeed.’

“By your own laws, my Lord, you cannot hope, are wasting time even suggesting, that you should be permitted to expand upon your considerable domain through the force of magic,” she countered, as he had well expected her to. “As I see it, as any court – including the Wizengamot – would agree, Divination meets that criterion. There are other favours we would be willing to extend.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” Lucius replied. “There is a village called Cokeworth outside of Manchester.”

“Far removed from your possessions,” she observed, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth. Lucius wondered why he found the sound so particularly intimidating.

“Mine, yes,” Lucius agreed. “My wife’s not. Narcissa owns multiple properties in the vicinity. We wish to invite the fifty-six families whom the policies of your predecessors forced from my father’s estates to take up residence there.”

“You want an exception to The Fair Housing Act,” Thatcher surmised without inflection.

“It is hardly ‘fair’ in that it disproportionally favours Muggles,” Lucius could not help but to counter, “but I suppose there is nothing to be gained by debating nomenclature. Yes, this is what I am requesting, but not only.

“Ten years ago, your government responded to a bacterial culture by polluting the water supply further with a substance known as chlorine, rendering it undrinkable and correspondingly driving away business. The matter has since been seen to. I’ve had private testing done. I’m asking only for a rubber stamp.”

Thatcher nodded slowly, as though to imply her moment’s consideration had been extended in earnest. “Which I could see provided, but such would again put you in conflict with the Reasonable Restrictions Act of 1736.”

She certain did her homework, Lucius considered, commending. That, or she had a witch or wizard on staff to supply her such retorts. He could hardly have been the only mage in her regular contact, he reasoned, studying the woman opposite him. In the past, Severus, Ted, Andy, and even his semi-regular raider Arthur Weasley had all explained ‘plastics’ to him, yet Lucius could not accept that ‘hairspray’ alone could allot for the gravity defying feat of his hostess’ hair. Even Dora could not quite master its imitation when she sought to make him smile or simply forget what he had meant to say. Complicated charm-work had to be at play. That, or Thatcher somehow had an elf of her own. He would not put it past her.

Little matter. He had prepared for the probability that the Prime Minister would know more than the law protected for with his wife the night prior.

“You will find, Madame, that the issue was dealt with using principles of agriculture, not magic. That an alchemist arrived at the solution is of no consequence,” Lucius answered calmly. “It was only through the efforts of the residents themselves – muggle most – to clean up the riverbed in order to plant legumes –”

“The First Citizen is a wizard, is he not? Can you prove beyond reasonable doubt that his constituents were not coerced?” the Prime Minister interrupted.

So, whomever she had watching him was also watching Remus Lupin, or, with a greater likelihood, his ward Harry Potter. Draco, so much his mother’s image, made the slightest nod at this passing thought, but did not remove his gaze from the place on the wall he had decided was safe.

“Alone from the fact that it took him nearly two years to accomplish. It is a stamp, Maggie,” Lucius answered, no longer able to mask his annoyance with polite platitudes. How dare they – these muggles who had taken so much from his family, from those families who had once been Malfoy vassals and villeins – how very dare they now seek to spy on an innocent wizarding boy under his loose protection, to make accusations against a competent Crown servant in order to mask or perhaps justify their impertinence!

Draco looked ill.

Lucius half-expected his son to say something with regard to Harry, as he rarely missed an opportunity to.

When he did not, Lucius looked down at his own folded hands, certain that he had missed something unsaid and for once thankful that he had nothing of the burdens of a natural Legilimens. It was always difficult for him to hold his tongue amongst the Muggle Leadership as he recognised that he must. Knowledge might render the task impossible. Sometimes, it was difficult not to bemoan that the Dark Lord had lost the war that might have freed them of these bonds.

“It is leverage, Lucy,” Thatcher replied, almost bored. “The society you seek to promote contradicts the values my voters espouse.”

“Then more the pity for you that you are Prime Minister of the entire nation,” Lucius spat, wondering bitterly why muggles taught their children to fear witches rather than those bent on burning them. “Draco, we are leaving,” he informed his son before shifting his attention back to his opponent. “Return to me with an offer or I am prepared to continue to withhold my assistance,” he told her as he rose, cautioning, “We both know Britain will not be able to survive the restrictions your proposed sanctions pose on trade without borrowing against the markets I have access to, unless you plan to negotiate with the E.U. or the U.S., whose demands would prove far greater than my own.”

“You would hold your nation hostage for a petty grudge?”

“No,” he corrected, regaining his practiced calm. “You would.”

Behind him, almost as though it were cued, a door opened, revealing a mage in muggle clothing, whom Lucius dimly recognised as belonging to the Auror office. He wondered if he was here at Scrimgeour or Thatcher’s request, if this was the particular agent affording Number Ten information about the delicacies of their hidden world, and if his beloved wife could force a case against the practice under the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy of 1692 to which Lucius was otherwise fervently opposed.

“My Lord,” the plain-clothes Auror addressed, “forgive the intrusion. There has been a development. You need to come with me.”

“A development is there?” Lucius smiled sardonically, glancing back to the Iron Lady, who for her part did not seem perturbed by the announcement or intrusion. Perhaps he should have read through the contents of that envelope.

He returned his attention to the wizard, imagining the frenzy which he could probably get Narcissa to work herself into should he mention offhand that the Muggle leader had made threatening overtones using an Auror. There was always something exhilarating in having his own worst fears echoed back to him in legal jargon. She would probably put out when she was through, too, for little put his wife in the mind for hard sex than an argument against an absent, philosophical enemy. Lucius reasoned in his anticipation that he would have to pick up a bottle of elfish red and those frog things she preferred to pralines and make a proper evening of it. Flowers would be overkill, too clear a signal of expectation and intent.

“Of what nature?” he asked, now positively grinning, knowing that he would have the man relived of whatever post he held on the very principles the Department of Magical Law Enforcement espoused at their own convenience; knowing that calling Maggie out for her part in this ploy would strengthen his hand when she was ready to offer real terms of negotiation.

“Kingsley, what is the meaning of this?” Thatcher demanded, annoyed but not, strictly speaking, unnerved. “My private secretary,” she told Lucius.

“Your spy,” he corrected. “Or ours. We’ll see.” He tapped his foot, gesturing his anticipation to the intruder, though the smile he wore confessed the welcome a farce.

The Auror answered slowly, as though considering his every word, not taking his eyes from Lucius as he did. “It is your niece, Sir. She has been reported missing.”

Lucius felt his throat grow dry.

Dora? What had she to do with –

No, he thought, glancing down at Draco, whose face had lost what little colour possessed it.

No, he stiffened. This was a bluff. Draco had been taken in by it owing only to a lack of experience with plots and ploys. Lucius received empty threats against his person or one of his dependants weekly and rarely needed to himself respond. Dora was tearing up Diagon Alley with his galleons. She was with Cissy, who even after abdicating continued to be provided with a personal guard by the Crown, who had her own hired thugs present on the periphery whenever she was arguing a controversial case or had just reversed a conviction. Dora was fine. She was protected. He refused to fall for it.

Then, knowing Dora, she might have done something to have gotten herself arrested. That would not reflect well upon him.

“And my wife? My sister-in-law?” Lucius inquired.

“Distraught, but unharmed,” Kingsley answered, his baring slow, collected, firm. “You need to come with me.”

Thatcher looked sanguine. This was politics, then. So be it. Dora had done nothing wrong, and none would be fool enough to wrong her.

“Who is making demands?” Lucius asked. ‘What’ was being demanded was of no immediate significance. The only thing Lucius was willing to pay was offence in kind.

“As of yet, no one,” Kingsley answered, a measure of hesitation to his baritone that had not been present previously.

Lucius spun around to face the Prime Minister, reaching for his wand out of instinct but stopping himself from producing it in present company. “I will not be threatened,” he swore. “Dora will be returned – unharmed! – within the hour or our cooperation has reached its end.”

“She had nothing to do with this, Lucius,” Kingsley cautioned, producing a wand from his pocket, cautious not to add the offence of raising it. Thatcher flinched at the sight. “This came from us. Scrimgeour just put a release out to all London units. You need to come with me,” he repeated.

This complicated matters. Us? What was that supposed to mean? The Department of Magical Law Enforcement? Lucius knew his enemies and knew them well. Narcissa’s were countless and likely encompassed a good half of the police force. He felt his heart sink in his chest. Most of the Aurors who had served during the war had long since lost their scruples. If this was an extrajudicial response to his wife’s long, public fight to return the Wizengamot to due process, Dora might well have already met her end.

“What is needed from our side?” the Prime Minister asked, regaining her composure. Lucius’ sudden fear must have in contrast reflected on his features. Draco, he only now noticed as the boy moved to hug his leg the way he had as a much smaller child, had long since given himself to silent tears. Lucius did not ask what his son had seen. Knowing would make no difference and might well hinder him from deciding what needed to be done.

“Every man you can spare,” Lucius answered sharply before the Auror could interject. “My niece, she is a Metamorphmagus,” he sought to explain. “She can take on any form. She could be anywhere. Anyone. Where was she last seen? In whose company?”

“William Weasley’s,” Kingsley answered. “He has also been reported missing.”

“Well, that should narrow it down considerably in terms of description,” Lucius snorted. “Red hair, freckles, hand-me-down robe,” he listed with some measure of relief. The enemies he imagined would not attack one of the Weasleys regardless of company. Perhaps Molly had gotten her wish and the two were simply in some bathroom stall succumbing to puberty’s temptations. If anything came of it, he would pay for the abortion and requisite counselling.

“Honestly,” he sneered through his relief. “How hard can it be for the entire force to find two kids who, to follow simple logic, are probably just off snogging somewhere?”

Lucius himself had been a late bloomer in that regard. He had fallen in love at thirteen, watching the girl he knew he would take to wife from the moment he laid eyes on her mask her discomfort at the Sorting with a mischievous smile as she told the Hat and the Hall that she saw herself in Slytherin. He had waited four painfully long years for a hint that his affections were shared, having his first (and far from chaste) kiss at seventeen after an otherwise forgettable Quidditch practice. He had remained a virgin until he was twenty and Cissy had come of age, marrying at twenty-five when he finally convinced her uncle of his merits. Though restrained by nature and title, it was not as though he had not had ideas all the while of what he would do with his crush-turned-friend if reality should ever echo dream. He had probably spent more time thinking on it than most over the course of his youth. He could not be conceived that it was all that much different with a friend-turned-crush, and his niece was the creative-sort.

“Dora was supposed to be with Cissy and Andy in Diagon Alley on a shopping tour. Has anyone checked downstairs at Flourish and Blotts? You know that alcove they have of books in runes? Great make-out spot, I’d imagine. Or … there is a pub on Knocktun Alley that doesn’t ID. Or,” he paused, doubting either Dora or Bill knew about this one, and rather hoping he was correct in his estimation of character. “Borgin and Brukes has a fire escape at the back of the building. The roof is such that you can’t be seen crouching up there. Or doing anything else on your hands and knees.” Merlin! It was admittedly not as bad as an overt death threat aimed at gaining a political advantage, but only just. He would have hoped that his only niece had better tastes in boys. A Weasley! Of all the –

“That is not the issue, Sir. We believe we know where the children are. We simply are not able at present to access or map the location. We are uncertain how they found a way in. It is necessarily secured, you will understand.”

“Then find the goddamned Secret Keeper!” Lucius shouted. “Where is the problem?” He looked between the Prime Minister and her Secretary-Spy without a sense that either of them had more of a grasp than he did as to what this Kingsley was attempting to communicate.

“This should be discussed in private, my Lord,” Kingsley offered.

“I am the Viscount Wiltshire,” Lucius sneered. “This is about as private as you will ever meet me. Out with it.” When Kingsley did not respond immediately, Lucius reiterated his command, loud enough to cause Draco to step back from him. What were they playing at? With any of this?

“We believe your niece and her friend to have gained access to the safehouse of a long running UC operation,” Kingsley said finally. “The Auror present at the scene made it clear that he is not willing to cooperate with our goal of seeing the children returned to safety. We have since lost the ability to make contact. As to the Secret Keeper, by process of elimination, we believe the distinction might belong to you.”

Lucius blinked. The only protected place he had been granted the authority to access by spell and oath was the Lestranges’ vault at Gringotts. He could not picture the children attempting a robbery – much as the Weasley boy may need an influx of assets. Dora was more goal-oriented than most of the adults in her life were willing to credit – she wanted to be an Auror, God bless her, and a criminal offence would impede this particular five-year-plan. And Bill – did he not want to become a gloried grave robber like Bellatrix had once been? Surely, an assault on the firm he hoped would one day extend him an offer of employment was counter to his cause.

Unless that was part of the application process.

Lucius frowned, both at the idea of the children becoming buried in excess, if, as stated, they had found a way into the vault, and at the fact the so much about Bill Weasley had buried itself in his subconscious. Perhaps Dora truly did fancy the lad. Lucius shuttered, imagining himself having to make small- and sport-talk with Arthur at a family gathering of any kind.

At least, Lucius reasoned, if Dora had attempted a bank robbery, he would likely cease having to answer summons to financially back genocide in countries with a substantial supply of the crude oil that muggles seemed to need for everything.

Perhaps such was too much to hope for.

He could little imagine that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had a headquarters in one of the oldest and deepest vaults of the wizarding bank whilst simultaneously defending their incompetencies by citing a lack of funding.

No. Wherever Scrimgeour thought the children were, he was mistaken. And what was worse, they were now wasting time. “Are you running this operation or is it running you? Where?” he demanded.

“Grimmauld Place, Sir,” Kingsley answered.

“I have not been there in years,” Lucius told him honestly. “I cannot imagine what Bill and Dora would want with the place. But Sirius is the heir; he should be able to enter unimpeded. Reduce the restrictions on his parole that the Dementors do not prove a hindrance. I will contact him to have a sniff around for you.”

“Strictly speaking, Sir, that is not expressly true. Sirius surrendered his inheritance when he emancipated himself at sixteen. The heir is present.”

“Draco?” Lucius gaped. “You mean for me to bring my eight-year-old son into what you suggest is a hostile situation? Dora and Bill are not there, I can but assure you. I am no one’s Secret Keeper. The Blacks would have never permitted the family seat to fall to a Malfoy, even your precious little pet Sirius who otherwise pretends to deny Pureblood values thinks us – ”

“Father!” Draco whispered, reaching a clammy hand for Lucius’ own. “Don’t you get it? He’ll kill her. I will go if I can open the door.”

“Who, Draco?” Lucius inquired, the entirety of his exasperation escaping into the question though such had not been his intent. Draco swallowed. Lucius sighed. He would likely need to order Dobby to collect fairies from the garden to light the boy’s room at night for the next month at least.

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not a coward, Father,” he said beneath his breath. “You are.”

“The Heir to the House of Black is present at the safehouse, Sir,” Kingsley clarified. If he had heard Draco, he was content to ignore him. “We need to locate the Secret Keeper, and giving your history, we have reason to believe it might be you yourself. It is no one on the force … our UC, he likes to do things his own way. We have no choice but to let him.”

It registered.

Then, Lucius considered what he was not being told, what Kingsley was so cautious not to voice in so many words. “That is impossible,” he pronounced.

“Neither your spouse nor her sister can apparate to their family seat anymore. They tried that before contacting our offices. Which is how we discovered that we no longer have access or means of communication.”

“No.”

“Sir, we are only asking that you attempt –”

“It is not me,” Lucius swore. He had never much liked Regulus Black, nor had he ever had that much to do with the boy. He had let him serve as a groomsman in his wedding, but only because his bride had wanted it. He had attended his funeral, likewise for Cissy’s sake. Years later, he had listened to her confession of a terrible deed which she had helped Regulus to forget when Lucius had quite nearly lost control over another attempt at oppression, asking if his conscious required the same cleansing.

No.

Lucius could live with his sins. Regulus, if he could not, if he now hid his crimes behind a badge, likely deserved the death he had led the few who loved him believe him to have suffered.

“If it is neither Narcissa nor Andromeda,” he said, “both need to be taken to Azkaban under heavy guard to conduct interrogations of former Death Eaters and we all need to pray that your UC did not so chose as to confide in Bellatrix. I am told there is nothing left.”

Kingsley nodded to himself. “Such is not simple to arrange.”

“And yet I am ordering you to see it done!” Lucius cried. “The Blacks … when both my son and niece were born, threats were made on their lives. Draco because he is a Mudblood by the definition the Ministry set simply to force my surrender, ‘conceived through Muggle means’,” he sneered. “In Dora’s example … Kingsley,” he swallowed, “they have killed every Metamorphmagus born to that line going back centuries. They consider it a perversion. It is why Andy joined the Order. You have to get her daughter out.”

“We do not believe our UC shares those beliefs.”

“You do or you would not have interrupted my meeting with the PM,” Lucius contradicted. “Maggie,” he shifted, swallowing his pride as he prepared to part with his soul. “I am certain that we will find another excuse to negotiate on what is rightfully mine in the future, but you’ll understand my concern is protecting what I have at present. I will have your request signed and fulfilled at my earliest possible convince, on three conditions: that you order this man to leave your service immediately. That … you take my son into protection. Consider his life collateral for the loan,” he said coldly. “I am certain hiding him is within your means.”

Draco had been born of Muggle medicine. To this Ministry, this made him a Mudblood – or whatever term Remus so often tried to explain was politically correct even if it bore no relation to fact in this example. Muggle Born! Pah! He himself was a Malfoy. Cissy was a Black. That anyone could question –!

But the fact that someone once had had been enough for the Dark Lord to demand the boy’s blood be spilt.

Sacrificed.

Lucius wanted to see Draco secured as far from magic and those to practice it as it was within anyone’s means to provide until the boy’s cousin could be delivered from the same fate. He knew that in exchange, he would be damning some foreign populace to some form of post-colonial oppression.

He knew that Draco was right; he was a coward. He would tell him when this was over that he would understand when he was older.

He hoped he would be mistaken.

“We are, of course, happy to grant your son and heir sanctuary – ”

“Sanctuary?” Lucius returned, almost insulted. “I want the fucking MI6. I refuse entertain the possibility of my people finding him until all of this is over. Am I understood?”

Thatcher nodded, reached beneath the table, and within seconds, her Secretary-Spy was being escorted from the premises without complaint in the company of an armed guard. “I’ll catch up,” Lucius called out to Kingsley when his back was turned. “Get my wife and sister-in-law into Azkaban if you can. Get them safely away from Grimmauld Place otherwise. I’m not the Secret Keeper. I have an inkling as to who might be. Give me an hour to follow up.” Kingsley turned back momentarily, said nothing, and continued to allow himself to be marched out of service.

The doors closed. The air seemed to thicken in the silence.

“Am I to imagine the third request involves my fireplace?” The Prime Minister asked, seeming to know the answer.

“I need to visit Rome,” Lucius nodded to himself. “If successful, I will be back in ten minutes.”

“Father!” Draco screamed.

“You will be alright, Draco,” Lucius said, kneeing to meet his son’s red-rimmed eyes. “Try to think of this as an opportunity. Am I understood?” Take, he thought. Everything you can get, take it without remorse. They are Muggles, they won’t be able to stop you.

“Yes, Father,” Draco nodded, resigned, resentful, but not yet defeated. “Dora … she will be okay, too, right?”

How could he possibly answer?

“If we act quickly,” Lucius said, standing as to not have to meet his son’s disappointed gaze. The most horrible truth of the world was that men killed in pursuit of hope far more often than for reasons of hate. He was dead inside. Regulus Black, however, would be dead, in fact, within the hour. He had no idea when he would see his wife or son again, but he had spilt too much blood in whatever he was backing for his niece to lose a drop.

Lucius Malfoy was a coward, but one who had been raised to reign.

As such, he trusted he could turn his deficits to his advantage. “Ten minutes?” he addressed the Prime Minister, hoping to see her on his return.  

“I’ll have a kettle put on.”

“Emerald Drink, or the Draught of Despair is something you have likely not encountered in Potions yet, it is – ”

Helga. Have. Mercy. Tonks thought. This was increasingly becoming like skimming through one of those Gilderoy Lockhart novels, so much so that she was beginning to suspect that the ghost of Regulus Black had ghost written, or at least tried his hand at editing the half. ‘The young, dashing, elegant narcissist,’ her mind paraphrased in the literary celebrity’s style, ‘had again braved the depths of his Master’s hidden lair to destroy that which he had once been deployed to hide, recognising that now that he knew the Dark Lord’s secret. He and his trusty and resourceful House Elf had fought off Inferi, made some kind of blood sacrifice, and drank –’

“A compound which, when consumed in great quantity, causes the victim to hallucinate, like a bad trip or something,” she could not help but to interrupt, doing her best to keep her tone respectful. “Given the amount required and the difficulty of forcing it upon anyone, it is fairly ineffectual as a poison, but I get how it could be weaponised in this scenario.”

Regulus blinked. “Clever,” he commented, as though to himself.

“Hard working,” Tonks corrected. “My Potions Master has exceedingly high expectations. It’s this contest he seems to think he is having against every other professor at Hogwarts, but none of the other teachers care, to be honest. Anyway, every second year or higher would be able to tell you that.”

“Is this your way of telling me what I am up against?” Regulus asked. There was nothing overtly mocking in his tone. No. He was continuing to evaluate, which was proving unnerving. Little matter. Tonks was sure she had his measure. Regulus Black, she decided, was a lonely soul who had given himself to employing his considerable talents into creating a kind of self-sustaining mythos. She twirled one of her mother’s long, chestnut-brown curls between her middle and index finger, not quite able to tell if her hair had changed to match that of the person she most wanted to hug and hold her as she was told it had done of its own accord when she was small, or if this was just what she looked like without magic.

She was nervous.

Regulus, rather oddly for a Black, seemed oblivious to her caution. That, or it had been so long since he had anyone to talk to that he had lost something of the skill.

He was pleasant if not personable. Upon his unnerving introduction, he excitedly offered her everything she sought and everything else his impressive home might offer. He had given her more literature that she could have reasonably hoped existed, let her pick out clothes from her imprisoned aunt’s enchanted wardrobe, figuring, correctly, she would be more comfortable in something that fit, and let her have her pick of bedroom.

Because she could not leave.

Ever.

Sirius’, he had said, he was planning to allot to Bill – giving that they two shared a house at Hogwarts and his brother had the place decorated in those tasteless colours. But those of Bellatrix and his late parents were filled with items that might spark her interests; her mother’s room had the best view of the garden even if it was now rather bare; and Narcissa had the softest bed, if she, Tonks, did not mind occasionally sharing the space with an ill-tempered tapestry, or did not happen to speak medieval French. No, Tonks swore. Neither.

This was in part true. She had learnt the modern tongue from her mother and had figured out from the way portraits at Hogwarts responded to student conversation that they could follow the plot, even if they shouted at you in Latin or something else dated or dead. Many of the figures the filled the walls of Grimmauld Place had additional portraits elsewhere, but she calculated that the She-Wolf of France was the most prevalent. If Isabella had made it into a museum, which seemed likely, (though Tonks had never been one for history or art) the former queen could tell all of the other witches and wizards on display where she and Bill were, and they could in turn tell those in other innumerable spaces, and someone, somehow, would get word to somebody that could do something about it. She explained this plan to an empty frame in whispers. The fact that Regulus had shattered an enchanted mirror sometime after told her it was working, even if her host was mute on the subject.

Bill, Regulus assured her, was fine, or soon would be. He was contending with his own Boggart in the office of the estate. Kreacher, the House Elf, was keeping an eye on him and would report if the situation changed. But Regulus was not interested in Bill, whose greatest fear seemed to be a constant onslaught of his mother’s everyday nagging. Tonks, in contrast, had recognised Voldemort in the boy to have had survived him. She was more interesting. Regulus had not accepted her explanation that Harry was simply the worst of the children she semi-regularly babysat – even though this, too, was true in its way. Draco might have proven himself competition in terms of waking up crying when Tonks was busying herself going through his parents’ things, but he did not speak Parseltongue. Tonks did not think it prudent to mention that Harry could.

Instead, she asked questions of her own. She had to find a way of appealing to Regulus’ better graces, or, failing these, whatever part of him she could manipulate to her advantage.

“Same as bragging that a potion meant to attack the mind is ineffectual against a Black, I guess,” she countered, mirroring his slightly smug smile.

Regulus, to her surprise, genuinely laughed at this. “Oh dear,” he said collecting himself. “You are being serious. Um. No, not at all. Had I consumed the requirement, I would have suffered hallucinations same as anyone. The Dark Lord’s error was placing this, for lack of a better word ‘trap’ – ”

“Obstacle?” Tonks suggested innocently as she could manage. ‘Trap?’ Merlin’s shrivelled cock! This guy had definitely read the whole of Lockhart’s library.

“Obstinate,” Regulus commented of her. “But yes,” he resigned himself to consent, “I suppose your description is an improvement. His mistake was placing the obstacle in a saltwater alcove.  Whenever I felt that I might succumb to long-suppressed sorrows, I had Kreacher fill the chalice with salt water, which induces vomiting, removing the potion from my system before starting again. The fire ring proved enough to ward off Inferi, but House Elves are accustomed to occupational burns. It did not perturb him form following out my orders.”

“I … know. I have one,” Tonks said. “Or my parents do, rather.” She always felt a little bit uncomfortable recognising her own privilege, partially because she knew it was not really punk rock of her, partially because most of her friends were poor by comparison, and partly because of questions like –

“Even though your father is, forgive me, a Mudblood?”

“If you have to caution your choice vocabulary,” Tonks suggested, “I don’t know, probably better to pick a synonym. ‘Muggle Born’ works great in my experience. And yeah, weirdly enough, blood purity doesn’t have all that much bearing on the fact that we – me, my Mum and Dad – are all kinda slobs. We’d be lost without her. And, like, I’m at school most of the year. My mum heads a wing at St Mungo’s, and my dad has like the most boring job in sport. He negotiates broadcasting rights for the entire league, so he’s away a lot, too,” Tonks defended, feeling at once justified and gross in doing so. “None of us have time for cooking or cleaning or any of that.”

“I’m … sorry, I did not mean anything by it.”

“But you never liked my dad.”

“I never met him. He left Hogwarts a year before I started, and it is not as though he came here to ask for your mother’s hand.”

“Yeah. You don’t like him.”

“It is my parents talking. I really meant nothing by it.”

“Is it your parents – or those horcruxes you’re wearing? Can you, perhaps, not shield your mind against Voldemort?” she squinted.

“No – no I,” Regulus stammered.

“Giving what you said about Emerald Drink and us, can you perhaps not perform occlumency? I’m trying to give you a way out, buddy.”  

“Of course, I can,” Regulus shook his head, smiling again, though something in it had shifted. “Just not to the mythical extent we so love to propagate and not because of some blood-born talent or trait. None of us have the capabilities we claim. The extraordinary power, if these is any, lies simply in the fact that the ability is rarely taught, and we typically receive instruction from the age of seven,” he explained.

There was something refreshing in his humility, but Tonks did not think it wise to read too much into it. As much as Regulus was diminishing himself, he was likewise cautioning her not to trust in the salvation her network promised.

“Anyone else who had received the same instruction would be able to claim the same accomplishments. Take your Professor Snape,” he posed. Tonks felt herself tense. It probably had not been a smart move to bring up how great of a teacher he was. Such confessed her sympathies, which gave him too much control over the conversation.

“He came from a physically abusive household and taught himself at around the same age how to disassociate from the pain,” Regulus continued, rather blandly. Wait – he fucking what? Tonks bit her tongue. Asking might tell too much. “When he got to Hogwarts, he had the further benefit of Narcissa’s tutorage,” he continued, ignorant of, choosing to ignore, or quite possibly amused by Tonks’ inner turmoil. Close, empty! She thought. But being held captive while one of her best friends was struggling a few floors below against a dark creature and a dark … Kreacher made the task exceedingly difficult.

Aunt Cissy could probably mange through the mental strain, though.

“But she –” Tonks started.

“Began learning earlier still,” Regulus dismissed out of hand. “I can’t speak to it in any precise terms, I was not yet born, but I imagine she had the sense that she was not like her sisters. In our house, one does not survive without struggle.  You would have been killed at birth or shortly after for what you are. Narcissa, practically a squib? Death would have been a kindness. She did what she had to. My other cousins claim it is somehow different for her, but I tend to think it just comes down to practice. To return to my example, Snape was always better than Sirius at such magic, but then Sirius never had anything to hide or hide from.”

“And you?”

A shadow seemed to cross the Auror’s face. “I killed my best friend’s muggle father when I was sixteen to join the Death Eaters, doing so with the intention to bring the organisation to ruin. Yes … I have had my fair share of practice.”

“Blood in, blood out,” Tonks shrugged, trying to mask her discomfort at the ease at which her host spoke of pruning the family tree. Again, there was nothing overtly threating in his tone. It was light, conversational. Which was worse. “So, what happened then? After you got a horcrux? If it is true that you are an Auror, presumably you went to the Ministry to offer your skill set. Why didn’t they make you hand it over?” she challenged, still not entirely believing his claim of being an undercover agent. Were the police not meant to be the good guys?

“Because to the time the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had been infiltrated by my fellows and an internal investigation was going on,” Regulus defended. “It was, and remains, safer on my person. As to what happened, I suppose I simply returned to my mission, regularly moving location, borrowing flats of muggles gone on holiday, hoping around the country in search of other pieces of Voldemort’s soul. After my parents died, I set up base here. Had a long run of it, too, until you broke my wards. What ... made you come?” he asked, almost as though he intended an invitation.

Tonks, frankly, was starting to wonder the same. She supposed she had come because she had been told to. When Aunt Cissy could not fulfil her wish, she had told her how she might do so herself under the guise of giving caution. But Regulus did not need to know this. Tonks doubted her aunt could have imagined she, Tonks, would meet opposition in her quest, and she did not want to place Aunt Cissy in even more danger than she was already under. They were too much alike for any good to come of it. She, and Aunt Cissy, and Sirius, and Mum even, were all too arrogant to accept the idea of being personally vulnerable. Regulus spoke too dismissively of killing. She could not risk heightening his sense of paranoia.

“Where did you get the ring?” Tonks countered, trying to shift the conversation.

“In the course of my travels. It is not such a glamorous tale as with the locket, I am afraid,” Regulus answered, abashed, seemingly caught off guard. Had he thought he was making her comfortable? Putting her at such ease that she would just open up?

“Being sick on yourself is glamorous?” she asked before she could quite stop herself.

“Touché. I might caution you to watch your tongue. Why are you here, Nymphadora? Or is it ‘just Tonks’?” he smiled. He must have heard her talking to Sirius’ enchanted artwork. Under that assumption, he could have heard her talking to Queen Isabella’s vacated frame as well. Time to change tactic.

“You might caution me,” Tonks repeated, “but you won’t. So, Reggie, since we are attempting familiar terms, and yes, Tonks is fine, it is like this, innit. When I was twelve, I tried sneaking out of Hogwarts disguised as Professor Snape. It didn’t actually work, but my mum freaked the fuck out about the whole thing, so much so that she wrote to my Aunt Cissy, whom she hadn’t seen in years, asking her to intervene or whatever. Anyway, owing to this, Snape and I have had a standing detention since. He’s taken me under his wing, so to speak. And … since my dad doesn’t have extended family, we usually spend the holidays at Malfoy Manor now that my mum and aunt are chill, and that means that I get to hang out with my Uncle Lucy, who uses words like ‘leverage’ with me.”

“Wait, you call Lucius Malfoy ‘Uncle Lucy’?” Regulus choked back a laugh.

Tonks had not thought about it, but she supposed she did use pet-names with a man many accused of war-crimes in whispers. Uncle Lucy, who called her ‘Dora’ and ‘kiddo’ and ‘brat’ with affection could easily raise an army. He had no concept whatsoever of not getting his way in the end. He probably was not nearly as accomplished of a wizard as Regulus pertained to be, but inherited titles and absurd wealth could counter most curses. It was not fair, but it played to her favour here.

“Yeah. I do,” she told him sharply. “You might consider that in the context of what I assume you already understand, but just so were clear that we are working from the same definition, ‘leverage’,” she cleared her throat, “is something that you can use to maximise your advantage. You are holding Bill and I hostage. You have something to negotiate. If anything should happen to either of us, you lose that edge. I’m worth more to you whole. And … if you should harm me, either of us really, I can’t promise that vengeance would be swift, the Wizengamot is pretty backed up with acquittals these days. No,” she paused. She was not used to threatening people or being threatened herself. Fuck. What would Snape say in this scenario? “Yeah,” she tried. “Vengeance would be slow, and it would be … agonising,” she spoke slowly to a certain effect.

Looking appropriately horror stricken, Regulus rose from the chair on which he had been sitting at Aunt Cissy’s old desk – immaculate, organised, but likely exactly as she had left it, a memo in her handwriting still scribbled on a notepad, a scroll with Uncle Lucy’s broken personal seal seemingly given a place of honour. He approached where she sat on the edge of Aunt Cissy’s four-poster with the soft mattress, kneeling before her and taking her hands in his own.

“Tonks, I have no intention of causing you harm. I could help you! We could help each other.” It sounded almost like a plea. Regulus had made himself such a stark contrast to these particular surroundings that he had seemed more terrifying than he likely intended. Cissy had the whole room done in white with tasteful gold accents; Regulus was black brocade and guyliner, perhaps applied in an effort to echo or offset the dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes from a lack of sleep. He reminded her of a vampire – not a real one, of course, which was perhaps what he had been going for when he had gotten dressed that morning, but the sort that Muggles dreamt up and cast as the romantic heroes in the three quid novellas one sometimes saw in the corner kiosk. Tonks had a momentary sense that she was sharing in a particular and private phantasy of his to the extent her cultural upbringing allowed. She tried to pull her hands from his and her mind from following these thoughts where she knew they might lead.

He tightened his grip, more desperate than threatening.

“Prove it. Let Bill go.”

“I can’t do that,” Regulus answered, almost mutely.

“You could wipe his memory.”

“Consider the strengths of your allies.”

“I am. We are nothing special, evidently,” she quipped. “Let. Bill. Go.”

“Tell me everything you know about Harry Potter,” he countered.

“Tell me how you got your pretty little hands on that ring,” Tonks answered, looking down at the horcrux to break eye contact more than anything else. There was no way she was going to let this guy get anything from her about Harry. Close! Empty! She thought, but her anger was too strong for the spell to contend.

“My appendix burst,” Regulus told her after a long hesitation, as though he somehow saw this reflective of a character flaw which he was too shy to confess. Tonks frowned. “Two years ago,” he continued. “I woke up in the middle of the night in more pain than I had ever experienced. I thought the Cruciatus had been cast. I tried to fight back, flinging curses everywhere, but I was entirely alone in my room. There was no enemy to attack. Finally, I called for my House Elf, who helped me apparate to an A&E, which was complicated, as I have no papers and was in no condition to invent any at the time, but regardless. They operated immediately, I awoke … sometime later, hours, days, I was in no state to say.”

Perhaps self-induced vomiting did have a comparative air of elegance and grace.

“Do you have stiches?” Tonks asked, again, before she could stop herself.

“I did. They take them out eventually.”

Her eyes widened. “Wicked. Can I see?”

Regulus blushed. “Um. Later, perhaps. These robes are not really conducive to … are you not going to believe me otherwise?”

“No, I’ve just never known anyone to have stiches before,” Tonks told him honestly. “Why didn’t you just go to St Mungo’s?”

“Why didn’t I ‘just go’ to the hospital where your mother heads an entire wing?” he rephrased.

“Fair. Continue.”

“When I woke up, I found I was not alone but in a room with a man who was watching a programme called ‘Haunted Britain’ on the television unit with which the room was equipped,” he paused. “A television is – ”

“Half-blood, remember?” Tonks sneered. “Plus, not to brag, but I have an ‘O’ on my Muggle Studies O.W.L.”

“Right,” Regulus said, slightly abashed. “I never took the subject.”

“It covers the basics,” Tonks informed him.

“Right. Sorry I … it is not my intention to come across as demeaning,” Regulus said, rising to take a seat beside her. He moved to brush her mother’s long hair back as to better see her face in profile, but instinctively, Tonks felt it transform into her usual, bubble-gum pink choppy bob, denying her captor the chance to again handle her with forced, faux affection. Unfortunately, he seemed positively delighted in the shift. “I find you exceedingly impressive and I don’t want – ”

“The offence comes more from the fact that you are holding my friend and I hostage, not the asides you intend as helpful,” Tonks told him stiffly. “Just continue.”

“Fair,” Regulus nodded, thankfully moving an inch or two from her and placing his long-fingered hands on his knees. “The programme dealt with supernatural occurrences, hauntings and the like, as interpreted by muggles – and this particular episode was about a stately family who all died mysteriously one night of unknown causes – the Riddles.”

“Voldemort’s family,” Tonks murmured.

“How do you know his name? Tell me that and I’ll release Bill.”

It was a deal she could not possibly make. And yet she had to. Draco was safe at his father’s side in some Ministry office. Harry was having fun watching the Italian National Quidditch Team train while his dads enjoyed their honeymoon. Both were protected. Bill, meanwhile, was downstairs, apparently being yelled at by the fake Mrs Weasley. It was her fault he was here in the first place. He had nothing to do with this. She had to get him out. Maybe if she did, he would tell his mum what had happened, and the real Mrs Weasley would come and put Regulus Black in his place. Tonks steadied herself. She did not much fancy her captor’s chances against her best mate’s mum.

“Draco, my cousin. He told me. Sort of. When Harry does something weird, Draco gets upset and calls him ‘Tom’,” she answered, hoping it was not too much.

Regulus nodded as though he had already guessed this. “How present is ‘Tom’?” he asked. “You were wearing his face earlier.”

At this, Tonks spang from the bed, gesturing as though she meant to gag herself. “Ew!” she exclaimed. “I was?! Are you serious?”

“No, I’m the pale imitation,” Regulus answered with a light smile, cautioning her to regain her clam. When she failed to laugh, he said with some embarrassment, “Sorry, old habits.”

“No, I just … I guess, I got it from Draco, too. He said he – this kid, wouldn’t leave Harry alone because of something my Aunt Cissy hand done. I thought he was a Hogwarts student I had nothing to do with, not well,” she paused, considering. “Is that why you let me in?”

“You took my curiosity.”

“You have mine.”

Regulus nodded his consent. Tonks, who had wanted to know how the story continued, now wished she had given him more cause to stall, rather than enough to have seemingly satisfied him. Fuck! Draco was her cousin. Harry was Snape and Moony’s kid. They were both eight. They would not stand a chance. Not without her help. Not that she had been much thus far.

“Various autopsies never concluded a cause. It was the sort of thing presented to give the viewer a chill, but it gave me information I had been seeking. I discharged myself, went to Little Hangleton, having learned the name of the place, and spent a week probing the estate for dark objects, finally expanding my search to the estate’s grounds, where I located the ring buried under a floorboard of a filthy, dilapidated hovel just past the property line.”

“Why would Voldemort hide it there?” Tonks asked.

“The last known decedents of Salazar Slytherin had inhabited the property decades before.”

“Coincidence?”

Regulus shook his head. “I don’t think so. Voldemort fancied himself the heir to Slytherin.”

“Prat.”

“And now, I believe, it is time these were done away with,” he gestured at his jewellery with a sweeping motion before placing his hand into his slim-cut robes and producing a small, corked vial. “Nothing I’ve tried to date has proven effective, but Basilisk venom was recently recommended to me. Evidently, it is what Narcissa used. Why, I am guessing, her son has been having nightmares about You Know Who and another of his horcruxes.”

He was right. She could not leave. Ever. She had to stay to save Harry and Draco from Regulus Black. She had to save Regulus Black from himself. She had not known him before, barely knew anything about the boy he had once been, but the time he had spent as a host for Voldemort’s soul had clearly come at great cost to his mental facility.

“Are you daft?” Tonks gaped. “You can’t just open that without wearing goggles and dragon-scale gloves. That stuff is highly corrosive, you could –”

Regulus grinned. “I see it now. Why you are said to be Snape’s favourite student.”

“Oh,” Tonks blinked. “Well. I mean, shit. Thanks for the existential crisis?”

“Any time.”

Tonks bit her lower lip. “I’ll help you. You need it, plainly. But you have to let Bill go now, okay?”

“I think you underestimate your friends. He is a Gryffindor, is he not? He’ll likely confuse chivalry with common sense, but I will inform his of the offer you brokered.”

With that, Tonks saw that all of her efforts had been for naught. Bill would never abandon her to face this alone. Regulus had tricked her. Without thinking, she raised her wand.

Since Dudley Dursley had let slip his cousin’s secret, the rest of the household had been making a valiant effort to pretend to themselves and to each other that Harry was a normal boy. It was almost offensive.

At the wedding, Dad had taken pause to ensure that the few outsiders who had heard what Dudley had said on the subject would not have any recollection of it the following morning. This would seem to involve a great deal of powerful magic but in reality, only amounted to him helping Professor Slughorn to disguise strong liquor with sirups, cut fruit and small, paper umbrellas. The effect had been almost instant, and Dudley might have imagined that his guardians had partaken of the same potion, had Moony not then taken him aside for one of those kind-natured heart-to-hearts.

The kind that at its heart was an appeal to him, Dudley, not to pick on his stupid cousin with that stupid scar.

Everyone had ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in them as Moony had said, sure, but Dudley reasoned that there was a huge, gaping discrepancy between his own playground punch-ups and the fact that Harry, at his own personal worst, was literally Wizard Hitler.

And it was not even as though the parts of Harry that were unmistakably him were all that great, either.

He was cheeky and sneaky, like a low-to-no-stakes version of that serpent who sometimes took his mind and mouth. And no one seemed to suffer for it save Dudley himself.

Harry copied Dudley’s coursework without asking and let Dudley take the blame when he got caught by their teacher. He often cited Dudley’s dyslexia as grounds as to why he, Dudley, could not do the assignment on his own, why he had to ‘help’ – which was bullocks, and Moony which believed it most of the time when the school rang.

Dad was, to his credit, more reserved in his judgement of these things, not that such really helped matters. If questioned, Harry would go have a cry that Severus loved him less, which was not true and had the effect of making everything yet more unbalanced in his favour for several days to follow.

Harry would change the channel on the telly when Dudley got up to get them both a snack during a break; and when Dudley complained, Dad would suggest that maybe he should just go outside instead, because this was the language that he had for saying that he loved Harry as much (if not more.) And Dudley always had to just swallow and accept it.

It was not fair! Nothing was!

Why, he had asked Moony that night, was Harry not also having a stern talking-to? Harry was the bad guy. He was Lord Voldemort. He should be in trouble instead.

Moony had made some empty promises that he would keep an eye out for this behaviour if Dudley could improve his own, saying that he missed the days when he and Harry had been ‘best friends’ – as though that had ever been true. The only thing Dudley and Harry shared, aside from a bedroom, was the ability to smile and lie to grown-ups about their own misdeeds. Sometimes they worked together when they had shared ends. But that was it.

They were certainly not ‘friends’, and never had been by Dudley’s estimation.

Harry, for all of the efforts being employed to make him feel normal since, had made no effort to hide his eccentricities. Dudley almost would have preferred having Tom to play with. At least that way he could be having a proper race right now, instead of swimming laps whilst his cousin shouted under water, pretending to be a fish or something.

Dudley was quite nearly as embarrassed for the boy as he was of him.

Since getting themselves properly shit-faced at the wedding, the Quidditch team had gotten into so much trouble the next day that Volpe was no longer allowed to bring Harry and Dudley to practice with her. This meant that they were spending the better part of their holiday since in her pool, while Dad and Moony walked around the city and Sirius continued his sorry efforts to murder Blaise’s mum half a block away.

For the most part, Dudley was fine with this new arrangement. Quidditch had not been all that fun, anyway. Harry had been airborne for about twenty minutes before being made to sit with Dudley and watch. Which he did, captivated the whole while.

Dudley, who had missed the last game of season owing to a yellow-red he had received in the match prior, had more or less written Quidditch off thereafter. There were some seven hundred rules, but the only punishment a player or team might suffer was a penalty throw from the opposing squad, and Dudley’s resentment that wizards just did not have the same consequences as everyone else now manifested in his inability to enjoy the game.

‘This is what watching football is like for me,’ Harry had told him sympathetically at one such practice, seeing his boredom. ‘Wanna go have a kick about down on the pitch? I doubt we’ll be much bother.’

Not being able to find a ball that did not float, Dudley had taken to working on his headers and had even mastered a bicycle kick before Harry had decided to try and make the ball move with his untrained magic. For all his efforts, he had not manged to make the thing fall and allow them to have a proper skirmish. Bloody useless, magic was.

After they had been banned owing to the team’s collective hangover, they had spent the following morning following their fathers failing attempts to immerse themselves in history and culture. This, too, had been awful. The whole time at the Colosseum, Dad and Moony only seemed to be looking at one another, slavishly, repeating in private whispers that they had finally done it. They were finally married. And all was well. Finally.

Dudley had wondered aloud if they had not drunken the same potion that they had given their guest to cause them to forget most of the prior evening. Even Harry had seemed annoyed, but then his memories of the ceremony were similar to Dudley’s own. Mrs Zabini had placed him in a little bowtie, too. If Dudley and Harry had been getting on better since the wedding, it owed only to the trauma-bonding of formal attire.

Mrs Zabini, the cause of all of their anguish, he and Harry had since decided between themselves, must have been a far better witch than Sirius was a wizard, for every time he had gone to her place on a witch hunt, he had returned with red marks on his cheeks and bruises on his neck.

For some reason, Sirius seemed exceedingly proud of this.

Moony was rather haughty about the whole thing, and Dad did not bother to mask his disgust. Dudley had told the latter out of concern that maybe he had ought to teach Sirius a bit of magic, not enough to hurt Blaise’s mum, but enough that he was not getting his ass kicked every time he went over.

Dad had found this assertion hilarious, repeated it to Sirius, who, like Moony, had then told Dudley that he would understand when he was older.

By this point, Harry had also taken an interest in what was being discussed and wanted answers, too. Dad told Sirius that, being Harry’s godfather, he might initiate something called ‘The Talk’ with the two of them, take up a bit of the burden of responsibility. They were old enough, after all.

This had made it sound as though they were both in a lot of trouble.

Dudley had backed away. Harry had persisted.

Sirius, looking nearly as nervous as Dudley felt, suggested that they instead all go out and have a swim instead – it was such a warm evening!

And Dudley and Harry had been in the pool ever since.

It was fun. Or might have been if Harry was not so odd.

Dudley was swimming laps. Harry was pretending to be a merman, diving beneath the water and talking to himself to try to hear if it sounded like Mermish when he did. Sometimes he asked Dudley to have a listen. When he did, Dudley, who had not the same capacity for phantasy, was questioning in earnest what Harry considered ‘normal’ to be.

For his part, he was simply imagining the glory of beating his cousin to the other side. Again. And again. And again. This was not in and of itself difficult. He was taller and stronger than Harry, and far more determined than the boy who did not seem to realise they were having a race.

Then, suddenly, Dudley felt himself propelled slightly forward by a change in pressure behind him. Assuming Harry was making a go of it, he swam as hard as he could, again reaching the far wall first. Laughing as he pulled his head from the water, he turned to face his cousin, planning to chide him on what sorry competition he was proving.

Instead, he saw Harry in the middle of the pool, grabbing at his scar, screaming, and flailing around as though set on drowning in the three feet of water he, too, could stand in without being submerged.

“Hey, knock it off!” Dudley shouted. Harry looked at him with red, tear-stained eyes and said something in a language Dudley could not identify. It was not Mermish. That was for sure.

For a moment, Dudley was completely still as he watched his cousin succumb to the waves his frantic moments created. Could the Dark Lord lurking within him not swim? Was he melting like the Wicked Witch of the West? If he, Dudley, let Voldemort drown, could Harry survive? Would he then be, well, normal? Muggle?

He froze as Harry sank. Dudley was a good swimmer, but nearly twenty feet separated him from his cousin. What if he could not make it in time? Concentrating all of his efforts on the last time anything had ever really felt normal with Harry, he managed to turn the water into coloured, plastic balls of the sort found in the play pits of the kinds of restaurants that Coach said he was not allowed to frequent anymore. It made it harder to move through, but at least Harry would not be able to hurt himself until he got there. At least he would not drown. Die.

Grabbing Harry under the arms, Dudley pulled him to the poolside where he was able to climb out, offering his hand to his cousin to help him do the same.

Harry coughed, and somewhat cognisant spoke again in that strange tongue before shifting to English. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Dudley, I didn’t mean – ”

“It is okay,” Dudley answered, his heart still racing. “Pretend I hit you.”

“What?”

“Just, when they ask, pretend that I hit you.” Dudley repeated, driving his fist into the concrete to draw his own blood. Once he had, he began spreading it across Harry’s scar. As he did, his cousin watched him with wide eyes. But at least they were their usual pickled-frog green and not red as they had been only moments before.

“Listen,” Dudley said. “I heard Moony talking to Sirius once. You weren’t there. It was that Christmas when Dad had to work and you wanted to stay with him, so Moony and I had to go to the Manor alone.”

“I remember.”

“The way Moony explained it, the only reason they, they only reason him and Dad wanted me, too, is because of some blood magic your mum did before she died. My blood, it’s like, supposed to help you, supposed to protect you from him so here, just, just don’t say anything, okay?”

Harry looked as though he in fact very much wanted to say something to contradict what Dudley had almost certainly not been meant to overhear. But Dudley did not want to risk having to confess anything of the small hurt he had carried with him since.

“I tried to ask Dora about it, about what ‘blood magic’ was and how to do it,” he continued before Harry could speak, “but she just did weird things with her nose as always, told me and Draco to go steal the sweets from Moony’s rucksack and eat all of them between us before we came back. And then when we did it seemed like she had been having words with the both of them – with Moony and Sirius, who she calls ‘Padfoot’ for some reason – because they were both cowering before her when we got back upstairs. And then she high-fived us, Draco and me, said ‘you’re welcome’ to the grown-ups and left, without ever answering my question. So, I am just … it is working right?” he squinted, studying Harry’s lightning bolt scar, though what for exactly he could not say.

“I figure I don’t have to cast a spell if Aunt Lily already did that part. Should I try though?” he waffled. “It is just a shield charm, right? Do you think? Potato! Potato!”

“Dudley, stop!” Harry hissed.

“Did it help? Does your head still hurt? Can you still hear his voice?” Ugh! What was that stupid thing he was supposed to say? He knew it at least sounded like ‘potato’, but Harry – or Tom’s – expression was telling him he had erred.

“Potato!” Dudley tried anew.

“Dudley shut up!”

“Did it work?” Dudley asked. Harry shook his head slowly. Dudley’s own was suddenly being yanked upward. He let out a small cry of pain, and a moment later, turned to face the very last person he could have ever wanted to find him red handed, screaming the name of a root vegetable at his cousin and Lord Voldemort, and hoping, for Harry’s sake, that his dead aunt had once made a better go of the same.

“Well, well. What is going on here?” Severus Snape asked sharply. Dudley took a step back, tripping over Harry as he did and falling to his bum behind him.

“I hit him,” Dudley claimed, inching himself back.

“He did,” Harry echoed, standing to meet their surrogate father in his fury.

“Liars. The pair of you,” Severus sneered. Dudley had never seen him quite this angry. He doubted very much that he would ever permit him to call him ‘Dad’ again. He had never felt more wretched.

Dudley wondered how much his surrogate father had witnessed, wondered why he was only just now intervening, and then realised it did not matter in the slightest. The past few minutes in their terrible entirety flooded his mind, which suddenly became a montage of the moments he and Harry had come to some understanding that the latter would take responsibility for the magic preformed if he, Dudley, took blame for whatever had been broken in the process.

So, this was what legilimency was. Dudley Dursley fell to his knees, fighting back tears.

“Liars,” Severus repeated, this time without inflection. He flicked his wand at Dudley’s knuckles to heal the wound, then turned dramatically and walked away, his black robes billowing behind him.

Chapter Text

She was hunting horcruxes, Severus Snape cursed himself. It was the only explanation he could come on. She was hunting horcruxes, and the blame lay at his feet.

He sat in silence in a booth with his boys at The Three Broomsticks, waiting for Sirius to return with Hagrid, determined that his charges should be given something edible if not suitable for tea before handing them over to the Groundskeeper for the night. Harry was making a pointed effort of studying the ‘menu’, his eyes darting back and forth over the five snacks Madame Rosmerta had on offer. Dudley was simply looking down, his tear-stained eyes stationary.

Lucius Malfoy had appeared at the villa’s double-doored entrance with Snuffles and a hysterical Melina Zabini roughly ten minutes after Severus and Remus had already been given the news.

From what Severus could place together, Dora and the oldest Weasley boy were being held hostage at the Blacks’ former family home. Dora had been clever enough to inform one of the many portraits, who in turn put out an alert in all the places it could do the least good. Their plight was whispered through museums across Europe until word of the incident had reached the Vatican, putting the poor Cardinal charged with finding him in the city in what the man seemed to consider a difficult position. The former Bishop who had surprised the poor man by speaking to him had been a candidate for sainthood for some four hundred years, but the ‘miracles’ attributed to him were in doubt on the grounds that said Bishop had been martyred by the institution after being accused of witchcraft.

A talking portrait was apparently both a miracle and sufficient evidence that the medieval church had acted righteously in ridding itself from a wizard within.

Severus hated organised faith and all of its complicated contradictions.

It had not been until Lucius arrived, his anger, fear, and frustration manifest in an all too familiar inability to command as he shouted orders on reflex that Severus had understood anything of what he was meant to do about it.

Lucius Malfoy said that Regulus Black may have once made him Grimmauld Place’s Secret Keeper. The would-be saint, in turn, had relayed to him through a Church servant that he ought to remember what had sounded odd in March would be met with the same puzzlement in July.

Happy Christmas, Severus had realised at once.

That had been the last thing Regulus had said to him as he, Severus, had turned to leave after a frustratingly unsuccessful last meeting nearly a decade prior. Severus had turned, repeated the phrase as a question, not certain that he had heard correctly, only to have Regulus say it once more, pull him into an embrace and then shake his hand with more force than his grip usually carried.

Severus had considered this on and off for a few weeks, and then it had faded from him mind, then certain that such was yet another expression of the dark drama with which Regulus liked addressing others to put them at unease.

No good would come from repeating the phrase now, however. He had to do this himself.

Frankly, he would have preferred to do it alone.

Lucius was in no emotional state to break down the barricades. Severus reasoned that most people would have had the same reaction to a close family member being held hostage by someone who might well pose a physical threat in addition to the one innate to whatever act of parliament they meant to influence by their actions. He figured this is why Lucius, and those who held similar positions, employed people to sort such matters on their behalf, only being informed after the fact if at all.

The fact that the Auror office had elected to and found a means of appealing to him directly indicated to Severus that Scrimgeour was resigned to enter Grimmauld Place with the full force of the emergency sub legislation enacted during the war that would allow him to kill on sight. Dora and Bill could well become casualties if he, Severus, could not first control the situation and surrender.

Sirius went barking mad at Lucius’ allegations that his little brother was still alive and taking orders (or at least income) from the organisation that had sent him to Azkaban on summary judgement. He seemed so angry at Regulus for the sin of his continued existence that nothing of his brother’s alleged action against Dora and her friend seemed to have yet registered, which might have been for the best.

And then there was the matter of the boys, who had chosen this of all inopportune times to truly make a mess of things.

While Severus and Remus were being told about the complexities of canonisation where magic was suspected, Harry had nearly drowned while playing. He had emerged from the ordeal with the ability to speak a language Rosmerta had recognised as Albanian from a few customers both she and Aberforth routinely had thrown out of their respective establishments. Dudley had been able to save Harry using magic, untrained but too exact to be unintentional, and Severus had for the first time been given cause to seek out their secrets, something he worried would become a more regular occurrence the older they got.

He could not leave the boys abroad, could not take them to Grimmauld Place, and would not place them in the care of Downing Street, as Lucius had done with Draco.

And so, they were here. The boys mute and lethargic. Remus at the bar with Lucius, trying to help the man collect himself. Sirius, as ‘Snuffles’, burning off the same adrenaline-born energy by running up to Hogwarts to ask an all too regular favour of Hagrid.

Severus hoped they would get back soon. The groundskeeper was so much more suited to reassuring small children. Severus recognised was entirely out of his depth on this one. He glanced over his shoulder. It a better world, this would be a decidedly Remus-Problem, but in this one Remus was busy walking one of the most powerful landholders in Britain back from the now-tempting nuclear option. Short-term, Severus supposed, Lucius recovering his mental stability was more important.

He looked back at the boys and cleared his throat to indicate that he wished to speak with them. They both looked at him with identically trepid expressions. The effect was rather humbling.

“That we are clear, Dudley,” Severus addressed the slightly elder of the two, “you misunderstood Remus when he said we only took on the responsibility of the both of you because of the protective bond your Aunt Lily’s sacrifice created, a spell that, in its essence, now lives in you from what we understand of it,” he explained as Dumbledore once had, entirely failing the old man’s abilities of encouragement.

“It’s fine,” Dudley murmured, again averting his gaze.

“I can’t speak to Remus’ motivations, however much I would like to imagine him a better person than myself,” Severus said, “but I took the two of you in with the understanding that by doing so, I could manipulate several situations and those involved in them to the result that my oldest enemy, Sirius Black, would be released from Azkaban; that I could then force the burden of responsibility on Harry’s godfather. At the time I could think of no worse fate than being settled with two screaming toddlers, you’ll understand. It seems to me now that my original intention was … for the best.” He folded his long, cold fingers before him.

“Sir, please!” Dudley exclaimed. The formal address he would have insisted upon at Hogwarts cut Severus like a knife coming from his own child. “You are not the reason I don’t want to be a wizard … well you kind of are,” Dudley amended after a pause, “but not, not in a bad way.”

“Good, for I think you will find that you have rather little choice in that regard,” Severus sneered.

“I … I want to be just like you when I grow up,” Dudley claimed. “I want to be so good at the thing that I do that I don’t ever have to be nice to anyone if I don’t feel like it. And I … I found that thing already, and it has naught to do with magic. I like living with you and Moony. I don’t want to give that up, even to move next door when the place is finished, even if it means I could have my own room. Please, please don’t get rid of me. And don’t get rid of Harry – he said we should have told you, but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want it to be true. It is not his fault.”

“Dudley,” Severus sighed. “I think you will find that I could not ‘get rid’ of either of you even if I had and designs on doing so. Too much paperwork involved. I’d need a solicitor, and the only one I might hire pro bono doesn’t practice Family Law. As far as Hogwarts goes, I understand why you do not wish to attend. All the same, you must be taught the fundamentals of magic for your safety and that of those around you.”

“I think, well, I think I’ll wind up in the best House. Your House. Slytherin. Harry,” Dudley then shifted to address his cousin, “I don’t mean this in any way, but I sort of, sometimes, don’t think you will. Not that you can’t still be a great wizard. Tonks didn’t get into Slytherin either, and she’s the best in her year. It’s not … I mean, you defeated the Dark Lord as a little baby. You’ll be brilliant at magic when you actually come to learn it. Everyone knows it. But if we are not in the same house, there will be problems. Draco will make sure of that, and you know it. And even if he somehow doesn’t find a way on his own to use me to make you jealous, you’ll be so angry that Da- um, Professor Snape isn’t giving you preferential treatment ‘cause you didn’t get in to Slytherin that you’ll find a way of making it my fault in your mind. Or he will. Not Professor Snape but … well, You Know Who.”

Severus frowned. He was not the boys’ surrogate ‘Dad’ anymore? When had this been decided? Why were they even thinking about the Sorting at eight-years-old?

Harry nodded, looking slightly ashamed of the alluded connection between himself and the Dark Lord.

“I mean, it isn’t your fault or anything,” Dudley told him as though he meant to apologise for what he had said and for a number of things he could not possibly understand in any meaningful way. Harry nodded again, unconvinced.

“Every house has its strengths, but yes, Dudley. You’ve known for years that you are a wizard and forced your cousin into colluding to conceal your secret. You’d be one of mine.”

“And I won’t?” Harry spoke up, frowning at this pronouncement.

“God willing,” Severus sighed.

“You don’t want me in Slytherin?” Harry accused.

“I like winning the House Cup,” Severus told him plainly. “Moreover, the both of you like me winning the House Cup – where do you think the money for all of your many birthday presents comes from? You are James’ son Harry, much as you can be said to be mine. Mark my words, at eleven, you’ll be Minerva’s problem and we can keep this winning streak going.”

“And me?” Dudley asked in a voice rather too small for Severus’ liking.

“As I believe I’ve already stated, I plan to charge Sirius with training you up in magic. Admittedly, I don’t know how we will work this into your regular schooling and academy training, but you’ll only be in Leigh,” he offered with a hint of a smile.

Harry, in true Gryffindor fashion, immune to the threat of public embarrassment, stood up on his chair in his sudden excitement. “Manchester has been in touch?” he asked, self-doubt and shared guilt forgotten in his excitement for his cousin.

“Too,” Severus said, reaching for Dudley’s hand. Maybe it was because he had already had offers from Everton, Liverpool, and far off Chelsea, maybe it was because he knew he would not be officially accepted until he turned ten, maybe it was because the Everton scout had told him that he needed to slim down, or maybe it was just the shock of having revealed his dearest secret in emotionally straining circumstances not an hour before, but the news did not meet Dudley in the same way.

Or at all.

“But Sirius,” Dudley was frowning. “Dad. Please. If I have to learn, can’t you – ”

Severus found himself smiling at the address, both at the nomenclature in and of itself and the fact that it was clearly being used to manipulate him. Fuck. He actually loved these dumb kids. “If you want to learn from me, you’ll have to come to Hogwarts,” he explained, plainly but with a twinge of pain, appreciating the irony that the Heir to Slytherin was alive in the little boy happily humming ‘Glory, Glory’ to his cousin though he himself could not give a damn about the beautiful game, while the one with all of the quintessentially serpentine traits was left brooding, despite everything he might ever hope for being within his grasp. Merlin, how Severus would have loved to have them both in a double Potions block together. But it was not meant to be. Dudley had other ambitions and Severus was going to do everything in his power to make sure these were realised.

“As much as I do not think your efforts ought exactly to be rewarded, they need not go to waste,” he told Dudley. “Black is more than capable of imparting –”

“He’s an idiot,” Dudley said flatly.

“I know,” Severus answered as sympathetically as he might whilst supressing the urge to laugh. Dudley could not have been more a child of his had he, Severus, had anything to do with the lad’s conception.

“He’s not!” Harry shouted in his godfather’s defence. And there was Lily, returning as she so often did in the form of her only son to remind Severus not to be a complete prat. There was something comforting in the fact that his boys essentially shared the same relationship he and his closest friend had had at the same age, even if they had no way of knowing it. Even if they would not recognise one another as friends. They would be alright. They would get past this. They all would.

“Also, demonstratively true,” Severus consented, motioning Harry to sit down before Madame Rosmerta could return with their respective Haggis and Scotch Eggs to give the warning verbally. “He was summa cum laude in our year. He knows his stuff. Narcissa is only letting the proceedings drag out to put the Wizengamot to shame in this press scheme she worked out with Rita Skeeter long ago, but mark me, Black’ll have his wand back in September when the body resumes from its deliberations. He’ll surely waste no time proving his credentials once again empowered to do so.”

This was a lie. For all of Sirius’ talents he planned to open a tattoo parlour in the long-vacant salon next to the laundromat across from the pub on High Street where Remus still moonlit on occasion. It was one of the few commercial properties Narcissa had not purchased, which made it one of the few commercial properties that did not already have Sirius’ ‘artwork’ all over it. But the boys did not need to know this. Not yet.

“What does that mean?” Harry asked.

“Summa cum laude? It means he was top of the class, best cumulative grade average,” Severus answered.

“And the-monster-lee?” Harry clarified, still seeming to mistrust that Severus had retracted his insult. There was sufficient Slytherin in him, Severus assessed. Best not to encourage it. Harry was, in part, being raised by two former Marauders in addition to himself. Minerva should have to reap that which she had once sowed.

“Demonstratively?” he tried. “That your claim that he is not an idiot can be proven with evidence.”

“You weren’t the best student in you guys’ class?” Dudley then frowned, also with the air of suspecting that he was being deceived.

“It is cumulative over seven years,” Severus explained curtly. “I – Dudley, I will level with you,” he shifted. “I well and truly understand not wanting to go to Hogwarts. The day before my transfiguration practical for the O.W.L.s, fifth year, the test that determines which subjects Hogwarts students can continue with, I – Potter and Black played a prank on me. No. That undersells it. They beat me up in front of the entire student body, and in the process of them doing so, I shouted something at – about – my best friend at the time that my life since has felt an apology for.”

Harry again lifted himself from his seat leaning across the table to ask, “My Mum? What did you say?” Why could this child never sit still? He would be Minerva’s problem at eleven, but in the meantime Severus wondered if he ought not ask Andy’s opinion on the matter, if Harry should perhaps be screened and subsequently medicated for ADHD which he had read was now trend among muggles of the upper-middle class, rich enough to visit a psychologist but not so rich as to avoid ever having to spend time with their offspring. Perhaps he was reaching, too ambitious for his income. “Well?” Harry persisted, pulling Severus from the phantasy of diluting his personality.

Severus took out his wand to gently force the boy back into his stool. Harry looked confused. Dudley snorted. “What did I say? You know that word that Lucius Malfoy uses thoughtlessly, that Remus is always yelling at him about?” Severus told them both seriously. “I won’t repeat it. It is very naughty. Very. Naughty. I used it once to great regret, and if I ever hear or hear of either of you saying it … I’ll do what your father did to me when I said it in his presence.”

“Curse us?” Harry asked, shaking his arms, half giggling at the tingling effect of the charm. They were too young for this particular conversation and Severus knew it.

“Hm. No. He hung me upside down by my ankle in front of the entire student body and stripped me bare.”

“He what?!” Harry exclaimed, as Severus had well anticipated he might.

“It was what I deserved,” he dismissed, frowning. “But no. At fifteen I did not see it that way. I was livid that he and Black – Sirius,” he amended, “were not punished, they never were. And come the next day, I thought to take matters up with their Head of House.

“Now, understand for context, I never liked Transfiguration as a subject, among other reasons because the Marauders, that is to say, Remus, Sirius, and their two other best friends, Harry’s father and this Peter Pettigrew bloke who all made my life a living hell were, by a wide margin in fact, the best at it out of our entire year, and Minerva played favourites. Even outside of the classroom, but I suppose my critiques here are petty at best, hypocritical at worst. She’s the colleague I most respect now, but I hated her as a teenager, and took my chance to teach her a lesson if she wouldn’t teach my enemies one on my behalf.”

“You don’t respect Moony the most?” Dudley wondered.

Severus blinked. The question had caught him off-guard, and he tried to answer it as diplomatically as he might. “Um … your other dad teaches what I regard to be the most essential of all of the core subjects in our curriculum. I sometimes have the impression that he does not take Defence as seriously as he might, though,” he glanced again over his shoulder, “if Dora and Bill benefited half as much from his light approach as Lucius seems to be, I suppose I might be forced to re-evaluate my estimation.”

Dudley nodded, either not fully understanding or not fully convinced. Never mind then. Severus was glad to have at least one fewer insolent, over-privileged, serpent with his hand raised before the question had even been fully stated in five years’ time. Though, with what he had gleaned from Dudley’s memories around magic, little Hermione Granger from his dance class might well come to fill that role for him if she did not grow out of her imitative arrogance in such time. Fuck. The class of ’99 was already shaping up to be worse than ’79 had proven itself, and the latter had included Severus personally.

“The assignment we had been given for the exam was to turn a teacup into a mouse,” he continued. “It was harder, I think, to mess up than to accomplish, but deciding that this was going to be the very last time I would ever in my life transfigure anything if I could help it, I went big. I turned my teacup into a tiny elephant, then, pretending to fluster under my confusion, cast an engorgement charm. I’ve never seen an actual elephant, granted, but I assume mine was larger, nearly reaching the ceiling in the Great Hall, and of course it was going mad, destroying everything in its vicinity. Everyone else had managed to turn their teacups into mice and the thing felt especially threatened. To add to the chaos, I cast several non-verbal shield charms whilst the examiners were attempting to undo my work.”

“Brilliant!” Harry laughed. “Can you – ”

Severus flicked his wand at Harry’s half-drunken pumpkin juice, turning it into a little white mouse, who, confusingly was shaking itself of the orange liquid when Harry put it in the inner pocket of his jacket, asking if he could feed it to his snake whom Hagrid had been minding whilst they were on holiday.

Dudley, who had taken a few steps back as though he imagined that Severus mean to transfigure an elephant in the middle of a pub that he rather liked, called Harry ‘stupid’ and told him that transfiguration was different than charms – the glass was now a mouse of a molecular level so duh, Tarquin would be fine.

Before Severus could intervene, Harry returned to his cousin that he hoped that one of Hagrid’s Hippogriffs had made a snack of Dudley’s pony Pebbles, that it was taking him so long to come because he and Snuffles were trying to dress a baby unicorn up as a stupid small horse.

Severus, who hated the pony, was also hoping that Hagrid had found a way of sorting the problem of his having to stable it on Spinner’s End, providing the literal farm to the proverbial one where all of Lily’s cats had gone when she was a little girl. He could point out how happy Pebbles looked, Dudley would agree, and Severus would be able to say his final farewell. Dudley could always visit when catastrophe struck, and Hagrid got stuck babysitting.

A memory, however, flashed to the forefront of his mind of Lily climbing into his window near dawn one morning when she had been well old enough to have long known better, telling him in tears that her parents had not brought her cat and its kittens to a farm as they had written. Tuna had told her they were all dead. Dead! Young Severus, tired, and legitimately not understanding that Lily had not been able to read through the lines when she had received the owl months prior, wondered if she was asking him the hex her sister or if he had any books on necromancy (the answer, to both being ‘sure, hang on’.) Lily had again said that her house-pets were dead as though she had not heard him, and Severus, completely lost for what to do, hugged Lily with an in-hindsight insensitive ‘Obviously.’

Kids were so bloody awful, even when they did not intend such, as his presently did. “Dudley – don’t call your cousin ‘stupid’,” he sighed. “Harry – don’t go on making overt death threats at your cousin’s pet. It is unbecoming.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dudley said, again mastering the assignment he had been given. “Sorry Harry.”

“But you can do basic transfiguration!” Harry returned, again avoiding personal responsibility.

“Not so loud,” Severus cautioned. “I have enough responsibilities at school without being called upon to help undo whatever some dunderhead pupil conjured up every time a spell goes awry. That’s for the likes of McGonagall and Flitwick.”

“Are you telling them about the elephant?” Remus asked from the bar at Harry’s exclamation, giving him an approving smile. Severus gave him a thumbs-up he did not feel, wondering how he deserved Remus as the wolf turned away, presumably to regale Lucius and Rosmerta with the same narrative as though he, Remus, did not personally possess a thousand far better.

“Afterwards I explained that Professor McGonagall’s instructions were impossible to follow,” Severus told the children. “I had asked for help, I had been since I was a first year – which was true, if not in the academic context, and that she never lifted a finger for me – also true, and also not her job. She was questioned about this after the fact. And then she questioned me. And then Dumbledore,” he could not help but to grin, “overhearing our heated conversation, made her spend the summer taking a course in Pedagogy.” Deciding that there was little to be won by explaining how many times he had been forced into the same instruction owing to Minerva’s complaints about him as an educator in his adult life, he continued.

“My written score was strong enough that I still got an ‘A’ overall, but you need an ‘E’ to continue in Trans. Weirdly, we became friends after that, Minerva and I. The next year even. I had to visit hospital and Madame Pomfrey saw something that caused her to call attention to my own Head of House, Professor Slughorn. You have both met him. Bloody git. I, however, refused to speak to anyone but Minerva about it, assuming, incorrectly, that she would not care. Anyway,” he shook off the surge of emotion he could not identify well enough to voice, which his children would, thankfully have no way of relating to or comprehending as it was. “Because of my misguided act of teenage rebellion, I wound up with the fifth best cumulative average for our year, behind Sirius, and Remus, and both of Harry’s parents. Lily was second, by the way, and by a mere fraction,” he added with a nod towards Harry, who seemed rather pleased to hear this almost-praise.

“Were you mad that the Marauders all finished ahead of you?” Dudley asked.

“I pulled a prank to rival some on their best work, though might have been mad if I hadn’t and had still been found wanting. No,” he reconsidered. “No, I would not have wanted to face the consequence of having finished first in the year. Lily was furious. It was all she talked about when we would meet up the following summer. In fact, this was a point of contention between her and Sirius at the rehearsal dinner for Harry’s parent’s wedding years after the fact. And they did not all beat me,” he defended. “Pettigrew, I think was top twenty, definitely not top ten, I don’t recall. This is really all just to say, I know how it feels not to want to go to Hogwarts, to go to drastic means that sitting a class no longer even be a suggestion. At the time I did this, I really did not care if I were expelled or not.”

“I think it is cool,” Harry smiled, seeming to imagine himself turning his plates and cutlery into the Safari Park off the A456 Remus had once made the mistake of saying ‘maybe’ to.

“And that, Harry,” Severus sighed, “is why you will be in Gryffindor when you’re older. You know. Now that I am on this – why don’t you ask Remus and Sirius to regale you with their stories of mischief making? Tonks can help, too, once we get her back. Of course, anything you need to actualise your plans – you obviously know how to get into my store cabinet,” he bade him.

“You just want to deduct points,” Harry deduced with some cheek.

“I just want it not to look arbitrary,” Severus answered him darkly. He should not be so nice to them. It would make it harder to sufficiently frighten Harry once he did get to Hogwarts and at this rate, he really would have another Tonks on his hands. Or worse, another James.

The door to the pub swung open and a half-giant ducked to enter, accompanied by two large hounds Rosmerta immediately took exception to.

“Oh! Speak of the devil! Who is a good boy?” Severus mocked ‘Snuffles’ over the landlady’s cries of The Three Broomstick’s strict no-pets policy.  “A. Good. Boy,” he patted the growling Sirius on his furry head whilst Hagrid’s bloodhound Fang whined at his own neglect. “Black. You better not die on this excursion of ours. I have a proposition for you,” he told him with an encouraging nod towards Dudley. “Way to earn your keep. Hagrid,” he shifted as the groundskeeper approached, content to ignore Rosmerta’s complaints with a gruff ‘won’t be here long’, “thank you, so much for this.”

“Ah, yer alright, Sev’rus. I’d take ‘em anytime,” he said, scooping up both growing boys with a single arm. Neither struggled, though neither, he noted, particularly welcomed the embrace, excited though they had been to see Hagrid moments earlier. It was probably less painful to just go limp and wait for the hug to end, the same as it was when Mrs Weasley pinched their cheeks and complained that they looked under-fed.

“You take care of yerself now,” Hagrid said, releasing the lads and clapping Severus on the shoulder, causing him to stumble forward. “Bring Tonks and Bill back safe.”

“We’ll try,” Remus answered for him, suddenly sharing Lucius’ look of apprehension upon hearing Dora and Bill’s names spoken by someone who had none of the deeply held, almost defining paranoia that made Lucius such fodder for satire.

It was real for Remus now, too, then.

Severus could not decide if this was for the best.

If the threat was even half so great as Lucius stressed, their rescue party might well need the wolfish instincts Remus only displayed in moments of conviction.

“We will,” Severus assured all present. “Harry can speak Albanian now so … whatever the kids have gotten themselves into, I have good reason to believe that they are winning.”

The throbbing pain was enough to tell Regulus Black that he had not, in fact, died for his sins or those of Tom Riddle. He was, instead, going to live with the consequences of his actions in a far more acute hell than that which had been promised to him by Scripture.

And with far worse company than the evils small children were instructed to fear.

Regulus was not sure if he could force his eyes to open, was not sure if he wanted to identify the speakers, these demons who likely passed unchallenged for decent men.

The first, as far as he could determine, was the father of a rather large family, a kindly-seeming, middle-aged man who espoused pseudo-liberal views in argument, but floundered when himself faced with the realities he thought should be forced on everyone else. Of course, he liked Professor Lupin, but he did not know how he felt about a werewolf teaching his children. Regulus, having heard the conversations thus far, knew quite well how the speaker ‘felt’ about a lycanthrope holding an academic title and a teaching post. He ‘felt’ like the man to whom he was speaking should be the one to criticise and complain.

The second man seemed unwilling to give him the satisfaction, however, out of convictions he genuinely held or the more plausible absence thereof. He sat on the school’s Board of Governors and sided with the available statistics. Since Remus Lupin’s appointment, the O.W.L. pass rate in Defence Against the Dark Arts had increased by 17%, and the number of students eligible and electing to continue with it at the N.E.W.T. had quite nearly doubled. He begged his opponent to consider in his evaluation that the birth rate had faltered during the war-years, and that it was now this generation from whom the numbers were being drawn, making Lupin’s accomplishments yet more impressive against those of his many predecessors. Did Arthur (whom Regulus assumed to be the pseudo-liberal) likewise suggest that Flitwick be forced to surrender his House and his wand, giving the rumours of his goblin heritage, or that the half-giant groundskeeper Hagrid be forced into some mountainous cave for the danger he posed? A danger which, the speaker defined after a pause, more or less amounted to the rock-hard fruit cake he was presented with each Yuletide. Of course not! Pseudo-Liberal swore. Neo-Conservative asked him to define the nature of his complaint. Pseudo-Liberal would not, or perhaps could not, for such would place him in the category of those he no doubt liked to criticise for the cheap approval of his peers.

They agreed to let bygones be bygones and to talk about Quidditch instead, as though two grown men who unironically owned replica jerseys could imagine that the subject of sport to be less derisive. The Governor felt that the Falcons were cheated a domestic trophy. Regulus tended to agree, mostly because the Tornados, who had the worst fans in Britain, had won the league twice in a row now. This had meant another summer of avoiding wizarding pubs at all costs – even to that of his operation – which may now have concluded.

Oh! For Salazar’s sake! What had happened? Who were these people and where was Tonks?

He tried to stir.

Pseudo-Liberal, ignorant to or simply uninterested in Regulus’ suffering against the allures of a debate with an equal he pretended to be his ideological opposite, told Neo-Conservative that he hated Ali Bashir, with whom his office had regular dealings. Neo-Conservative feigned an interest in the man’s work. Flying carpets, he said, even used ones, would put a family back a good 13,000 Galleons, substantial savings when considering the median income in wizarding Britain. How then, did Pseudo-Liberal and his peers reckon, that mages would be so careless with their investments as to allow them to enter muggle dwellings as decorations?

“Aren’t you Nimbus’ primary shareholder? Would not allowing the sale of Flying Carpets in the UK affect your bottom line?” Pseudo-Liberal remarked cooly.

“It is a different market. There might be some overlap between purchasers of high quality, bespoke racing brooms and family-friendly vehicles, but where such exists, I doubt that cost would be a consideration,” Neo-Conservative answered.

Fuck, Regulus realised. He knew at least one of these men. And he had evidently angered him more than he considered possible.

He had not exactly put it passed Lucius Malfoy to subject him to torture should ever he fall into capture, as he apparently had, but he had rather imagined an Unforgivable Curse to be visited upon him.

The fact that Lucius had gone out of his way to find another middle-aged bloke to have the most banal, curricular debates with was sadism on a level Regulus had not truly thought the acquitted Death Eater capable. This was the kind of thing that Bellatrix would have dreamt up at her most deranged. It was the kind of thing that even the Dark Lord himself would have shied from demanding that his followers put to practice, preferring to favour his foes with death than ... whatever this was.

Oh, where was his fragmented, former Master with his demonstrations of mercy that only now made valid sense?!

For fuck’s sake! The two had somehow transitioned into gender politics!

Regulus gowned. It was as close as he could come to pleading with an indifferent God for the death which he had ought to have long ago suffered and succumb to.

“It has been about an hour; do you think we ought to apply more ointment?” Pseudo-Liberal asked in a tone that Regulus had learnt in the course his unwilling eavesdropping meant that he was inviting Lucius to voice the negation he himself hesitated from.

“I think this man held your son and my niece hostage for several hours. He deserves a lasting vestige of the affair. Besides, it is not as though he’ll have much in the way of social functions to frighten people at with his hideous visage, being dead with all that such entails. Lucky sod.” Lucius did not disappoint in terms of vitriol and scorn. His opposition – fuck. How had Lucius addressed him?! – gave a quiet, deceptively kind chuckle at this assertion. Regulus tried to part his lips to demand an introduction. He found difficultly in doing so, his face, arm, and torso seemed to be wrapped in a gauze and the drying ointment of which Pseudo-Liberal had spoken.

“He’ll have court if Scrimgeour can’t clear things up with English Heritage. And between you and I, Scrimgeour can’t clear things up with Heritage. Such would be a tall order even for your Queen. It is almost as if the punishment is disproportionate to the crime.”

“He held Dora and Bill captive,” Lucius countered.

“They seem to have had the upper hand.” At this both men burst into unintended laughter, to be followed by the sorts of awkward apologies over their shared moment of bleak humour that caused Regulus to feel, as he so often did, an internalised mortification about the national character in its entirety.

His hand! Regulus realised. They must be laughing about his hand. The last thing he clearly remembered was trying, and failing, the break Voldemort’s ring against the floorboard to have absorbed the Basilisk venom he could not salvage after his collapse. He had punched the floor, repeatedly, shattering his fist rather than the ring, and, upon finding a potentially deadly splinter buried in one of his knuckles, had tried to remove it with the same curse Tonks had used to temporarily disable him.

She had warned him from the action, he recalled, stating that he would never be able to regrow his lost digit it he mean to separate himself from it with a spell. Then, she had grabbed a dull blade from Narcissa’s old desk of the sort used to open correspondence and had attempted to cut away the infection. The penknife had proven far too painful for either of them to fret that it had been enchanted at any point.

And then he had fainted. Must have done.

Merlin! To add insult to injury he had fainted in front of a girl he rather fancied, as though she did not already have reason enough to take him for a joke. At least the ring was –

Gone.

It was just gone.

Regulus lifted his left hand to examine the place where the horcrux had so long been safely kept. Where his long, pale ring finger had once been stood the small, pink one of a child, recently replaced and not yet fully regrown. This did not look like the work of a professional healer, but rather that of a housewife all too accustomed to her own children getting into violent scrapes. Mrs Pseudo-Liberal? he guessed, wondering if Andromeda was not present or had simply denied him her talents. None of these questions, however, felt of any immediate importance.

“The ring,” Regulus stirred. “The ring, did I … did it – ”

“It is here,” Pseudo-Liberal assured him in fatherly fashion, patting at the breast pocket of the rather worn vest he wore. “I gave your superior another in its place of roughly the same description, breaking the stone inside and pretending that it, too, had been destroyed. Nothing of enough value to warrant a place on your ledger.”

“Lying to your betters, Weasley?” Lucius raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “You have my genuine respect.” Oh. So, this was Bill’s father. And his was in procession of and to some extent quite possibly processed by a portion of Voldemort’s soul. Little wonder he and Lucius were getting on.

“If what Remus explained is true,” Weasley defended with a small huff, “I would not want for something so crucial in the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named to get caught up in bureaucracy.”

Lucius looked askance. “If what Remus says is true, that might be worth a try, actually. Ministry paperwork has always felt to me like some kind of anti-magic.”

“Hand it over to Heritage if no one comes on a better plan,” Weasley smirked. Lucius laughed. Did neither of them appreciate what they were dealing with? Had Tonks failed to explain? Had she been afraid to after all that had happened? And what had happened? How had these men gotten past his wards?

“Where is Tonks?” Regulus demanded, sitting up as best he could with the deep cuts that had been visited upon his torso courtesy of his former captive’s Sectumsempra. “Is she okay? Please tell me I didn’t harm her. I swore I wouldn’t, but when the locket – ”

“She is fine,” Weasley assured him. “She will probably come back up in a few minutes to check on you as she has been doing. Right now, she is downstairs with her Defence teacher and my elder sons trying to figure out what to do with the thing, but she comes up every half hour or so to check on your recovery, afford us updates, ask if we need a shift change.”

“Nope,” Lucius said, satisfied with the post he held at the foot of the makeshift sickbed for reasons Regulus struggled to envision. Lucius, he was sure, had never much liked him.

“Oh, decidedly not,” Weasley agreed, “What with this endless supply to tea Dora keeps bringing her victim by way of apology,” he gestured to at least twenty emptied cups on what had been one of Narcissa’s twin side tables. They were so plentiful that they looked like they were being supported by magic. Regulus might have smiled if the act did not hurt quite so much.

“You have been out for several hours,” Weasley informed him unnecessarily. Outside the sun was setting, or perhaps rising, its positioned was obscured by neighbouring buildings and Regulus could this not say. “We should inform the others.”

“We absolutely should not for all the reasons we’ve not been adhering to the agreed upon, hour-long beside shifts,” Lucius interrupted. “Just wait for my niece to make the discovery. Then we can return to the snake-pit.”

“Lion’s den,” Weasley corrected. “If I am not mistaken, your only fellow is Severus, and he may well have since fallen asleep reading to Percy, Ron, Ginny, and the twins. Excepting Ted and Dora, the rest of our party is, or was, in Gryffindor.”

“It is a figure of speech,” Lucius grumbled.

“And we all know how much you love figures.”

“Is my brother here, then?” Regulus asked before the two could resume their debate over the price of importing flying carpets.

Regulus soon learned that he was, and far from happy about it, Sirius had been one of the few to refuse flat out to take a shift at his, Regulus’, side. When Lucius had arrived in his company, it had been to find Dora attempting to stop the bleeding for which she had been responsible. Sirius, far more experienced in such matters, had rather roughly pushed her aside, and upon seeing to Regulus’ immediate survival if little else, had announced his need for something forty-proof and had disappeared into the kitchen where he had been ever since.

For a time, he had been joined in the space by Severus and a still-sobbing Dora, whom he succeeded in calming by issuing instructions for an ointment to help against the scaring his spell could leave if not directly addressed, all whilst Sirius mocked them, telling Severus not to waste his time and telling Dora not to waste her tears on his rake of a brother.

Bill had been able to leave as soon as Regulus had given his consent, and upon discovering that Dora could not, took her suggestion to run back and tell the others how they had broken through the first barrier. Having already entered 12 Grimmauld Place, he had subsequently been able to open the door for them.

By the time Scrimgeour and his associates found Narcissa’s old bedroom on the topmost floor, Remus had cleared up all signs of struggle. Lucius had informed the Head Auror that though DS Black was at present in no condition to answer for his actions, Nymphadora Tonks and William Weasley would be more than happy to clear up any of the particulars of their ordeal. In the presence of any after first consulting with their solicitor, of course.

Scrimgeour had grumbled about Narcissa’s present whereabouts, how hard it had been to arrange access to Azkaban and how long it would take to recall the operation. Lucius in turn assured him that he had other solicitors in the capitol with whom he had already been in contact, and within minutes Corban Yaxley had arrived with his team to spin Dora and Bill’s sworn statements to such effect that Dora had been offered placement in the Auror training programme upon successful completion of her requisite N.E.W.T.s.

Perhaps in gratitude for Yaxley’s complete lack of scruples so long as his hourly rate was being paid, Scrimgeour additionally agreed to personally write Bill a recommendation to Gringotts, which he did with the satisfaction that his department would not be facing legal action in the form of an internal investigation that would see his resources diverted from the streets.

In fact, the only consequence of the afternoon was that Regulus Black would have to answer to the magical division within English Heritage on account of his having destroyed the last known artefact of Salazar Slytherin.

Well. That was at least a century’s worth of accumulated family wealth and the next decade of Regulus’ life done away with. Death would have been preferable.

Molly Weasley, the wife of Lucius’ associate who had since reidentified himself as Arthur, had agreed with this dim assessment.

She had been furious that they had not waited for Narcissa to arrive. Saint fucking Narcissa, whom Molly swore would have found reason to argue her son’s case before the MACUSA which dealt out capital punishment. She had still being insisting upon this phantasy sentence when the two men retired upstairs for a long-shift, despite it being pointed out to her by multiple parties that Slytherin’s locket was well out of MACUSA’s jurisdiction, that Narcissa would need to pass the barrister in both the State of New York and the Commonwealth of Virginia before bringing a case before the body, and that the United Kingdom did not extradite to countries with the death penalty full stop.

This, however, had done the opposite of calming Molly Weasley down.

Like Sirius, she had taken to the kitchen, boiling and baking her frustrations instead of drinking them. In Sirius, she had found someone to share in her anger and more than match it.

According to Dora, somehow, the two had since gone from mourning the absence Narcissa’s swift and surprisingly detailed vengeance from the afternoon’s proceedings to blaming her for the entire affair. Somehow, three bottles in, Sirius had let it slip that his cousin had made abuse allegations against a pair of muggles (‘Using a telephone! Of all things!’) after meeting Harry Potter and finding Voldemort in his mind.

And now everyone present was involved.

And everyone, it seemed, was arguing about what to do now.

Everyone, that was, save for Lucius and Arthur, who had seen and taken their chance to bounce early on by volunteering extra shifts with the patient-prisoner, well away from arguments of any consequence.

No, they had told him, Harry was not there, Severus having guessed what Dora was after, what Regulus was thus about, and this separating his charges from any threat before going himself to meet it.

“Wait,” Regulus frowned. “If Molly and Sirius are in the kitchen, where is Kreacher? What did they do to Kreacher?” he began to panic.  The elf was, after all, his only friend. Arthur looked at him with something approaching pity, Lucius with disgust.

“Sirius sent him to back to Hogwarts to return Phineas’ portrait. What were you thinking?” Lucius sneered. “There are hundreds of other former headmasters and headmistresses certain to inform the current office holder that a house elf stole your great-great grandfather from the space he occupies on the wall. It won’t take Dumbledore long to deduce it was none of the elves in Hogwarts’ employ – and then where do you think he’d then be headed to get his predecessor back? You couldn’t fight off two unqualified, underaged wizards. What did you really think your chances would have been against arguably the greatest wizard of his age?”

“Dumbledore had ought to know about this,” Arthur commented quietly, as though he had already accepted that his contribution with be dismissed out of hand.

“According to Remus he already does,” Lucius sighed, pulling his long, moonlight blonde hair into a loose ponytail. “I think he and Severus are worried about how all this will affect Harry. Once they have figured that out, we can let those in power, Dumbledore included, think that they are making the important decisions.”

“Would it not be more prudent to ask his expertise?” Arthur frowned.

A shadow crossed Lucius Malfoy’s sharp features. “Should I tell you the terrible truth about how the world is run?” he asked, a tremor of sadness to his tone. “Expertise is inexact. No one knows what they are doing, and few even know what they are about.”

“Lucius don’t take this the wrong way, but you really need a hobby,” Arthur said.

“Offering to teach me how to disassemble muggle appliances?” Lucius countered. Nothing of either the cruelty or the humour with which they had previously spoken was present. They were probably imagining what they would do if it had been one of their children upon whom this terrible half-reality had been visited. Neither seemed sure of what he would do nor seemed to feel he had any place offering advice to the boy’s makeshift parents.

“Uncle Lucy!” Tonks burst in, the tea she had been carrying spilling down the front of an old dress of Bellatrix’s as she shattered the setting silence.

She looked too pleased with herself to offer a standard expletive of the kind her clumsiness ordinarily carried. Or, Regulus considered, did she censor herself in front of the oh-so-formal ‘Lucy’? It was all he could do not to laugh.

“Uncle Lucy! Charlie figured it out! You have a nuclear bomb at your estate in Wiltshire!”

“You do?” Regulus asked.

Mr Weasley shook his head at him warningly. “Don’t start this,” he mouthed.

“Regulus!” Tonks exclaimed before he could make the error of inquiring further. “You are awake! Helga be praised!” She grinned as though she were actually pleased to see him. He returned it. Then cringed.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, here, give me that,” she said, leaning over him to grab a bowl filled with ointment, its top forming the crust of disuse. “It’s my fault, I’ll do it,” she said, batting away her uncle’s hand before dipping her fingers into the pot and removing a goodly amount to rub along his wounds, disengaging the gauze that bound them with a flick of her wand. “You are both needed downstairs,” she told Lucius a little testily, rather reminding Regulus of her absent mother. “Shift change.”

“Dora,” Lucius returned sharply. “I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“I was alone with him for two hours,” Tonks dismissed. “I’m fine. Bill and I both got sixty points each for our respective houses. Scrimgeour offered me a spot in the Auror training programme and told Bill he would write him a recommendation to Gringotts. Look at our captor by way of comparison,” she gestured. “Take his wand if you want to. You can leave the door open and if I’m in trouble I’ll scream for help. But seriously, someone needs to redress his wounds and they need you guys to plan logistics.”

“Logistics?” Lucius frowned. Regulus, too, did not quite gather what she meant.

“The bomb! The horcrux!” Tonks exclaimed, almost exasperated.

“Even if such could work in theory,” Arthur grimaced, “it will leave nothing it is wake.”

“He gets it,” Lucius said, sounding rather pleased with the assessment and its source. Regulus guessed that Lucius must spend a great deal of time addressing said bomb, and that to date few had considered his concerns in earnest. “Dora. Be serious. Even if Draco learns the codes, as I well suspect he might, I’m not setting off – ”

“No! Uncle Lucy, listen. At school, Moony is most people’s favourite teacher, but Snape is hands down everyone’s favourite sub, cause like – he doesn’t care about Muggle Studies at all, doesn’t even pretend to, but he’s the best at teaching it because he’ll spend like ten minutes telling us the rules to rugby before encouraging us to go tear up Madame Hooch’s pitch for the rest of the hour. Or he’ll tell us about something to have happened in the Muggle news and then play NWA and have us all write an essay for Quirrell about ‘Fuck tha Police’ drawing from what we just discussed about systematic violence in the US, knowing full well his colleague won’t be able to make heads or tails of any of it,” Tonks rambled. “And when the weather is bad and Snape really can’t be bothered to find new, creative ways piss off the other teachers because it is like seven in the morning, his go-to is reading us from these books called ‘The Lord of the Rings’, which deal with how Muggles imagine magic, but its really just about the writer’s war trauma, and anyway, Bill, Charlie and I have all heard at least ‘The Fellowship’ to the end. But Percy, he hasn’t started with the subject yet – ”

“Dora, excuse the interruption, but how often, exactly, is Quirrell absent from his own lessons?” Lucius squinted, “You do realise I pay the man’s salary; I assume.”

“A lot. Enough, anyway, for Bill and Charlie and me to convincingly pretend to Percy that we were talking about the books when we were talking about the actual ring – the Ring-Ring! – and to give enough detail that he went and asked Snape about it. Cause um … Mrs Weasley said she didn’t want the little ones to be involved in any of this. Bad enough as it is that Harry and Dudley and Draco should all have to suffer. Percy is not that little, but I get the feeling that Bill just did not want him around, because – ”

Regulus was struggling to keep up. Lucius Malfoy was no longer listening. “Is this a chronic childhood illness like what Remus has or – ” the Governor broke in, still, evidently, stuck on the Muggle Studies teacher and his constant string of sick days.

“Lucius how are you letting your mind be drawn to staffing particulars? Dora, what is it? What do the Muggles say ought to be done about an evil ring?” Arthur asked. Regulus frowned, thinking he sounded rather patronising. Tonks mouthed an apology to him, mistaking that the ointment she was applying had burnt his cheek.

“The general consensus is that Quirrell has some kind of bipolar disorder that he’s attempting to self-medicate with cheap spirits, but like, everyone loves Snape in Muggle Studies, so don’t you dare try to address it, okay?” Tonks attempted to boss her uncle about. “And if you have to set an example, you might start with Professor Trelawney, whose too busy telling people how they are going to die to do any work. She drinks a lot too; accordingly, I suppose. But yeah!” she shifted, now finished with her nurse-duty and the limitations hesitant touch had placed on her natural enthusiasm. “Lord of the Rings – okay, hold on to your hats, boys. Basically, they have this evil ring that has to be destroyed and the only way to do it is the toss it into the fires of Mount Doom in the heart of Mordor, which is like this evil sorcerer’s realm. He’s got Inferi patrolling, if Inferi were like trolls that used to be elves, but not like real elves, like Uncle Lucy with pointed ears. Pretty-like,” she explained, her face shifting to reflect what she was trying to explain.

Regulus was fascinated. Not only could she perfectly mimic anything in the natural world, but she could also interpret visions from someone else’s imagination. He could have watched her all day and forgotten his own existence entirely in her act.

“Anyway, Snape is a freak and I guess he just always assumes he is going to have to fill in somewhere, because he actually had a paperback copy of ‘The Fellowship’ with him in his apothecary bag with all of his portable potions supplies, and after he went to read it to Percy and the littler kids to say ‘its time for bed’ without actually saying it cause their would be objections, well, I went rummaging around to see what else he had in there – ”

“Any chance he had more Basilisk venom?” Regulus piped in.

“None,” Tonks answered, her shoulders sinking slightly, not, Regulus realised to late, at this set back, but at the questions she could reason would follow.

“That is a Category A banned substance,” Arthur Weasley said with horror.

“Why would Severus have been in possession of it to begin with?” Lucius furrowed his brow. He had asked this of Regulus, who had asked after the venom, but it was Tonks who answered.

“Ugh. Uncle Lucy, seriously? Can’t the school have any secrets? Isn’t there some big, mythological chamber of them that we’ve all agreed to just pretend doesn’t exist?”

“There is a ‘big, mythological’ Chamber of Secrets that no one in my house has ever been able to ignore. Answer the question,” Lucius said sharply.

“Fine. Hagrid won a few millilitres worth at cards ages ago along with the rooster to have evidently killed the beast. He ate the rooster and didn’t want to just toss the venom, afraid of what might happen if it somehow got into the water supply or something, so he gave it to Snape, who wanted to figure out if he could synthesise it because apparently it is like super-rare, like so rare that other nerds like him who like to see if they can replicate magical substances and effects with muggle means have never been able to try it with Basilisk venom. I mean he could probably patent it and sell it to national defence to use as a poison and make an absolute fortune but knowing him he’d just be satisfied that he’d done it, like that he’d proven to himself again that he’s smarter than his late father. Which, sorry, Reggie, I don’t really get?” she shifted, squinting and wrinkling her nose in the way common to all in her material line.

“The psychological hangups of a former mate I’ve not seen in a decade?” Regulus squinted back.

“Yeah!” Tonks complained. “You said earlier that he came from a physically abusive household, but he told me once that his dad had a doctorate in chemistry, which is like being a Potions Master but a little more intense because when Snape got his own credentials translated for the foster care application, he was really pissed that he didn’t qualify for the same thing his dad had and went and took classes in Glasgow for like a year – made McGonagall redo his whole time table just for him to prove a point that no one who knows him today needed making. As far as I know he didn’t even get a raise for it,” she said, glancing at her uncle with something akin to accusation.

She was waffling, Regulus realised, because she could not stand the idea of anything she had seen, done, or heard that afternoon being real. If she just kept talking, it might all feel like fiction centred around figures she did not know personally. What the fuck had he been thinking? She was just a kid. A bloody clever one, but even still. It was too much for her to take in all at once.

“He gets to teach Muggle Studies when Quirrell is ill,” Lucius shrugged. “Maybe he can explain to you there what ‘organic chemistry’ entails as opposed to reading some muggle phantasy gibberish. And Dora, you do realise that I’m not the only Governor?”

“The rest all do what you say.”

Lucius seemed to consider this for a moment but decided he had no rebuttal. Instead, he answered the question she had posed to Regulus. “Domestic abuse doesn’t have an educational barrier. Snape’s father was, in fact, a chemist, much as he was an alcoholic who fell into poverty when the refinery that employed him shut down, his wife absconded with all of his savings, and the value of his property plummeted when government testing evaluated the water in the river to be hazardous to human life owing to the actions of his former employer. And he took his frustrations out on his only child. Why, honestly, do you think Severus hates Quirrell and Trelawney so much, that he has, perhaps inadvertently, galvanised you and your classmates into sharing his aversion? Why do you think he came to live with Cissy and I after we had gotten married?”

“Because his dad died?” Tonks tried.

“That is true, but it was already well in the works. McGonagall cornered me at my first Governor’s meeting when I had taken up my father’s post, explained the situation and what the muggle legal system required to see it remedied and I started attending parenting classes, which in hindsight might have been what spurred Cissy to this obsession with providing me with a Malfoy heir. I should have probably explained the situation to her first.”

“I’m sorry – what?!” Regulus gaped.

“You were the one who brought it up, evidently,” Lucius shrugged. “And why would you just mention out of hand to my niece that her favourite teacher had an unenviable start to life? As to your cousin, we would have had children eventually – ”

“Oh, I could give a damn about Narcissa! You would have gotten him, Snape, regardless?” He sounded desperate. That had been an error. Or it had not. At least know he knew just how much Lucius Malfoy personally despised him.

Lucius leaned over him, smiling darkly as though to say that he knew exactly what he, Regulus, had done to warrant the Dark Mark fading on his forearm now that he no longer wore the horcruxes. “Someday, Regulus, we’ll find ourselves in the same hell for our sins, but in this life, in this realm, I have always, and will always find a way of protecting my own, rarely resorting to desperate means and never inconsiderate of the multitude of factors at play. Be warned and stop looking at my niece as though you’re worthy of her pity or even her presence,” he whispered. “Apropos, I take it my wife’s charm was not permanent?”

“Em- Emerald Drink,” Regulus answered, seeing no way out. “It’s a potion that causes its intended to hallucinate their darkest deeds. I had to consume it in my fight against the Dark Lord.”

“Think it would work on Bellatrix? Bring her back to herself?” Lucius inquired, shifting his attention to Arthur. “You are in the Order, right? I know we are here to debate solutions to greater problems, but if what this one claims is true,” he said, tugging at Regulus’ now matted hair, “my wife could get her sister back.  Your side could get the Longbottoms back. Not,” he shifted, turning his attention back on Regulus, “that what I’m arguing is that the world needs any more Blacks. I’m still struggling to get used to Snuffles but he is a positive delight compared to you.”

“That is enough!” Tonks said with a stomp of her foot. “We are here to discuss solutions, and we may have found one. Charlie may have come on one, rather. While I was going through Snape’s stuff, he and Bill kept talking Tolkien, wondering if Frodo ever makes it to Mount Doom as one does after two, three years of hearing a story slowly unfold. They don’t have it in Flourish and Blotts, I’ve checked,” she explained. “Anyway, while Bill wondered if a real volcano would do the job, Charlie was like ‘we should destroy our evil ring with Fiendfyre’. I mean, it makes sense, right?! Fiendfyre! Remus and Sirius reckon that they could cast the spell, but given that it is then so hard to control, Mrs Weasley was yelling at all of us that it would be completely irresponsible until Moony remembered  –”

“Lucius!” Arthur exclaimed in excitement. “You have a highly secured military compound on your estates. The whole surrounding area has been depopulated and presumably every security precaution is in place. It … could be perfect, actually.”

Whatever objection Lucius Malfoy had planned to utterer died on his breath as he looked at his ideological foe, nodded his understanding and consent and flew from the chambre with Arthur Weasley in his wake. When the creaking stairwell told that the pair were at least two flights under, Tonks closed the door with an excited squeal.

“Et voila!” she declared. “Sorry. I know my uncle is a very particular kind of awful, and I can’t imagine Mr Weasley is his best when in his esteemed company, when in a situation where Uncle Lucy is his best option, but … I love them both and you … you get used to them,” she tried to smile. It was awkward. Adorable.

“I think I love you,” Regulus said before he could stop himself.

“So, what happened after I,” Tonks paused, again pondering his face, and reaching for the ointment she had apparently made. “Merlin, Regulus, I wasn’t thinking. What happened up here after I panicked and hit you with the Sectumsempra?”

“Snape put that on the curriculum?” Regulus asked, smiling in a way he meant to be reassuring. She either had not known what the spell did or had absolutely no clue when it came to human anatomy. She had not aimed to kill. However extensive the damage, it was only cosmetic. He should have done better than to threaten her friend even if he had intended no follow through. Tonks, like her father, was a Hufflepuff after all and everyone to have known Ted at school, even just on reputation, knew not to mess with the Badgers.

“Snape teaches potions,” Tonks answered flatly as she continued to apply her own. Regulus doubted it was necessary to anything but helping clear her conscious in a way his assurances seemed incapable of. Besides, he enjoyed the sensation of her touch.

“Find it scribbled in an old textbook in his office then?” he suggested, half to remind himself that worldly as she was, she was only fifteen. The fact that they were second cousins did not enter into his evaluations of what was appropriate. He had ‘died’ at eighteen but at twenty-seven, he was old enough for this to be weird if protocol was not strictly followed.

He would have to court her under approved supervision until her seventeenth birthday, and then offer a dowry large enough to impress Ted, Andromeda, and by all chances of ill-luck, Lucius Malfoy, one of the richest and most well-connected men in Britain. And now, apparently, he had bloody English Heritage after him for destroying a priceless artefact, because of course Scrimgeour would not explain the situation or allow him to do so. He probably saw this as indirect retribution for all of the overtime he felt he had to authorise this afternoon, as though he, Regulus, had not be following protocol, much as he might.

It was not as though he could simply obliterate a fellow Black – well, he could, giving Tonks’ odd absence of experience in occlumency, but it served no one to admit that no one in his line actually processed the mythical powers others supposed.

Fuck. He could forget courtship. For all intents and purposes, he was broke by pureblood standards. And dead. Broke and dead and deformed from the extent of Tonks’ regret. Lucius was right. He deserved nothing of her pity or presence.

“I … yeah, I mean. I am so sorry, had I known what it did – ” Tonks stammered.

“Hm. I think it is cool how you can alter your appearance. Seems you changed mine as well. Now I can see you whenever I look in the mirror.”

“Now I regret it less,” Tonks stuck out her tongue at him, elongating it and splitting it to mimic a snake as she did.

“How bad?” Regulus asked.

Tonks smiled as she afforded the question some consideration. “When you’re chatting up easier prey at some hole-in-the-wall pub henceforth, you’d be better off buying shots instead of pints.”

“I needn’t go straight for the bottle service?” he joked. “That is a relief. That I can work with.”

“Mm. You’re cuter now that you’re not straight up trying to disappear me,” she teased. “It’s a good look.”

“But what happened? What did you tell my employer that the only thing I’m facing is the complaints of some heritage organisation?”

“Oh,” Tonks blinked. “I didn’t come up with it. Yaxley did. He lies for a living, for some really high price. My uncle always pays his debts, and the three of them – Yaxley, Uncle Lucy and Scrimgeour –  probably all play Gobblestones together on bank holidays while house elves bring them G&Ts because that seems to be what power likes to do with itself. Not my game. Gobblestones or illicit collusion.”

“But do you know what was said? There is a very good chance I’ll have to give a version of the same.”

“Okay, um … Yaxley said that Bill and I came to look for books my Aunt Bellatrix may once have owned, because we were trying to figure out how Harry survived the Avada, because he does a weird amount of magic for a little kid, a worrying amount, but anyway, it turns out that his cousin is a wizard too and the both conspired to hide it from everyone, so yay! Mystery solved. No really,” she claimed, her eyes widening. “That part came from Snape and that is just not something he would lie about.”

“Sure.”

“Right, so anyway, we got here, exactly like we actually broke in, and met you, but um, an entirely professional, ethical version that probably doesn’t exist in anyone anywhere on the force. You interrogated us, but in doing so we got curious about what you were doing … alive and all that, and you asked us – no,” she adjusted, “you told us to go home. Bill wanted to, but I refused, and then we figured out how to destroy the locket. It attacked you when we got it open, and I closed your wounds as best I could. Then my Uncle Lucy, Professor Snape, Professor Moony, whose legal name is Lupin – you should probably know that.”

“I went to school with Remus Lupin. I’m well acquainted with the man and his alias,” Regulus stated plainly, though from Tonks’ expression he likely sounded cold.

“That … makes sense. Well, they came and broke the wards, Sirius, too and then the coppers showed up after everything had been sorted. And that is what we said. And they seemed pretty satisfied that they didn’t have to go through termination paperwork or run an internal investigation. I think Scrimgeour kind of knew Yaxley was lying, but one should never underestimate the boon an overstretched, underfunded bureaucracy can make of itself when it comes to getting away with bullshit.”

“You learn that from your Aunt Cissy?” Regulus guessed.

“Nah. From attending Hogwarts, just in general,” Tonks shrugged.

“What actually happened then? After your spell found me unguarded?”

“After I hexed you, I ran to find Bill, which I did, by the door. His brothers, the twins, were in the middle of the street, throwing dungbombs at the house they couldn’t see, noting its location from where their weapons disappeared and flinging one after another at the same spot. They kept taunting Bill that he was going to be in so much trouble. I asked him if his Boggart was his little brothers, he told me it was clear I was an only child.”

“Sort of,” Regulus said, remembering that an audience with his own evidently very angry brother reminded something he ought to be ‘looking forward’ to. She had no way of appreciating her fortune.

“But no. Unlike me,” Tonks frowned, “Bill defeated his actual Boggart fairly quickly, was then confronted by your house elf, on whom he cast a silencing charm and bound. He was trying to find me when he heard a woman scream ‘murder’ in the atrium. I heard it too. I was like a minute, maybe two behind him, but when I had gotten there, the woman, the portrait, was gone, and Bill was freaking out that Fred and George might break in. We think they got through the barrier because they were not intent on going anywhere in particular, just on making annoyances of themselves. You might have to work on that.”

“Sounds plausible.”

“Anyway. I told him to go, if he could, to get help. I might have committed involuntary manslaughter and had to go back upstairs. Only that woman – your mother? – she wasn’t talking about you being dead. She thought you had killed me in cold blood, in the sacred house of her forefathers. Because I was … upstairs? I’m not quite sure. Half the house, like the portraits in it, were watching from Queen Isabella’s frame, but none of them could swear to what they had seen either when being interrogated.”

“When your spell hit,” Regulus explained, “I collapsed, as you know, taking the poison to the floor with me and watching it shatter. I used my wand to cypher the few drops I could to its tip, then used that to break the locket’s clasp. When I opened it, an illusion of you emerged, holding me down, mocking me accordingly. I, I suppose it owed itself to you being the first person I have cared about in ... I can’t even count how long. I couldn’t do it, at first. I had promised not to hurt you.”

“But it wasn’t me! It was him!” Tonks cried. “Playing with your mind! Topical, rather amateur shit. It was a bit of a let-down to be honest,” she evaluated. Clearly, she had never been in love.

“You came back.”

“For all of the good that it did you,” Tonks scoffed, taking his damaged left hand in hers. His new finger was nearly as its fellows now, but still, the shade was off, and probably would be until the blood he had lost had been given time to replenish.

“When I saw you, the real you, I used the remainder of the venom to break the spell,” Regulus continued. “To break his soul. Then, realising I still wore the ring, I tried to shatter it on the floorboard where I had spilt the venom. Broke my hand instead and got a splinter for my efforts. Only thanks to your quick thinking that I still have a hand. That I am still here. I must have passed out after you summoned the pen knife from Cissy’s desk and cut of the infection before it could spread.” He felt dizzy as he recalled it.

“You did,” she confirmed. Fuck. “And I am so, so sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Regulus gaped. “Tonks, you were right, I ought not have been so negligent with the stuff. You had to cut off the extremity of a near stranger. I should have never put you though that.”

“I tried to fix you as best I could,” Tonks claimed, looking guilty. He believed her all the same. “But you had lost a lot of blood already. You … you want me to go down and tell everyone you went back to sleep? Listen, downstairs it’s ... if Uncle Lucy and Mr Weasley picked one another as the most agreeable company, I mean. It is bad. I can ward them off for a little while longer if you need me to, but I need to get back down before someone remembers to miss me.”

“I would gladly fight them all in my present state for five more minutes with you,” Regulus said as gallantly as he might, being that he was the broke, dead, and being hunted by a heritage NGO for his crimes.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen a mirror,” Tonks answered, the hint of a blush crossing her cheeks.

“Nah, he dismissed. “Because you haven’t. Changed, I mean. It’s been an honour to have made your acquaintance, ‘just Tonks’.”

“Reggie, you say that like we are never going to see one another again,” she frowned before breaking into a mischievous grin. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? I. Got. In. My application has been preapproved. And you still have a job. We are practically colleagues already. You can complain to me about Quidditch results in the bullpen or break room and I can then pretend to know the difference between a ‘Bladger’ and a ‘Quaffle’ if I ever like, get around to dating. Or maybe just for work reasons? You really went heavy on the mansplaining earlier when you assumed I didn’t know what Emerald Drink did or what a television was, and I can’t imagine you are unique in that respect among members of the force.”

Regulus laughed. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Kid.”

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin sat sullen in an all too familiar and at once somehow foreign room, gazing at a shatter of darkness whose destruction he was now damned to prevent.

“Second guessing yourself?” Dumbledore inquired or perhaps inferred.

Remus did not lift his gaze to meet the man. Rather, he continued to stare at the ring that had once belong to Lord Voldemort and now preserved some portion of his power, reflecting on the evening prior, wondering indeed the extent to which his own actions were born of its influence.

It would be so easy, so terribly easy, to find comfort in that notion. He suspected, however, that Voldemort in this reduced state could only exploit feelings and fears that were already anchored in the perceptions of those otherwise governed by a will to resist.

He had noticed the shift in Dora first but had failed to attribute her outburst to the horcrux.

Upon receiving word that she and Bill had been recovered, Andromeda had not wanted to abandon her designs of conducting interviews at Azkaban, though the missive she had left Narcissa to send in her stead failed to elaborate on what they hoped to discover now that Grimmauld Place had opened itself to the outside. Dora had been outraged that her wellbeing warranted so comparatively little of her mother’s concern, and she began demanding of all present to know why she earned so little of the woman’s affection.

It did not help that Phineas Nigellus had answered that her existence was an abomination, echoed by Walburga’s cries of ‘Half bloods and half breeds besmirching the house of my forefathers!’ with which they very walls trembled. Sirius had sought to rectify the situation by demanding that the House Elf Kreacher return his great-great grandfather’s portrait to Hogwarts, but the image bound to the family seat continued to taunt. Metamorphmagi occurred on occasion in their noble line, but the most were not suffered to live more than a few hours. Sirius retaliated, but his defence of Andromeda did little to rectify the situation in Dora’s eyes.

‘No, she thinks I am a freak,’ Dora had claimed. ‘And Gramps is right, I wouldn’t have survived you at all had my Aunt Bella not helped us into hiding. She thinks about it sometimes, Mum does. That is how I know. I can take on any face, any form, but she wishes that I really and truly were someone else. And you know what? Let her! Sirius, when your house if finished, can I come live with you instead?’

Sirius had not thought very much of this idea.

Lucius offered the Manor as an alternative but thought best that the conversation continued under arbitration.

Ted dismissed this notion. The European Quidditch Cup began the following day, he was needed now, if ever, at the office and had left work without any such consideration because his daughter needed him. Lucius had blown off the bloody PM when he had been informed of Dora’s disappearance and if Andromeda mistook anything as being more significant to the moment than their child, he would start looking for his own flat and sue for full custody. In the meantime, if the offer was in fact open to them both, he’d content himself with one of the Manor’s sofas.

This expression spoke to nothing in Lucius’ experiences and led to an argument between himself and Arthur Weasley around muggle cruelties and degradations. Why should Ted otherwise assume he would have to sleep on a sofa when a bed was available and freely offered? A sofa! Any wizard would offer his own bed were none other available. (In his anger he missed Sirius’ comment that Severus made him sleep on the floor, a comment that caused Remus to snort with laughter, inappropriate though it felt)

It was nothing altogether out of the ordinary for misunderstanding to create a riff between any two people who might have gotten on had politics never entered the conversation.

Still, in hindsight, Remus wondered how he could have missed Voldemort’s hand in the heated arguments that ensued.

Lucius was naturally paranoid, but there was a difference between antagonising the opposition and refusing to continue negotiations without legal representation, especially when everyone was otherwise more or less talking about those Lord of the Rings books Severus put far too much stock into.

Arthur, for his part, seemed oddly keen toward debate – not on its own merits, but because such excused him from engaging with Remus without being overtly rude.

Remus had never considered that Weasley feared the breast within him before but was not altogether surprised. At the time he blamed it on cultural conditioning as one often excused casual bigotry when unexpectedly confronted with it, but it occurred to him now in the light of day that the wolf must have already shown its teeth, without Remus having taken much notice.

There had been so much else going on as they grasped desperately for what to do.

Sirius was picking fights with nearly everyone if only to show that his estranged brother that he was owed nothing of his regard, including his misplaced ire.

The twins had found their calling in destroying as much of Grimmauld Place as they could fit into their mucky ickle hands with Ginny playing lookout and occasionally joining in on the sport.

Percy, ordinarily the most well-behaved of the Weasley brood, was panicked when he could not find his pet rat in his robe pocket and tore through much of the house trying to find him without success.

Charlie was preoccupied taunting Bill about Tonks (‘k-i-s-s-i-n-g’) and about how much trouble he was in until Molly had snapped at him in turn.

No one had taken much notice of Ron, or had had much cause to, until the boy had gathered up the resolve to approach Severus, whom he feared, to ask why Harry was not there. After all, did this not all affect him the most?

“While I agree with your assessment that these remaining Horcruxes ought not be touched until we properly understand the effect their destruction has on Harry, I think it unwise to hold it here,” Remus answered Dumbledore. “I know how it affected me last night, how it affected all present. Albus, understand I do not mean to dimmish you in saying this, but how long do you truly believe yourself capable of withstanding its influence? By the time I recognised the wolf in my words … I, I am ashamed now to admit I did not want to fight it.”

“Tis perhaps for the best that you did not. Your argument was better for it,” Dumbledore answered.

After Ron had made the case for his best friend, Severus had succumbed to these same fears.

Regulus claimed that Voldemort had spent time abroad in Albania. Harry could now speak Albanian and failing an alternate explanation, it stood to follow that rather than destroying the Dark Lord, they were simply altering the terms of his self-imposed confinement. Severus had wanted to return to Hogwarts, and perhaps, in hindsight, Remus ought to have let him.

Independent of however much experience Severus had with the Dark Arts, his was in no condition to contribute.

Which meant the task of leading discussions had fallen upon Remus.

“I grew up knowing that this beast was ever lurking within me, fighting it within my mind became the whole of my identity,” he admitted to Dumbledore. “In fact, I still struggle to identify even half so much with other, often hard-won distinctions half as much as I do with ‘werewolf’ – husband, father, professor, acting mayor, marauder, friend,” he listed, paused, “coward.”

“You are anything but that, Remus.”

“I wish Narcissa had been present during last night’s deliberations,” he answered, almost out-of-turn.

“I should doubt she’s ever so much as seen Sirius’ diadem if Lucius did not recognise it and Arthur could support his denials. Kingsley has since questioned her, and she confirmed your deduction that it was a memory preserved within the old diary which Lucius had Dobby precure that she undid; loath though poor Regulus was to accept that explanation. It is perhaps beside the point, but you know the woman better, at least socially, than I myself – if she knew anything of it and thought to keep this secret, do you truly think our odd constellation could have broken her resolve?”

They had spent hours on the subject. Regulus had been (and likely remained) convinced that Narcissa had, at some point in her adolescence, been given a diadem by Andromeda, one Bellatrix had stolen from a lowlife at a Goblin gig in a Hoxhaist bunker some twenty years prior. Voldemort, Regulus claimed, would not have used something so pedestrian as a timetable to contain a part of himself, preferring objects associated with great power in and of themselves. Slytherin’s locket. Percivale’s ring. And, likely, the Lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.

It was the only matter on which he and Sirius could agree. But Lucius had never seen the item and Arthur had indeed vouched that such had never belonged to his household.

And the only two people who might have added anything of value from that point forward were far and away.

But Remus, who had since become convinced that Voldemort’s destruction might in turn spell Harry’s, had not wanted to see a woman he otherwise had no great love of for what she might have said, but for what she would have inevitably forced him to think.

“It isn’t that,” he answered of Narcissa. “She … ‘intimidates’ likely is not the word I seek, but she reminds me of my place with her manner,” he explained, correcting for context, “Not that she has ever expressed bigotry towards half-breeds, at least within my company. What I mean to say is, if she had come, she could have taken charge.”

Dumbledore nodded his understanding. “As I could have done. Or Lucius. Or Sirius, Regulus, Severus. There were others present accustomed to leadership or wanting of it. And yet often, or so I have found, power is best wielded by those reluctant to take it. Last night, you were right to. You know better than anyone what Harry is facing, and sought love as the weapon rather than fire, steel, or venom. It is not for nothing that it was you whom I appointed to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts.”

Dumbledore had arrived unannounced shortly after midnight, saying jovially in his greeting that since the brothers Black had been so good as to return the portrait of Phineas Nigellus to his office, he thought it in turn prudent that he personally return Kreacher to the care. In doing so, he explained that he had spent a long time that evening sitting with a highly concerned Hagrid, who was fretting over a change he had seen in little Harry. Rather than rejoicing at the news that Tonks and Bill were safe as Dudley had, Harry had grown sullen, serious, and rude in a language that Hagrid did not think he had ever been exposed to but could suddenly speak. Dumbledore spent a long while thereafter questioning Harry and Dudley in turn.

His deductions, however, had been negated by indignance before they could be shared. Severus was furious that his children had been interviewed without a court appointed appropriate adult present. Lucius immediately began scribbling an owl to Yaxley, who arrived through the Floo Network minutes later insisting that the testimony be stricken from the record, livid to learn that the Head Warlock of the Wizengamot would conduct himself so.

‘Their statements were not given under caution, Corban,’ Dumbledore contested, more amused than put-out.

‘Stricken,’ Sirius echoed coldly with Dora adding, ‘And never spoken of.’

Remus had this not needed to ask what Dumbledore had confirmed for himself, the reactions of three of the headmaster’s fellow four Legilimens told enough. Regulus, for his part, was too focused on Dumbledore not to have arrived at the same.

Wherever else Voldemort might be hiding, he was manifest in Harry’s mind.

For Remus, the risk of doing more harm than good was too great.

‘Magic is a property on one’s soul, insofar as anyone understands it,’ Remus had stood to address the gathered company. ‘We talk about blood status, but I’ve yet to read anything conclusive to suggest that magic has a physical component at all. Likewise, I doubt the extent to which it is mental. Narcissa has a brilliant mind, I do not doubt that she has a great many spells memorised, but she struggles to preform them. In contrast, this morning my son Dudley was screaming ‘potato’ meaning ‘protego’ and nonetheless managed to save a life,’ he concluded.

‘That said, would breaking Voldemort’s power bring about his defeat if his mind remained, reformed in a child too young to have experienced the sorts of seemingly insignificant moments that might stand in contradiction? We wait! We must! Ron was right, Harry has to be a part of this conversation. He has to be old enough to decide for himself and the most any of us should be attempting until such time is to guide him to make good and decent choices.’

As it worked out, everyone was in complete agreement. At least, once Remus had instructed Yaxley to write up a Cease-and-Desist Order, which the scrupulous solicitor consented to do pro bono in light of another massive overreach in which he would spend the following day addressing with the Crown Courts, presuming his erstwhile protégée would be tied up in discovery.

‘I’m sure you are already aware,’ Yaxley said smugly, handing Dumbledore a folded piece of parchment written almost entirely in Rune, ‘But I should think you’ll be a bit too busy to pursue any further questioning of my clients for the foreseeable future.’

Dumbledore had merely chucked as he read. ‘Oh, good girl,’ he gave approvingly.

Remus demanded to know what the missive contained, the wolf within him raging.

Yaxley agreed to read and translate the single line concerning him in any fashion.

‘P.P.S. If Lucius should have any further need of your council this evening, please inform him on my behalf that I expect I should be up in Manchester until the coming day, that I will send word to this myself when I am back on the mainland, but for the moment I fear I’m too livid to have learned that he placed our son under muggle protection to say anything constructive in direct correspondence. The presence of Dementors is doing nothing to deter my fury. Shacklebolt even less so.  P.P.P.S. What tiara?

‘And the signature you can read for yourself, she wrote it in English plain – XOXO Bl. #3. Telling, I think,’ Yaxley commented, ‘that after fifteen years of marriage she still signs off with refence to House Black in private correspondence.

‘Snape,’ he shifted, ‘I’ll have the order to you within normal business hours tomorrow. Lupin, I mean no disrespect, half-breeds have no rights to such requests which is why such needs to be written in your husband’s name. But if you wanted to organise a class action, now would probably be the time.’

Remus had not realised he had been barking orders until that moment. He had thought himself calm, collected, but his reception suggested otherwise. Arthur had developed a mistrust of lycanthropes. Dumbledore had yielded him the floor. Yaxley, who prior to successfully arguing Karkaroff’s acquittal was most famous for getting Greyback off homicide charges after he had already plead his guilt, certainly was not one to succumb to intimidation, and yet he had.

Remus hated himself for it, quite likely more than the others had feared him, but it had perhaps been a mistake to back down when conversation began around protecting the ring from all who knew of its existence. He should not have left Dumbledore take it. Dumbledore, who questioned his children behind his back, who made secret plans, sometimes with the stated enemy, plans which he then refused to share or shed any light upon.

The worst of him was nothing when compared to the best of Albus Dumbledore. It was not a risk he should have even taken.

“Then in that role, as the man you trust to teach Defence, may I humbly suggest that you entrust the ring to my care? It shan’t leave Hogwarts, but having seen, and myself to an extent having experienced its affect, I think it best to keep it well away from leadership.”

Dumbledore nodded slowly as though taking his measure. Then, he looked back at the ring. “Where would you keep it?”

“Hidden,” Remus smiled. He reached for the Horcrux without awaiting an answer.

It occurred to him later that if Dumbledore had wanted to stop him, he would have.

But it felt like a victory all the same.

Tom Riddle rarely found his interests align so fully with those of his host.

He had been twenty-two, working a dead-end job procuring oddities for a pittance whilst engaging in the occasional theft from his employer and the one-off murder of a client. Both, he had told himself, were needs musts in commission-based retail, especially when one dreamt of being the so great a wizard that no one would dare refer to him by the name printed on his plastic nametag.

Tom had been actively plotting his escape from this particular mediocrity, saving up to travel and taking an evening course in Albanian from a Muggle (whom he had silently sworn to kill if ever he corrected his pronunciation in front of the entire class again) when suddenly, unexpectedly, he found himself abroad or in the strangest realm of Dante’s Inferno for the sum of his sins.

He was drowning in a pool of coloured plastic balls at the villa of an internationally renowned Chaser with a child screaming ‘Potato!’ at him before fading into subconsciousness and a kind of understanding.

He had achieved immortality, but at the cost of his great magic and oh so much more.

“If you destroy these horcruxes, you destroy Voldemort’s power with them, but part of his mind will be my mind? My thoughts?” he, or rather Harry, surmised to the man he called ‘Dad’ in grasping inaccuracy.

If correct, this might go some way to explain why, when confronted with the might of his master, ‘Dad’ had been more concerned about the fact that his other ward was a wizard with no intention of discovering his potential.

Dudley, the other ward, Harry’s biological cousin who seemed to have an even greater understanding of Blood Magic than The Dark Lord himself, was presently busying himself by trying to kick as ball to the same spot on a tree while its branches attempted to halt the ball’s advance in violent sweeps. Two hounds chased after it on instinct and the half-wit groundkeeper tried to call their game to a halt.

And one of these dogs was supposed to teach Dudley magic at home so he could spend even more time kicking a stupid ball instead of attending the most prestigious academy of witchcraft and wizardry on the British Isles.

It was bullocks.

The very juvenile idea of doing everything different to what his parents were when he was old enough to mirror circumstance occurred to Tom as he watched ‘Snuffles’ accept a pat. That Severus Snape would allow for it was a travesty. When Tom grew up and had kids, they would go to Hogwarts, learn under the best minds in magic and put them all to shame. They definitely would not waste their time with football and quidditch. And they would not have chores or bedtimes either!

“Which is why Moony thinks it best to wait until you are better able to distinguish between the Dark Lord’s thoughts and your own,” ‘Dad’ answered.

Perhaps there was something to this.

Tom did not want to grow up, get married and have kids. He wanted to return to being the Greatest and Most Terrible Dark Wizard to ever have graced this world with his magic.

Harry might want to do all of those lesser things, but this, Tom consoled himself was only because he was eight and had not quite worked out the mechanics of conception yet.

“But Draco Malfoy long since can! Why shouldn’t I be able to?” Harry asked with an envy Tom could approve of and a yearning he suddenly realised he could not.

The two boys shared an obsession with one another that at eight was unhealthy and by eighteen would almost assuredly have taken on a sexual component, but, Tom shuttered, would that mean he would have to watch?

Such would be worse than the sum all of the children’s birthday parties he was invited to, all of the Sunday League sporting fixtures, all of the errands Dad and Moony had that required that he and Dudley be stuck in the backseat of a car for an indeterminate amount of time! The Dark Lord did not consider himself prudish where it came to sex and sexuality, preferring to exercise all of his internalised hated on muggles and mudbloods, but Draco was Bellatrix’s nephew and Bellatrix –

Wait. Who the fuck was Bellatrix and why should he, Tom, have a care?

Maybe it would come up over the course of conversation in the inferno that was adolescence. Maybe he would have to wait until The Order decided Harry was old enough that he, Tom, was no longer a threat to the boy’s mental stability so that he might remember that detail of his lost life as well. Or maybe he would only have to wait until a Black decided to pursue their own agenda. There was always a decent chance of that – Tom paused. Shuttered. ‘Dad’ put his overly inked arm around the boy’s shoulders, likely expecting more tears.

And Tom might very well have wept from the sudden fear that had swept over him.

Seven was the most magically significant number.

His soul had been split into seven pieces – there were seven remaining Blacks, two of whom had already destroyed two of his Horcruxes.

Had he failed to evade fate?

He would simply have to take one of them in retaliation for every part of himself that they had eliminated.

‘Snuffles’ would be easy enough, even if forced to work through an eight-year-old, but ‘Snuffles’ was not guilty of anything – yet, aside from mucking up a perfectly fine tattoo.

Narcissa and Regulus were the ones who really had it coming, and they would both prove challenges for entirely opposing reasons. The latter was an Auror, gifted in the Dark Arts he now sought to fight from his self-made shadows. The former was all but a squib, but one who already had powerful foes from the opposite side, and a far more practical husband who always had protection trailing her.

Tom would need to find a means of catching them both off-guard if he meant to punish them in accordance with their crimes. He was not sure Harry was up to it. Perhaps he would need to start smaller. Draco? Dora?

“While that might be true, do you think Draco would know, if asked, why he believes half of the things he takes to be self-evident?” ‘Dad’ posed.

Why, Tom wondered, did Severus always approach a ‘teachable moment’ with a Socratic question? Tom did not have a clue and he was certain Harry did not either. This was becoming a waste of the Dark Lord’s time, which he now seemed to have far too much of. Perhaps immortality had been a judgement error.

“He is a kid,” ‘Dad’ gave simply. “He can’t separate his own thoughts from those of his parents and their peers, which is why Cissy cannot enter his mind insofar as I can determine. It is the same reason Remus thinks it best to limit your connection to Voldemort at this stage.”

Fine. Tom would spare Draco for Harry, for the Dark Lord was merciful and if it was true that Narcissa could not read her son’s thoughts, the boy might prove useful.

He would have to be creative in killing the uppity Attorney and the isolated Auror, the Dog would be easy enough to take, and the others?

The Healer made the mistake of thinking this had nothing to do with her, so he would have to get at her though a means that had nothing to do with the great wizard he had once been – perhaps though one of her patients.

Her daughter, on the other hand, made the mistake of thinking this matter her business, and Tom was sure that he could orchestrate her end through some misguided ‘heroic’ effort. And Bellatrix –

Wait. Who the fuck was Bellatrix and why did he care what should become of her?

“But you can enter our minds,” Harry reflected. “Mine and Dudley’s. Do you? Often?”

“Only the once, and such is far easier when the subject is panicked, as you both were.”

“Can’t you? Can’t you just … so you can make sure, that he’s well, that he’s not there,” Harry seemed to beg, evidently growing too conscious of his homicidal intent. “Until I am older, until I know better?”

“If I did you would never learn to shield your mind for yourself,” ‘Dad’ answered rather blandly.

“You’ll teach me then?”

“No. Not willingly. I’ll see if Snuffles is up to the task, test if I really want to entrust Dudley’s wider education to him,” ‘Dad’ sneered, watching his unwanted housemate discover his own tail and attempt to chase it in a small circle, leaving his other kid to play keep-away with the Whomping Willow unsupervised. ‘Dad’ sighed, then shouted, “Dudley! Get away from there! If you are so determined to break a bone today, have Harry teach you how to mount a broom and go play catch at altitude!”

“Do I have to?” Harry whined. He would honestly rather degnome Hagrid’s pumpkin patch.

Again, Tom found himself in complete concurrence.

“Yes,” ‘Dad’ replied in a tone that allowed no room for argument. “Sirius and I have to have an adult conversation. And you need to go be a kid.”

Severus went on to remind Sirius that the Dementors had no jurisdiction at Hogwarts by way of pleading with him to retake his human form while Dudley jogged over and asked something about brooms.

Tom, who could once fly without one, wondered when childhood would find the mercy to end.

Narcissa Malfoy needed a win – personal, professional, political, it did not seem as though she could differentiate. Not, thought Kingsley Shacklebolt rather blandly, that he had much of a mind to wonder which motivation presently animated the woman he could not quite look upon as an ally, regardless of allusions Albus had made to her person in half-shared plans.

For the moment, it was enough that she had lost.

Kingsley respected Dumbledore’s judgement, for hope, as the aging wizard personified, could be as dangerous of a weapon as any that sought to hinder it.

Still.

Narcissa had humiliated him, Kingsley, before the Wizengamot at its last session. She had quite plainly delight in in the prosecution’s defeat, and, while he knew it unbecoming of his office, Kingsley found that he was rather enjoying the sufferings of which Narcissa refused to speak, acknowledging instead in acts of grasping desperation.

After year spent clearing Sirius’ name, his ‘dead’ brother had gone and ruined all of the good grace she had seen returned to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black by virtue of crimes committed under an Auror badge. The irony was almost too much to properly take in.

Kingsley had never much liked Regulus. He liked him considerably less after the events of two day’s prior, the boy’s blatant disregard for procedure in an attempt to protect his cover and operation that had placed two children at risk. Whatever he felt about his colleague’s right to the badge, however, paled against the significance of an Auror finally bloodying the nose of the office’s most notorious assailant. Kingsley need only think on the lives lost in the convictions Narcissa and her team sought to overturn to rejoice in her humiliation.

Now, it seemed as though all of her efforts to discredit the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had redoubled on her and the whole of House Black in the morning press.

It was not a victory, he knew, not precisely, but it felt like one.

Or, rather, would have, if not for the body they two had together discovered in a shallow grave.

“I never thought I would be in a Manchester morgue with a coke-snorting attorney so hell-bent on dissembling the Emergency Protections Act that she’s solicited the help of a Muggle Born, not yet of school age, to make a plaster model of the teeth of some Jane Doe,” Kingsley commented as Narcissa again wriggled then wiped her nose, a small trickle of blood trailing on the sleeve of the white sweater she had worn to the morgue, cosy as though she meant to suggest the same of herself.

“No? You really haven’t been in this job long, have you Shacklebolt?” Narcissa quipped in return. “You need a bump?”

“I’ll abstain,” he returned coldly. She had bought the tiny bag in his plain sight, possibly to test his jurisdiction, possibly to discover on whose initiative he had followed her from that windblown North Sea fortress down to London, and then back up to Manchester to present a warrant whilst she plead her pitch to the Muggle parents of a young witch whom she vaguely knew. Harry and Dudley’s friend, she had explained of the girl. The parents had been her dentists for years and the mother, especially, liked having a witch for a patient, telepathy making for less of a one-sided conversation during cleanings as Narcissa could cheerily discuss tabloid fodder with a vacuum and tiny spade working their way around her open mouth as no other patient of Dr Granger’s could.

Narcissa had him at a disadvantage, one he had well anticipated, and perhaps finding this in a mind he could otherwise reasonably conceal, she had been deceptively open throughout their dealings of the past two days, stating every intention plainly as though to challenge him to find the lie her truths obscured.

Scrimgeour had sent him to accompany the sisters to Azkaban to seek out a former Death Eater who might yet know how to get into Grimmauld Place. Dumbledore’s orders had been every bit as plain but had left more room yet for questioning. Narcissa, or so the leader of the resistance suspected, had long known a truth which he had only just had confirmed for himself, and such confessed her as an ally of the cause. Kingsley was to assist her however he may (giving the considerations and constraints of his employment) insofar as this assistance kept Narcissa from the family seat for the duration of the evening.

Dumbledore had intended to confront the assembled Order members, plus Regulus Black and Lucius Malfoy, and thought he would learn more with regard to the mission on which everyone present had individually embarked without Narcissa’s input leading all to feel as though they were being questioned under caution.

He intended that she ought one day to succeed him as the Head Warlock of the Wizengamot, but the evening, he fretted, would be ill served by litigation.

Hearing this, it was all Kingsley could do not to scream.

If Narcissa Malfoy ever made judge, even at a lower-level court, Kingsley swore he would resign from the DMLE in disgust. Most of the force would, rent and mortgages notwithstanding. He did not like her reading of the law. It was too procedural, too mechanical, too exacting to take anything of the human element into consideration. Even her crusade to free her cousin from a wrongful conviction had nothing to do with familial affection.

News of Dora and Bill’s return to safety had reached Azkaban before their party.

Narcissa had wanted to return at once, an act her sister Andromeda had encouraged her towards without any immediate intention to follow. For her part, Andromeda intended to sit with Bellatrix; her tone said enough about how she felt about Narcissa’s inclusion in this constellation.

Something passed between the two Black sisters in silence, though if it was magic or some equally dark combination of guilt and blame Kingsley could not tell.

‘Come,’ Narcissa instructed him. ‘Andy heads the fifth ward; she can handle her own. I, on the other hand, cannot produce a patronus. I assume such is a necessary precaution in such a place?’ Kingsley said nothing but followed her with his lynx as she walked dark and lonely corridors, exchanging alms in the form of pleasant news and fictions with the inmates still in a state to recognise her. In return she was met with questions about Bellatrix’s health from near to everyone she spoke to.

‘Bella, or so we have been told, is still herself, at least, she is much herself as she can ever be. Nor was Sirius irrecusably altered from the time he spent here.’ She shook her head before Kingsley could interrupt. ‘It is not a question of using occlumency. If it were Dementors would prove no deterrent and they both would have been able to escape. No, I see it with others, who is affected and otherwise.

‘My sister does not suffer fear or remorse. She never has. I believe she is glad of this place where the only harm that can be delivered unto her is in her own hands, and hers have always been steady. There is nothing of her from which the guards might feast, and so, she seldom warrants their chilling caress. I only mention this because I remember her sentencing. Clearly, as it were. Every detail. It wakes me in the dead of night when least I expect it and I am sure it always shall. She sat there proud, unrepentant, and without protest to answer the charges for which she was to be imprisoned without trial –’

‘She was caught in the act,’ Kingsley had told her.

‘You misunderstand me,’ Narcissa answered. ‘I only use her example as a curious contrast. Do you recall how Barty Crouch Jr behaved during the same sentencing? He was the last to die here and I wonder, oh I wonder, who they buried in the grave that bears his name.

‘No one receives visitors in Azkaban unless their case has been accepted into appeals which Bella never sought and never shall, or, unless they are dying, which also seemed curious and unlikely to the prisoners, given the sorts susceptible. Everyone keeps bringing up Barty, who did not last a year. After his father’s visit, it was … as though he accepted his fate. Quietly. Death took him quickly and the Dementors, who took so many tears in terrors until that point, became as disinterested as they have ever been with Bella. So, what do you make of it? Do you suppose his father murdered him within his cell?’

Kingsley had wanted to see the cell. Then, he had wanted to see the corpse.

‘I think you need a warrant,’ Narcissa had said, smiling. ‘Preferably from the Met. You know the DMLE is never going to pursue this of its own accord, but I bet I can make Barty beg to be tried by the body he did so much to dismantle.’

Had Kingsley known her plans involved muggles, he would have left his curiosity buried on that rocky beach with the bones pretending to belong to a convict. Bones they were now here to identify.

Narcissa gave a small shrug that turned into a long stretch and returned her attention to Hermione, who had grown so focused on the assignment she had already completed that Narcissa was beginning to fret she might unintentionally influence the outcome.

“How long does it normally take?” she asked, hoping to give the child a distraction more than actually caring for the answer.

“At room temperature? On a living person? Five minutes, give or take. Down here, it is so cold I – can’t you, can’t magic –”

“Hmm,” Narcissa considered, producing one of Draco’s pullovers with a flick of her wand and placing it over Hermione’s shoulders. “I’m sure there is some charm that would speed up the process, but which could, in turn, impede our efforts here entirely. You see, because the parties involved hold so much influence within the Wizengamot, a kind of combined court and parliament for wizards and witches, I’ll have to bring charges before the Crown Court. Now, do you know overmuch about trials by combat, the kind that they used to have in times of old, where those of status could demand the judgement of God by sword as opposed to facing that of man and his laws?” she asked, meeting the young girl with a childish enthusiasm Kingsley did not suppose was feigned for anyone’s benefit.

“Does that still exist among wizards?” Hermione frowned.

“In a kind-of,” Narcissa explained. “It is exceedingly rare that a wizard is subpoenaed by a muggle court, but in such instances, he can demand that the matter be heard by the Wizengamot, that it to say, by a jury of his peers. When that happens, any evidence presented to a muggle court is turned over, and if any of it is found to have been tampered with through the use of magic, it is thrown out as impermissible, giving the nature of the original charge. However, evidence common to muggle investigations that is not otherwise considered in magic-court, has to be accepted as such.”

“That sounds like they don’t want wizards to get in trouble if they break the law,” Hermione stated, frowning further.

“Oh, it is corrupt to be sure,” Narcissa agreed. “But we can use their loophole against them here. Now, this wizard, the one who I might argue had a more ruinous impact on wizarding Britain than even Voldemort,” she began to explain, taking too much as a given.

“Who?” Hermione asked.

“Right, you wouldn’t know,” Narcissa considered. “Voldemort was this fascist-adjacent Half Blood who rose to power on the Dark Arts when you were just a wee babe and fell around the same time –”

“Voldemort? Not ‘The Dark Lord’?” Shacklebolt interjected sceptically. It was quite possibly the worst explanation of good versus evil he had ever heard offered to an eight-year-old, but that was almost beside the point.

“I feel comfortable in the assumption that you have never done anything to manage a hereditary estate,” Narcissa answered briskly. “The Dark Lord! Really! As though the man ever spared a thought for how rising carbon emissions are affecting weather patterns and had to subsequently repurpose his resources as to protect the continued prosperity of those dwelling on his estates. ‘Lord!’ Even if I had not once shared something of the weight of an actual crown, I doubt as though I could call him that with any degree of earnestness.”

“I both never realised Lucius’ titles came with such responsibilities, nor that anyone to meet a mass murderer calling themselves ‘Lord’ anything would extend their hand and ask where they held their estates. Are you fucking with me or are you honestly that pedantic and quite possibly thick?”

“Oh wait,” Narcissa blinked. “No. I get it. We were all meant to bow, were we?” she sneered. “The man knew neither his followers nor his foes if he expected such treatment! Regardless,” she shifted back to Hermione, “Voldemort was a Dark Wizard whose chosen name you are like to seldom hear when you enter our world, for his legacy, his only lasting legacy, was creating so much fear around a word in a language he did not even properly speak – in French the ‘t’ is silent, you see – that to date the Wizarding World shies from saying it.”

“You really have a tick when it comes to nomenclature, don’t you?” Kingsley shook his head. Narcissa ignored him.

“Barty Crouch, on the other hand, the guy you and I are going to bury,” she explained to the Muggle Born, “who rose to power within the Ministry of Magic on Voldemort’s reputation during the war, made himself judge, jury and, as we seek to prove executioner – personally enacting and enforcing legislation that rendered all other wizarding law arbitrary.”

“R. B. Tra – Ry?” Hermione repeated.

“Useless,” Narcissa adjusted, “for how can anyone consent to being governed by these without the promise of their protection? Summary sentencing on suspicion, conjecture, rather than argument and evidence has done more to create the hell of Voldemort’s vision than targeted terrorism,” she ranted. “Sorry. That phrase – targeted terrorism – is oxymoronic and to an extent inaccurate, but I am exhausted and better wording fails me.”

Kingsley wondered how much Hermione was able to follow giving the vocabulary Narcissa employed in a speech as sporadic as her thoughts.

“Voldemort was an evil wizard. Crouch sought to bring him down by changing the law that the coppers could hunt down Voldemort’s followers with greater ease. And Narcissa doesn’t believe in good or evil, just in courtroom procedure and proper pronunciation, evidently,” he simplified for the girl’s sake.

“Shacklebolt, I can’t imagine that you would be here if you thought I was wrong on this count, regardless of what you think of me,” Narcissa sighed.

“I want to know who is buried in his son’s supposed grave,” Kingsley gave gruffly.

“Couldn’t magic help you with that?” Hermione asked again. Kingsley guessed that her exposure to magic thus far had been restricted, largely, to children around her age asking her how muggles did common things without spells, and her falling under the logical assumption that magic could accomplish anything.

“Oh! I can’t manage with the Dark Arts. Inspector, you likely know a thing or two about necromancy. Inferi … not really talkers, are they?” Narcissa answered. Was she joking?

“Not usually. Your cousin certainly has a way of making a headache of himself though,” Kingsley continued the jest at her expense.

“Toujours Pur, mon ami,” Narcissa dismissed in rapid-fire French. “Nous sommes spéciaux comme ça. That is how we do,” she translated. “But no, Hermione, because this case necessarily needs first to be brought before a Crown Court, any magical interference with the evidence would have it thrown out when it reaches the Wizengamot. Ordinarily, this serves as a stipulation for protecting people, well, people like me from prosecution, and I am willing to gamble that Crouch is victim to the same Prue Blood arrogance and subsequent ignorance of which the Inspector here continues to make warrantless allusions with regard to my person. Crouch will demand a trial in the Wizengamot, and by God will I give him one,” she swore.

“Using muggle forensics?”

“I’m pretty shit at magic, but magic is pretty shit at arriving at conclusive evidence. Our courts tend to rely instead on witness testimony, which is never exact and under the extrajudicial procedures that have come to replace fair and free trials in the past decade, never examined. For example, Shacklebolt here claims to have seen my cousin kill thirteen people on a crowded street with a single curse seven years ago.”

Hermione gasped. “You don’t mean … but Sirius, Sirius is so nice. I met him at Dudley’s birthday, when I was trying to teach Ginny and Pansy about hopscotch, and he helped us draw a course where the squares changed and … and no one said. He can’t be a dark wizard! I mean, Pansy hasn’t a kind thing to say for anyone, and even she didn’t say anything about Sirius being … being evil,” she shifted, squinting at Kingsley. “Are you sure?”

“This is, of course, bullshit,” Narcissa answered, “but as he genuinely believes it to be true, were we to give him Veritaserum, he would say ‘Sirius Black killed thirteen people with a single curse,’” she mimicked, lowering her voice an octane. “And that would satisfy the needs of the prosecution. By the same notion, were we to force the same truth serum on a flat-earther, they would tell you with perfect conviction that the earth is flat, but that would hardly make it true, would it?” she winked.

“Then why do you call it ‘truth serum’?” Hermine wondered, fairly.

“Because wizards seldom bother to differentiate between opinion and fact. Ordinarily, there are hard restrictions under which the substance can be used, and court testimony is not among them, but at our last deposition, Prosecution was given the go-ahead and our inspector was more than willing to comply,” Narcissa’s face twisted into a cruel smile.

“I would have objected on moral grounds,” Hermione insisted.

“I know, Sweetheart. And don’t worry, I used it to the advantage of the defence. Shacklebolt, when muggles discover victims of the Avada, what do their coroners typically cite as the cause of death?” she repeated from her courtroom performance several weeks past.

“Gas leak,” Kingsley begrudged her.

“And why?” she chimed.

“Narcissa,” he warned. This was not the time for her theatrics.

“The Killing Curse leaves no physical evidence, so how do you seek to explain Peter Pettigrew’s finger and how do you dare point it at my client?”

“You have made your point. You made the same several weeks ago.”

“No. I made headlines. My point will be made when the rule of law ceases to be another tool of political expedience. Don’t you get it?” she implored. “You predicated the society Voldemort preached and named it justice as some kind of twisted consolation.”

“Why do you think I am here now?” he countered.

“Orders, or perhaps The Order?” she tried, stressing the pronoun with a sneer. “Regardless, your presence affords my investigation a sense of legitimacy it might otherwise lack.”

“Which would frighten you more?” Kingsley asked after a long pause.

“Do I seem frightened?” Narcissa returned.

“Not at all,” he answered.

Narcissa returned to Hermine’s side, watching intently as the child removed the plaster the way her father had instructed her to. Being a muggle, Dr Granger could not come to an Auror outpost to make the copy himself, though presumably he would handle matters once Hermione returned to his office with it.

“The Order,” Narcissa answered quietly without meeting his gaze.

“Really?” Kingsley wondered. “You are more popular among their ranks.”

“Which means only that Albus has taken something from me I cannot hope to reclaim through reasoned argument. That more is at risk.”

Is there not something to be gained through defeat? Kingsley thought. You like the girl, Narcissa, or you would, had she another blood status.

“You assume quite too much,” Narcissa told him.

“Will it make a difference,” Hermione piped up, “if she is a muggle or mage?”

To this Narcissa shrugged. “If it is a muggle I could move for harsher sentencing. Even our own laws seem to favour them. Here is hoping.”

“Can I come? To the Wizengamot, I mean? When this all goes to trial?”

Narcissa blinked. It was not often that someone could take her by surprise, Kingsley imagined. “Really? You want to? Draco has no interest whatsoever in what I do. Neither does Lucius, not really. Actually, no one in my friend group who isn’t also in the profession cares much for the minutia of it. Remus is the only one who ever asks, and I think only in an attempt at distraction.”

“I want to!” Hermine raised her hand as though she meant to volunteer for more than just sitting there. “I want to help make a difference, if this is going to be my world one day, too.”

Narcissa seemed to consider this. “If you are not at school, if your mum and dad say it is okay, and if you are still so inclined. It could be years before this goes before a court. First, we have to identify her.”

“She probably is a muggle. I mean, because she has two fillings,” Hermione devised, pointing her discovery out to Narcissa. “If you’ll allow me to take a sample, my mum and dad will be able to say when the work was done and in a lot of cases where.”

“I trust your knowledge in that respect, but, oh Darling, I hate to be the one to disappoint you, but not all wizards bother themselves to floss.”

Hemione smiled as though she wanted to say something naughty. “I know. But I shouldn’t, because of doctor-patient confidentiality, just I heard my mum yelling at someone I now know is a wizard when she dropped me off at ballet one time.”

“There are a number of fields we have yet to break into, dentistry on the scale that you muggles have it is a solution to the modern problem of processed sugar which magic has not found a way of contending. While it might not be as likely that we are looking at a witch, statistically speaking, of course, we witches are not common in the general population, it is not outside of the realm of possibilities. I like it,” she seemed to decide on the spot. “Dentists! Witches used to help their communities when they were at liberty to do so, hundreds of years ago when medicine as you would know it was less advanced, and now muggles get to do the same for us.”

“And sometimes I have the impression that they would try burn us for it if they but could. No one ever wants to play with me when they find out my parents are dentists. I think I have more witch friends because they are not sure what that means and are not scared of it.”

“A secret?” Narcissa winked. “No witch was every burnt at the stake. At least, no witch ever died that way. And the prescribed punishment for witchcraft was hanging. Burning was for a change of treason, which often went hand-in-hand.” Fucking hell the woman was pedantic.

“I know!” Hermine answered with enthusiasm what Kingsley thought better met with an eyeroll. “Dudley’s dad gave me a book about Hogwarts and back in the seventeenth century they had classes on how to survive burnings, but then this group of girls spent a summer getting ‘caught’ in various guises, like, as a kind of game. They were all expelled.”

“One of them was an ancestor of mine,” Narcissa winked. “You and Dudley, you are quite close, aren’t you?”

“He’s my only friend in dance class. And he’s – ” she stopped.

“I know,” Narcissa said. Kingsley wished he knew what Hermione had not.

“Does he?” Hermione squinted.

“If you want,” Narcissa offered, “I can teach you how to find out without even having to ask. I think you’ve the mind for it. It is not permissible in court though, just to say. So, if you want to be a lawyer someday, it is still a lot of hard work and a whole lot more hard reading.”

“I want to be a judge,” Hermione declared.

Narcissa laughed. “Damn girl, same,” she answered, though, Kingsley felt, she was speaking mostly to him.

Chapter Text

Light crept in through the crystal cut glass like a skilled thief, not yet willing to risk the sharp angles that would fill the fifth-floor room with thousands of variegated prisms when dawn grew closer. Nymphadora Tonks blinked as it gently caressed her cheek, bidding time to make an exception and hasten the sun across the horizon.

She loved this room with its sly tricks of light. It was the only one like it at the Manor, perhaps anywhere, and it had been hers for the past fourteen months.

And soon, soon enough at least, it would be forfeit.

Time, which in the mornings felt so slow, was certain to speed her to bittersweet goodbye. She would leave this place in two weeks for her seventh term at Hogwarts, and again in ten months without returning, when the train stopped for her at Kings Cross for a final time, when she packed her trunk in a taxi to take her a few blocks and forever away.

Tonks loved the Manor and its machinations, her extended family and their rigid formality that met crudely with unexpected bouts of shameless fun. When she spoke of home she spoke of here. But she was ready to return to London.

At least she had been telling herself as much since last night’s owl post had arrived to meet with every expectation she had built since first she sought her mother’s childhood home.

She was ready to return.

But London, for all of its bustle and brilliance, was always overcast.

She wondered if sunlight had a secret alcove at Grimmauld Place where it would sneak in to make mischief, or, as she rather suspected, the seat she would occupy came with a kind or nominal determinism.

Black.

Lady Black.

She reached lazily for the letter again, though she had spent the night prior locked in the bedroom reading it. Reading and re-reading until she had it all-but memorised, until her eyes were so full of words and wet and a great number of things that did not lend themselves to simple definition.

She thought that Lucius and Narcissa would have approved, would have welcomed the prospect, had the proposal been made to anyone else. It was the same pride manifest as disappointment that had coloured every discussion Tonks had ever had with her parents before taking her uncle up on his offer of quarter. In anticipation of his coming objections, she felt rather small in a way she had previously been able to supress in these surroundings.

Her parents, she realised, would be here come breakfast, likely before. So would Remus, Severus, and their boys, joining the table with many of the guests who had arrived from abroad days prior and the little girls who seemed to live here, whom Tonks jokingly referred to as her aunt’s ‘ladies in waiting’ prior to having her French corrected for the hints of English and Breton that broke through in her pronunciations. Her eyes filled with tears again, thinking about Hermione frowning over a Rune translation she had been set, whilst Pansy, who had long since lost interest in the work itself (recognising it as distraction rather than something that might assist in actual casework) asked as casually as she might what Draco had really been off learning from Sirius the day-over, suspecting (rightly, as it happened) that it was a bit more interesting than their set readings.

Odd, how small matters that annoyed if they bore any immediate significance tallied among the things that she was now certain she would come to miss.

Sirius was rather meant to be instructing Dudley in magic and had been for the past year or so, not that he had gotten far in this venture and not that it was, strictly speaking, his fault. Dudley had elected a spot at a footballing academy rather than one at Hogwarts, whereas Harry may well have forfeited his spot a year prior to taking it for having made Sirius a casualty of his own internal conflict.

Poison, or rather serpentine venom employed as such, arresting Sirus’ nervous system as he casually picked at a bit of kibble which he kept for the sole purpose of putting his flatmates off. Fortunately, he had not been able to consume enough to kill prior to being rendered incapable, but he had been at St Mungo’s since the end of May all the same. Tonks knew who was responsible. But she could not blame Harry – not when Professors Snape and Lupin had decided it best to keep it from her until after finals. Her last conversation with either of them had erupted into a screaming row that had lost her ten points and Hufflepuff the House Cup along with them. She did not want to return to Hogwarts. Not yet. She was not even sure she wanted to see her former-favourite teachers at the party that evening, much less at breakfast.

Tonks bit her bottom lip. She wanted Sirius to come, to distract from the tension that was sure to settle by mocking his cousin’s mimosas and intentionally mispronouncing the name of every hors d'oeuvres to appear on his plate.

She wanted Harry to come, too, but Severus might decide moments before they were set to catch the portkey that it would be in everyone’s better interest to stay home with him instead.

No, she tried to tell herself. No. Moony would never allow it for all of his faults.

And even if Sirius headed her mother’s caution at the pre-celebratory breakfast, he was sure to grow weary of it in due course. He would be at the Manor well before the party if he had to run on all fours to make it. And he would start the dumbest debate with Severus as he always did. And stop Molly from putting on Celestina’s latest, saying ‘Dora’s an adult now, but fuck’s sake Mol, she’s not old,’ to general reproachment from the woman approaching her fortieth with dread.

Sirius would come.

And so would his brother.

And Regulus would ask her to dance if Uncle Lucy did not first ask him to leave.

Tonks wriggled her nose as she fought back tears, feeling her hair change the way it always did when she was feeling melancholy, nostalgic, or nervous. Light was beginning to flood into the room, and she remembered the first time she had ever come up here with her uncle, wide-eyed with wonder, asking absently, of herself far more than him how a place so shrouded in darkness could contain such multitudes, changing her eyes to reflect colours she had never before seen.

He had said it reminded him of her.

‘But I ruin everything,’ Tonks had replied softly, thinking of how her adventure with Bill Weasley to steal one of her imprisoned aunt’s old books from the Blacks’ ancestral seat had ended in her uncle having to offer concessions to Number Ten, to Regulus nearly dying at her hand, to her parents agreeing to attempting ‘amicable uncoupling.’ They had not had any success on the ‘amicable’ part of their oh-so-posh breakup, though they managed the bit about not being able to be in the same room as one another and all of their misplaced anger and blame.

It had been all her fault.

Lucius did not say anything to contradict her, which Tonks remembered appreciating. At least he was not patronising the way most grown-ups had then seemed. ‘As do I,’ he had finally answered after what had seemed a very long while. And then they had sat in a truly perfect silence until the light began to fade, until Dobby came to tell them that dinner was set, only to be reproached that Lucius would take his in his office that evening and that tonight his niece need not appear in the great hall, but that staring tomorrow such would be a requirement. He had explained a great number of rules for mealtime that seemed to have little to do with the task of eating.

Perhaps it was because she would not be allowed to wear ripped jeans or cross her legs at his table that she joined him in his office to take her last supper of the summer in carefree comfort. And then, somewhere between his comparing star charts against stock projections, he had begun her political education proper.

And now Tonks knew how to well and truly ruin everything within reach.

Soon, she would rise from bed before practically everyone else in the household, tiptoe (and thus likely trip) her way into the dungeon kitchen to join her uncle for the tea that he insisted upon brewing himself before meeting matters of great importance. She would remove the mood ring Remus had brought her from Rome, now permanently green from wear, placing it on the upturned cup to cause it to cool. She would read her tea leaves as he read the letter. And then he would ask her if she saw the same things that he did by way of saying ‘no’.

Because this time it would be ‘no’ as opposed to the ‘convince me’ to which she had long been accustomed.

He would wish that she were his all the while, too. He often did. He had never said as much, but she knew it, and suspected she would have even if she had never been the beneficiary of Professor Snape’s private Legitimacy lessons.

Everyone seemed to.

The Malfoys did not follow salic tradition in the same way the Blacks did.

At Easter, Corban Yaxley had been at the Manor for ‘discovery’ – which meant something far different than when Arthur Weasley paid a visit, and which Tonks had no doubt that little Hermione or Pansy would be able to explain far better than she ever could. He and Narcissa were arguing opposite sides of the same case, which meant that they had to share evidence, and for some reason, their table.

Lucius made no efforts to conceal his general dislike of the man, and Tonks had said something dumb to diffuse personal tensions, which the adults all mistook as politically apt.

Perhaps it had been. Tonks had not really a chance to reflect.

Yaxley had commented on the shame that the curse of the once noble House of Black was again so manifest in this new generation though their surnames had changed. Rightly, Bellatrix should have been heir as the eldest and inarguably most capable of leadership. Had she been raised the rule, she would have likely never bent the knee to the Dark Lord whom she had personally despised, would have never permitted Orion to banish Andromeda, and was it not equally as unfortunate that Nymphadora now had no claim on the family seat as a result, that the Twenty-Eight was cursed to endure either Sirius or Regulus in that role should their legal dispute ever end?

And how very tragic that Lucius could not name the same girl in his own plan of succession. She was a half-blood, granted, but then, so was he if rumours were to be believed. Perhaps a few additional years under his tutorage and she would have the good sense to hide the shame.

‘Twenty-one,’ Tonks had corrected coldly. ‘The Blacks and Crouches are without representation at present. The Abbotts, Longbottoms, Prewetts, and Weasleys refuse the association and company, and I believe Shacklebolt was correct in the observation he gave at your last gathering, the first, I might add, that the family has attended in near-on two decades that such division defeats the objective of unity. If we were still in the practice of arbitrating our internal disputes rather than relying on dismissal, the body might yet prove politically advantageous to all.

‘The ‘tragedy’ if you are looking for one, Sir Corban, is not one of my birth, but rather your own bluster. You can hardly call for a general election with a fourth of the families abstaining. Frankly, in your position I let would let it go. My Aunt Narcissa is a controversial figure, but her crusade has more support than I fear you appreciate, and the families that we could reasonably coerce to returning to the fold to meet the four-fifths threshold, that is to say, the Blacks, Shacklebolts, Prewetts, and Weasleys would throw their support behind my uncle rather than yourself of whichever candidate you mean to promote. Worry about getting Crouch off of murder charges as opposed to the plights of the House Malfoy and Black. Or was that speech simply an admission that you well recognise that my aunt is going to bury you in a half-forgotten grave as your client allegedly did his wife?’

Nothing she said was a lie.

Except.

Except it would not be Uncle Lucius leading Britian’s most powerful bloc into the twenty-first century. At least, not for long.

Draco would never have dared.

Likely, he never would learn to.

And when she could bring herself to inform her uncle about her plan of usurpation, he would likely hear all she had to say with that understanding about his own son banging in the back of his mind all the while. He would have been proud, she knew, if she were not his niece. Same as her mum and dad might have been were she not their daughter.

“Were you protecting me again, my little dragon?” Tonks whispered softly to the boy snuggled to her, snoring lightly, clutching the letter she sought in his still-small fist. What she meant – and what Draco doubtlessly heard as he awoke to her efforts to take it back – was “Did you ride here on the night mere?”

He often did. Still. At ten. Even though Narcissa had taken pains to fill his chambers with companions to keep the bad dreams at bay.

“No,” Draco answered drowsily. “I could not mount for I could not sleep. Mione and Pansy were in a proper quarrel all the night through. I came when they tried to involve me.”

“Oh?” Tonks asked, giving her cousin a conspiratorial smile, bidding him to distract her from the imminent with that of very little long-term importance.

“Mione wants to quit ballet. Pansy wants that she continues with it, so she can spy on some muggle girls neither of them much like. Dudley kissed her, Pansy, that is, but he kisses a lot of girls and Mione said it was Pansy’s fault for letting it happen and letting it mean so much, that it had nothing to do with her, Mione, and to please leave her out of it. And then – and then Mione said that Dudley was not the only wizard getting a better pre-Hogwarts education than they were. Told her that I was always coming ‘round to take lessons from Sirius … at least, at least before,” he stopped, frowning.

Dudley Dursley had been given special dispensation to begin his magical education early on account of his only being able to take lessons part-time. The club was aware, Professor McGonagall having been on friendly enough terms with Sir Alex since the school had purchased a number of Thestrals from him a few years prior for the purposes of breeding. And so, whenever the other boys left for their regular lessons, Dudley met the Black brothers at the gate and practiced levitating cones and flags with the wand that otherwise had to stay in his tutors’ procession.

Evidently, none of his teammates found this particularly odd. For one, Dudley was a fair few years younger than most of the lads he played with, size and skill closing the gap of years. He played in goal, which meant that much of his training was separate and specialised as it was. And then there was the fact that he was dyslexic, which at one point had been a cause of personal embarrassment and now served as an easy explanation as to why he never shared the same classroom.

Dudley had always been popular with the girls at Twinkle Toes, from everything Tonks had heard on the subject, the boy had numbers that would have put even Madame Zabini to shame if ever they sat to compare (an unlikely prospect, as she was presently married again and Sirius, as such, was engaging in far fewer thirsts.)

Hermione, still in the boys-are-gross stage of childhood development, let this annoy her, nearly as much as it annoyed Pansy, who had discovered the pastime potential of the other sex around the same time Ron and Ginny had told her that Harry said that Dudley already had his own wand and that he would not have to go to Hogwarts like the rest of them. This made him cool in the eyes of ten-year-olds (who were not Hermione, who for her part though he was cheating himself out of a top-rate education.) Tonks doubted it made much difference, to Dudley at least, if he did not want to be a wizard anyway.

Harry was likely the real victim of all of his cousin’s special circumstances.

At least, he would have been if Sirius had been a better teacher from the start.

As she understood matters, largely through correspondence, Severus had tried to do right by his slightly elder adoptive son by tasking Sirius with his education. Regulus, who moved in with his brother as to be better positioned to monitor the Dark Lord living within, or simply through, Sirius’ godson, had since grown frustrated watching his brother’s efforts and taken up Dudley’s instruction himself, bored as he likely was on suspension.

Regulus often wrote her at school, asking her advice and opinions on the lesson plans he conjured from experiences badly misremembered from the decades he had spent immersed in the dark arts. Tonks offered her corrections, old notes she no longer needed, and general tips, receiving answers on subjects not even addressed in the restricted section in exchange. Regulus told her what she should focus on in class for her finals, what would later become important during Auror training, and, when he was feeling particularly cheeky, what Remus and Severus were planning for upcoming classes in case she needed to take a mental day.

She could accept that he was probably the best tutor Dudley could have found.

Sirius, however, was livid, and decided to teach Harry all the magic he might without a wand of his own after regular school let out in retaliation, as though he meant to prove his credentials by forcing the rivalry which he and his brother had long shared on a pair of cousins who were otherwise wont to work together to get their way.

This turned out to be in error, not solely because of the arguments it caused at the Snape-Lupin-Potter-Dursley-Black household on the rare evening when everyone was around, but because Voldemort fed off this energy and Harry, for whatever knowledge Sirius thought to impart, was far from powerful enough to fend off the Dark Lord when he thought to try his hand.

And then Draco, upon hearing Severus complain to Lucius at Christmas about the hell his good intentions had helped create, found Sirius, and suggested that since legilimency was useless against him in his Animagus form, maybe he could teach Harry how to turn into a frog or something, and then the Dark Lord would not be able to take his mind for his own, either. It was advanced magic, sure, but it did not involve a wand, and maybe, if it was not too much trouble, he could teach him, too? His mother was in Manchester enough with Hermione and her parents, and if they said that he was learning to touch for scrofula she would not object, and when he was teaching them other things – the useful things that Dudley got to learn just because he was better at kicking a ball than he was at catching one from a broom – he, Draco, could warn when ‘Tom’ was manifest, and he had a good track record of getting him to back off, and, and, and –

Apparently, Draco had even said ‘please’.

It was a good arrangement, or would have been, if not for the girls.

The two had met at Dudley’s eight birthday party, and at first, Pansy had been happy with the role she had given herself of explaining everything about the wizarding world that she felt Hermione had been misrepresented (which was, Tonks gleaned from hearing the girls in their play – literally everything.) That was, until, Hermione had been brazen enough to ask Narcissa to teach her how to read Runes, until she, in turn, had something to explain to Pansy.

Pansy could not handle the perceived indigence of being lectured by a ‘Mudblood’ and demanded that Narcissa take her on as a weekend pupil as well.

Tonks was half-certain that that was not all the girls were learning in pre-law. They had picked up some French at Malfoy Manor, of course, some choice Berton swear-words, and occasionally they would look up from their readings to engage in uncomfortably long staring contests that ended in even longer bouts of giggles. Regulus said that legilimency and occlumency were easier to learn the younger one began, and Narcissa was likely of the same mind. The girls never said anything about this, but then, they would not have to.

What they were saying in conspiratorial whispers of late was that they thought Draco and Harry were somehow doing something far more interesting up in Cokeworth, that they had to figure out what it was.

Draco refused to tell them. Then, human transfiguration was illegal and unethical, however practical it might prove in extenuating circumstances. They would be sure to tell him so. What was more, they would be sure to tell his mother, who would be sure to put an end to it.

If Hermione thought boys were gross and Pansy thought them intriguing, Draco was beginning to understand that he thought about boys a great deal more than he should. He never wanted to talk about them in any capacity.

The girls knew as much, and Tonks had less trouble imagining them using this fact to their shared advantage than she did with the idea that Hermione Granger and Pansy Parkinson were really sour with one another over Dudley Dursley.

“But it is not – I don’t have a wand like Dudley does, not yet,” Draco stammered in his recollection. “And the only reason Mother permits it is because she thinks he’s teaching me how to touch for scrofula. It is not … I can’t show them what he’s really teaching me, can I? So why even bring it up? And I can’t help Pansy with her problem either. It is not as though there are ever muggles around when we’re having lessons. And Dudley usually isn’t there, either. And they are both right. About kissing.”

“Are they now?” Tonks raised an eyebrow. Draco averted his eyes as much as he might cuddled beside her, eventually electing to sit up and meet the day.

“Dora … you know, if you do this, what you are planning, you are going to have to kiss him,” he said slowly, as though exercising some great restraint as he returned her post to her. “You know that, right? You are going to have to kiss him, and hold his hand, and there is something else. Sirius told me. It is dreadful. I though he was lying, so I asked Father and he said it was true and that someday – but then he said I did not have to. And that it is fine if I don’t want to. I think … I think he’ll say the same to you.”

“I highly doubt that your father is going to lecture me on sex and sexuality,” she smirked, likewise sitting up on their mattress and throwing a slender arm around his small, hunching shoulders. “But that is not to say that he is wrong,” she paused, wondering how much Draco had been able to read in the dead of night and how much he had read into Regulus’ words. “If you never wish to marry, you needn’t, but if I don’t take my rightful place, yours might well be forfeit.”

“Let it be, then,” Draco sneered, struggling to free himself from the embrace that Tonks tightened against his efforts.

“You don’t like Regulus?” she asked. Few did. Though she did not want to admit it to herself, it was her intended’s greatest appeal on a personal level as well as a political one, but Draco was too sensitive to accept that and still far too young to understand the sorts of things that Tonks was still grappling with at seventeen.

“I don’t want you to go,” he answered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, freeing her arm to ruffle his hair before leaning over to kiss his forehead.

“Happy birthday, Dora,” he tried to smile.

“Oh! Oh!” she returned wholeheartedly, taking her wand from her nightstand to compel her silk robe from the door where it was hanging, draping it over the tank-top and boxers in which she slept to present a more respectable figure. On a normal morning, she would be forced to dress before attending breakfast which her aunt, uncle, cousin and whomever else happened to be around. It seemed a curious condition of making cutting remarks about the morning news and arriving correspondence over tea and toast, and she wondered if she would have to further the practice at Grimmauld Place.

But what did it matter now? Today was her birthday. Today, for the first time, she could use magic to accomplish medial tasks and quickly became preoccupied elongating her hair and pinning it up into perfect space-buns with a swish of her wand.

“You know, it’s a tell, when you do your hair like that,” Draco observed. “You always leave it honey-brown when asking for a favour you know Father would otherwise hesitate from and he well knows it.”

Like Mum’s, Tonks thought. She and her mother had ultimately grown much closer since she and her father had moved out, Tonks electing to stay at the Manor when her father had found his own place a month or two into their trial separation because ‘she did want to choose between them’.

No. She had made her choice. And at Christmas her mum confessed that she felt that she had made the right one. Cissy and Lucy could offer more stability than she and dad could at the moment, and it was clearly having a positive effect, and she was so sorry for all the times she had been neglectful, when it seemed she was choosing her career over her family, when she levelled unfair and unwarranted accusations at her, Tonks’, academic progress. That she was so proud and, and, and –

Would she still be come evening?

Likely, she would resent her daughter for being better at a life she had not wanted for herself, and in a misguided effort at self-control would level Lucius with the blame, as though fault had to be found. As though blaming her brother-in-law for ambitions she simply would not understand would cause less damage than confronting her child personally or insulting Tonks’ betrothed, who despite blood ties and near-daily correspondence was, frankly just-some-guy to her. A surname rather than a given one. A means to an end.

But Tonks felt she had to end so much. If she and Regulus were to wed, it would end the dispute he and Sirius were having over the inheritance. Sirius had no interest in serving as the head of a great family, and Regulus had no aptitude for it. While Sirius could not conscious supporting his brother in the role he had himself rejected, he would freely abdicate his crown to her, if for no other reason than the amusement he would take in the knowledge that his ideological enemies had far more to loose rejecting Tonks’ claim. That a number of former Death Eaters would have to sit at the same table with a half-blooded, half-bred upstart accepting and addressing her as their equal in all things, less their own influence be diminished.

Regulus was a good ally, Tonks considered, and she might well come to like him if condemned to his company, but such was secondary. Lucius recognised that Narcissa was an inadequate consort, and Tonks, for her part, had been taking notes this past year on how to content her intended with a silent role. Like his cousin, he was resolute in ambitions which partnered well with Tonks’ own, but which existed absent of the body politic, giving him no cause to engage in a sport in which he had no skill so long as she could be seen to further his agenda.

And giving that his agenda was destroying Voldemort’s power? Well! Tonks would do well to shatter the remnants of his former support.

The families that had left the Twenty-Eight would return were the body perceived as a more progressive institution than it had proven in past decades, which the circumstances of her birth would see to. Lucius would easily be elected chairman, and under his arbitration a number of minor disputes could be resolved to the extent that mutually beneficial proposals that had long been tied up in legislation could be forced through the Ministry.

Yaxley had once admitted out of hand that he had not followed Voldemort for his ideas as much as he had for the market his rise to power opened for his own commercial ventures, accusing many of his former associates of the same callous approach. The debate, he had said, was framed in the press as being between white and dark magic, when in truth it was about trade and infrastructure and a number of other things that were more or less agreed in principle but not in practice, but such sold far fewer papers than death’s master hell-bent of eliminating muggles and their sympathisers.

Yaxley was an idiot, at least to admit as much, but he was not wrong, and Tonks reasoned that if she could utilize the Twenty-Eight to see some number of minor measures passed through parliament, if a handful of these families could be further enriched in the process, Voldemort’s lingering support would dissipate when faced with stability. He would not be able to ignite the fears and frustrations of his natural allies as once he had.

No one belonging to a great family sought immortality, certain as they were that their names would never die. Severus sometimes criticised the Blacks as being interchangeable, failing to understand that such could be seen as complimentary. Likewise, none of the Weasleys complained when their mother called them by the wrong first name, and only the twins ever sought to correct, and this merely in jest.

The Twenty-Eight, to the last, sought stability, continuity, only they called it ‘change’. Same as anyone, Tonks supposed.

Ultimately, she saw herself as the best positioned to deliver on the implied promises of decorated history.

Uncle Lucy would last a single term as Chairman, which was not to say that he would prove a poor fit for the role. He had vast estates to manage and little interest in the minutia of legislation. Owing to age restrictions, Tonks imagined someone like Kingsley or Arthur would be his immediate successor, but they both likewise had established, demanding careers, partners, and children.

Tonks’ ambitions within the DMLE were and would ever be hindered by her aunt’s endless series of appeals. All she would have with regard to immediate family was Regulus.

At least, she would have his last name, which was all she really needed from him.

She would employ it to head the shadow government into taking more progressive stances on social matters, forcing parliament to follow suit.

It was simple enough. Draco was legally classified being Muggle-Born despite his parentage. The Malfoys were too embedded, their wealth and influence too substantial to supplant, but he could not succeed his father in titles owing to the wizarding world with this perceived detriment attached to his public records.

Narcissa was on every politician’s short list to appoint Warlock in the highest judicial body when a spot became available, which meant only that many shared her no-exceptions reading of the written law. This reality was not contingent of Narcissa’s ever holding power, Tonks thought it more a measure of public sentiment.

Someday, she supposed within the next decade, Tonks would appeal to her fellows to pursue measures to eliminate blood status from consideration, for Draco would be less capable than his father of funding whatever project they wanted to realise without a seat at the table. As many held roles within the Ministry, no one would risk the corruption charges she would claim might rise from making a logical exception in her demand to strike status from the registers.

Some, she imagined, would support her plan on merit; others would simply be interested in the implications it entailed for their money, but it would not matter, she would see it done.

She would have her way.

She would reign.

As Uncle Lucy had raised her to.

That did not mean that he would not be furious.

“Your father hasn’t any aptitude for legitimacy whatsoever, I almost owe it to him. That said, he has the gift of foresight and has doubtlessly been having the conversation I intend for weeks if not months,” Tonks answered. Draco was right. She did make more of an effort to look ‘normal’ when she felt she could not rely on logic and reasoned argument. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes Uncle Lucy would just look at her and ask flatly what she had managed to break before she could even begin.

“You should listen to what he has to say, then. Have you ever been kissed, Dora?” Draco pressed.

“Have you?” Tonks teased. Draco looked down at his lap, declining to answer. His hands twisted over themselves, and he muttered something incoherent. “Draco, have you?” Tonks demanded. Like herself, he was usually loquacious, often to fault. What had happened to the boy? Had Pansy tried to show him how fun kissing was by way of mockery? Had Hermione told him about ‘cooties’?

“Harry said we had to,” Draco said, not meeting her gaze. “Or maybe Tom did. I could not tell. It was the first time in my life I Could. Not. Tell. The. Difference,” he over enunciated, “but it was right after Sirius was brought to St Mungo’s, right after Tom … he said, one of them did, anyway, that love was the only effective weapon against the dark arts. But it didn’t save Sev’s friend Mrs Potter,” he seemed to complain, “and it did not save Harry, not really. But I did because he was scared. And I was scared. And he’ll be here for your party and so will Sirius and –”

“And you are scared of what might happen?” Tonks tried.

Draco shook his head. “No. I plan to keep Sirius well away from Tom. I’ve been practicing.”

“Have you now?” she smiled.

“It isn’t impressive, but Sirius said its not like it is with you. We don’t get to pick what we become.”

“Show me!”

“It takes me a few minutes. And I’ve just almost … Harry says I’m meant to be a snake and not a dragon like I wanted, but I’ve not quite … I have the form about right but still have my hair and limbs when I do it, but I’m almost there.”

“Draco,” Tonks beamed. “I think you have it down. I think you’re Animagus form is a ferret, which fits, in the verbal sense,” she considered. “But show me! Pretty please, it is my birthday, and I am owed a present.”

“I already got you one. That rooster you saw at The Magical Menagerie last time we went to Diagon Alley together. His name is Sir Percival and he only eats red beans and rice and I have no idea how you are going to sneak him into Hogwarts but – ”

“I’m going to have Sirius charm him to look like an owl when we get to the platform, or maybe Regulus, if he can manage, cause Padfoot would probably tell Moony and he’d make me write lines but never you mind that! Show meeee!” she squealed.

“Since you can do magic now, legally, and all, if I show you, will you make my hair like yours for the party later?” he countered. “Not like it is now, but like it is normally?”

“You mean?” she flicked her wand, turning Draco’s hair bubble-gum pink. More because she could than because she cared.

“No, longer. To my chin, like you have yours usually.”

“Hmm,” Tonks considered, thinking up an incantation.

“Do you fancy him? Harry?” she asked, noting the way Draco had begun admiring himself in the mirror.

He considered this for a moment. “I don’t have a choice, either – do I? Like you and Regulus, he’s not really given me one.”

“You always have a choice, Draco,” Tonks frowned. “That is what your father meant, I’m sure, when he said – and anyway,” she shook her head. Draco was not ready to understand. “Regulus has even been a perfect gentleman since first we met.”

“And you’ve ever been happy to use him to help realise your own political aims,” Draco asserted. “Or my father’s. Sorry, I didn’t mean … I just, you should not have to claim a crown by such means just because my father fears I might never wear his. I needn’t. He achieved his aim. He restored his vassals to homes and holdings. I won’t ever live up to that.”

“Draco, this is all so much more complicated than you realise.”

“Is it? I want you to be happy, Dora. I wish you wanted that, too.”

Tonks choked hearing this. It was exactly what she was so afraid his father would say.

“Then show me what you’ve got, kid, and then scurry off and show your friends your hair that they can be proper jealous.”

“My dear cousin,” he laughed. “Those birds? Pansy and Mione? They always are.”

Chapter Text

January 1973

Bellatrix Lestrange decided upon seeing the postcode scribbled in his sister’s brief that she wanted nothing to do with any of it. Now that she was at ‘The Eel’s Head’ – the more respectable of Cokework’s two public houses, or so she had been told – she revised on her prior notions. She wanted nothing save to sample the establishment’s ‘top shelf’ vodka, which she supposed would be just as pedestrian like the rest of the place. She said as much, sneering.

“I don’t see what it matters,” Cissy said curtly. “You can’t possibly mean to have a drink.”

Narcissa looked wane, that was to say, more so that usual, the illusion of her once-infallible beauty shattered by unrest. She was too thin, owing to the eating disorders and occasional drug use which she excused with her workload, speaking frantically about dossiers and dispositions by way of distraction.

Bella never fell for it. For once, it did not seem as though Cissy was going to feign the usual pretences.

But then what would be the point?

From Bella’s necessarily limited understanding, a man, a muggle, had died drinking in one of the mismatched chairs of the scattered, shabby tables of this same pub a week prior. And now the whole town was celebrating his demise. Loud music played with that strange electric tinge that distorted everything which may have otherwise possessed something approaching beauty within the muggle world. Several people were crass enough to dance along to it.

Bella shot a glance at Cissy’s fiancé Lucius, wondering if he had cast an Impervious to serve as explanation, but he seemed uncomfortably engrossed in a conversation with an aging couple, themselves subdued by events or at least pretending towards basic decencies before their betters. This was not his work. If it were, he might have been enjoying himself.

Bella scowled. It seemed to her that this was just what muggles did with death. Small wonder the Dark Lord was so consumed with his want to escape it. She wanted to leave. She had seen well enough.

“I need one,” Bella replied sharply.

“But its muggle,” Cissy warned, her voice falling into a whisper. She continued to cup her head in her palms, but her tone told enough that she had not partaken, was not succumbing to the suggested substance’s effects.

“That’s why we’re doing vodka shots,” Bella explained dryly, perching on the barstool beside her sister. She removed her wand from her black patent leather handbag and pointed it at a bottle with a logo stylised to look like Cyrillic, bearing the name of one of those nineteenth-century novelists whose work Andy had read out of intrigue and Sirius had picked up to be even more of a prat than that which had become his standard. (‘It’s 800 pages and it’s muggle!’ he had bragged, taunted. Something. ‘It’s about a woman seeking intellectual release and physical autonomy within the confines of her restrictive society. She likely dies in the end. They all seem to. I hate books like that. Too close to home,’ Bella had returned blithely. Sirius had lost a bit of his enthusiasm, the bit that too often took his tongue. Lucky guess, she had thought.)

“I’ve never been able to taste the difference between a quality bottle and the sort you can pick up at a corner shop for a few Sickels, so it stands to reason that even Filth could not fuck the distillation up that bad,” Bella claimed, certain though she otherwise was that ‘Tolstoy Premium Russian Vodka’ would make her choke. “Come, drink with me. Explain what it is I am doing here by way of explaining how you wound up in this dystopian hellscape.”

“You know Sev, that boy I introduced you to at Christmas?”

“Mm. Half-blood, terrible hygiene, nothing approaching table manners, awkward conversationalist but surprisingly great in bed? He around?” Bella hated being answered with a question. It was poor form. But two could play at that.

Cissy wrinkled her upturned nose as though resisting the urge to sneeze.

Bella glanced dramatically over her shoulder, throwing her long, curly black hair as she did, lowering her heavy eyelids as though she were squinting to look for him before looking back at her sister with the same hint of seduction. Letting a stiletto drop to the floor, she ran her foot against Cissy’s leg, the same way ‘Sev’ had done to her at Christmas when she had been seated across from him, keeping eye contact the entire time.

‘Sev’. She decided she did not like it. He had seemed more a ‘Malichai’ or a ‘Balthazar’. He had not introduced himself, not exactly, but Bella had gathered that this was the ugly kid whom Sirius spoke of with such derision.

Her kid-cousin had been right, on that count, at least. But it mattered little.

Bella had not fancied the boy, not exactly, but she was rather intrigued by the idea of fucking someone who did not give a damn that she was Bella Black. Or, at least, that she had been until recently. She had never consummated her marriage, her husband more interested in putting her on offer than having her himself, and perhaps this would put him off the ideas he had been playing at. Rodolphus might yet come to know humiliation if he continued to refuse a lesser sense of shame.

‘Sev’ was not the sort of partner she would have ordinarily picked, but the very fact that she had chosen, in this instance, made up for that. The hour or so they had spent in one another’s exclusive company made up, or allowed her to suppress, much of the hurt that threatened to become defining.

Their brief connection was raw, and rough, and utterly impersonal.

He was simply there. He was no one.

It had been perfect.

He had ridden her from behind on Sirius’ old bed, looking unsure when she had teasingly told him to strangle her with the red-gold necktie she had found discarded on her cousin’s floor. Kreacher never cleaned in there. But then he had no cause to, not anymore. The boy told her that he wanted to hear her scream, if she then wanted to choke, he could think of something better they might do, but Bella wanted to suffer. She wanted to come as close as she dared to death that for once she might truly feel alive. He complied, grateful, Bella gleaned, that she would not be looking at him in the act. She came within minutes and when she thought she was though, he had laid her down and devoured her release until she found herself screaming for Cerce as she knew not his name. ‘I’m Bella,’ she said, again spent when at last he laid himself beside her, sweating in the cold stale air and choking for breath. ‘And?’ he smirked. ‘Got a fag, Bella?’

She offered Cissy a teasing smile as the memory tingled throughout her, knowing her sister would feel the same. Narcissa looked positively affronted, and Bella thought it served her right, never leaving anyone alone with their thoughts.

“It’s his father’s funeral. Stop that!” the younger of the two sisters snapped. “It’s inappropriate and truly uncalled for given the circumstance.”

“I’m inappropriate?” Bella scoffed. “Imagine, openly celebrating the death of a loved one like this. I know Muggles are incapable of love, but this is just fucked.”

“It’s called a ‘wake’. It is like a send-off,” Cissy answered as though providing vocabulary was an excuse for the horrid practice to which they bore witness.

Bella took a cigarette from her purse at lit it with the tip of her wand. Normally, this would set Cissy off, but the vague threat that Bellatrix’s memories of Christmas included sharing a smoke with the kid she deified as much as their cousin denounced seemed to serve as censor. Their father had died of lung complications. His funeral had been a sombre affair. As was proper. Cissy, Bella realised upon reflection, disappointed that the family darling refused to take her bait, could not have been much older when Father had passed than ‘Sev’ was now.

Perhaps that was why Narcissa as less present than she was usually able to pretend at.  

“I suppose there is something to be said for it,” Bella shrugged. “Want to send Aunt Walburga off like this when her day comes? Save us the trouble of feigning tears.”

“Don’t jest. Regulus is here,” Cissy tensed.

“So you wrote. Still waiting for the ‘why’.”

“Oh! I wish I knew,” Narcissa, at last, exploded, her speech reverting to its usual allegro. “I think I fucked it up, Bella, something horrid. He has to leave. People are starting to whisper, to wonder.”

Bella focused her gaze on her sister’s, but nothing was forthcoming. “About what?” she asked, growing frustrated. “Cissy, you know I can’t – ”

“Later,” Cissy returned sharply.

“Now,” Bella demanded.

Narcissa rubbed at her temples. “Can we suffice it to say that when last he was here, he must have made something of an impression on at least a few of the locals? At least, insofar as a few of them can remember his face. It is of little relevance; he has no recollection of events which is,” she paused, pained. “I didn’t anticipate this, Bella. I did not think he would come to the wake, but I suppose I ought to have. Same impulse that brought him here in the first place, I imagine. I just … I just did not think they would have it here. But the other pub is apparently inadequate.”

Bella was still struggling with the questions of why anyone would willing come to ‘the better of Cokework’s two public houses’ to begin with. She supposed the establishment might be of the sort blind eye to underage drinking, there was enough graffiti and debris about to support that assumption. But The Hog’s Head did not put up much of a fuss, either. And Regulus just was not the sort. Not that Bella doubted her cousin had it within him to get absolutely shitfaced at the weekend. He was simply not apt to do so socially. Fuck, she had heard the kid unironically tell the bloody house elf that he was his best friend once.

Maybe the locals had him confused with Sirius. There would be nothing out of character for the dog to skive into a muggle dive and throw fists with some kid he had simply loathed since first sight.

Sirius would have left an impression. He always did.

No one noticed Reg. Ever. Unless his odd sentiments invited an opportunity to mock.

He had let the elf have a lick of his ice-cream cone one summer’s day. That had been a fun one. When they all played Quidditch they usually made Regulus Seeker, mostly to keep him out of the way. He played the position for Slytherin now. Apparently, he was pretty decent. But it was not as though anyone went to watch. A Seven did not exactly make for a brilliant spectator experience unless the Snitch had been spotted at a numerically crucial moment. Bella doubted that her youngest cousin often played hero on the pitch, whatever Kreacher may have to say on the subject. Fuck, maybe they were besties.

Bella wanted nothing of this. If Cissy, or Regulus, or even Sirius needed someone to create a counter curse, she would have it sorted in minutes. She fought dirty and fought to win. For everything else she was useless. Certainly, she would prove poor comfort to a kid who showed up at what should not have been a party, and, feeling overwhelmed, wanted a ride home. “This sounds more like an Andy Problem,” she said absentmindedly, forgetting in all Narcissa refused to say that she, Bella, kept secrets, too. They never used to. Any of them.

“Well, it is not like I can owl her, can I?” Cissy sneered.

Bella closed her eyes, though she knew it would not help. “Narcissa, if I could tell you, you know I would.”

“Why can’t you? What spell did you use that was so effective that Sirius and I can’t get it from you? Because that would really, really come in handy right about now. I have to obliterate about twenty people before the day ends and I have had this most terrible headache for going on a week and – Oh! Bella! For fuck’s sake just –”

Bella fell further into a frown. It was the one bit of magic she could not prove much help with.

“There was no spell,” she answered, honestly, as it happened. “I never knew where they took her and Ted. That is the whole of it. I planted a trail of evidence for the Order, practically summoning them to Andy’s old flat, made my plea and left them to take care of things. I didn’t have the heartfelt goodbye you were denied, either. So stop!”

“You saw the baby though,” Narcissa said after a minute. Accused, rather.

“Yes,” Bellatrix confirmed.

“What does she look like?”

The question sounded innocent enough. It was not. Bella did not particularly appreciate the fiction. “Like a baby. Cissy, don’t do this.”

“I meant, does she look more like Andy, or like Ted?”

“Both. Neither. I don’t know, it’s hard to say. It’s a baby,” she snapped.

“She’s not – ”

“Cissy, stop this! You know not what you ask.”

“And neither do you, these questions you put to me!” Cissy returned. “Just leave it.”

So. It was like that then.

It was not often that her sister could match her rage, which gave Bella pause. “The difference is you have your answer. Though I suppose you always do,” she sighed, supposing it would be easier to appeal to her sister’s often misplaced pity than to argue over facts undefined. Cissy was good at arguing. She had hardly said a thing and Bella felt like shit.

“Yes,” Cissy nodded, not meeting her gaze. “You did what was necessary.”

“Let me help you do the same?” Bella tried anew.

“He’s the reason, Regulus, for all of this,” Cissy said quietly. “And I’m the reason he hasn’t a bloody clue as to any of it. He told me to take it, and I did, all of it – not just the act but everything surrounding it. He’s despondent.”

“Well, it is a funeral,” Bellatrix frowned. Cissy was right, this was not safe to speak of, which made her wonder why they were using words at all.

“Not … it is as though the whole day he’s been … do you know that feeling, when you have something that you were about to say, when you are interrupted and then simply cannot recall and it seems so crucial, even though the subject has long since changed?” she struggled to explain. “He cannot seem to let it go. I think even his little friend is beginning to catch on.”

“Snape? I’d imagine he has worries right now that extend Regulus somehow making this about him.”

“No, not Severus. The Mudblood he is always hanging out with. They are all hiding in the kitchen together. And Bella, you. are. not. listening.”

Bellatrix smirked inspire of herself and the wider situation. Reg hung out with Mudbloods, did he? Little wonder he thought of grimy Kreacher as his best mate if the bar was set so low.

“No,” Bella corrected straightening her face as much as she might. “I’m not commenting. There is a difference. You are right, we should not discuss this. But Cissy, show me. Show me, I might be able to come on a fix. That is why you called for me, isn’t it?”

“I can’t. You know how my magic works. You’ll feel it. It will hurt. Like nothing you have ever felt,” she winced. “Please, just take the boy and go. Make some righteously indignant scene if you must, but please.”

Had Regulus hurt her? He would not! Never! He would not dare! But Cissy looked drained, pained, and pale. “For my own safety then,” Bella bade.

Cissy produced her own wand, casting a silencing charm that caused Bella throat to contract but not close. She still was not doing it right, Bella scowled. Another shot of Tolstoy’s Premium would likely have done a better job. She reached again for the bottle and blinked, her eyes adjusting to the sudden absence of natural light.

She found herself several feet away, at a window-side table, watching a dusting of snow disguise the dirty, potholed street. For a moment, she found herself in the company of a stranger, whose size and posture vaguely recalled Fenrir Greyback. Then she felt a tear, as though something in her mind, no, in her brain itself was caught in a struggle with oblivion. And how welcome it would be! This was agony. The pain alone she could hardly contend, but the memories that filled the moment, though not her own, made the idea of living so repugnant that she, that she –

She could not herself think. The man she had been for a moment expired in his own excrement. People, all around were standing up. And so was she. Regulus Black, with a smug smile, nodded to the landlord, said something about his needing to dial 999, produced a few notes of muggle currency from his pocket, placed it on the bile covered table with what remained of his pint and walked out into the night, it’s chill a gratifying sensation on skin that had just broken into a sweat.

And the scene started anew, continuing until Bella began to notice small alterations, until the pain ceased, until she had forgotten where she had been altogether. She was lounging in a chair, or trying to, trying desperately to get comfortable.

Fuck! This book was so boring, Regulus was frowning. But he didn’t ‘get’ poetry and the only other works of fiction in the whole of the Malfoy library were The Accursed Kings, which he had read before, and Beedle, which he could recite.  

He glanced up from the text on which his eyes were no struggling to focus. “So, what has happened?” Narcissa asked idly, her eyes bloodshot from a lack of sleep.

“I’m not really connecting with it, to be honest. There is this girl, who fancies a guy but fancies herself more, so she goes about demeaning him to prove herself witty but she’s just ... dull. Why do you like this kind of thing?”

“It’s more Lucius’ thing, to be honest. They were his mother’s. Just didn’t think you’d have fun with it is all.” A small, self-satisfied smirk crossed Narcissa’s thin lips.

“Then why did you tell me to read it?”

“You were annoying me,” she shrugged.

Bellatrix looked at her sister, barely trusting herself to speak. Narcissa had worked out what Regulus had done, somehow, recreated and relieved it a thousand times until the entire evening was misremembered, erased, and replaced. It was worse than she might ever have imagined.

“Narcissa, listen to me. Please just listen. I brought the car. We are leaving, we are all leaving. You, me, Reg, and Snape if you so insist.”

“I can’t leave – Lucius is hosting. And it would be unseemly for Severus to leave before his late father’s guests.”

“It is unseemly for you to allow him to cry in the kitchens.”

“He’s sixteen.”

“Would Mother and Father ever have permitted us –”

“Were we ever children, Bella?” Cissy seemed to beg as though the answer would absolve her of her borrowed guilt.

“You can’t marry him, Cissy,” Bellatrix shifted. What you can do, how you can manipulate minds … if it ever got round certain circles, circles I know Lucius to frequent, I don’t know that there is anything I could do to protect you.”

“I know about his affiliation,” Narcissa answered, impassive as ever.

“I don’t think you do.”

“It’s not as though I’ve never seen him with his sleeves rolled up.”

“It is also not as though you fully appreciate what it is to be reduced to a subsidiary,” Bellatrix sneered, softening slightly as she reached for her sister’s  hands. “Cissy, I get it, I do. He’s a prince from a fairy-book, at least, his PR team is good at lending such laurels. What frightens me, the more I get to know him, is that he seems to genuinely believe the carefully constructed fiction he is so keen to repeat. ‘I had no choice.’ Bullocks!

“Lucius Malfoy has never once in his life done anything that was not self-serving,” Bella cautioned, “be it providing the financial backing to disrupt governmental stability in the global south, or misrepresenting the interests of the Twenty-Eight to the Ministry in some way that inevitably favours Wiltshire’s vagrants, or taking the Dark Mark only to bow to the bloody muggle PM the night after. He has a choice. He’s choosing his county and he always, always will – even at your expense. Fuck, Cissy! The marriage itself would be at your expense. You really mean to give up your career for this man?”

“Not only,” Narcissa said with a small huff.

Bella bit at her lip. “You won’t be doing him any favours, the kid. You think money will solve his problems, but all it will do is afford him the sort he is in no way equipped to deal with.”

“Does this resentment stem from alleged blood status?”

“The Glückburgs haven’t produced a mage between them in a century, I doubt Lucius’ mother was an exception. I likewise doubt his proposal to you was not political in ways I doubt you’ve the capacity to consider, love-struck as you are. Sure. You have the prestige of the Black name. You are brilliant in court. But think about it, Cissy, everyone thinks you are no better than squib. Not really.”

“How dare –”

“If his heir turns out to be non-magical, everyone would blame you though his line is far, far more deluded. And he would say all sorts of pretty words to comfort you. He can afford to. His titles are held from the Crown. Your children will still inherit those.”

“I can’t have children, Bella,” Narcissa snapped. “Why do you think we’ve waited? I’ve been to every healer in the former empire, it seems, seeking a second, third, fifty-sixth fucking opinion and it is no use. And he loves me all the same. So don’t you dare, don’t you dare compare my situation to yours! You are right, Uncle Orion expects nothing of me. He expects more of Sirius for fuck’s sake! So let it be! What do you care for muggle politics anyway? And what insight do you truly think yourself to have into Lucius that surpasses my own?”

Bellatrix rolled up her sleeve, revealing her own Mark. “The man has murdered thousands. But with a signature. Not a spell. And feels himself morally uncompromised as such. He lacks conviction either way – he ‘had no choice.’” Her lip curled. “And that sort of cowardice is worse than Regulus’ remorse. And it is everywhere in our organisation. And I will not – I will not! – see you be made victim to it.

“The Dark Lord, he desires me, you know. He flatters and flirts and Rodolphus allows it, encourages it, dangles me before him as though hoping to gain more from our union than my dowry and it is disgusting, Cissy,” Bella shuttered. “I’ve been able to halt his advances so far, but someday he’ll tire of the stories I tell him to take his fancy and the thought of his half-blooded but fully bloody hands on my skin is enough to turn my stomach. And to make it more horrible I think that is half of the appeal that I hold. The other half is that I’m a Black, a natural at a dark magic he’ll never master to the same extent – but if he met you, Cissy,” she shook her head. “I’m sure Lucius, anyway, would claim he ‘had no choice.’ Sort of his M.O.”

“Why do you follow him?” Narcissa demanded, all other grievance forgotten.

“I agree with him on a great number of things, but ‘follow’?” Bellatrix shook her head. “Cissy, I mean to supplant him. Even – pretending – he wins his war; he is not equipped to rule. Not really. He doesn’t even have a bloody trade policy. He a means to an end. And … unlike Lucius Malfoy, I truly do not have a choice. Get out before you are in the same position. I could take you, Regulus and Severus to the château in Gascony – Uncle Orion intends it to be part of your dowry anyway, I doubt it will be missed. I could make it unplottable and then, then you can do to me what you did to Regulus. Make me forget that no one can take it from me without exposing themselves to like-torture.”

“I’m a Black.”

“And for Salazar’s sake let it stay that way. Don’t marry yourself to someone so high-profile that you’ll never be able to hide even outside of our world.”

“We don’t hide.”

Bullshit.

She would not know, but Bellatrix supposed she had to, on some level at least. She herself had been thinking of little else for many months and Narcissa, she supposed, had had no choice but to follow her train of thought. Bella could not understand the blame her sister issued for her great burden.

Of course, the task would have fallen to Regulus as the family’s youngest. That was the way they did it as to avoid prosecution. Bella wondered if matters would have been handled differently as Regulus was old enough to weird a wand, but somehow she doubted it. Spells were traceable, stabs were not. Besides, the Black bloodline had produced enough monstrosities over the years that she assumed the ritual had since become tradition.

She had been three years old when she had been made to carry it out, handed a wailing newborn and ordered to make it stop. Bella had cooed, cradling it as she had been taught, her infant cousin calming in her embrace. No. She was again compelled. Make. It. Stop.

Uncle Orion had given her a silver dagger, demonstrating what to do with it by drawing his extended index finger across his throat. Someone then objected. Technically, Bellatrix was not the youngest. But Andromeda was still in nappies, she lacked the understanding and death might prove slow. Painful. It might cry out again.

Bella did not understand, not truly, what she was doing, but she understood that if she did not, Andy would be forced to in her stead. So she did what was asked.

The baby did not cry.

But Aunt Walburga screamed.

She would never forget that sound.

By five, Bella had an understanding of what she had done and looked at her little sister with fear and trepidation to equal the adults’ chilling indifference. Another girl, they had said, disappointed. There was something wrong with her aside from sex, and Bella picked up on it immediately,  though for her parents this seemed the lesser sin. Whereas everyone else in the family had dark hair, Cissy was blonde.

What if she had somehow changed it?

Bella had frowned looking down at the smiling baby, an expression she felt herself to have worn perpetually since. What was she to do? She had not a wand to defend her wee small sister, or herself for that matter. But she would not do it. Not again. So she sat vigil. And she screamed. Screamed like Aunt Walburga had when her daughter had been slain, half certain that if the horrid bitch had done so a moment sooner, the child would have been safe. Bella screamed when anyone approached Cissy, even Andy, whom she supposed was old enough at four to do the deed herself were ever it to be ordered.

Sometimes, she was ignored in her demand and magic happened all of its own. Cissy was safe, and by the time whispers began that there truly was something wrong with that one, Bella had a wand of her own and a reputation for being a rather wilful child. They would not hurt Cissy whilst she was at school. She made her sister write her everyday just to be sure, though Andy thought it was ridiculous. She plainly was not a Metamorphmagus, and, likely as not, there was nothing magical about her at all.

But Andy did not remember on her own. And Bella had sworn that she simply would not let it happen again, and in most of the years to since pass there had been no cause.

And then Andy had run off with a Mudblood. And Cissy, somehow, resented her, Bella, for it, as though she had been the one to get herself knocked up by an undesirable. Stupid, stupid girl!

Bellatrix took another look around the public house. People were dancing on tables now, and it was in this world her nice might well be raised. The faint notion crossed her mind that perhaps death would have been the greater mercy. Regulus, certainly would have been willing and able, as this afternoon seemed to demonstrate, at least on its premise.

There was laughter. The light, electric tinge grew louder. Bella felt like screaming in a way that she had not since coming on the false notion that having a wand meant having her way.

She considered casting an Impervious to instil order. If a few Aurors showed up as a result, it would save her the trouble of obliterating the memory of Regulus from their minds.

But Cissy was starting at her, speechless and with tear-stained eyes.

“The baby …” she began.

“Nymphadora,” Bella furthered, not wanting to reflect upon the cousin they had not bothered to baptise. “You’d love her.”

“Yes,” Cissy gave softly. “I’m certain I would.” It was not the apology Bella felt she was owed from the world, but coming from her sister, somehow it was enough.

August 1990

The contrast was uncomfortable. Tonks shifted in her seat, self consciously trying to sit a bit straighter as she uncrossed her legs, though table manners were neither observed nor strictly enforced in the Manor’s kitchens. As predicted, she had found her uncle carefully brewing his own cuppa, while outside the dungeon doors Dobby fretted that he had somehow done something to displease his master, punishing himself in preparation for a tirade over the tea he had served the family the afternoon prior not being of the expected quality. She did not mention this. Lucius, likely, would have found such amusing, and she did not want to acknowledge that particular truth about him prior to initiating the conversation she had intended.

Like herself, he had not bothered with formalwear exactly, instead electing a long bathrobe spun of silver-silk, his thick, white-blond hair left to hang loose around his shoulders. No wonder Dobby was concerned. Lucius, however, did not seem to be. He listened to her plans with little comment, saying only, as he poured his cup of early morning mysticism and invited her to follow suit, that now that she could use magic there was less of a chance of her spattering it everywhere.

Tonks had still managed to spill a few drops in her saucer. Lucius gave her a light smirk that said everything though he spoke not. He had caught her off guard. She was not as prepared as she assumed. Not for any of it.

When she started, her voice was as shaky as her hands often were trying at the same grace. Lucius had merely listened, occasionally bidding her to continue with a lazy gesture of his hand. When she had finished, she gave him the missive she had received from Regulus the night before. He studied it without expression.

Tonks was not yet finished with her tea. The Prophet had either not yet arrived, or Narcissa was reading it in bed, either way, it was not in the kitchen. Having nothing else to occupy her whilst she awaited judgement, Tonks tried to read her uncle’s mind. The fury she found in no way translated to his impassive expression. He was calm. But he could not be.

It was altogether unsettling.

“Do you love him?” Lucius asked. He might as well inquired if she would pass the sugar.

“I think I could,” Tonks answered, swallowing. “Also … I don’t think it matters much, either way.”

“Nor do I,” Lucius agreed, “though not owing to the same sentiment. All the same, I’ll speak to your father, if it is your wish,” he said with a sneer. “Let Regulus beg a Mudblood for permission to court House Black’s heir presumptive. Something almost poetic to the humility.”

“Do not presume to speak of my father in such terms,” Tonks said, injured. She knew Lucius held such beliefs, but it still came as a shock to hear them directed towards her father, whom he otherwise professed to like.

“Do not presume that you will not be exposed to the same in the position you seek, and don’t presume to correct it in your would-be peers. Not at first. Ignoring the specifics of politics and prejudice, you’ll never go far if you let them know what you are thinking.” Oh. So, this was another lesson. She ought to have known.

He had taken her to their gatherings numerous times in the past year, though she was barred from attending the meetings themselves. Once, he had picked her up from school and she had not yet bothered to correct for hair-colour and style. He had warned her not to. That she was a Metamorphmagus was known, for such had to be registered. ‘Give them reason to think it is only your appearance that you alter with ease,’ he had said. She had no idea what he meant. Lucius had long since concluded for himself that Tonks took more than the material set from her appointed tutors. She picked up on mannerisms and what they meant, borrowing these in turn where it suited. She supposed this was true. She was more subdued in Professor Snape’s detentions that otherwise, secretive, calculating, and sarcastic in turn. With Uncle Lucius she was more apt to argue, never raising her voice the was she might with her mum. ‘It is sort of weird,’ she had answered, though in truth she sought contradiction. ‘It’s a strength. Don’t let them see it. I’m shallow, frivolous, and not particularly strong. Accurate or not, you have no idea how much I manage to assert my will simply by meeting with expectation. No one respects divination as true magic. No one ever sees my hand. Don’t reveal yours.’

He had been right. It was possible she did not know him at all.

“How do you do it?” Tonks asked. “What you are doing now, it isn’t occlumency.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “Its practice. Patience. Neither of which, I’ll admit, would be particularly beneficial in realising your current ambitions though both will come in time. Perhaps. We’ll see how you fare under Alastor’s instruction.”

“I’ll never get that far in the DMLE,” Tonks said, resigned. “Madeye only trains the elites.”

“You’re top in your year. At fifteen, you took on a Dark Wizard cum Auror and won. You destroyed a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul. You are already ‘elite’. You’ll be fast-tracked.”

“But Aunt Cissy –”

“Is likewise effective in her ventures. She brought the Shacklebolts back into the fold, and that after embarrassing Kingsley on the stand. Your ambitions are not hindered. In fact, I would say positioning yourself as a speaking member of the Twenty-Eight will win you favour an any field you may yet pressure. If such is earned. Now, to how we are going to best accomplish this.” He crossed his long-fingered hands about each other and met her with a conspiratorial smile.

“I have your permission?” Tonks gaped.

Lucius shook his head. “Dora, you needn’t wed Regulus to serve as the head of your mother’s family and ipso facto representative to the Twenty-Eight. You have a claim to the crown in your own right. You would be a fool to weaken it, or yourself, by confessing an absence of confidence with an engagement to one of your cousin-uncles. Here is what you do: Tell Sirius of your ambitions to end the printing of blood-status on public records. Not in the same manner you argued this to me –”

“Brave, passionate, righteous, and idealistic. I’m good at talking Gryffindors into doing things anyone else would regret,” she smiled, reciting. “An argument is best presented in the base language of thought, let your opponent believe it was they who came on the idea, and they will naturally agree.”

“Precisely. He’d happily cede his claim. Apropos, I agree with your assessment. Sirius has no interest in the title himself, he merely has no intention of allowing Regulus to rise to it. Many feel the same way. Now Regulus, Regulus –” there was venom in his tone. It was odd, Tonks thought. Uncle Lucius was otherwise good at hiding his feelings as he instructed her to do at every turn. Sometimes hints emerged; he did not like Yaxley on a personal level, found Sirius draining, and was a little intimidated of Mrs Weasley – but then who was not?

But where it came to Regulus, he did not even feign pleasantries, even though everyone else seemed to have more or less forgiven him for the events of Grimmauld Place. Even Snape, who could otherwise hold a grudge like no one else, allowed him to be alone with Dudley, though he was more cautious in Harry’s case. But then Harry could not throw a punch the way his cousin could, and Tonks sorely doubted the Dark Lord who sometimes showed his residency would have been able to get his former subordinate with a left hook failing a wand.

When she had finished her lab report and was filling up the rest of a potions-double writing to her intended, Snape, mockingly, asked if she would not mind taking ‘Snuffles’ too as long as she were in the practice of ridding him of Black brothers. He had threatened to have him neutered the last time he had to take him for a rabies shot, which had been a jest but also an error, for now the cur was due for a booster and refused to be taken to a vet. There was a forty-quid fine if this could not be accomplished within the next two weeks.

She had laughed. The whole class had. Though in Tonks’ case this was more out of relief that Professor Snape was more or less leaving her filtration alone. He would have been less generous to any other student he found composing a love letter in his class, she knew.

But though she was his favourite, he was not her uncle.

Lucius was. he was also honest with her in a way no other adult hade ever trusted themselves to be.

“Why do you loath him so?”

There was a pause. He did not want to answer or did not trust himself to.

“I’m one of the few – perhaps the only – person alive truly positioned to judge his character. I find him cowardly and uncommonly cruel, even when measured against our peers. But I was seventeen once and recognise that anything further I may offer on the topic would only strengthen your resolve to be with him, so we will leave it be.”

“Don’t. You’ve never treated me like a child before, Uncle. And you are right. I’m seventeen. Have out with it.”

“I like to imagine that I am consistent, as you yourself are. It is why we two get on, work well together despite our vastly different worldviews.”

It was not an answer as much as it was an explanation as to why she would not receive one. Well! They two could both prove tenacious.  

“You always claim I’d have made a good Slytherin. I think you’d have done pretty well for yourself as a Hufflepuff, too,” she teased.

“Were you a hat stall?”

“Not a true one,” Tonks answered. “He wavered, but for no more than a minute or two. You?”

Sorting stories often surprised her. Severus and Sirius had left the hat stuck between Slytherin and Gryffindor, letting both elect different paths. Her mother had been declared a serpent straight away, whereas Aunt Bella had apparently had Hufflepuff whispered to her and Aunt Cissy, to like horror, had listened to the Hat address the room instead, ultimately resolving to sort herself. Moony had been placed into Gryffindor without pause like Dad had been put directly in Hufflepuff – a fact that seemed to surprise them both, as though they still could not believe their incredible luck.

Lucius, she now realised, had never joined in these conversations that always seemed to invite themselves to the Christmas table, usually because the Weasleys who had joined them of late always seemed to have another child entering Hogwarts in the autumn. Who ‘might not be in Gryffindor’ according to their elder siblings. As if.

He did not seem keen to speak of it now.

“No, no. There were perhaps three times in my life when I fully lost my self-restraint, and with it the consistency you respect, though I’ve never let it shame me. Slytherin, through and though.”

Oh. One of those Slytherins then. The sort that gave the house its reputation. She did not know why she was surprised. In true Slytherin fashion, Lucius had evaded the question of Regulus well enough. In true Hufflepuff fashion, Tonks knew she would have it from him. Hard work and persistence and all that.

“When were they?”

“Fine. I suppose you are old enough, as you claim,” Lucius drolled. “One was when I found my mother hanging from the rafters, when my father refused her in death the acknowledgement he never afforded in life. I promised to take everything her professed to love by force. He abdicated on my seventh birthday. One was when I learned that Regulus lived and was holding you and Bill Weasley hostage. I paid homage to an authority I am loath to so much as recognise for the slightest chance of seeing you returned to safety.”

Tonks pressed her lips together and nodded. Part of her wondered how many people had suffered, perhaps died for her uncle’s concessions offered under duress. Part of her wondered how much this troubled him, how much it played into the nightmares that flooded his conscious mind, to the prejudice he felt towards muggles and those born of them despite every contraction she might choose to argue. But such was not what he was now saying, and it served her not to dwell with among guilts that were not hers to bear. She was being told that at some point, Lucius had had to fight for his place at court and that in her he saw an equal. And one worth promoting.

“One, the one I believe the positions me to judge your intended as I do, was when Elieen Prince wrote me after ten years of chilling absence from her son’s life, demanding compensation for a self-inflicted loss,” Lucius continued without pause, his long fingers losing what little colour they possessed as they tensed, still folded on the table between them. “In my rage, I told her I would meet her price on the condition that she would never seek Severus out. She confessed that such had never been her intention.”

Tonks swallowed, and an imitative gesture bade him to continue.

“I grew up surrounded by hatred in a conceptual sense – Muggles, especially German-speaking ones, Mudbloods, here specifically those to profit from a Hogwarts education without contributing anything to our economy after finishing school, et cetera – but I don’t believe I ever, truly, hated someone on a personal level before meeting this selfish, neglectful woman. Her late husband, perhaps, but I never met the man, it was different. Maybe I would have murdered him, too, as Regulus did. I cannot speak to that. What I can say, however, is that I would not have gone to Cissy afterwards, sobbing and begging that she wipe the act from my active mind and therefore, conscious. I can live with my sins. I hate people who lack the character for it.”

Oh. Oh dear.

“You … you killed someone, Uncle Lucius?” Tonks asked hesitantly. He never spoke of it, at least, not in a manner that could not be misinterpreted.

“You know that I have,” he answered as though growing bored of the lies his manner ordinarily invited. Tonks wondered if she had been mistaken, if he had never, truly, addressed her as an adult before. “You know that in most cases it cannot be avoided. I can act to reduce collateral damage or donate to relief agencies after the fact, but quite often, even when ‘choice’ is offered in the vaguest sense of the word, none of the options are good and none of the residual effects entirely foreseeable.”

“But you are a seer,” she challenged. “And we aren’t talking about Number Ten. We’re talking about Professor Snape’s … mum?”

“She left him in the care of a neglectful and violently abusive father when he was eight, nine maybe. I imagine all muggles are like this, though your father and Arthur Weasley – who considers himself an expert on the subject, both claim otherwise,” he said with a sneer. “In two weeks when you return to Hogwarts, watch the first years after the sorting. The ones from muggle households always look upon the feast when it appears as though they have never seen food before. It always made me ill to behold. But Severus? Severus was something else altogether. He was smaller than the other children when he came to school, not owing solely to malnutrition though it was certainly a factor. Muggles have studied this. Children who experience nothing by way of physical warmth during their early development don’t have a normal distribution of growth hormone, the body focusing its reserves of brain development. Or so it is said. Can you imagine, Dora,” he frowned, speaking now with more force, “they ‘study’ this rather than act against it. They are monsters to the last.”

“Maybe they are studying it to come up with a workable solution,” Tonks suggested. “And I think the kids, most of them, anyway, to have muggle parents just have never seen food simply appear on a table before, they have to have it brought out to them. They don’t have house elves.”

“Neither do the Weasleys. But they have, you know … food. Speaking of, where the fuck is Molly? She meant to come early to bake your birthday cake, her present to you. I assumed she would be here before breakfast.” He looked at the fireplace as though he expected her to spring from it, ordering him to help or vacate the kitchen. His kitchen. In his ancestral home. Mr Weasley had likely audited the place enough times over the years for his wife to know where everything was without an ask or an ‘accio’. Lucius looked as though, for once, though perhaps not for entirely the first time, he had want of the pair of them, if only for the fact that they might remind, without entirely meaning to, that Tonks was barely out of adolescence. ‘Oh, don’t you raise a finger, Dora-dear,’ she could almost hear Mrs Weasley coo after barking orders at her uncle to whisk flour and sugar together if he could not take his precious tea in any of the Manor’s other 200 rooms. (There were ‘only’ 178, but Lucius would likely have the grace not to make this correction to a woman raising seven children in 200 metres squared.)

“Maybe she’s volunteering in a muggle soup kitchen,” Tonks crossed her arms. “Would be a better use of her time. You know, they do have institutions to feed the hungry.”

“Are these easily accessible?” Lucius countered. “Are they muggle concepts unto themselves or the work of well-meaning mages?”

“I don’t know but I know that they exist. Maybe you should set one up,” she suggested, meanly. “Or make the funding of several a condition of your next umm … ‘forced participation in diplomatic intrigue’. If it is such a big issue for you.”

“Maybe,” Lucius seemed to agree. He was often on the right side of issues, or could quite easily be led there, but never, Tonks considered, for the right reasons. It was as fun as it was frustrating and –

Fuck. He had done it again.

“Professor Snape?” she bade him to continue the narrative where he had welcomed interruption.

He nodded, affording her a dark sort of smile that she could chose to interpret as mocking or mentoring in turn.

“I had sort of lost direct contact with him after Hogwarts. I made a point of catching up as much as I might when I succeeded my father as governor, but he never confided much of his home-life to me, and, frankly, why would he? I’m seven years his elder, we barely overlapped.

“One day, however, Professor McGonagall reached out to Narcissa and I, shortly after the start of Severus’ fifth year, asking if we were willing to take on the responsibility or at least extend our influence in a fostering scheme. He was tormented by his classmates. She did not know many wizarding households he would be particularly comfortable in and certainly we had the resources and – he,” Lucius stopped. Blinked. Adjusted. “We can suffice it to say that the head of a rival house who never particularly enjoyed having the boy in her class fought tooth and nail to rectify his situation after seeing the state of him after summer break. I don’t mean to treat you as a child as you will no doubt accuse but this part of the story is not mine to tell.”

“No, I understand.” Tonks had the distinct suspicion she would not have many chances to sit detention with Professor Snape in the coming term. McGonagall either. It was for the best.

“We brought him with us to Narcissa’s family home at Christmas. To Grimmauld Place. He had something of a breakdown following a small exchange of gifts, was uncommunicative at supper the next day and then during the festivities oldy brazen. He simply had no idea how to get on.

“I don’t know how much he confided to Regulus if anything. He’s never exactly been open. Remus must have the patience of a fucking saint,” Lucius, who kept his hands on the table in plain view without revealing what might be held between them seemed to critique. “Suffice it to say though, after we departed but prior to the start of term, Regulus went to Cokeworth, killed Snape Senior in cold blood and then showed up at the manor, sobbing, begging Narcissa to take it back, it hurt more than he could bare, and he could not face hanging out with Severus in the library or common room or Quidditch practice with this in his heart,” he spat.

“But he had no heart, Dora. You know … your Aunt Cissy, when she enters someone’s consciousness she doesn’t just see, she feels, and from him she felt nothing, and they were at it for quite a while. Days. She left his chambers wane and exhausted. Regulus had given Severus’ father a cerebral aneurysm as he sought to destroy his mind. From Narcissa’s description I think death must have been instant. I doubt he suffered much and have no idea how I feel on that count. Or how I should. I know that my wife felt the same hundreds of times over in rapid succession as she undid the knowledge of the spell. It was in her prophesy, the one Trelawney gave, that when she met Death, she would know exactly what to say. I thought about this when she told it to me. I thought, perhaps that was because she and Death were already long acquainted.”

“You know Trelawney is a hack, right? She told me I’d be undone by a werewolf, but not during a full moon, and can you like, seriously, imagine Professor Lupin attacking anyone under any circumstance? But his was just as bleak. Told him his kids would perish the night he sired a cub.”

“And she told me that I would be the last of my name. I believe her. Draco has not the aptitude for rule, and though in time such may reveal itself, I think enough about the man he will one day be is apparent for us to conclude that I’ll never be a grandfather,” he said as though it were of little consequence. “Harry and Dudley aside, of course. But being that they were both born within a two-month of Draco, I cannot quite credit them with that distinction, emotionally, at least. My will, of course, is a different matter.” Always a needless contradiction.

“Wow. Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both 'yes' and 'no',” Tonks quoted her favourite teacher’s favourite wordsmith.

“Pardon?”

“Never mind. Please, continue.”

Lucius smiled. “Likewise, enough about the woman you will be is plain that I could accept you and your descendants inheriting my titles, by coup, of course, if you insist on wedding yourself to Regulus Black. I’ve given Narcissa’s lands in Gascony back to the Black family, if not in name, as part of your birthday present. They have long resented my better management, by which, naturally, I mean my name, and I would likewise be damned to have a Black seated at Wiltshire. But your mates call you ‘Tonks’, do they not?”

“Shut the fuck up! I am getting a castle?!”

“A château,” he corrected. “Far more profitable.”

“Uncle Lucy, seriously, that is too much – ”

“You need to learn something of estate management and the property will remain in my guardianship for the next five years as you do. We’ll make a deal. I’ll ask you again on your twenty-second birthday if you love him. If you can say ‘yes’ without caveat, I’ll retract my objections and revise my opinion. If you wed him, or anyone, before such time, the inheritance will be forfeit.”

“You don’t think that likely.” He was not ‘giving’ her anything save the skills request to take when opportunity presented. Tonks had never considered that as head of one of the great houses, she would have to represent their holdings and mange considerable wealth. She would also, it seemed, need to learn a great deal more about centuries-old conflicts. She sized Lucius up again. She knew her Black relatives called him a Breton pirate. She never considered that the resentment might well run both ways.

Except in Regulus’ case.

Regulus, who had killed when he was younger than she was now. Whose remorse was taken for weakness. For cruelty, even.

She would never entirely understand the rules of this world.

“No,” Lucius answered. “I don’t. Regulus left the Manor thinking he had spent half of his holiday working his way through his cousin’s Jane Austen collection; Narcissa did a couple of lines of coke for sustinance, owled Corban and told him that she was going to be out of the office for a few days, that she needed Theo for related reasons he could no doubt deduce.”

“Jane Austen,” Tonks repeated, not knowing what else to say. “And here I always kind of thought irony was wasted on Aunt Cissy.”

“Punishment fit the crime?” Lucius smirked. “Regulus loathed it. Loathed himself for engaging it, too. Though in truth he never did. Cissy has more of a sense of humour than people want to give her credit for. But to answer your question, that is why I hate him. Because he did something objectively awful and rather than stand to his convictions, tortured his relatives to absolve him of regret. Something was always off with him afterwards. Cissy thinks she did something wrong, but I think whatever the problem is in his mind it long existed if he could just go have a drink with a stranger, staring at him until he was shattered.”

Was that why Regulus thought so little of Legilimency and Occlumency? Because he had once over-extended himself? Had Narcissa, for his own protection and for that of others, done something to cause him to shy from its continued use?

Had whatever hell she had ‘inadvertently’ condemned Aunt Bella to sprung from Regulus’ mind?

And then, and then had Mum done the same to the Longbottoms to save the sister she still could?

Tonks bit her bottom lip. She knew tons of people to have recovered from the curciatus curse. She did not know anyone else to respond to treatment the way the Longbottoms had. Was that why her mum had wanted to visit Aunt Bella first upon learning that Regulus was still among the living? Had she intentionally disregarded her Hippocratic Oath? Did she want to work out a continued cover-up?

And then, for what?

Tonks did not want to think about it. Not now. She would figure it out eventually, she knew. Hard work, perseverance, and all of that.

“Might have been the Austen.”

“Perhaps.”

“What did you do? By way of comparison.” She wanted it to be awful. As though House Black would somehow be absolved of its sins if House Malfoy could be shown to match them. She was not certain she wanted to take their place in the Twenty-Eight anymore. She always was not certain she had any choice with Uncle Lucius supporting her claim.

“What I always do,” Lucius shrugged. “I provided the financial backing to hasten the demise of my opposition. Severus, when he lived with us, perhaps before, perhaps still, would write to his mother on occasion. Sometimes he even sent them. Owls always know where to go. The letters were delivered but left unanswered.

“My heart broke for him, but he said it was enough knowing she was out there, somewhere. When she came to blackmail me, had she refused my ultimatum, I would have done everything I could to facilitate a reunion, to help her back on her feet, to recovery, whatever was necessary. Instead, I asked if she wanted pills, powder, or cash, paid her what she asked, half-knowing I facilitated an overdose.”

“Know thyself.”

“Know thy adversary. I told Severus everything when our owl returned, his latest letter still attached to his leg. Not everything. I omitted the part about his mother’s refusal of him. Why invite that pain? He may know. But not from me. When I told him he nodded, said nothing – at least until Dudley’s mother tried to retake custody last year prior to the adoption. Then, he told me he understood. It was not forgiveness, exactly, but it is more than I am entitled to. And then he just ranted about how much he hates Petunia Dursley. You know she used to keep Harry locked in a cupboard? Disgraceful.”

“Maybe Regulus did what he did because he loved Severus, too,” Tonks offered. Suddenly, she had to believe this.

“Maybe.”

“But what do you think?”

“I think he killed a muggle to become a Death Eater. There was a vetting process.”

Fuck. How had anyone survived this war?

Did anyone survive? Did anyone survive any war, ever? Nymphadora Tonks wanted to scream.

“Who did you kill?”

“Between us? I’ve never once killed with magic. I’ve never intentionally used it to hurt anyone absent the youthful hex. That is not why it is granted to us.”

“Then why did you follow Voldemort?” Tonks demanded.

“I had no choice.”

“Because of Wiltshire? You created a functional and affluent diaspora in Cokeworth without him.”

“Did I? Cissy would not have afforded me the means if she had not found the Dark Lord in little Harry. She did not want to relocate wizards to Cokeworth, she wanted to keep it vacant, to keep the kid safe. She resents me for it. So does Severus, but I don’t think for the same reasons.”

“He just doesn’t like people, full stop,” Tonks answered, realising she was being offered a way out of a conversation she no longer wanted to have.

“Quite.”

“Uncle Lucius,” she asked after a time, “what do I do, about Regulus?”

“You get him to cede his claim to you. Say that you don’t want the title to come between you. He seems mad for you, he’ll acquiesce. If not, he’ll fall in line with the rest of his family and give his support, reluctant but valid and legally binding, nonetheless.

“Then you’ll need to have every living relative state to third party within the Twenty-Eight that they elect you to wear the mantle and chain of House Black, and this must be further witnessed and notarised. We can do it at breakfast when Molly and Arthur arrive. Then, there is a twelve-week period in which the other heads of house are invited to cite their objections, and if none are forthcoming, you will have your seat. If there is a credible objection, there will be a confirmation hearing in which such is adjudicated. So … whatever it is you are planning sneaking that chicken into Hogwarts, wait until November?” he tried to smile. Surely, he knew her better than that, even if she did not know him at all.

“I’m a half-blooded half-breed,” she answered.

“You are a respectable alternative to Sirius and/or Regulus. Those who might object on the grounds you suggest think you are merely my puppet.”

Tonks blinked. “I shan’t do anything to disabuse them of that delusion, at least, not at first.”

Lucius gave her a curt nod and directed his gaze to her overturned teacup. “Smart. Now, what do you see?”

“Proving we spend far too much time together,” Tonks answered, lifting her fate and lowering her gaze to meet it, “a bomb. An explosion, rather.” It was a scattering, signalling nothing.

“Where? Top, bottom, middle?” Lucius asked with interest.

“Scattered, kind of.”

“It means you’ll be lucky in your coming ventures,” he pronounced.

“Here’s hoping,” Tonks answered, less sure than ever.

Chapter Text

It was not a temper-tantrum, but it was a near thing.

As near as Dudley Dursley could conceivably get to pitching an absolute fit without facing immediate, and to Remus’ mind, often unmeasured consequence. The screaming and shattering of everything within reach had come the evening prior and had ended with Severus sending the boy to bed without supper, with Dudley declaring on the stairs that The Dark Lord was not always at blame every time Harry acted out. Sometimes, he had said, the mythical Boy Who Lived was an asshole on his own accord.

The door to their ordinarily shared bedroom had slammed shut, Harry had sputtered denials as he fought back tears, and Severus had stepped out back for a fag, effectively leaving Remus with a catastrophe to clean up.

The morning found Dudley sat up in bed, staring at the taped football match from the World Cup earlier that summer playing for what must have been the eightieth time on the small television in the boys’ bedroom. He not actively watching it, but rather avoiding eye contact.

Remus smiled in spite of himself. It was exactly how Severus behaved when he was upset. In a word, it was disconcerting, and he said as much.

“What does that mean?” Dudley wondered, still not looking at him. After five years, Remus had learnt not to take it personally.

“That you are acting like Dad,” Remus answered. “Come on, Dudders,” he bade, approaching the bed and rubbing at his elder son’s heavy shoulder. “Time to get dressed. We don’t want to be late for the party.”

“I don’t want to go,” Dudley gave blandly without giving any reason.

“It is Dora’s birthday – you’ll have a brilliant time,” Remus tried to encourage, knowing full well that, much like the father figure Dudley quite nearly resembled when mildly cross, the boy would likely spend the better part of the festivities in a corner with a catty girl or two making snide comments. “So many of your friends are going to be there –”

“Harry’s friends,” Dudley corrected.

“Something … something happen?” Remus asked, taking pause. He wondered if Dudley would be able to verbalise any measure of the hurt which he seemed to have been harbouring for the past several months.

As Remus saw it, it was one of those matters in which mistakes were only clear in hindsight. For all of their better efforts, Dudley and Harry had been afforded nothing by way of equality in their shared upbringing. Dudley had taken to sport. Harry had been taken up with his phantasies around the wizarding world, picking up sticks in the playground to pretend at wand work whilst his classmates played, more intent of conversing with garden snakes than he was with the boys and girls in primary. It fell, therefore, that Dudley had been the popular one, which had not seemed to bother Harry in the slightest.

Harry had had a vague notion growing up that his name carried a certain importance to a goodly number of people, but Severus, in particular, had been insistent that they play this down lest they find themselves raising a self-important prepubescent such as his godson was slowly turning into.

Harry knew, or perhaps recalled by virtue of Tom Riddle, the basics of what had occurred that fateful October night, but he had never had cause to ask for more than which was given, for it had never seemed that important to him. Even within the confines and context of Hogwarts, Harry was just his and Severus’ kid – and the one who often got written off at that, for owing to Dudley’s disciplinary record prior to being scouted, the latter was more often to be found sitting in Potions making derisive comments about the concoctions Severus had not yet gotten around to correcting.

Again, Dudley was better known, being, generally, better socialised.

Harry, Remus suspected, had liked things better the way they had been, too.

Shortly after Dora and Bill had shut down the DMLE with their excursion to Grimmauld Place, Lucius had made a deal with the Muggle Prime Minister, the exact details of which had never been disclosed to Remus personally, though he supposed Lucius’ actions to be extrajudicial for Narcissa had been livid over ways and means, much as she was over her own considerable losses. Lucius had negotiated the relocation of the families to have been dislodged from his estates to the properties in his wife’s portfolio, initially at a loss. The new tax revenue, however, had made Cokeworth’s commercial properties considerably more valuable. Industry was returning to accommodate the population boom, and Remus’ own honorific title had undergone an upgrade – rather than being ‘First Citizen’ he was now a proper ‘Mayor’, which meant he spent more time than frankly seemed necessary arguing with the town’s council over zoning restrictions in his voluntary capacity.

In the scope of his personal life, however, Remus found himself dealing with the fallout of living in a predominantly magical community where everyone knew Harry’s name. People would stop on the street to shake his hand or simply stare, which caused Harry the sort of confusion that often led to tantrums and Tom.

Dudley, in turn, when he got to come home from the academy, was all but ignored on the streets where he had once been a child-king. When friends who had once been his, to whom Harry had long simply been ‘Dudley’s weird cousin’, waved from the park, calling Harry’s name rather than his own, Dudley would do his upmost to fracture Harry’s smile with a cruel reminder: ‘You didn’t beat the Dark Lord, you became him.’

Sometimes, this seemed true.

Sirius had been in hospital since the pervious winter, owing to an act Harry blamed on ‘Tom’ without bothering to feign ignorance of it as he long had in matters of active possession.

Dudley had been at the academy at the time. Thirty minutes and half a world away. He had gotten the news from Regulus, at the next day at that, Remus electing to wait until they had been given a prognosis to caution concern.

This had been an error. By the time Dudley arrived at St Mungo’s, Andromeda had sent word to Narcissa, who had come to make peace with her cousin and enter into open hostilities with everyone else. According to Narcissa, Harry, and by relation everyone, had been safe from Voldemort in a sparsely populated suburb. This was Lucius’ fault for backroom dealing. It was Remus’ fault for allowing Honeyduke’s to open a branch on High Street. It was alternately the fault of everyone else present (including the unfortunate orderly who had entered to bring Sirius his low-sodium supper, who consequently had been cursed for doctor’s orders as well.)

Listening to Narcissa’s tirade, no one bothered to keep an eye out for the children, who had themselves sought out safe quarters.

If Remus had to identify the crux of Dudley and Harry’s conflict, he would have placed it in the private bathroom afforded to Sirius by his surname, by generational wealth, and by the fact that his cousin Andromeda headed a wing and within the hospital had a similar reputation to her sister Bellatrix who had put many of their long-term cases in care.

Dudley had walked in on Harry and Draco kissing. As Draco had been his best friend as opposed to Harry’s, this would have stung unto itself, but Draco had made things worse declaring that he did not have a choice in the matter, that for the first time in his life he could not tell the difference between ‘Harry’ and ‘Tom’ –

That he had been afraid.

The words stuck.

Dudley had decided for himself that there was no distinction between his weird cousin who talked to snakes and the Dark Lord who had murdered his aunt, uncle, and much more recently made a like attempt on the ‘family dog’.

The boys were barely on speaking terms.

Remus was at a loss.

“Mrs Weasley is like the best cook in the whole entire world and she’s making cake for Dora and the two hundred or so people Mr Malfoy has invited. Except me,” Dudley answered, removing his eyes from the screen to look down on his protruding tummy which, in that moment, had the poor courtesy to further announce itself with a growl. “I won’t get to have any. And honestly, I don’t like any of them enough to sit there and pretend to be happy when they are all eating cake and all I’ve got is an orange.”

“It is what you wanted, Dudley,” Remus answered. This grief, at least, seemed wholly legitimate. It therefore proved all the more difficult to sound encouraging. “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices – ”

“Why?” Dudley balked. “It is not like it makes a bloody difference. I’ve been on a strict diet for two years and I’m still … Pansy said that I might be part giant. Am I?”

“No, you are just –”

“Fat?” Dudley inserted.

“Going through a growth spurt,” Remus gave as diplomatically as he might. Dudley consistently exceeded the fitness goals set for him in spite of his size. He played with boys significantly older than him in a full-time training scheme near-unto impossible to enter, and for his efforts he had to contend the criticisms of coaches that Remus though bordered abuse. Dudley was heavyset. It was the truth. But he was also ten and should not have to suffer self-doubt on that count.

His cousin, of course, did not help. There was not much that could be said in retaliation to claims that one was a literal incarnation of the most evil warlock to have ever existed, but Harry had figured out that reminding Dudley that everyone else had a problem with his weight and that it thus stood that he, Dudley, rightly should as well, seemed to work well enough as a defence.

Remus frowned.

At the moment, as far as he knew, Severus was next door having the sort of conversation that he somehow felt entitled to whenever someone was trying to date one of his more promising students. Regulus would win, because Dora was as of today a fellow consenting adult and their age difference was negligible when that much money was involved. Maybe Regulus would lose the same fight later against Lucius, who had even greater wealth. Remus did not care, mostly because Other People in the abstract sense all seemed capable of solving their interpersonal disputes.

Severus, however.

When Severus came home in due course to sulk or swear, Remus intended to meet him with the argument he in hindsight out to have instigated the evening prior. He should, under no circumstances, have sent Dudley to bed without supper.

Such expounded more problems than it could ever hope to solve.

“I think Harry’s giving me swelling serum,” Dudley said, clarifying, “Harry. Not Tom. He wants me cut from the team so that I’ll have to go to Hogwarts like the rest of them. And I won’t. I swear I won’t. I’m a freak enough already. I’m a freak, in this whole town of freaks, and I don’t want to then have to go to a freak school or sit through a freak birthday party where everyone but me gets to eat cake.”

“Dudley, one small piece of cake is not going to make a long – or even short-term difference,” Remus grimaced. “Plus, if it makes you feel better, I know your friend Hermione and her parents don’t eat sugar and will likely abstain, and Narcissa will just do the same thing she always does when she has court coming up and move hers around her plate with a fork, feigning undue interest in whatever is being discussed so we can all pretend not to notice her not eating.”

“Well, I don’t want to have pretend to be interested when Dora and Mr Malfoy talk about politics, waiting until Harry does something awful and blames it on ‘Tom’ and apologies after he’s gotten his way in a way that makes you and Dad think that he knows right from wrong.”

“He does, Dudders,” Remus sighed, wondering if he entirely believed it himself.

“Don’t you get it, Moony?” Dudley demanded, turning to look at him and crossing his arms as his brow knitted itself into a right proper frown. “They are the same person. That bastard killed my cousin, and he tried to kill Sirius, and he is going to kill Dora – and honestly, I don’t think you should take him anywhere. If I can stop him by staying in my PJs, I mean to.”

“Dudley, what happened with Sirius was an accident.”

“Harry soaked Sirius’ kibble in your Wolfsbane Potion knowing full well it kills people who aren’t already sick.”

“I do eat it sometimes,” Remus gave.

“Yeah, but Sirius would like snack on the stuff while watching TV ‘cause it bothered Dad and Regulus so much. He knew what he was doing. And it was Harry,” he again insisted. “Not Tom. Harry was jealous that I got to start my magical education a little bit early, that Dad put Sirius in charge of it at first. Tom doesn’t have any grudge against the family dog. Just ignores him for the most part. Pretends he has a bloody migraine when it’s his turn to take him on walks. And he never gets in trouble. For attempted murder or anything else.”

“That isn’t true, Dudley – but we can’t hold Harry accountable for having two souls.”

“Can’t you?” Dudley demanded. “Seriously. Draco, Hermione, Pansy, and I can all do basic occlumency by now. You know, the thing Harry’s meant to be learning before he goes to Hogwarts. If Dad can’t teach him like he taught Dora, why didn’t you make him spend the summer with Mrs Malfoy, too?”

“It is complicated.” It was because Draco had told his father that he was not sure if Harry had kissed him or not. Because Draco was confused about a number of things he was simply too young to contend. Because Lucius imagined that giving into his son’s whims disguised the plain fact that he longed for a legal mechanism that would allow him to name Dora as his heir. Because of Wiltshire and the wealth attached to it. But saying as much would do nothing to quiet the boys’ extended quarrel for a few hours.

“It is because he tried to kill Sirius, and then Dora at Christmas, and then he made Draco kiss him and Mrs Malfoy’d probably ...” Dudley guessed, correct on at least one count. Narcissa drew a clear distinction between Harry Potter and the parasitical soul. That, or she did not and further suspected that she would not be able to get an acquittal if such should ever land before the Wizengamot. Remus did not trust himself to ask.

“Regulus said she killed her sister or killed something in her mind,” Dudley continued, now hesitant. “That she had done the same to him, but then he had to drink a potion and he had to remember. Couldn’t she … if Harry and Tom really are two separate people, couldn’t she kill off the Tom part?”

“The thing about Tom is, he isn’t just a part of Harry. He placed his soul in other things so that he can’t be killed,” Remus explained, deciding that he would likewise have to have words with his son’s tutor. A suspended Auror with a hate symbol on his forearm no longer seemed the best possible candidate for teaching his child about magic whilst allowing him an otherwise muggle upbringing. Dudley should be practicing levitating feathers, not participating in an existential debate around one woman’s abilities in magic not properly understood. Even if Narcissa though herself capable, Remus would never allow it.

“And if you destroy them than more of him becomes Harry,” Dudley said with an eyeroll, indicative of having heard this many times before. “I know. But why … why don’t you just destroy the part of Voldemort that is inside Harry and bury the rest of the stuff somewhere where it can’t do anything?”

“That is what we’ve more or less done for the time being.” He had kept them under the till at the local pub the doubled as Town Hall for a time after removing them from Dumbledore’s custody. Then, deciding that the arguments around commercial zoning were getting too heated, he removed them to Narcissa’s chancellery, where she kept them in a lockbox which she could not personally open with a spell, amongst books she rarely had to reference written in runes few others could read. Remus reasoned that her natural occlumency would serve as personal protection against the dark items, and lacking a means of their destruction, they, too, would be safe until Harry came of age.

But there was no reason why Dudley should know the specifics. Even Severus know no more than that they were safe.

“You can’t let him go to this party. You can’t let him around people,” Dudley continued to argue. “Dora and Regulus, they still want to destroy the rest of the Horcruxes. Harry told her, at Christmas, he told her that he thinks that her mum must have hidden the one that she had in the Chamber of Secrets if she never gave it to her sister. And he told Dora how to open it and everything, thinking that she would just go down there and try to deal with it,” Dudley exclaimed, growing louder and increasingly more fanatic.

At this point, Severus would have pronounced him a liar, but Remus thought that doing so would be at the peril of fuelling this particular phantasy, to which he could no more personally credit.

“The Chamber of Secrets isn’t real,” he offered alternatively. “Believe me, if it were, Padfoot, Prongs, Wormtail, and I would have had it all mapped out.”

Dudley gave him a curious look. “It is, you get to it through the girl’s toilets,” he said matter-of-factly. “Harry tried to get me and Ron to go in it one time. But the fact that you, the maker of that magical map, think it’s a fairytale just shows that the Black sisters probably did not open it when they were at school, either. That and the fact that they probably would have never shut up about it if they had. There is no horcrux. Dr Tonks probably doesn’t have any more idea of its existence than you claim.”

“But Dora tried to? She tried to get in?”

“She’s not a Gryffindor,” Dudley sneered, again looking eerily like his other father in the expression.

“Hey now! I was in Gryffindor,” Remus had to force himself to laugh. It emerged as a warning, despite his best attempts.

“Then maybe you should go down there before Dora does!” Dudley retorted, causing Remus to straighten. “She plans to, now that she’s done a bit of research. Apparently, there is a basilisk hidden down there, and Dora thinks she’s just going to take it on.”

“By herself?” Remus demanded, getting no response as he wracked his brain wondering what girls’ bathroom was meant. “By herself, Dudley?” he repeated sternly.

Again, Dudley’s eyes sought salvation and landed on the bedroom floor. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “She asked Draco to buy her a rooster for her birthday, which he did. And she means to have Regulus charm it to look like an owl so she can sneak it into Hogwarts. Then, her uncle has these golf clubs, goblin made, and she’s charmed them herself. Literally. She is wearing them as a charm bracelet, has been all summer, but she can just take them off and use them whenever, or I guess, however she wants.”

The revelation that Lucius Malfoy not only played golf but had found a means of cheating was more amusing that surprising, and it was this fact that Remus’ mind decided to focus itself on in its momentary inability to contend the entirety of what he was being told.

“When she took us to the cinema this summer, there was a 3D film and she told us if we stole the glasses from it she’d get us extra popcorn. And then … well, she promised the twins she’d give them your map if they helped make a noisy distraction whilst she beat the shit out of a giant snake with goblin steal, and I mean – there was basically no bartering. Of course Fred and George took her up on that offer.”

“Worthy heirs to my greatest legacy, both” Remus said, more in hopes of distracting Dudley from his fears.

But before he could expand upon the pair’s classroom antics, Dudley continued darkly, “And Harry was just there smiling like – he is going to unleash this big snake on the school, probably kill at least Dora in the process, and if anyone but me blames him he’ll just cry that he didn’t mean it and tell Draco that they have to kiss because Dumbledore said that love is the most powerful magic but all Harry understands of it is control.”

“I’ll handle it,” Remus told him.

“He’ll deny it. And so will Dora unless you catch her in the act.”

“That is precisely what I intend to do,” he promised.

The following week would prove him a liar.

Chapter Text

“Your plate,” Sybil Trelawney commented with mild disgust, “will keep refilling until you surrender your utensils.”

That, to Remus Lupin’s mind, was the point.

Five courses into Hogwarts’ opening fest, he had hardly spoken a word to his fellow teachers, preoccupied as his was with chewing.

He reckoned he had put on a solid stone in his three years of teaching, though perhaps this estimation was generous as it failed to take the evening into its account. He had already – discreetly – had to unbutton his trousers to accommodate his appetite, and he had to wonder in his colleague’s tone if this had not gone unnoticed. At six-foot-five, clad in the same overlarge pullovers he had been donning for years, a few pounds hardly made a difference to his physique, or so Remus told himself.

“It is the lycanthropy,” Quirinus Quirrell commented coldly. “Like the canine Remus sometimes is, he lacks any concept of s-satiety, s-s-something else I’m left to wonder if he included in his Year Three courses to date.”

Despite the fact that he recognised that Quirrell, at least, had cause to be cross with him this evening, Remus could not help but respond with self-deprecating humour. “Yeah, no, I used to take them to that all-you-can-eat Chinese place a little outside of Hogsmeade. I’d pay for twenty people, but I wouldn’t actually let the kids eat, not after the first time I did this, giving the anger I incurred with the manager. Have them sit at the tables with their books opened to the half page dedicated to my condition and if anyone thought to ask a question, I’d ever respond between mouthfuls that I could never quite decide if chicken or pork came closer to the taste of human flesh,” Remus replied sarcastically.

Trelawney shuttered and Quirrell offered additional criticism of his overall organisation. As, Remus supposed, was due. The new school year had seen Remus move to part-time, his mayoral duties making a full syllabus impossible to contend, at least without a time turner and the kind of personal control that would have permitted him to give his colleague the detailed syllabus as he had requested. Quirrell was taking over years one to four in addition to the handful of Muggle Studies courses he was otherwise employed to teach, with Remus focusing on O.W.L. preparation and N.E.W.T. levels.

“I think it would be pork,” Septima Vector said, unhelpfully – as Remus’ goal with the statement had been to excuse himself from further conversation with the co-workers who pride of place found him among at every formal sitting, with whom he otherwise had little contact.

In truth, he had no exact formulation where it came to talking to students about Lycanthropy. Usually, he compiled a list of bullet points from the set text and spent the next half hour talking about civic responsibilities and attending his kids’ Sunday-league features, hoping to illustrate how mundane werewolves really were.

He doubted the approach would work for Quirrell, which was why he felt he had nothing to share. Perhaps he could convince his husband to write up something impossibly detailed to save him from at least some of the questions he was bound to incur from his replacement and the younger students he was leaving the man with. A few had already approached him to express their disappointment.

Leaning back slightly, he snuck a glace at Severus, jealous of the better time he was having.

His Head of Slytherin husband was well away at the middle of the long table, making snide comments with Minerva McGonagall. The Headmaster beside her as well as the other House Heads pretended not to hear their insolent chatter, much as their expressions confessed that they could not help but to listen. Remus did not envy the Headmaster, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff their shared predicament.

Still, he hated having to sit near the end of the table with the other part-timers and elective teachers whose subjects were either too difficult or too dull to generate much student interest.

“Correct me if I am mistaken, Quirinus,” Vector continued, “but Muggles can’t regrow organs that have been injured or suffered some illness or excess, and in cases where no doner can be found – they use those from pigs. I read about it … oh, some time ago in Transfiguration Today, much as I recognise that it sounds the sort of thing The Quibbler would print.”

“I p-p-penned the article,” Quirrell gave with a small blush. “It is not a common p-practice, however, and the s-success rate reflects that.”

“Pff, even so – we have your answer, Remus,” Vector dismissed. “In case they don’t have any Chinese places in … Cockworth, was it?”

“Cokeworth,” Remus corrected, “and we do. Only one I’m not banned from is a takeaway though, through no direct fault of my own, I might add. My son Dudley can really put it away, too,” he boasted, rubbing at his belly, in which the wolf continued to howl, unable to recognise that it had been more than fed. “And Harry, of course, well, he has something of my penchant for mischief and may have started a food fight of all-you-can-eat proportions.”

“I wish we had food as to allow us to follow the boy’s example,” Aurora Sinistra grumbled. “Remus, all science and sensitivities aside, pudding is being delayed by your dedication to your dinner. Could you not find it within yourself to instead gauge on dessert?”

“I beg your pardon, Madame,” Remus said, dropping his knife and fork to great clamour as the students, likewise, saw their tables filled with sweetmeats. Remus spooned out a piece of tart for himself and briefly considered flinging it at the Divinations teacher beside him before surrendering instead to a greater temptation.

“Looks like Percy Weasley found his rat at last,” Remus overheard Sinistra tell her best friend with an ironic, “You’ll have fun with that one.”

Both laughed as a few cries arose from the girls at Gryffindor table at the sight of a chubby rodent emerging from an apple pie.

“Much like Bill and Charlie, is he?” Vector smirked. As electives were not available to the first and second years, she had yet to make the boy’s acquaintance. She would be disappointed, Remus considered.

“All the bother but without the humour,” Sinistra told her.

“The twins more than make up for it next year,” Remus said encouragingly, with a twinge of regret that he would not see the two again in his classroom for another few years. “Wait till you have that pleasure.”

“Are years one and t-two really as bad as everyone implies?” Quirrell wondered at the same time Sinistra laughed, “You really think Fred and Geroge Weasley are going to bother themselves with Arithmancy?”

“Where are they?” Remus squinted. “Placing a pet rat in a communal dish feels like their work, but I don’t see them celebrating.”

“Bill and Charlie are not there, either,” Vector observed.

“Bill graduated last year,” Sinistra corrected. “But agreed, three Weasleys unaccounted for can’t be good.”

There was a twinge of excitement to the chatter. Officially, no one on staff wanted student mischief, and to the extent that this was widely true, no one wanted to have to deal with it themselves. However, with Dumbledore and all four Heads of House present, no one would look to the selection of substitutes and specialists at the tables end to set punishment. Their party could simply enjoy the chaos without giving consequence any consideration.

“Then it is as I foresaw,” Trelawney gasped, disrupting the shared, gleeful anticipation with her regular dramatic pessimism.

“All dead then?” Quirrell sniggered at his fellow former-Ravenclaw, quickly joined by the staff’s two infamous ex-Slytherins.

Remus, however, found that, for once, he could not share in a joke about Trelawney, which was truly a shame, for Quirrell found so few opportunities for humour and all ought to be encouraged for the Greater Good.

Remus’ eyes searched the Hufflepuff table for Tonks or someone whose mimic and gestures confessed her true face but found nothing.

She would not attempt it, he told himself. Not, at least, on the first night.

She would not dare!

“Remus?” Vector called, waving her hand before his field of vision. “Hell-o-oo?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Remus announced absently, no longer concerned with even feigning interest in anything at the feast.

Before he could stand, he felt Trelawney’s cold hand on top of his.

“You might be able to halt the forces of fate for a time, but you would be a fool to try,” she seemed to further prophesise, but perhaps it was just the ordinary candour of her speech. “Too many before you yourself have realised the futility of attempting to correct Fortune’s course.”

“I – I just have to use the loo,” Remus lied.

He looked around nervously. Severus was still exchanging witticisms with Minerva. By Trelawney’s prediction, he would meet his end in the form of a giant serpent.

Beside him, Quirrell was giving Vector a wry look, his prediction about being murdered by Voldemort doubtlessly long forgotten.

And Dora wanted to try to open the Chamber of Secrets. Much as he did not want to credit Dudley’s concerns giving what such implied about Harry, Remus had planned to speak to her after their first class together tomorrow morning, but it seemed he had already missed his chance.

He wished he could himself forget what he had been told of what awaited, but it seemed too much was at risk to not meet this with vigilance.

But here, he was on his own. Anything he said would put the others in more danger than any of them might hope to contend if they did not instead deride him for encouraging Trelawney’s conversation.

“What was mine exactly?” he asked under his breath. “The one you gave when I started teaching, maybe before … I don’t know the games you play, having never taken part. Because Dora … Miss Tonks, you told her she would meet her end at the hands of a werewolf, but not during a full moon. Is it – is it me?” he choked. “Will I kill her?” It was too much. “There were brothers in mine, were there not? One will die and one will bleed when my first cub is sired? They are not – if I fail to act somehow, Fred, or Geroge, they won’t …”

“If you fail to act, your fears, as you interpret, may well come to pass in a fashion,” Trelawney told him in a throaty voice not at all her own. “But know that if you leave in search of what is lost, a servant shall soon enough rise to his master’s call and the wounds your hands once caused will close though they fester still. Two devils with one sin shall sit together tonight as the castle burns to hear each other’s confessions. Would you suffer your children to their whims?”

Lucius Malfoy strode to the far end of the underground Governor’s Boardroom where he had insisted proceedings take place, his long fingers digging deep into his niece’s shoulder as he directed her into a chair otherwise occupied by his vice chairmen. He felt Dora tense under his controlling touch, but she made neither sound no sign of protest. Lucius was still too frightened by what had transpired to be properly enraged by the ill-timing, but this, he knew, would come. Far behind them in the corridor, he could still hear Molly Weasley imploring Albus Dumbledore to severe action, her sons made silent by the implication that once she had exhausted curses of an expletive nature, her wand might well turn on them. Arthur and Remus quietly plead caution where Professor Sprout in a sudden shriek that could have come from a Mandrake bade them all to be silent, her voice reverberating in the cold stone walls.

Lucius raised the cane concealing his wand to light the torch lamps lining the walls, lowering it slightly to set disconcerting shadows for the others to enter into. Unable to undo Dora’s alleged sins and unable to by any means absolve her of them, he sought to remind Dumbledore and to a lesser extent Sprout and McGonagall of the ease with which he could render operations impossible.

He controlled the budget if little else. Dumbledore would do better to remember that before repeating his permanent secretary’s cries for expulsion.

It was not as though he would not be making the same were it his children who had quite nearly met their mortal end through the misguided notions of another pupil, and he intended to make it up to Molly as might as he might in due course.

Basilisk venom was valued at six times over the market value of gold per ounce, and there was enough in the dungeons to challenge the GDP of most developing nations. As Hogwarts had centuries of documentation denying the existence of the Chamber of Secrets and Slytherin’s Beast, the school could make no claim of ownership and the ten percent finder’s fee the Ministry issued for such treasures would belong to the students in full.

Cissy could explain this to Dumbledore, Crouch, and whomever else might say otherwise well enough, Lucius was certain. Likewise, he had no reason to question his abilities to argue that Dora ought to surrender her cut in and act of contrition, or a mere show of such. Ultimately, she would reap greater benefit were the Weasleys not merely returned to the Twenty-Eight, but to the wealth that could stand to implement the altercations she intended for the body.

If he could but sort it all within the next month prior to the nomination hearing with Dora was now certain to sit!

Offering Molly and Arthur such sums would at the moment be taken as an insult, and in the immediate future be seen as bribery, back-dealing or some other such notion that got printed in boldface above his portrait whenever an editor operated under the assumption that his or her readership was both apolitical and innumerate, unable to calculate how the compromises he made benefited them.

Lucius folder his hands on the table before him as he often did when preparing for war whilst the others scuffled and shoved their way into the room.

“Where is my mother?” Dora hissed.

“I’m sure she has been contacted,” Lucius gave weakly, wishing that these had not been the first words spoken between them since his panicked arrival an hour prior. Wishing, as he often did, that Dora was his daughter in fact as much as she was in practice.

“What if she cannot find us here? She needs to be here, Uncle Lucy,” it was a plea and it sounded pained. Dumbledore hat assumed the chair opposite him at the far end of the table, with Professor Spout assuming pride of place to his right in her role as Hufflepuff’s Head and McGonagall, as Deputy, the slightly diminished seat to his left. Remus, or Professor Lupin as he was here known, elected a place beside McGonagall and Narcissa, still donning the wig and robes of court fell in beside him, though – if this owed itself to preference or desire to stare down the common opposition, Lucius struggled to himself decide. Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody sat opposite Narcissa and met her gaze as much as Lucius reckoned that he might whilst the latter continued to complain that the sitting justice had suspended proceedings without allowing her to give objection to evidence or argument the Defence intended to use at trial.

Though far from present, for she rarely was in truth, his wife had come as soon as the summons had been issued, likely well after Andromeda and Ted had been notified. How, Lucius wondered, could he hope to justify their absence to the girl when so many had since arrived from London with seeming ease? Dare he claim that Dr Tonks’ job at St Mungo’s was ‘more important’? Rufus Scrimgeour, Department Head of the DMLE sat beside Professor Spout and was in deep, hushed conversation with Dumbledore of which neither Narcissa nor Remus nor Mad Eye, Shacklebolt, nor bloody Regulus Black who sat like a prisoner between them paid any mind.

Lucius guessed that a silencing charm had been cast and, as the Weasleys sough places of their own as distantly as they might from ‘the accused’ within the room’s confines, he cast one of his own.

“You’ll find she does not,” Lucius replied to his niece. “You are seventeen, Dora. I was notified as a courtesy owing to my possession as Chairmen of the Governors’ Board, as I am no longer your legal guardian. I should be able to sway my peers into overriding whatever decision Dumbledore makes regards your continuation at this institution – but could this not have waited until your admittance to the Twenty-Eight?”

Five chairs remained empty around them. Lucius wished more for Severus’ decisive presence than he ever would or could for Andromeda’s self-importance or Ted’s easy humour. But such was impossible. Professors Snape and Flitwick were charged with student safety in the advent of emergency in the noted absence of their peers.

Dumbledore, Lucius grimaced, always seemed to be conveniently absent whenever something went array at the school he professed to love over all else. He, Lucius, would prefer to see the Hogwarts Headmaster replaced by someone competent in the role, but the Heads of House, all of whom he respected, served his personal motivations better where they presently were.

If but Severus could be here. Now.

Lucius needed someone on his side.

Narcissa was pointedly ignoring him. Regulus, who in contrast was openly staring at the girl he claimed to love, Lucius could never accept as an ally. Not for the first time he wished he could replace the boy with his brother in any capacity or company.

Molly had silenced herself but was eying Dora angrily as she absentmindedly ran her fingers through the hair of one of the twins whom Lucius could never tell apart. He could not conceive of Andromeda behaving with such gentle affection towards her child. The gesture seemed to give Dora like pause. Perhaps this recognition belonged to part of the reason why he and Dora had taken to one another with such ease. Father had never embraced him, either.

“I think you’ll find it could not,” Dora returned sharply. “Uncle, I never wanted the passive acceptance of a body reduced to two thirds of its strength. Let Molly Weasley rant and rave, let her tell the families that I endangered her sons – not to mention the school – by opening the Chamber of Secrets. Let me offer at adjudication the same defence I plan to give here and now, that if I let the matter lie dormant in this, what would have been my final year, that the Heir in his present form could employ Slytherin’s Monster to the same murderous ends he did fifty years prior.

“Longbottom, Abbot, Olivander and Shacklebolt, all of whom would have otherwise abstained from voting will surely side with me. And if I timed it … just right,” she half-winced, squinting at her aunt, who was herself still engaging oral argument, “Yaxley will honour me by holding his admittedly more valid objections to my nomination, because Narcissa will have to fold. And getting Barty Couch Jr. off accessory charges in the aftermath of his father’s conviction in a case where my aunt is serving the role of prosecutor beside?” she snorted. “Maybe he’ll be able to charge enough in fees going forward to actually afford all of the alimony and child support his ex-wives and kids are due.

“And then I’ve got the Crouches, too, or the one that is left. Since voting is anonymous, I doubt I’ll lose Authur’s support regardless of Prewett indignance, and even if I do, it is a small cost to pay to return the institution to its potential. You’re welcome,” she winked.

She had given him an argument in the exact manner he had long instructed her, appealing to calculations he might have made for himself were he in any condition to truly think. She had even admitted to what might be otherwise reviewed as careless oversight without excuse or apology, but rather by appealing to his own personal prejudices and private grievances in such a way as to absolve him of any fault in his judgements.

He hated Corban Yaxley. He hated that the man had four ex-wives and five children between them, but such was a moral complaint he would have made against any man to have abandoned his family time and again. What he truly hated about Yaxley was that as cross as Narcissa seemed with him at present, she would still name him as her best friend, would lunch with him when next she was in London, and would blithely feign nonchalance when Lucius indicated his jealousy. It was not that he suspected that anything romantic existed between the two, ever would or ever had, but once he had asked her how she could be friends with such a bastard to receive the answer: ‘He thinks precisely as I myself do. The noise is not half so damning when I am with him,’ she had indicated to her forehead. ‘It is not to say that we agree on all matters or necessarily conduct ourselves as the other might outside of the office, it is just … I suppose you would not know what it is like otherwise. I could show you,’ she had added seeing that he had taken pause. ‘But it would hurt.’

‘Does it hurt when you are alone with me?’

‘You mistake power for something tangible – lands, titles, wealth, and those bound to you by ancient rite. I ache, Lucius.’

He glanced down the table at his wife, now animated by something Remus must have said, laughing prettily as he examined a bracelet she was wearing, or the scars inflamed by its silver. Lucius had given her that bracelet on her fifteenth birthday, before they were dating, before he had any real hope that they ever would. Since being assaulted by the wolf that lurked within Remus’ gentle exterior years prior, Lucius had never seen her wear the thing. The two loathed each other, not that one would know it to observe them now. Remus smiled, too. He smiled at the only person Lucius had ever known to provoke him to violence as though she were dear to him.

But Narcissa was good at such things. At public facing projects. She continued to laugh after the fashion of her sisters before her, feigned and frivolous in a secret plea for flight like the three grounded crows that made up the Black Family Arms. Sirius had the same forced laugh as the sisters when he lied, and Lucius was sure that is Regulus were capable of smiling, he would sound the same, too.

But Dora had no such concern for appearances. She would laugh, genuinely, when her foes were defeated. She would not compromise. She had learnt to so position herself that she may never need to. She was his heir in all but name and seeing within her all to which he had always aspired, the millennia of conflict between the Malfoys and the Blanc line of questionable legitimacy who would be named Black in England owing to insult and mistranslation no longer mattered.

Lucius wanted to hug her, to tell her how proud he was, to make any number of oaths on which he might yet not be able to deliver, but overcome with emotion, all that he found he could formulate was a feeble “You could have died!”

“I didn’t,” Dora said, her tongue splitting like a snake’s as she playfully extended it. “No one did, that is the point.” Cerce, for the extent of her ability she was but a child still!

“You could have,” Lucius paused, sighed, “done this all in a way that did not give the suggestion that I cheat at golf.”

“Do you?” Dora wondered.

“Needs must,” Lucius confirmed, returning her wink.

“Exactly. It will be fine, Uncle. At least,” she paused, “if my mum comes in time.”

“She cares, Dora, I promise you that she does.”

Lucius Malfoy regularly made a number of promises that held no real meaning, and this he counted among them. Naturally he had been thrilled to have Dora in his home, but he despised Andromeda all the same for allowing it to happen, for electing to spend the night with Bellatrix in Azkaban when last Dora had found like-trouble, for all of the snide comments of derision and disbelief where it came to Dora’s abilities and academic achievements where a simple ‘go change’ or ‘well done’ would have respectively sufficed.

He considered himself good at allowing for believable untruths and wondered how far Dora had gotten in her Legilimency lessons with Severus, if he had manged to teach her, at least, that which seemed to serve him best – where not to employ the skill.

Though, he supposed, as was the case with a goodly number of subjects, where it came to her mother, she need not make use of magic to know precisely what he was thinking.

“It is not that which I am counting on,” Dora admitted, much to Lucius’ relief. “It is more the fact that she’ll be angry, that the Black in her won’t consider consequence beyond the immediate self-satisfaction. The horcrux, the one that you never had and Narcissa never saw, Mum hid it somewhere in this castle. Once she hears that You-Know-Who sent me off in search of it, she’ll admit it’s location.”

“If she herself remembers. Dora don’t get your hopes up, there. If she knew, Cissy would, too, and she would have long since shared it with Remus and Severus.”

At this Dora shook her head. Lowering her voice needlessly, she said, “People think my mum is the ‘nice’ one. They are wrong. Aunt Narcissa doesn’t know because … whenever she’s tried to get it from her, Mum’s just actively concentrated on thoughts around Frank and Alice Longbottom, for whom she feels responsible, or on how very much she, Mum, wishes Aunt Bellatrix had won their dual, how she wishes it was Narcissa, instead, rotting away in Azkaban. It is how Mum has always kept everything she has wanted to conceal from her, their whole lives. Just this constant reminder that she, Narcissa, is the least loved.”

Lucius felt his hand clench around the serpent’s head of his hidden wand, first becoming aware that he had drawn his own blood when he noticed Albus Dumbledore raise and eyebrow in genuine concern, as though to ask after his wellbeing. Lucius, not knowing how to respond to the seeming kindness of a man he considered to be an enemy, gave a small nod in response. This seemed to suffice, and Dumbledore returned his attentions to Scrimgeour and Mad Eye. Lucius dared to glance at his gorgeous wife, who was now in the process of listening to what one of the interchangeable twins was telling her, extending to Molly in the process the same calm she could force with such seeming ease.

Lucius felt his own heart lighten. Narcissa probably was livid over whatever had transpired at the preliminary hearing, at the perceived betrayals of Corban and Molly – slights her general isolation would force her to soon forgive. She was probably mad at her sister’s tardiness, at her sister in general if even the half of what Dora said was true, and part of her likely shared in the wish that Bellatrix had won.

But she must not be harbouring either Dora or himself any of her ill-will as posture might otherwise suggest. She simply realised that her talents, such as they were, were better employed elsewhere.

Tonight, the Malfoys would likely stay in one of the suites Hogwarts kept for visiting dignitaries, for doubtlessly when deliberations ended, Narcissa and Dumbledore would hold a private audience over unrelated legal matters. Much though Lucius felt he needed a drink at The Hog’s Head, he would likely pass out after a single shot, and he would rather do so somewhere he would not risk bedbugs and headlice if unable to make use of the Floo Network.

Tonight, he would hold his wife in foreign but familiar quarters, kiss her lips when she had told him of all of her stresses and of the solutions which she had thought out in between, and he would tell her in turn that it would all turn out right in the end.

This would also be a lie, but it would hardly count as such, for when Lucius spoke it, he, too, would believe what he said to be true.

Narcissa had that sort of effect on people.

“She has never mentioned,” Lucius gave absently.

“Why would she?” Dora countered. “Aunt Cissy, too, only shares what suits, just she’ll distract with sweet nothings and seemingly innocent chatter where she can. She’ll be mad, too. At me, I mean, and she’ll have more cause than most. But I doubt she’ll say much. I always respected that about her. I don’t think I could remain so stoic were it me being met with such constant derision. I’m sorry to add to it,” she said after a pause, “but it had to be done. Voldemort can’t just be allowed to go on attempting to off members of our family until Harry comes of age.”

Lucius again glanced down the table, this time at Mad Eye, who, thankfully, was not watching them in turn that Lucius could see. Certain that a simple muffliato was nothing to the Auror, he wanted to warn Dora to be careful with her words in certain company, much though he suspected everyone present was an Order member of Dumbledore’s personal selection, barring, of course, Narcissa, who had respectively declined citing the role Dumbledore had passively played in Sirius’ unlawful imprisonment, and Regulus, who to the extent of Lucius’ knowledge had never been asked.

Everyone here, however, knew about Harry. Or, rather, ‘Tom’.

“In my position,” he posed instead, “would you move to block his admission to Hogwarts?”

“In your position,” Dora mirrored as he had taught, “I would feign ignorance to the board. As in mine I plan to confess only enough to exercise reasonable control over the estimation of those needed to further my ends.”

“May I?” Lucius smiled.

“Please,” Dora extended, meeting it with her own wicked grin.

“I imagine your trunk is still packed upstairs. That you’ll take it with you to London tonight – to Grimmauld, as Scrimgeour has already offered you a place in the Auror training programme and Dumbledore can surely cajole Moody into expediting your start date, if but to save himself a fight where I withhold funding and so on.”

“Not bad, not bad,” Dora nodded.

“The London address further stands to establish your claim to House Black in and of itself, and it can be assumed that Regulus will likewise resume his residence, protecting Harry from whatever wrath he may well harbour the boy well after the fact.”

Dora pressed her lips together, seeming somewhat unsure. “He helped me plan this, but pretty much, sure.”

“Five years, Dora. Remember our agreement,” he told her with a dead glare towards Regulus, who had charmed his face for his former friend’s afternoon hearing to conceal his disfiguring scars as much as he might. It was not simply his long-harboured dislike of the man that led Lucius to access Regulus looked better with the marks Dora had afforded him at their first meeting. The charm gave Regulus’ pale skin a waxy glean, not unlike that of their former Master when Voldemort had been as close to whole as Lucius had ever known him.

Dora laughed as though she had read his thoughts. “Recall that not a moment ago you suggested that I am using his amorous feelings towards me to realise bigger dreams of mine. I assure you, Uncle, these are not shared,” she snorted. “Plus, I plan on inviting Sana and Bill to move in, too, after I’ve finished my N.E.W.T. studies and my exams are over, so it won’t be like,” she paused, frowned, and wiggled her nose slightly the way the Blacks did more generally when struggling to contain something complex. “We’ll just be roomies.”

“Sana?” Lucius asked, happy to change the subject.

“Bashir.”

“The teenage Quidditch magnate?”

Dora shrugged. “She’s the only one of Ali Bashir’s twenty odd kids who has a foothold in England, so he gave her the Falcons as her inheritance with the expectation that she’ll continue to let the board run it whist arguing his other business interests to the Ministry.”

“You certainly get around.”

“Not really. She’s Professor Vector’s kid and half the time we’ve actually hung out whilst she was here on holiday, she was a rhinoceros, and I was starting fires for her to stamp out.”

“Yes, you’re certainly good at precisely that,” Lucius smiled. “You know I am proud of you, right?”

Something in Dora shifted slightly. Though he could not name what it was, she reminded him a bit of Draco in those moments when his son felt that he had learnt something that he was not meant to know, that extended his understanding, that he was fighting with himself to inquirer after.

“Uncle Lucy … thanks, for everything, really,” Dora said in a small voice. “Everything. If I pull any of this off at all, it is to your credit.”

“It is pretty straightforward, Professor, and I assume all responsibility for the danger I chanced inviting, though when I’ve finished, I might be so bold to suggest that Gryffindor share in the spoils of house points giving Charlie’s bravery and the twins’ guile,” Dora explained calmly to the parties gathered.

Andromeda Tonks pressed her lips together, wondering if it was wise for her daughter to be quite so candid in her account. She glanced at her sister at the other side of the table, half-hoping that Narcissa would intervene, but nothing was forthcoming.

Instead, Dumbledore spoke. “Much of that I am certain can be arranged, Miss Tonks, but seeing as you are no longer a student at this school, I can neither reward nor punish House Hufflepuff for the actions you claim as your own.”

“I beg your pardon?” Andy snapped. She had arrived at Hogwarts two hours after receiving the Headmaster’s summons, certain that nothing would be decided in her absence, certain, at least, that the Breton half-blood her sister had married would use his position to block any such action.

Fawkes had found her in her pyjamas (or the yoga wear she had purchased with better intentions and had since employed to the purpose) far too early in the evening to have otherwise retired. She was settled into her sofa with a bag of crips to suffice supper, an ITV crime drama she had been looking forward to but was not able to actively concentrate on, having been informed by her daughter earlier that morning that her ex was abroad on business, which was why he had not come to see her off to school for the last time. He had sent a card. Apparently. How quaint.

Andy, accordingly, had a few back issues of Witch Weekly opened before her along with a week’s worth of heretofore unread Daily and Evening Prophet issues, the last of which had been delivered alongside an inquiry as to if she would like to cancel her subscription. Had the morning met her with Ted, with the discomfort and idiosyncrasies she had come to associate with his presence since their separation, this might be something to consider.

However, his absence had caused her to tear though the Sport and Entertainment sections of every publication she could acquire, certain that she would find evidence to echo her self-doubts. She almost hoped for a picture, perhaps, of the only man she had ever been with in the arms of someone who likely lounged around in sexy lingerie instead of sport clothes. Someone who had by some black magic kept her Hogwarts-waistline into early middle age. Or who was herself a recent graduate.

Andy could not decide which would have been worse.

Finding noting suggestive of her fears only served to increase them.

She had kept the penthouse, but he had taken the elf and the space showed for its neglect. A conspiracy’s worth of newsprint littering her sofa aside, it was remarkable how filthy her flat was without Andy doing much to actively further the waste buildup. As she had throughout the latter half of her marriage, Andy actively avoided home, preferring to hide from her own psychiatric hangups in her office where her numerous degrees hung behind her desk, where her dissertations were contained in bound journals that other healers referenced –

Where no one could call her a failure or a fraud.

Sometimes, Regulus sent Kreacher by to tidy up in the condescension he pretended was concern. Sometimes Sirius would do the same for simple want to rid himself of the company his little brother kept. Andy traced a grease-covered finger across her coffee table, a visible line forming in the settled dust, wondering how long it had been since her childhood servant had been round, since she had entered into her cousins’ considerations in any capacity.

It was for the better. The dust, at least, saved the space from being entirely barren.

Ted and Dora had taken most of the photographs and artefacts of affection that had once littered their living space. The only pictures that had been left, Andy had since realised, were those few in which she herself appeared, a further reminder of just how often she had chosen her patients over her family.

She had no idea what had caused her to expect a warmer reception that same morning at Platform 9 and ¾.

Not that Dora had been cold, exactly, just that by the time Andy had arrived to see her off, she had already met a few of her friends and was engaged in all of the typical post-summer chatter, though she had seen all of them at her birthday party two weeks prior. She had hugged her mother in what Andy expected was a mere show of obedience, exchanged a few pleasantries and explained her father’s absence in a tone that seemed to wonder if this was the first Andy was hearing of his itinerary, still unable to accept that two people who had spent twenty years together could part with nothing left to say.

Except Andy had not been able to have a private conversation in any real capacity in the decade since Frank and Alice Longbottom had entered into her care.

‘Care’ she thought bitterly when Narcissa had arrived out of breath with an enormous basket of sweets, tailed by half of her legal team and the two little girls to whom she had given fancy titles that in practice meant only that they would be permitted to observe proceedings from the gallery, as any member of the public would. The two seemed less excited by this prospect than that of the year to follow, in which they would be robed in black for their first term at Hogwarts, already preoccupied with sorting themselves, each other and everyone else they knew. The pure-blood one said loudly to the muggle-born one that she would except no less then the whole of their gang ending up in Slytherin, which seemed a rather Hufflepuff notion to hold and, laughing, Dora had gone over to say as much. The hug she then shared with her aunt was longer and warmer than that Andy herself had enjoyed – that, or Cissy and Dora were simply both easily excitable people feeding off each other’s energy.

Andy resented her little sister’s easy smile, resented that Cissy had no concept of the sacrifices by which it had been won.

Alone on the platform, Andy found herself flustered and overwhelmed, hoping to disguise herself in the crowd as opposed to approaching the larger party, her private tears hidden behind a veil of hatred she was perhaps too quick to don.

She was jostled as a party pushed by her, recognising too late for a quick retaliatory hex that she recognised its patriarch as Corban Yaxley greeted Narcissa with a kiss on the cheek, shaking Lucius’ hand as two of his boys began explaining something to their peers. Andy guessed from their gestures, and from the fact that only Draco, Harry, and one of the interchangeable Weasley boys Dora was friends with – fuck, she had really ought to know the names of her daughter’s friends! – seemed at all interested.

Dora, for her part, summoned Regulus with a half nod and gave some excuse as to allow herself to slip away, meeting him on the other side of a pillar, twisting her legs around his waist as he lifted her slightly to close the gap between their respective hights, kissing her as deeply as he dared with many who so vocally opposed the match metres from them.

At seventeen, Andy had done the same with Ted.

Even so.

Andy might have counted herself among the dissenters if Regulus were not the only member of House Black who could in any way relate to the resentment ‘rehabilitation’ carried. He was no more welcome than she was and, like herself, only stayed for Dora’s sake.

Andy left the platform alone without exchanging empty words with those she once knew, declining obligatory invitations to celebratory brunches in which reservations had long since been set without factoring her into consideration. It was the first day she had taken off in longer than she wanted to consider or contend, and even so she found herself walking past the hospital, the abandoned storefront that disguised its true purpose.

Feeling something approaching inspiration, she spent the next several hours in muggle boutiques, trying on unflattering jeans with vanity sizing, ultimately buying a few items to keep her from feeling awkward and old, resolving to go on a diet, and then deciding to put such off until tomorrow when she stepped into the corner kiosk for a pack of fags on her way home and additionally picked up a fizzy drink and a couple of bags of crisps out of inertia or targeted advertising.

At home she closed her curtains, read though her post without responding and was prepared to make herself comfortable for an evening of crime drama when she walked past the door that had once been Dora’s, climbed into her bed and, cuddling one of the stuffed animals she had left behind allowed herself to weep.

If Dora had known that ‘Aunt Bella’ had given her the plush pink snake at the first and only meeting before helping her escape fate, it likely would have belonged to her favourites, been pack into her Hogwarts trunk instead of being discarded in the pile she had intended for charity.

Andy had, in fact, failed to give anything of her daughter’s away to the needy and rather doubted she ever would.

“Are you serious? Hufflepuff isn’t going to get any points?! I was a student here when I was bashing that Basilisk’s brains in!” Dora exclaimed, for the first time dropping the formal speech she must have learned from Lucius Malfoy.

“You were a student until you, as you so eloquently put it, were bashing that Basilisk’s brains in,” Dumbledore smiled, his eyes twinkling from behind half-moon spectacles.  “It has been decided in conjuncture with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that your skills and talents have surpassed that which Hogwarts can help you to further develop. As to what, precisely, your future holds, I leave to the judgement and discretion of my esteemed friends and colleagues within that body.”

“Should I take that to mean that Dora is being questioned under caution?” Narcissa asked. She was still wearing the robes court required, though she had surrendered the wig to one of the twins. They all had names belonging to German or Georgian monarchs, Andy recalled to some delight, but if it was Georg or Karl or Friedrich or Wilhelm or some analgised version thereof pulling at the curls of a court wig in an attempt to resemble Dumbledore, Andy could not tell. Instead, studying her sister, she wondered if she should have bothered to get dressed.

When Fawkes had appeared at her window with a summons, Andy had sprung into the shower, set her hair to curl and tried on the clothes she had purchased on a whim, once again coming to terms with the fact that she was no longer a size six, or even an eight that had been so mislabelled as to appeal to the conceits of women like her, to divorcé-chic forty-somethings whose ex-husbands might well be off in sunny Spain with a twenty-year-old intern who doubtlessly looked better in a bikini. Figuring that whatever had transpired, Ted had received a missive as well, Andy became determined not to let him ‘win’ and spent the better part of the next half hour dressing up, doing her hair and makeup, and looking ‘effortlessly’ elegant as a result.

Narcissa made more of an impression. But then, she always did. Her hair looked like it had been badly braided that morning by the little girls who kept her company, now dirty, sweaty, and partially undone from hours beneath a wig on an uncommonly warm September day spent in an unventilated London courtroom. Her makeup existed only in dark smudges.

Whatever she was working on at present, it seemed as though coffee and cocaine were again substituting sleep of late from the circles beneath her eyes and the way she kept rubbing at her nose. She was a wreck, but there was something insultingly noble in her absence of effort or afterthought. Narcissa had come as soon as she had been called and she spoke with the air of someone comfortable with exercising authority.

“Certainly not,” Dumbledore negated warmly. “I am simply asking that she satisfy and old man’s curiosity before we part ways.”

“I likewise want to know how you did it,” Alastor Moody spoke. “As you can imagine I don’t receive many recruits who can claim such a resumé.”

For a moment, Dora looked as though her heart might burst from joy. When she spoke, however, it continued to strike Andy as eerily calm and collected. It did not escape her notice that Dora was borrowing Lucius Malfoy’s posture – back straight, not touching the chair, hands folded elegantly before her as she spoke.

“I was told last Christmas by a source I feel I need Not Name where Slytherin’s secret chamber was located and how I might enter using Parseltongue, a language in which I have some degree of literacy owing to the efforts of my former DADA teacher, and his kids, for whom I have often babysat in the past,” Dora over-enunciated, giving enough detail to disguise the fact that she had offered nothing exact. Andy looked at Lucius, who seemed to approve.

“We, that is, my cousins and an assortment of friends whose parents all serve the Order,” Dora continued, “who were spending their Yuletide at the Manor as has become custom, we were searching for this Diadem believed to be a Horcrux of You Know Who, at least, for evidence that it had at one point passed through my aunt or uncle’s possession – perhaps absent of their knowledge – but there was nothing to  suggest this. As Lucius and Narcissa have insisted many times, I should probably add.”

“You are not under caution, Dora, nor have the Malfoys anything to hide,” Lucius told her. Dora looked at him apologetically, as though to reject the confidence and approving tone.

“Perhaps not,” Dora consented, “at least, not within the direct scope of your knowledge, but it had occurred to me as I had been trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve that prior to their arrest and subsequent imprisonment, Rudolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange made you judiciary of their vault at Gringotts, and I had just located the ledger when something happened to suggest I might have been on to something.

“See,” she continued, now turning to address Dumbledore and the DMLE contingent once more, “it was at night, and I heard footsteps, and naturally assumed they belonged either to the House Elf Dobby, come to warn me of his Master’s potential wrath should I be found in his safe, or my cousin Draco, who is in the habit of seeking my company when he has suffered a nightmare, which he always seems to when sharing his chambers with certain company.

“Finding it was neither, I returned the ledger to its place of keeping, and listened to another little boy repeat the lies he had been told, saying that he knew how to enter the Chamber of Secrets, and that Tom Riddle, more widely known as Lord Voldemort, opened it and his some of his treasures there while he was at school.

“The thing is – the timeline as I am given to understand it did not add up,” Dora frowned, wrinkling her nose slightly as she did. “What we were looking for, allegedly the Lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, surely would have been found in the millennia since its obstruction by a Hogwarts student had it been lost or left here on the grounds, even if he had, somehow, manged to split his soul back when he was still at school.

“Regulus and yourself, Headmaster, and I am sure other people who have likewise been involved in this research for way longer, hold this belief that Riddle would have sought artefacts of the Founders in which to hide himself. So, I went to look at the others. But the thing about that is, the only known artefact of Godric Gryffindor is hanging in your office. Regulus destroyed Slytherin’s locket, and the other items associated with him are safe and accounted for at Ilvermorny, the British Museum in London and the French Louvre. Helga Hufflepuff’s artefacts, with are more numerous than those of her peers, are likewise all accounted for in permanent collections, either of museums or private persons.”

“All, Miss Tonks?” Dumbledore pressed.

“I have done my research, Professor. I assure you I was thorough,” Dora answered, her eyes seeking Andy for the first time in the suggestion that her efforts were wanting. Andy thought about all the times she had been belittling in her disbelief after her daughter’s marks began to improve at school, as though to imply that it was easier to believe that she had cheated than committed to the set assignments.

“There is one item in particular I’ve not been able to locate,” Dumbledore said. Andy worried that Dora would take this as a challenge, as surely, she would have it been her or Ted to raise question or concern.

“At the risk of sounding trite, I have access to resources you yourself do not,” Dora answered firmly. “Though I am happy to share my findings if, once I am empowered to act upon them, I can rely on you to sign a few warrants.”

At this, Dumbledore turned to Narcissa with an amused smile, though Andy was herself certain that such positioning had instead been leant from Lucius. Narcissa sought to neither compromise nor appease, still clinging to a rather childish notion of equality under the law, or at least under the strictest interpretation thereof.

“Very well,” Dumbledore smiled. “But you did not believe Voldemort placed any such Horcrux within the Chamber of Secrets?”

“While recognising the informality of this interrogation, Your Honour, I object to your implementation of leaning questions,” Narcissa said without inflection.

From across the table, Shacklebolt frowned, leaned across to confer with Moody and Scrimgeour and then agreed, “She is right. Miss Tonks, you needn’t answer.”

“I did not think that Voldemort placed a Horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets,” Dora gave with a small shrug.

Dora, Andy thought as hard as she could bring herself to in the storm of emotion swelling inside her, Listen. To. Your. Aunt. I know you think you are helping your cause by giving in to Dumbledore, but instead you are showing your potential employers that you struggle to follow orders. The DMLE had enough on its plate without another half-cocked Auror tampering with testimony by not adhering to procedure. That is why Aunt Cissy wins the majority of the cases she brings against them. Not because her clients are innocent, but because some cop acted on their own initiative in a manner contrary to common law. Think, Dora! Before you confess, think!

Must I with you here to do so for me? Dora met her with a smirk. Merlin, could she take nothing seriously?!

“Then why, pray tell, were you tempted to enter?” Dumbledore continued.

“Because I suspected it to be a trap, Sir,” Dora answered with feigned innocence. “Because – and please forgive me for both the assumption and assertion, but I believe myself to have received the best possible education for contending whatever was truly down there, because I don’t think other, future, students will be quite so lucky. Remus Lupin was honestly the best DADA professor you ever could have hired, but he is part-time now, and Quirrell, well Trelawney made a prophecy to him which leads me to think that the curse will continue.”

Lupin, who had apparently found her daughter covered in blood in the girls’ toilets as though he had known exactly where to look, seemed somehow surprised to hear his name in proceedings.

“Dora, I’m still here, I’m still teaching – ” he stammered. Andy instantly understood her sister’s dislike of the man.

Dora, too, shook her head dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, I know. It is just another side effect of Uncle Lucy relocating all of Wiltshire’s wizarding vagrants to Cokeworth that apparently no one thought of save my Aunt Cissy, whom, I might add, he robbed blind –”

“Nymphadora!” Lucius exclaimed, likely unable to conceive of the betrayal.

“Let the child speak, Lucius,” Shacklebolt said. Narcissa said nothing to the effect. Andy imagined that any protest her sister might give or have ever given would be an admission that Bellatrix had been right in the objections she had raised to their union. Andy’s, admittedly, had been far less politically astute. She had stopped liking Lucius Malfoy when Slughorn had named him to the captaincy of the Slytherin Quidditch Team, where Andy thought herself Bellatrix’s natural successor.

Listening to her daughter’s assessments of local politics, however, she wished the war had had a decisive ending. That for her own seventeen-year-old, petty rivalries were of paramount importance rather than upturning pureblood policies from within.

“And Professor Snape, who, admittedly, knowing the guy, may have just not wanted more neighbours. And then Lord Voldemort, who certainly stands to benefit giving how odd Harry’s finding his sudden celebrity,” Dora spat. “Anyway, now Cokeworth needs a fulltime mayor being that it has business and infrastructure and zoning issues and all the other stuff one would think a seer-cum-career-politician might have surmised,” she pronounced, turning to glare at her uncle. “And no one will be here at Hogwarts should, oh, the Chamber await its true Heir. I had to act. And I had to act when I was sure that Professor Lupin would be here should anything go array.”

“Speculation,” Narcissa said to Dumbledore, as though she meant to mount a defence on behalf of the boy who had lived to go on killing in his own right.

“You think anything you say in the Dark Lord’s defence is going to bring Bellatrix back?” Andy spat.

“Andromeda,” Lucius warned.

“After all she did for you, you really think she came to kill Draco that night? Despite Dora, Ted and I standing precedent to the contrary?” Andy continued with venom, unable to contain herself. “I have reasons all my own but … Kingsley, really,” she shifted, “this has just never come up?”

Returning to Narcissa, Andromeda resumed, “Bella made a deal with Frank Longbottom to get the three of you out of Britian. Seriously. Get a warrant if you want proof or, rather, Albus, write one for Corban to use as I’m sure this ought to be cited at Junior’s hearing. And Cissy? We both know you are better served recusing yourself from that proceeding, as I might dare suggest you are from this one. Defending the Dark Lord against accusations made by my daughter, your niece? What do you possibly hope to gain here?”

“I could show you,” Narcissa answered, barely audible though her gaze remained fixed, “But it would hurt.”

“Mum. Stop,” Dora demanded, rising from her stool.

Lupin moved to follow suit, producing his wand before further offence could be extended, and holding it first in an open palmed gesture of peace, placed it on the table before him. Protocol demanded that this action be copied by all present, including Andy. Still, she was not ready to surrender in a fight she now felt she alone was willing to wage on her daughter’s behalf.

“And Professor Lupin knew of and encouraged this?” she asked Dora, though her gaze remained fixed on the awkward, shabby professor, or mayor, as she gathered that he now primarily functioned as. Lupin looked quickly at his wand on instinct as though he regretted giving it up. Good.

“Not exactly,” Dora defended. “The next morning Draco warned me of what I already suspected, namely that it was a trap, that nothing awaited me but my own demise. So, I did my best to research what form that might take and found that it was like to be a basilisk, which Professor Lupin then told me how to kill – his specialty being dark creatures – though I ultimately had to modify the methods.

“Being that the beast was at least a thousand years old, I expected to find it calcified. The rooster, ‘Sir Percival’ as Draco christened him, was his birthday gift to me. It is one of the only things that can harm a basilisk. I asked for one specifically. I had the twins positioned in the antechamber with him and the fireworks I had left over from that time my Aunt Cissy had to bribe me to keep Professor Snape from his office for a couple of hours so that she could steal, I guess ironically here, Basilisk venom, as now we have more than enough to corrode like, a thousand souls,” she approximated with widened eyes.

“Lovely, Narcissa,” Andy snorted.

“I destroyed the one I found,” Narcissa answered. “Where you’ve just destroyed evidence of the one everyone here knows you to have been the last person to have seen. Don’t accuse me of acting in a manner contrary to collective goals. And Andy? Please don’t mistake an honest inquiry for a threat, but you are right. For all that I lack, I defeated Bella, the best and brightest witch of our age by nearly all assessments. Do you really think that you would have succeeded where she failed?” she asked silky. “For it would seem that you are all too eager to find out.”

Dora began waving her arms as the break the sisters’ fixed gaze. “I’m not trying to start anything, I just – I mean, Fred and George were safe the whole time. Regulus transfigured Sir Percival into an owl when he saw me off at the platform earlier, making a spell so that a blast would turn him back.”

“Knowing my boys, I’m surprised Sir Percival made it to Hogwarts intact,” Molly Weasley murmured.

“We all knew what needed to go down well in advance,” the oldest son admitted. “It was Tonks’ plan, but she did not act alone. We went alone with it willingly. For fuck’s sake, Mum! Ron’s going to be here next year, and then Ginny the year after. I’m not. What was I supposed to do? Leave it in the hands of a school that has for centuries ignored the Chamber’s existence?” he challenged.

“George held him while Fred just kept up a continuous onslaught of fire to frighten him,” Dora continued before Molly could sputter further admonishments. “His cries caused the beast to stir in its panic, and when I saw the wall crack, I leapt from Charlie’s broom where I sat whilst he flew, and before the Basilisk could make a menace of itself in any way, I hit it with goblin steel, and kept at it until movement ceased as it expired.”

“Where did you get goblin steel, Miss Tonks?” Moody asked. “It is not easily acquired.”

“I – do you know what golf is?” Dora squinted. “Uncle Lucy has to play it with Muggle Leadership at times and they have these – well they call them ‘clubs’, but it’s not like the kinds that trolls carry, but it did the job well enough. Anyway, my uncle had a set made to adjust for his handicap of not being able to play a game that he would have grown up with if our respective society were not necessarily isolated.”

“I’m sure when your uncle is doing business with Muggle Leadership, his game is the least of the ways in which he is cheating them,” Shacklebolt muttered. “See Thatcher’s capitulation at Cokeworth.”

Somehow this dig seemed to meet with Lucius’ personal satisfaction. How, Andy again wondered, could Narcissa stand being this man’s wife?!

“Anyway, the Weasley boys and I, we were protected by 3D glasses all the while, so we could see without actually looking at anything as it was presented. I stole them from a muggle cinema when I was a legal minor.”

“Fascinating!” Arthur Weasley exclaimed. “Might I see – ”

“Fascinating?” Andy repeated, scoffing. “No, it’s …” Deranged? Farcical? “You know what?” she shook her head as she stood. “This is your mess, Lucius. All of it. It’s your mess and I leave you to sort it. But Narcissa,” she turned, “do you see now, do you see what Bellatrix, what our Capetian ancestors warned you against? He will always, always pick his interests above you and yours!

“He – likely, knowingly – damned us all with his seizure of Cokeworth, of land of your name and in your right while allowing those who would otherwise damn his vessels to bloody their hands in ink to meet with his ends. And you? Left with no option but to likewise sign despite your objections? But mayhap I give you too much credit, sweet sister, and mayhap not enough.

“You are welcome to it, Dora, the crowns she would not wear. May Armand and all of his descendants scream from hell on the day of your coordination. May you someday understand why I never wanted any of it – the Ancient and Noble House of Black, the Twenty-Eight and all of the collusion that the body contains. You foolish, foolish girl,” she hissed. “You can’t change it! Trying just ensures continuation! You think you are going to use the influence you would seek to force positive change? To eliminate blood status from public documentation? I doubt it,” she scoffed. “I doubt in time you will even want to.

“As thinks stand, Draco can’t inherit his father’s seat. Do you honestly think Lucius actually wants him to?” Andy inquired rhetorically. “Of course not. Not with another option at hand, one who plays the game at least as well as he does. I hope that becomes clear to you before you sacrifice all of your morals for hallow victories.”

“Mum,” Dora choked, “it’s not what you think. I’m not –”

“You know nothing of what I think, Dora,” Andy warned.

“No because all you think about, really, is how much better all of your lives would have been if I had been born normal, or if Bellatrix had not stepped in and I had not been suffered to live!” Dora shouted, causing Molly Weasley to reach for her wand, which she carried with her as she moved to stand protectively beside the girl whom she had felt she had cause to damn that same day.

Andy took a step back from the table as the room dissented in quite murmurings. She did, in fact, think these things when she knew her daughter to be practicing legilimency against her. Sometimes, she even felt them.

“Andromeda, I think you should leave,” Molly warned.

Glad that she had not been the first to retake her wand, Andy picked up her own and bowed her compliance.

“All that time, Dora, I was trying to protect you,” she swore before parting. “Though I suppose there is only one thing I might now do to that end.”

When she left the room, Andromeda became aware that she was being followed, but as the footfall was too heavy to belong to her petite daughter, she did not turn around to meet her next accuser.

“The diadem? It is here?” a man asked.

The voice was too high to belong to Shacklebolt and too gruff for Lucius, Albus or Arthur. Alastor’s gait was unmistakable. She suspected that she had won the intrigue of the Chief Auror himself, and wondered vaguely what sort of reception she might receive from Bellatrix in Azkaban giving all that she had not meant to say to Narcissa. She supposed it did not matter. They all shared in the crime and should share in its consequences.

“Its location is of little relevance. I’ll not suffer it to remain,” Andy snapped.

“You can’t destroy it.”

She turned to meet her opposition but stumbled upon realising that Remus Lupin had caught up to her in a single stride. He moved to support her, but she stepped away with a jolt.

“I can,” she answered, “and before you burden me with your convictions of convenience – that man, that monster wearing a child’s face brought rot and ruin upon my family, the remaining members of which – including my own daughter! – he systematically seeks to kill. The way he did your friend, James! And Sev’s friend Lily!” she reminded him. “And how can the two of you sleep at night with his essence among you? How can you damn your other son to share his room? Allow Dora to babysit, or Draco to spend the night?

“She was right, Dora, killing that monster before he could use it to more nefarious ends against a less capable foe,” Andy gave as tears began to swell in her eyes. “I Love. My. Daughter. Remus. Even if she refuses to believe it because I refuse – I just. Refuse.” Andy began to weep. The wolf hugged her, and despite her internalised disgust at his embrace she had not the strength to break it.

“Shh, it is fine. She is safe,” Lupin whispered.

“She is not. She never will be,” Andy sobbed. How could she have let this happen?! Dora knew exactly how to get to her, she knew that, and yet she gave in as she did each and every time it came to blows. She could not blame anyone else. Lucius had seemed genuinely surprised by Dora’s casual betrayal. Narcissa might have played along once she understood her niece’s aims, but she was not a politician any more than she could really be called a witch and would not have been consulted in any part of Dora’s planning. The Weasleys, certainly, had been angry if not surprised at their sons’ involvement. Lupin, most assuredly, had shared his knowledge in good faith.

Andy knew she could save or at least avenge her child against the Dark Lord’s attempt on her life, but how was she meant to then protect Dora from herself? She did not exactly have the best track record.

Andy did not know how long she spent allowing Lupin his feeble attempts at comfort, but these added to her general resentment, for how unjust that Voldemort should get to be raised with gentle, affectionate parents where the only alternative that had been offered to her own daughter to screaming arguments and half-meant suggestions of hatred was feudal politics in cryptoclastic sums?

The Boy Who (Voldemort) Lived (Through) knew he was loved, more, probably, than most children would ever be able to recognise they themselves were.

There was a certain injustice to it.

“Andy – oh thank God,” a voice she very much recognised sputtered. Andy stepped away from Lupin as quickly and as much as she might. Much though Ted likely did not want her to see him red-faced and out of breath, she certainly did not want him to see her in the arms of a derelict with mascara stains down to her cheeks.

“I was just told they are meeting down there,” Ted panted, pointing, “in the Slytherin corridor. Lucius insisted that deliberations take place within his own court so –”

Andy shook her head. “It’s over, Ted. She’s been expelled.”

“She’s what?” Ted gaped; his energy renewed by the revelation.

“Not expelled, per se,” Lupin attempted to caution. “Dumbledore and the DMLE though it best that Dora’s talents be developed elsewhere – ”

But Andy pushed passed them, determined to finish that which she had set out to do before Dumbledore and the DMLE delegates were of a mind to stop her.  

“Are the two of your coming?” she demanded.

“Where are you going?” Ted wondered.

“The Snog Spot!” Andy shouted, continuing her march.

“What? Now?” Ted tried to joke.

“The Snog Spot!”

“Okay!” he returned less jovially as he broke into a jog to keep up.

By the time their party had made it to the seventh floor from down in the dungeons, Andy wondered if memory was kind or cruel. She and Ted had made the journey to the secret room he had shown her hundreds of times while in attendance, but she could not remember once being this sore or out of breath. And maybe she had not been, back then. Back when she was secretly dating the school’s star Quidditch player and had no concept that either of them would ever be middle-aged and slightly overweight. Or separated by their own initiative, for that matter.

The two caught sights of one another trying to reclaim their respective decorum and broke into the first bout of laughter they had shared in years.

How could she have thought that he was cheating on her? Or that it would still count as cheating? Ted smiled and she felt like she was fifteen again.

“The two of you used to make out in front of that tapestry?” Lupin asked, as though he meant to question if they were truly in the right place or if they were just taking a break.

“Not quite,” Andy told him.

“If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need but ask,” Ted expanded.

Lupin blinked. “That sounds like one of Ravenclaw’s riddles.”

“Do much snogging behind her bust in your time?” Ted joked.

“I um … no, but, I made use of their private library from time to time. Gryffindor dose not have one of its own, and the Eagles were happy to share with anyone who came in pursuit of knowledge.” Fucking nerd.

“Well, this is the Room of Requirement, it – ” Ted began, gesturing at the wall opposite the tapestry.

Andy, worried that he meant to open it on his own, said, “Shut up. I need to think.”

And thinking was all that one needed to do to unlock the hidden door. Andy closed her eyes and began to pace.

I need the place where things are hidden, I need the place where things are hidden, I need the place where things are hidden.

“Fuck me, then,” Lupin said in wonder as a door revealed itself. Andy opened it to centuries of abandoned items in an overwhelming mass that reminded her slightly of the way the penthouse had looked when Ted and Dora were still in residence, despite the elf’s best efforts.

“How do you propose to find it?” Ted wondered, stepping inside just enough to pick a Fanged Frisbee from the base of the nearest pile.

“I don’t,” Andy gave with a wicked grin. “He tried to kill our daughter, Ted. Join your wand to mine. Lupin, seal the door once the spell has been cast.”

“Andy, you can’t!” Lupin protested. “Harry will – ”

“Pestis Incendium!” Andy cried as flames howled from the tips of her and her ex-husband’s wands.

Chapter Text

The idea that a singular embarrassment could exist in perpetuity had until this very moment been just outside Harry Potter’s understanding of adult life.

Occasionally at breakfast, Dad, Moony, or one of the other nominal authority figures to regularly make up their table would conversationally reference something to have happened so long ago as to no longer bear significance, repeating whatever had been done or said in a way that recognised the extent to which this particular humiliation had been internalised whilst citing that the memory had kept them awake much of the night prior.

Harry’s reaction, when he had one at all, was to inquire when his birthparents’ names came up, usually receiving stunted answers from the tired speaker and laughter from the other adults which offered little illumination. He had never considered that he too might, one day, have cause to relay the kinds of incidences that often went forgotten when the upsetting impetus was no longer a present factor. At ten, neither his memory nor his empathy was extensive enough.

But Tom was, or once had been, an adult.

And Harry knew as soon as the words left their lips that this was something warranting of regret.

“I can talk to snakes,” the Dark Lord said. His voice was slightly too high to belong to a grown man, and Harry wondered if Tom had truly sounded this way or if his mind was superimposing his own voice onto the speaker, in the way his friends or their siblings often sounded like him in his mind when he was explaining something funny to have happened to his two dads on the way home from a play-date.

“Is that much consolation for the fact that you struggle to talk to women?” answered the darkhaired woman to whom the greatest and most terrible wizard to have ever lived (*in London, at least) was speaking. Her voice, he could not help but to notice, was deep and sultry, and it was these things despite Harry having never heard anything akin to it prior. The sound caused him to think about lighting a cigarette after sex, two things he had never experienced and had no effective desire to himself know at this point in his life.

Understanding that he was sharing Tom’s consciousness and therefore admiration of another left Harry with a feeling of betrayal he could not quite identify as envy.

He recognised, however, that it was the same way he felt when Tom took to narrating his doubts in the form of counterargument. When Harry would fight with Dudley about the latter electing not to attend Hogwarts, Tom occasionally commented that Dudley, at least, had some sense of ambition, with the implication that Harry did not, for Tom otherwise had no interest in football or sport in a wider sense.

It was the same way that Harry felt when he tired of Dad’s tutoring, when Tom, likewise, could no longer be asked to care what three-hundred-seventy-nine divided by fifty-four was, when the once and future Dark Lord began shouting at Harry to pay attention. This usually caused Harry to sniffle, both because his head hurt when Tom spoke in frustration and because he was relatively sure that Severus was, likewise, silently cursing his intellectual shortcomings within the confines of the thoughts which Harry was not wizard enough to himself hear.

It was the same way he felt when Tom would tell him something he, Harry, should not have known, causing him to comment on a conversation in which he was not being included for want of external attention. When, for example, a mimosa-fuelled Mrs Malfoy was explaining to her brunch guests why she had legitimate grounds to oppose something in ‘discovery’ in relation to a former Death Eater, when Tom through Harry would lament the carelessness of a follower in intimate terms. Usually, this served to sober their hostess, and she would make a comment that ‘Oh, you know that Barty and Regulus were friends, Harry must have heard …’ but the only friend Harry had ever actually heard of Regulus Black having was the House Elf Kreacher.

He did not know the half of what he said, but most of the time, he had not a care for any of it.

Because most of the time Tom Riddle was his friend.

And because most of the time, it was Harry’s conscious mind that Tom was infiltrating, not the other way around.

Harry felt out of place at present. He knew Tom did, as well.

“Need I remind you who you address, Bellatrix?” the Dark Lord asked the woman in a voice Harry refused to accept as truly having belonged to the man. Maybe it was him, Harry, saying stupid things he thought might seem vaguely threatening. Maybe the woman was Bad like the Wicked Witch of the West, and Harry was failing to protect his friend from her the way he knew Tom would have been able to protect him.

Tom, for his part, was in the process of imagining himself gagged, his wrists and ankles bound together as he writhed on a cold floor with the woman, naked save for the stiletto-heels she presently wore, laughing as she used her wand as a whip, insulting the status of the blood she drew with undisguised delight.

Maybe Tom had gotten bullied, too, back when he had his own body?

Harry assessed his friend’s options as best he could within the limits of his scope. When he was getting picked on at school, he either relied on the fact that he was faster and ran, or, when cornered, offered some reminder that his cousin Dudley could and would beat them up, too, and beat them up worse.

In the event that it was Dudley or someone belonging to his gang doing the bullying, Harry would say something snarky with refence to his cousin’s physique or the fact that he struggled with reading, knowing that such caused the sort of injury that Moony would not be able to fix with a flick of his wand when school let out for the afternoon.

Tom had transcended a long stairwell to speak to the woman, pre-emptively, Harry supposed, but experience had taught that it was easier to run up a flight of stairs than to run down them, and he guessed long-legged Tom might trip if he tried. There were enough people present that he might have a friend or two to help him, if he made it back downstairs but –

“No, I think I have you figured out,” the woman replied as she turned to face them. Although her own was concealed with a pretty mask that reminded Harry of the venetian carnivals and princely masquerades he knew from storybooks, he could tell she was smirking. “‘It is better to be feared than to be loved’, hm? My Lord, if you will forgive the assumption, you have never actually read Machiavelli’s Prince, have you?”

Tom wanted her to step on his balls while calling him the kinds of slurs Harry had only really otherwise heard in context from the portrait of Walburga Black who greeted visitors to her ancestral home by way of telling them to get out. Sometimes, Kreacher said things like this, too, until Sirius ordered him to kindly shut up. Harry, therefore, could not conceive of why Tom yearned for insult and injury, and wondered if it had to do with the fact that he had splintered his soul into a number of household items, if his mind had somehow broken along these same lines.

Harry wondered how he would feel if it were Draco saying these things to him, and though he decided almost immediately that he would not, in fact, enjoy it, he felt his, or rather Tom’s, cock growing stiff with the notion, though he was not sure the extent to which Tom was conscious of his shared presence. Probably because Harry had never been able to learn legilimency as he was meant to.

“Is it an assumption or assertion?” Tom asked the woman with the smoky voice. Harry did not know what either of those words meant exactly, but he understood that Tom meant to flirt with her, and it was going badly for him. Harry tried to help as best he could from his wealth of second-hand experience. He urged Tom as hard as he might to tell her that her mask was pretty, that she smelled nice, that he thought she was smart and that he liked the sound of her voice. Tom, however, did none of this.

“Am I using legilimency?” she asked in return, mocking still. “I needn’t. And if you are so reliant on it that you cannot conduct yourself at a masquerade, I assure you, you were never doing it right to begin with. Come, join me,” she beckoned.

Tom complied, approaching the balcony that overlooked a ball at what seemed to Harry to be a Manor house, smaller than but not altogether unlike the one Draco lived in. Except that for hastily arranged magical decor in the form of floating candles and a self-playing orchestra, the place clearly belonged to Muggles. None of the pictures moved, and a few were covered with a black cloth that the rich and otherwise old-worldly used to signify a recent death.

“At what?” Tom wondered, seeming to retake his vision from Harry.

“Observe and enlighten me what you intend to do about it,” Bellatrix gestured towards the partygoers. Tom afforded them a courtesy glance as he had been bidden but found he had not a care and elected to concentrate on the woman beside him instead.

“I intended to ask you to dance,” he said, still shrill, much to Harry’s horror.

“Oh, there you would be in error,” Bellatrix answered, plainly bored.

“I have taken magic to limits heretofore unimaginable.” This, too, Harry took to be the Dark Lord’s attempt at flirtation, and again, he tried to urge the man to compliment her rather than himself.

“And was that worth the price you paid?” Bellatrix inquired, her voice raising more in parody than inquiry. Tom released the breath he had been holding, longing for her caress on a member now throbbing with anticipation and with the contradictory notion that his advances would again be rejected, a prospect equal in its intoxication. “I can remove my mask,” she demonstrated, revealing one of the most singularly beautiful faces Harry had ever seen, “you cannot. Is it because you cannot face yourself my Lord, or have you forgotten what you looked like to such an extent that you can no longer create a convincing charm?”

“Most women would call me handsome,” Tom claimed. Again, Harry tried screaming at him that he was supposed to tell her that she was beautiful instead. But again, he was ignored. Tom’s gaze shifted to an old mirror placed behind a muggle candelabra to increase its glow. Dusty and damaged with age, it seemed to clutch centuries of smoke within its depths. Tom’s reflection, too, was somehow waxy like the candles doubled within. While his pale skin contained no blemish, it seemed pulled over otherwise perfect features the way imperfect surgery of nearly a century past had sought to restore the faces of veterans who had returned broken from a trench. Tom’s eyes were red, and Harry wondered if it was a trick of the light, if the old mirror could somehow be blamed for the mild distortions.

Bellatrix, seeming to follow his gaze, herself turned to give the mirror a wicked grin as to underline its honesty as well as her own. Tom’s evidently crimson eyes returned to her. He wanted to taste the sweat between her trembling thighs as she called out ‘My Lord’ in a plea for his tongue’s penetration. He wanted to choke on her cum, and when she revived herself enough from the experience to return the favour in kind, he wanted her to use her teeth. He wanted to force her to taste his impure blood, to carve his initials into her perfect snow-white skin and bathe in his own ruin as he kissed the pain away, penetrating, her legs trying to close, squeezing him like a cobra might its prey –

Harry, for whom Desire’s most intimate and intimidating manifestation had been pressing his face imitatively against Draco’s as their tongues collectively struggled to intertwine in a way they could agree to as enjoyable, wanted to gag himself. Why were grown-ups so gross?!

“‘Most would call you handsome’ and yet few can boast my pedigree,” Bellatrix sneered, returning her attention to the ball’s other guests. “Now, what are you going to do, My Lord? If you ask me to dance, my husband will expect the favour repaid, something you are not at liberty to do now that the terrorist antics you have your followers borrowing from Catholic separatists have alienated your most significant financial backer.” Harry felt Tom’s almost-face fall into a frown. The Dark Lord was so weary of discussing the deaths of five Wiltshire muggles with a man who by rite ought to be glad of their demise. Likewise, he was done with listening to his best general’s derision of his ‘borrowed’, ‘muggle,’ tactics, which at present were achieving his aim of generating press.

“Malfoy won’t just walk, he’ll take his usual acolytes with him, plus House Black in the form of Regulus, plus young Mr Crouch, whom you could otherwise – ”

“I needn’t play at politics, Bellatrix,” the Dark Lord interrupted, unable to endure another conversation about how his latest recruit’s father had no interest in waging the sort of ineffectual, asymmetrical war which muggles in ‘enlightened’ post-colonial nations thought disguised their oil-interests. No, she would be sure to say as she had before. Barty Crouch Senior took a ‘Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius’ stance on domestic terrorism.

Harry did not understand any of this, and had a sense that Tom did not either, not really, which was why the Dark Lord was not keen on a debate that would force him to concede that his opponent was more worldly and intelligent than himself, at least where it came to such matters.

“No?” Bellatrix put on a fake pout. “Such is all you have left open to yourself in revealing your weakness.”

“I am immortal,” Tom responded defensively, automatically.

Hearing this, and likely not for the first time, Bellatrix let out a laugh cruel in its authenticity and countered, “No, I am immortal. My name will never be forgotten to history. You never gave me yours.”

This gave Tom pause. He looked around at the lavish home he had visited but once before, where his muggle father had lived in comfort after abandoning his pregnant wife to destitution and death. Tom saw both the life his father to have gone on to lead and his mother’s untimely end as betrayals and hated everything about his heritage and himself. “Gaunt,” he answered at long last. “I am Salazar Slytherin’s last living decent.”

“That is a falsehood,” Bellatrix snorted. “I have the blood of the three founders to have died with issue in my veins, many here can claim the same. I doubt we have all gathered at one of your old crime scenes for a happy family reunion. So, tell me, Tom, why might the most powerful Dark Wizard to have ever lived, excepting, of course, Merlin,” she could not help but to condition, “have a sudden interest in politics? Because you are not offering anything original or for that matter obtainable, at least within the limitations of your tactics.”

He had never told her his given name, and though he resented it being spoken, he found it tantalising that she had come to learn it through virtue of holding his gaze.

“Give it time, Bellatrix,” he whispered into her ear, leaning over to take in her rich, exotic scent. “I could give you time eternal.”

“And what would that be worth?” she said, meeting his tone, or at least the one he would have intended if his voice but matched with everything else he attempted to project. Bellatrix’s long, bejewelled fingers reached under his robes to find the buttons to his trousers, which she proceeded to slowly undo whilst she spoke into his ear in those throaty, sexy tones. “Everything pleasure can be derived from is fleeting. It is dangerous and that is what makes it so bloody fun, the knowledge that this moment might well be your last. Drugs, sex, duels, bondage, torture, love, heartbreak, vengeance – where is the rush if you are always on the run from a fear you claim to have conquered?” Her touch was ice cold, and he shrank against it, cursing the limits of his still-human anatomy while at once indulging in the way her rings cut into his inner thigh as she tried to amuse herself with what remained of the boner he bore her.

“Death?” he gasped, desperate to go further but prevented by the enormity of almost-realised desire to consider a single charm that might persuade Bellatrix towards genuine interest. For fuck’s sake! He was the most powerful wizard to have ever lived (*in London). Why the fuck could he not keep it up?!

“At what cost?” Bellatrix demanded, removing her hand slowly, her manicured nails tracing invisible gashes in their retreat.

“What do you fear?” Tom whispered.

Bellatrix laughed and looked away. “If it is undying loyalty you seek, you would be served better asking me what I love, what I want, what I would pay. That is what I mean. You do it wrong, mind magic.”

“What would it take for you to show me?”

“You can’t give me what I want, My Lord,” Bellatrix shrugged. “Nor can I give you more than this. You shattered your soul. I doubt you would derive much if anything from carnal pleasure, I doubt you would care at all if you hadn’t cause to idealise me to meet your ends.”

“Tell me,” Tom begged.

“Take it,” Bellatrix spat, opening her heavily lidded eyes wide in challenge.

Tom, though fixated, could find nothing that fit. He saw a scrawny kid with startling green eyes and what he guessed was otherwise south-east Asian heritage picnicking on Chocolate Frogs with a woman quite nearly as beautiful as Bellatrix. He saw the boy whispering to snakes at a place that reminded him very much of Wool’s Orphanage and whispering with another boy about cauldrons in children’s stories, about wizards and whims and ‘but-why-did-you’s too numerous to take in. A tall, moustached crust-punk was levitating him with his wand, and he was laughing. He was sitting with a sharp-nosed man at Hogwarts, watching the other boy playing football with an enchanted tree while two dogs kept chase. A pretty girl with pink hair and a plastic crown twisted with the number ‘17’ laughed, changing her slightly upturned nose to resemble a duck’s bill, a pig’s snout, and an elephant’s trunk in quick succession.

My memories, Harry realised as Bellatrix said, “Never mind,” herself taking a step back. Had she seen them as well?

Tom, confused and looking for composure, said, “I’d kill your husband if you would but ask it.”

“You would leave me a widow for a year and a day before Orion would see me again married off to some other pureblood princeling. Whatever you Dark Arts, you are still and will forever be an outsider. They would laugh, all of them,” she gestured, “they would laugh at you if you had the nerve to ask for my hand.”

“I could kill your uncle after demanding that he make you his heir.”

“To what end?” Bellatrix sighed, seemingly exasperated. “For me to take his seat, I would need the approval of three fourths of the body proper. You have made it so that we can’t even hold a vote at present. You have all but broken one of our oldest institutions. Murdering the current chairman would only further undercut your objectives. Parkinson, Greengrass, Nott, Yaxley even wouldn’t just leave the Twenty-Eight in protest, they’d turn on you in the process. None of them would be able bear to watch noble blood being spilt, it would underline the insecurities you encourage, but not to your gain.”

“Are you saying that I have traitors within my organisation?” Tom challenged.

“I am saying that if you keep relying on borrowed tactics and stale rhetoric to no discernible aims you soon will. Allow me to offer Malfoy concessions in your name,” Bellatrix pleaded. “Allow me to conquer and rule in it.”

“In my name?” Tom seemed to puzzle.

“You have no interest in exercising that kind of power yourself. You don’t even recognise it as power owing to your birth and upbringing, same as you do not recognise love. It is no fault of yours, or perhaps it is, either way it is known. Muggles cannot love,” she pronounced. “Like legilimency and occlumency, and ... faces, it is just something that you cannot hope to master.”

“I am the heir of Slytherin!”

“You were, or might have been, before creating so many horcruxes. Now you are barely a wizard at all, are you?” Bellatrix teased, again with a put-on pout that made Tom feel insignificant, and for once, deeply uncomfortable with this stance. “Is it much consolation that you can still talk to snakes?”

It made too much sense, Harry thought. That was why he could not follow Sirius’ instruction to the same success Draco enjoyed, why his own ‘accidental’ magic had become practically non-existent since Dudley had begun training in another borough. Tom had lost at least some of his power in creating his horcruxes. If these were to be destroyed, would Harry lose his magic, too?

Like Tom, he supposed, all that he had ever wanted to be was a wizard. Could that dream be lost to him?

Harry wanted to kick and cry and scream and had the momentary sensation that he was doing all of these things, and all at once. Sirius was screaming, too. So was Mr Malfoy. So was Draco. So were the neighbours. Harry had a fever and his head felt as though it would burst and for some reason, they wanted to give him muggle medicine that tasted like grape and sounded like surrender.

Where, he wondered, was Tom now when he so desperately needed him?

“Narcissa, you may try it on if you wish.”

Narcissa Malfoy blinked, realising that she had begun staring at the Sorting Hat during a conversational lull. Deciding to retire, she took a final sip of the delightful concoction the Hogwarts Headmaster had provided to warm her after a long journey, but found her cup refilled when she replaced in in its saucer.

“Of all the hats you wear, Albus, I assure you that one holds the least appeal,” she answered. What a wonder it was, that in all that had transpired, a hundred or so children had confronted their fates in accordance with a long-established tradition she alone had never truly been made part. A basilisk in the bathroom and a fire in a room few had known to have existed, all while political alliances that were certain to dictate the course of their lives were being forged and broken in a dimly lit dungeon. What a start to secondary education!

The night was cold and clear. Narcissa looked past Albus towards the stars twinkling in the Scottish sky, imagining the constellations and celestial bodies for which her relatives were named and wondering why it was that she had been denied this tradition, too.

“Aren’t you curious if you chose correctly?” Dumbledore pressed.

Narcissa self-consciously pulled the tartan dressing-gown Professor McGonagall had lent her tighter around her shoulders as she felt herself shiver. Personal ambition failed her entirely. She had surrendered the crown marriage had given her and allowed Lucius to control and then confiscate her lands to his own misguided ends, all without argument, and often without even a show of acknowledgement. Even Andromeda, who had fled family obligation like a thief in the night was disgusted with her. But Narcissa had never been meant to reign. She did not even consider herself particularly good at being goodly and gracious while others ruled in her name and stead. Most likely, she would not have been placed in Slytherin if the choice had not been hers to make.

Looking at the stars, she was glad that she had been denied their light in the dungeons’ depths during her time at Hogwarts. The sight of them both made her feel homesick and sharpened the understanding that she had never truly had a home into resentment. No home. No crown. And now no lands. Ravenclaw or Gryffindor Tower would have been her undoing.

“I did so with certainty. I chose my sisters,” she answered. “If I seem curious, I assure you, it is not doubt in the sense you seem to imply. Rather I wonder if my son Draco might suffer the same humiliation as I myself did when his time comes.”

“Ah,” Dumbledore nodded, extending a slight smile as he leaned back in his regal, high-backed chair. “That I can all but assure you shall not transpire. From what Remus has told me, Draco’s magic has already shown other, remarkable manifestations.”

Narcissa was annoyed with Remus as it were, and for much the same reason that she ever was, but tonight the mild ill-will she bore towards him was both more present and more acute. Remus Lupin got to be melancholy. He got to regret his actions rather than defend them. And he had probably saved Dora’s life with his expertise. “What has Remus to say regards –” Narcissa began.

“Sirius has been instructing Draco, if I have not been led astray,” Dumbledore interrupted.

“Yes, of course. Scrofula,” Narcissa blinked, collecting herself.

“Scrofula,” Dumbledore repeated without inflection. “You know, Narcissa, when first we met, I was much reminded of a particular text I was set in History of Magic. Your forefather Phillippe Auguste was rumoured to have precisely the same gift. Many, of course, since have been throughout the centuries, but there is decidedly something different about you.”

Narcissa bit at her bottom lip. She had heard this before, for the House of Black liked nothing better than to brag about its Capetian roots. But unlike herself, Phillippe Auguste had been a master politician who had risked war with the Holy Church at the hight of its power when his advisors had presented him with a muggle bride, electing instead to take a lower-born witch to wife, who had provided the natural son who would go on to found House Black.

Narcissa, by contrast, had married a Malfoy, perhaps at greater insult.

She looked up at the portrait of her great-grandfather, willing him to hold his silence. She would in fact bring all to ruin as he had claimed when she had announced her engagement, for the old feudal holdovers extant in the legal code were inextricable from the way their noble house saw and spoke of and unto itself. Still, she often ached to live to the more limited promise of what a third and therefore throwaway daughter of the old aristocracy was meant to. To smile. And wave.

“If we are speaking of legilimency and occlumency –”

“We are not. Not exclusively.”

“You are wondering if I am patient enough to defeat my would-be rivals though incremental bureaucratic reform?” Narcissa smiled teasingly. “Perhaps.”

Dumbledore, to her surprise, met her with an open grin. It was only then that she realised that as she had at eleven during what should have been her Sorting, she was sitting on her hands and kicking her legs out before her, unable to remain still. Narcissa stopped abruptly, folded her arms, and contemplated how much she hated sitting. She was much more comfortable pacing the length of whichever room happened to hold her, gesturing during speech as though to emphasise her argument. Corban had nicknamed her ‘Ballerina’ when she had first interned for him at fifteen, and it had seemed nice because it was neutral. At thirty-five she was referred to by a great number of nouns in the popular press, polarising all.

“He was said to have been able to read the minds of everyone at the room at once, without trying, from an extraordinarily young age,” Dumbledore continued of her ancestor. “I believe that was what you were doing when it was your turn to be sorted. You were nervous.”

“Everyone is nervous at the Sorting,” Narcissa countered.

“Few could cause the Sorting Hat to hear the private thoughts of everyone in the room clearly in the self-same moment. Try it on, Narcissa, you are safe here. I know how to silence myself.”

“Is that what happened?” Narcissa asked, though she was not sure she wanted to know.

Dumbledore gave her a single nod, seeming to study her as he did. “Were you truly never curious?”

“I try not to dwell on it.” Narcissa stood, wanting to leave. It was late and she was tired and there was no legal recourse to deny Corban his motion to appeal now that Regulus’ statement had been accepted into evidence, owing, in part to Dora’s uncanny knack for bad timing. Sometimes Narcissa lost in court and otherwise, and sometimes she deserved to, as was here the case. Barty Crouch Jr. would in all likelihood be released on bail, but, as Dumbledore had pointed out in commiseration, he would not be permitted to leave London until a date for his trial was set and such matters could be infinitely delayed. Like Dora, he would in all probability take up residence with Regulus at Grimmauld Place. The little bitch of a usurper would surely loath the company her machinations had invited. At least there was that to look forward to.

Sometimes, Narcissa Malfoy found that she had almost come to like Albus Dumbledore in the years since her reinstatement to the bar.

And then he spoke.

“And yet you teach it, I hear.”

He was not going to let her say goodnight. Not yet. Narcissa, as was her habit, began to pace the length of his desk.

“Draco inherited it. Hermione had an interest and Pansy an aptitude, and the exercises help the girls with the concentration necessary for Runic translation, which is what their parents actually send them to me for.”

Dumbledore again gave her an appraising smile, his blue eyes twinkling from behind a pair of half-moon spectacles. It likely amused him that she had taken on, and in fact taken to, a Mudblood, but time moved separately for certain things and Narcissa saw enough of herself in young Hermione’s mind to recognise that with the right exposure and training, the muggle-born Hermione would someday be able to wage all of the legal battles that Narcissa herself could not hope to as a daughter of House Black.

It was not that she did not care about Goblin Reparations, Half-Breed Restrictions, and, to hear Hermione argue it, House Elf Liberation – for Narcissa was a traditionalist and took ‘equality under the law’ to precisely mean that, but she remained Lucius Malfoy’s wife though she was no longer his consort. This came with as many limitations as it did opportunities for collusion, though few on the left would be willing to extend her such understanding.

Likewise, Dumbledore in all probability misunderstood her kindnesses towards Pansy Parkinson. Like herself, Pansy was the middle child of a sacred bloodline. Lands her father had hinted she would inherit border Wiltshire, their former feudal overlords, and she was already being presented as a possible match for Draco – her son’s marriage being something that Narcissa had not entirely realised she was surrendering her voice on when she had given up her crown at Sirius’ insistence. But Pansy was smart and fisty and, like Hermione, accepted nothing in the way of intimidation. She got into blows with boys twice her size, fought dirty and won more often than not. She was not meant to smile and wave, either. Narcissa was determined that she should not be sold into a loveless marriage for an allegiance of little long-term significance.

“You never instructed Nymphadora?” Dumbledore asked.

“No,” Narcissa answered flatly. “I likewise never got in the way of her instruction. Perhaps that was in error. I would like to hope that I’ve been able to establish enough of a sense of jurisprudence to dissuade the DMLE from exercising its force outside of the constricts of law, but my husband’s protégée has been conditioned to hear ‘no’ as ‘find me another way’ as Lucius himself does. That will work for her in politics, certainly, but I’ve never been personally invested or even much interested in short term gains.”

“How do you see your niece’s aims as contrary to your own? Perhaps I might yet intervene.”

“You won’t, for like most everyone in tonight’s meeting, you see the law as an extension of the Ministry’s power rather than a means of defending the populus against gross governmental overreach.”

“That is not fair, Narcissa,” Dumbledore said, for the first time that evening dropping his kindly façade. “I, too, believe that the Order had ought to wait until Harry comes of age before it seeks to destroy Voldemort’s soul.”

“To the end that you martyr the lad?” Narcissa shook her head. “Albus, we wait because if he should commit the sort of crime that confesses the Dark Lord’s power whilst still a minor, the Wizengamot has no option to conduct a separate trial. If we can hold off until he turns seventeen, if we try him as an adult, we can try him as accessory rather than perpetrator.”

Narcissa stopped pacing to appreciate the Head Warlock’s speechless stare. It was not often the man was lost for words. “How do you propose to win that case?” he asked at last.

“Oh?” Narcissa smiled darkly. “I plan to prosecute.”

It took a moment for Dumbledore to take this in. Narcissa did not mind the lack of estimation, in fact she quite enjoyed it, as such benefited her exponentially.

“I thought you were fond of the boy,” he remarked, not, Narcissa noted, disapprovingly, which came as a comfort. At least he was not a hypocrite in private.

She did want to save Harry, as much as he might be helped, but she would happily sacrifice his good name to keep Britain’s wizarding population free of the unlawful prosecution to which they had long been subjected. Immediate history may well recognise her for the monster she knew herself to be, but in time she would be viewed as a reformer, a proto-feminist, and quite possibly a blood traitor. Not that it mattered. Not that she imagined she would much mind whilst hanging in the halls of parliament, most probably under her former surname.

She was not ambitious. She simply acted where need be.

“That is of little interest,” she told Dumbledore of Harry, whom, like Dumbledore himself, she saw as a means to an end above any and all else. “You said something once when first I encountered to boy and sought to correct for your neglect where it came to vetting those you charged with his care. Voldemort never understood love, which is what caused Lily’s sacrifice to prove as protective as it has. It causes Voldemort physical anguish when he attempts to fully process the boy, which, to my mind, means that Harry has to be complicit in his – Voldemort’s – continued actions.”

“Agreed,” Dumbledore gave.

“If I understand this correctly, when Harry tuns seventeen, Lily’s last spell will be broken, and Voldemort will no longer suffer such limitations.”

“The hope is that in such time Harry can be taught to resist,” Dumbledore said, though he already sounded reserved to the counterargument Narcissa reasoned he must know her well enough to except.

“Both Sirius and Dora nearly died at his hand,” Narcissa stressed. “I doubt he wants to resist. Furthermore, I doubt that he will want to if the horcruxes continue to be destroyed and he becomes increasingly conscious of Voldemort’s mind.”

“You think that is likely, giving all that we have done to safeguard those that are known to us?”

“I think you had ought to offer Order membership to Regulus and Nymphadora as a preventative measure, but ultimately I think it is inevitable that they will continue their hunt, especially as her actions are to be rewarded with Mad Eye’s direct attentions.”

What did it matter at this point?

Lucius had joined up with the rebels against her wishes. Narcissa hoped it was a miscalculation rather than genuine conviction to spare him from the pain of his protégée’s coming betrayal.

She heard stifled, selfish laughter coming from a frame above her head, and knew it to belong to Phineas Nigellus. Upon her endowment, Nymphadora more than meant to take up with Regulus, who held for her some fascination if not a direct fancy. His surname would avenge the Malfoys’ betrayal of Prince Louis during his 1216 invasion, and the seizure of Wiltshire would restore the Blacks as Britian’s predominant wizarding family.

And regardless of if Nymphadora would one day be able to recognise it within herself, or, if like Lucius, she would ever need to lie in order to look in a mirror, Narcissa knew that her niece had the capacity to kill for mere concessions, or to convince others to do so in her name as tonight had proven.

Regulus, for his part and explaining the entirety of his appeal, was single-minded in his ambition of reducing Tom Riddle to rot, which would keep him silent in matters of politics.

But Narcissa shared this same trait, and if in fact she was not cleverer or more powerful than her cousin as she privately supposed, she was certainly more patient. Let them do their worst.

If Narcissa won her war, none of those waged by or within the great families would bear any significance when all the dust had settled.

“But it cannot happen until Harry can be put on trial in his own right. Otherwise, none of us will ever truly have agency if every Imperious carries a life sentence for its victim. Separate sentencing, Albus,” Narcissa, whose pacing had resumed, continued to argue. “We do this, and Harry will get, I don’t know, depending on the event crime and the extent to which he can be proven to have been complicit, five to ten? Tom, on the other hand, will be afforded the eternity he sought.”

“Which Harry will then have to serve,” Dumbledore replied, rising himself.

Narcissa stopped to meet his gaze. “No. Do you remember the last time little Dora did something ill-advised and Andy and I had to go to Azkaban to find out if Bella still knew how to find our old front door? Well! I had time to observe the guards at their posts – and I propose to you, if a being with two souls should enter the prison, and one soul is just the typical teenage angst bullshit and the other is so evil and damaged as to literally splinter when encountered with an act of love, which do you believe more likely to be taken out with a kiss?” It was what Draco was attempting, after all.

Dumbledore stared at her; horror stricken. “I would not propose that punishment –”

“No, you wouldn’t. Nor would I,” Narcissa stressed, “which is why when a Dementor is unable to resist its nature, we will be able to force an … administrative overhaul, shall we say. I doubt that you would have so much as a tenth of the opposition you face at present in trying to get that bill passed as written. You can retire on a win.”

Dumbledore nodded to himself and sat, bidding her to do the same. “It screams of collusion, Narcissa.”

“Only if you name me your successor.” She was not ambitious. Not, at least, in the Slytherin sense.

“What then do you ask in exchange?” Dumbledore bade.

Narcissa took a deep breath. Close, close, empty.

“What my sister said tonight,” she began slowly. “Do you know the truth of it? Did Bella and Frank really make a separate deal for the continued safety of my immediate family?”

Dumbledore looked at her sadly. “If I answered you ‘yes’, you would leave with the understanding that you made a costly mistake. If I answer ‘no’, you’ll continue to suffer in the knowledge that the war damaged your beloved sister to the extent that she felt justified in killing your son for the alleged sin of his conception. I’ll answer, but only you if you can tell me if it would make a difference.”

“Can you not answer that question for yourself?” Narcissa posed. Albus Dumbledore could neither save her nor cause her more doubt and self-hatred than that which she already suffered. What she needed from him was surrender.

“The similarities are topical, at most,” he acknowledged as she had rather suspected he might, “but I’ve even seen my sister Arianna whenever I look at you. It is not that you are incapable of other forms of magic, it is that you are so concentrated on occlumency by necessity that you have neither concentration nor control. Were I to ask you to levitate this quill,” he offered, “you would raise all of my devices here and the desk and chair besides. You would refuse. And that control you do have. You restrain yourself, because you know if you did not, you would bring your opponents to ruin, which you have been blessed with enough wisdom and grace not to seek. It is commendable. And, quite naturally, it makes me wonder what might have been if I had taken more of a personal interest. If I had been with Arianna more like how Bellatrix was with you.”

Hearing her name stung more than Narcissa had anticipated. Close, empty, she thought.

“The odd, fair-haired little sister of talent singular within a generation and a social dropout in between,” Dumbledore continued vaguely, “thought to be a squib and yet … I imagine so many little girls growing up right now want to be just like you, Narcissa, and with good cause. Misses Granger and Parkinson included, of course, and though I should doubt you would accept this old man’s particular observation, Miss Tonks as well.”

He was right on the count, at least.

“I can’t do much, Albus,” Narcissa said, “but I’ve got this one little parlour trick you might find amusing. If you let me into your mind, I can tell you if you meant it or not.”

“I don’t even know if it was my spell to have killed her,” he lied.

“You do,” she negated. “Find closure, Albus. I meant it. I live with that knowledge every day. Until the very last moments I fully intended to kill my sister. Part of my still wishes I had. Part of me wishes, as everyone else seems to, that Bella had won that duel as she did every other in which she ever engaged.”

“She knew the risk. Which is why she took it,” came Dumbledore’s reserved answer to inquiry. “Frank went to her, not the other way around. You would have killed him or any other by whom you felt threatened during that stage of the conflict, when your son’s life had been weaponised against your husband by every party hoping to force him into doing their bidding. Including myself,” he acknowledged, adding, “I should offer you an apology, but I know you would reject it on principle.”

“To think how far we’ve come,” Narcissa offered ironically, though she knew them both to understand that the sentiment was true. There was not much to differentiate their politics excepting the way they each approached personal honour, which Dumbledore met as though it were an ideal and Narcissa viewed as another duty to which she was bound by birth and status.

He would help her bring a case against Harry Potter on her own terms, and when he retired, he would relinquish to her the only crown she might ever have sought for herself. They both knew as much.

Not that she was ambitious.

Not in the personal, Slytherin sense.

There was simply no one else practicing who would be able to lead the courts in the same direction Dumbledore himself might have had Voldemort never been a contention.

“I don’t want to know, Narcissa. It is enough to know that people can change for the better, as we two have since proven, as we might both yet hope young Harry likewise will.”

Harry awoke with a small jolt. He felt a pressure on his chest, beneath which his heart continued to race. Reaching out from beneath more covers than he was ordinarily accustomed to at this time of the year, he found himself met with silky, soft fur. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he had somehow contracted Moony’s lycanthropy, but looking to find a human hand before him, he sat up, jostling the snow-white ferret that must have fallen asleep on top of him. It let out a retaliatory hiss at being disturbed and Harry found himself smiling.

“Draco?” he asked, scratching the rodent’s head until it regained its calm, crawling up on Harry’s shoulder. “Draco, come on, don’t be like that,” he started before understanding from the ferret’s incessant squeaking that he was meant to give way. “Oh, sorry,” he said, scooting himself towards the wall to make space for the other boy in his twin bed, patting the empty space beside him, until, suddenly, Draco filled it.

“Shhhhh,” the blond-haired boy hissed from the moment that human speech ought otherwise to have been made possible to him.

“Ss-sssh?” Harry replied awkwardly in Parseltongue, unsure what he was being told.

Draco’s pale grey eyes fell into a fixed glare. “No, we need to be quiet,” he cautioned, glancing ominously over his shoulder towards the over-long man snoring from the bed that had once been Dudley’s (and would be still if the following day did not begin with a four-am run before training.) “Sirius told me that I was not to come round. I shouldn’t want to cross him.”

Harry, who liked being as close to Draco as volume demanded, stopped himself from saying that his godfather looked as though he had drunken enough the evening prior that there was very little risk of rousing him before noon, and even then, only with the upmost protest.

Still, he conceded to himself it was a bit curious that Sirius was here in his room. Normally when he spent the night these days, when he came or grew too drunk to assume his Animagus form, he just passed out on the living room couch. Moony might throw a blanket over him. Dad would pretend to ignore him only to complain about him the next morning when he refused to stir. Harry had liked things better when Sirius had been Snuffles at night and had slept on the floor between his and Dudley’s beds. But he had not seen Sirius take his Animagus form since he, Harry, had put Wolfsbane into the kibble. Since the Dark Lord had given him the idea.

Trying to forget, Harry cuddled himself against Draco’s shoulder, feeling his silk pyjamas under his cheek. He liked the way they looked and felt. He liked that they were the sort that grown-ups wore, with buttons and a pocket embordered with initials. It was the kind of thing that he and Dudley only wore on Christmas Eve, that his two post-rocker dads only bothered with for the same occasion, for that matter. He would probably be the same way when he grew up. If he was still himself when he grew up, that was. Tom had been fancy, too.

Draco’s thin fingers ran themselves through Harry’s perpetually untidy hair, unconsciously seeking the order he himself exemplified with such elegance. Harry, having seen Tom for the first time in what might have been a dream, half-wished that the friend he so fancied would not fuss over him so, worried that he would look something like a dark-skinned Dark Lord should Draco’s efforts ever prove successful. He pulled himself from the easy embrace in which they had fallen.

“I wanted to become a snake, you know, that way, we could talk even when I am in my Animagus form, and none would be the wiser,” Draco said.

Harry, unable to place into words that he was glad that Draco had not become a snake, instead replied, “But how did you get here in the first place?”

“Pipes,” Draco seemed to shrug.

“Pipes?” Harry repeated. He imagined a small ferret prancing merrily through an extensive sewage system, simply daring the waste to sully his pristine coat. He wondered how far Wiltshire actually was from Cokeworth, having only ever been to the Manor via side-along apparition or the Floo Network, both of which took no time at all. Dudley, he recalled, had gone by car once, but in want of avoiding holiday traffic, he and Moony had flown the thing, and anyway, they had set out from Scotland.

“How long did it take you?” he asked.

“From next door to here?” Draco wriggled his pointed nose. “Like, three minutes, maybe?”

“Next door?” Harry asked. The last time he remembered seeing Draco Malfoy, they had been at King’s Cross Station in London on what Harry had to imagine was the morning prior, saying goodbye to Dora and Charlie on their last trip to Hogwarts.

Draco’s father had had business in the City which Draco was being made to attend, a prospect he would not have been looking forward to had it not given him an excuse as to why he could not go watch a Ministry Hearing with Pansy and Hermione, leading the latter to direct all of her frustration at Dudley, who had training, as he did every day, and therefore could not likewise assert that such was more interesting or important. Excepting Ron and Ginny, who had a garden to degnome and therefore were apt to envy any alternate prospect for a sunny afternoon, no one had asked Harry what he meant to do with his day or asked him to be part of theirs.

In fact, he had gotten to take the rest of the day off primary (having missed the better half of it) and had been set up with paper and crayons in his godfather’s tattoo parlour until Sirius had finished one of the pieces that had had to be put on delay whilst he was in hospital, something Harry knew he had ought to address, much as Sirius seemed keen to ignore it. They had gotten on his motorbike afterwards, rode to McDonald’s for tea and then returned home for a few tuns on Dudley’s Nintendo. Harry had no recollection that Draco was due to come over, or of his arrival.

“Oh. You don’t remember, do you?” Draco inferred. “My father was called away to Hogwarts and he dropped me off here before he went. You were,” he paused. “Well, you were across the street at the time. Sirius said that the two of you had been playing a video game and that you just started screaming. You were not even losing. He went to hold you, to try to get you to calm down, but you had a really, really high fever. So, he took you to see that alchemist and the … muggle-alchemist,” he puzzled. “I forget the word they use. The guy who, back when he was a student, used to sell ‘fun’ drugs to Mother and Severus. Not that I can agree that being sick would ever be much fun, even for muggles with all of their oddities.”

“It’s ‘chemist’ and his name is Mick,” Harry informed him, assuming ‘fun’ just meant that they tried and failed to make their medicines taste like fruit. “Him and Elliott have been our neighbours for, well, Mick since I can remember, at least. But Dad’s something of a grudge against them, at least, he does when he doesn’t need to buy or borrow something. Why did Sirius bring me there instead of St Mungo’s?” he frowned.

“Because Dora opened the Chamber of Secrets and Sirius,” Draco winced slightly, “he thought it was better to go to a Muggle and a Mudblood for help, figuring they would not have cause for connection, I guess. Anyway, he, Sirius, tried to tell my father ‘no’ to my staying with him, but Father simply insisted that that was the point of extended family and then left me to his charge, saying that he was not going to put me in harm’s way with Slytherin’s Monster on the loose. But Sirius said that if his suspicions about what was going on with you were correct, I was in danger here, with you, so he put me up next door, put stupid Kreacher in charge and said that I had to go to bed even though it was only seven,” Draco complained.

A wave of realisation hit Harry. “He didn’t lie, Draco,” he said quietly on Tom. He remembered that he had told Dora last Christmas how to enter the Chamber of Secrets, enticing her with the temptation that a horcrux was hidden within. Except Mrs Malfoy had already destroyed the horcrux Tom connected with the place years prior, and Harry had known as much. Had there in fact been one to find? Had Dora destroyed it? Had she done so with fire?

Normally, when something threatened Tom’s soul, Harry’s scar ached for days on end, but at the moment, he felt nothing save for an overwhelming and conflicting sense of guilt that he had tried and failed to end the life of one of his – nay, their – detractors, the life of someone whom he, Harry, otherwise adored.

For his part, Tom seemed to despise them all. Was it because that pureblood lady had not wanted to marry him? Because his dad had been a muggle? Harry closed his eyes, trying to remember the specifics of what Tom had given of his consciousness but came up short.

“Pfft! I am bigger,” Draco claimed, mistaking Harry’s meaning. “I could take you in a fight.”

“That’s not what – and you bloody couldn’t!” Harry frowned, shoving the other boy as much as he might without actually unbalancing him.

“I have more experience,” Draco asserted.

“I have Dudley as experience.”

“Hermione.”

Harry snorted. “You ever win?”

“No,” Draco smiled slyly. “You?”

Harry shrugged. “Sometimes I can trick him into conceding an own goal when we are getting yelled at after the fact. But I mean, I can’t physically overpower the kid and besides, he has a wand.  What is your excuse?”

“Hermione’s a bloody savage. She’s punched me hard enough on occasion that I can more than relate to the headaches you get whenever Tom decides to make himself present.”

Harry blinked. He felt for his scar and then at his face, to make sure, to make absolutely sure it was still the one he knew. Where was Tom, anyway? Ordinarily, he had the same generalised sense of fascination around Draco and his abilities that he did, or had, around that raven-haired bombshell who could practice legilimency and discuss politics, whom he had so badly wanted to hurt him all the while.

Who perhaps truly had.

“He didn’t lie. Tom,” Harry clarified. “He didn’t lie. If Dora opened the Chamber of Secrets, then there really was a horcrux down there. There must have been and she must have destroyed it.” Saying this, Harry began to weep in fear, anger, frustration and then sense that for the first time in a long while, he was truly alone.

“Harry, what is it? What did you remember? Was it your parents?” Draco guessed, offering him the corner of a sheet as a makeshift-tissue.

“She said … she said that I, he, we, because we damaged our soul so much, we weren’t really wizards. Not anymore. What if, because of what he did … what if I can’t do magic?” Harry choked.

“Who said that?” Draco demanded.

“The pretty lady. I forget her name, but she was mean to Tom … I think because she knew he liked it.”

Draco threw Sirius and unconscious glance as though wondering if he ought to in fact wake him.

“I couldn’t focus until she said that thing about giving up magic because I knew that Tom wanted her to step on his private parts in the high heels she was wearing like, the whole time they were talking,” Harry explained, looking at Draco who had opposite sex parents to see if this was normal.

Maybe he was better off asking Sirius, but explaining his insight into Lord Voldemort’s sexual yearnings seemed like the sort of thing that would result in his being grounded for no real reason. Plus, Dad and Moony would probably feel the need to host a number of Order members, who, for the next few weeks at the very least, would neglect to invite him, Harry, around to play with their kids. Even after he had served his punishment. It was not fair!

“And I don’t know why he wanted her to do this because I imagine it would hurt, like … a lot, but then I thought that Moony, when he and Dad lock their door, he usually isn’t wearing his gloves and Dad has scratches and scars all over his body and actually, Moony does, too, so maybe that is just something that adults do when they are alone?” he asked Draco, who seemed to have no more experience or inclination towards such matters than Harry himself could claim.

All the same, Draco gave the matter deep consideration before announcing, “It doesn’t sound any worse than what Sirius told us grown-ups do together.”

Harry had thought about this, too. “I think it would be different with a boy, though,” he admitted. “Don’t you?”

Draco was silent for what seemed a very long time. “I only think about boys.”

Harry bit his lip, wondering if this was the first time Draco was admitting as much in so many words. He accepted that on a human level, Lucius Malfoy genuinely did not care that his only son was gay, believing homophobia to be ‘a disgusting muggle concept which he could not credit’ as he had often stated. But it was also true that Wiltshire was held of the Crown, who certainly would expect Draco to ‘close his eyes and think of England’ when it came down to it, something that had to factor into his father’s other calculations. It was not fair. It was not fair at all!

“I only think about you,” Harry said, brushing back a stand of hair that had fallen from behind Draco’s hair onto his cheek. “Like that. I mean.” That was true. Even as Tom was imagining his societal better degrading him, Harry, in want of relation, had been picturing Draco in the same role. He did not want to be called ‘Mudblood’ or ‘Filth’ but he would not mind Draco touching him there, or knowing in turn how the other boy felt in his hand.

“Same,” Draco blushed deeply, perhaps inadvertently reading his mind as he was wont.

“Really?” Harry smiled.

They had kissed twice. Once at St Mungo’s at Harry’s insistence, an act that had ended with Draco in tears and Harry not seeing him for six months (though other factors including attempted homicide were admittedly at play.)

Once, more recently, in the Manor’s rose garden, when Harry had for the first time seen Draco fully realise the form of a little white ferret. Delighted, he had chased the animal as he scurried behind a bush, only to find Draco blushing when Harry had emerged from crawling through the thorns, wondering if he wanted to try snogging again, but ‘the way grown-ups do, with tongues.’

‘Yeah, go on then,’ Harry had answered.

It was the first thing they had actually said to one another in half a year.

The only thing they had said at Dora’s seventeenth.

And then, this morning, everything had seemed so normal between them as to suggest that nothing had happened at all.

Draco was acting important in front of Pansy and Hermione whom he knew best; Ron pronounced him a prat for his peacocking; Dudley was growing increasingly more resolved not to know any more about magic than some statute of education deemed he must; Harry was calling his cousin out for being a tit; and Ginny was ignoring all of their idiosyncratic arguing in favour of listening to Charlie talk school Quidditch fixtures with the Yaxley boys who likewise played for their respective houses.

And all this as though he, Harry, had not been kissed by Draco Malfoy a fortnight prior.

As though Draco regularly kissed whomever he felt like.

Harry had never asked where he had learned to use his tongue. But it certainly not as though Draco shared his consciousness with the greatest and most terrible Dark Lord to ever live (*in London) who could tell him about adult-stuff!

In his sudden envy, he felt something like Tom, which gave him both pause and peace.

“Of course, I only think about myself. I am gorgeous,” Draco winked. “Oh, come off it, Harry. I was just – ”

“You are though! You are the prettiest boy I have ever seen!” Harry objected. “And you can do legilimency and occlumency. And you became an Animagus even if your animal form is kind of lame, no offence. And you can cure some weird medieval sickness just by touching someone. And you speak like five languages and all I can do is talk to snakes and that might be all I will ever be able to do because Tom broke his soul and he broke mine, too!”

“He didn’t break your soul, Harry,” Draco said, reaching his arm around Harry’s shoulders.

“No, he did,” Harry insisted, and, in the context of this claim realising he ought to have asked far sooner, offered an obligatory, “Is Dora okay, then?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Kind of. She got kicked out of school but then she meant to. She is going to sit her N.E.W.T.s early and then go straight into Auror training before the end of the year.”

Fuck, Harry (or perhaps Tom) thought. As though immortality did not have enough unforeseen challenges.

“Harry?” Draco asked in attempt to pull him from the ascending darkness.

“What happened to Sirius,” Harry admitted, “We did it because We can’t learn, or can’t do, any of the stuff he taught you with such ease. What We tried to do to Dora ... I did it because of your dad. Because he wants to name her as his heir at your expense.”

Draco stared at him, opened mouthed and for what felt quite a long time.

“It is what is best for Wiltshire,” he said finally. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“You are not angry?” Harry wondered.

Draco squinted, disbelieving. “That Tom used you to try to kill my cousin? Of course, I am! But you beat him. Kind of. What you did, your part in it, I mean, it was born out of love and not envy or hated or anything the Dark Lord understands. That is why it must not have worked. And that is magic, too, isn’t it?”

No, Harry decided for himself. Magic was Might. Love was … commercial and quite possibly American in character. Moony and Mrs Malfoy watched girly movies about ‘love’ when she came around to remind him that he had lycanthropy with a box of chocolates, a tin of biscuits, Dobby’s Hot Cacao, and a few magazines she had finished reading. And they were all the same. And they were all generally bad and painfully boring.

“I mean, love is also kind of the fact that Mother comes every month without fail to check up on Remus when he’s not feeling well even though they don’t really have that much in common and she has lots of other obligations,” Draco explained. Harry wondered how much if any of that he had said aloud, or the extent to which it mattered.

Draco could read his mind. Furthermore, he had likely arrived on the same conclusion that Professor Dumbledore would have expected from him, Harry. And it was probably because, as She had said, that Muggles could not love.

“They’ll never let me go to Hogwarts now,” Harry lamented, cursing his Mudblood mother, Tom’s Muggle father, and what he saw as his own loss of magic.

“Of course, they will,” Draco frowned. “If they don’t, I mean, it will be to admit that the Dark Lord was never really defeated. Everyone has cause to continue promulgating that fiction.”

“What does that even mean?” Harry demanded.

“I don’t know,” Draco admitted sneeringly. “My father said it, and he’s Dumbledore’s boss insofar as he has one, so you are fine,” he tried to assure him.

“What if I am not, though? If the horcruxes are destroyed, he’ll lose all of his remaining magic and I will lose all of mine. Dumbledore was right. There are things worse than death.” When, Harry wondered, had Dumbledore said such things? He hated knowing so much that actually, he did not know at all.

Draco seemed to be wondering the same. Then, he spoke up in a rather small voice, “Would a life without magic really be one of them?”

“Yes!” Harry insisted instantly.

“No. Think about it Harry. I think, aside from Sirius, maybe, you’re the only person who knows what it is really like to be me. To have a stupid, famous name that comes with expectations not within your nature. To know that it is better for everyone, like really everyone if you just bow out in favour of someone you know would be better at that one thing you are supposed to do with your life. But only the people who know and love you best even know the truth of it all and you know they kind of hate you for it.

“If you don’t get into Hogwarts, I won’t go, either,” Draco continued. “When my parents believed me to be a Squib, Father had plans to send me to Eton and that is just what we’ll do. It doesn’t hurt, does it? When I hold you, you head, it doesn’t hurt? That is why I came. So that you could sleep easier. Because, I think, the Dark Lord, he is as afraid of me as I am of him. Mother said that could be the case.”

“No,” Harry answered. “I feel fine now. You would really give up everything to protect me from myself? Draco, I can’t let you do that. You are a beyond talented wizard.”

“Then shut up about not getting into Hogwarts! It is not going to happen, anyway. And even if you do lose your magic someday, you still have me, okay? And everyone else besides. So shut up.”

“Draco, I – ” Harry started.

Deciding that he was through with including him, Draco interrupted, “I decided, when we met, that I would marry you as soon as I came of age.”

“You are older than me,” Harry pointed out.

“I know better. Exactly,” Draco answered, sticking his chin out slightly.

“No, you will have to wait a few weeks.”

“Even if I have been effectively superseded in the English line of succession, I am still a Malfoy. I will have my way.”

“The English line?” Harry smirked. He did not follow, not really, but he liked it when the Malfoys and Blacks spoke like this. It reminded him of the fairytales that for some reason Moony had stopped reading him years ago, even though he had liked them quite a lot.

Draco gave a half-shrug. “Dora can’t take my claim to Denmark or Oldenburg that I’ve got from my father’s mother. No more than Tom can change my mind about you. You are not him; you know. At least, you don’t have to be. You suck enough just being Harry Potter, with your stupid scar and your stupid glasses and your stupid broom and your stupid posters that don’t even move.”

“I love you too, Draco,” Harry said. And meant it. He blushed as the other boy’s lips met his cheek.

“See then? It will be fine,” Draco insisted. “We’ll go to Hogwarts together and then fuck off to the continent if it should turn out that, like Dora, and like I kind of expect, we are both just too good at magic and the place gets a bit boring. Or if you get all like ‘I’m going to conquer wizarding Britain and enslave the muggles for the Greater Good’ or whatever Tom’s about when he is not otherwise trying to cheat at cards.”

“You could just get Hermione to hit me,” Harry snorted.

“I would kill her if she tried,” Draco answered rather more seriously than the throw-away comment warranted.  

“She wouldn’t, hit me though,” Harry said quickly, feeling that he ought to defend the girl since Draco seemed to be of a mind to take everything in earnest. “She secretly fancies Dudley.”

“Glad it is not the other way around to be honest,” Draco shrugged. I wouldn’t want to fight your cousin.”

“Not even for my hand?” Harry teased.

“Pfft! I’ll have it regardless!” Draco dismissed, tucking himself beneath the covers and, upon realising that the twin was not big enough for two ten-year-old boys to share, retaking his Animagus form.

Draco once again settled himself on Harry’s chest, above his beating heart.

Chapter Text

“Dear Dudley,” Arsenal Ladies’ and Lioness’ Goalkeeper Lesley Higgs read aloud. “I hope this letter finds you well, much though I wish you were here. Have you given any thought to coming? Please don’t mistake my pleas as an attack, but statistically speaking very few academy players ever make it to the professional level, and there just more effective ways you might be spending your time,” Higgs broke into a grin, “Like punching Harry in his stupid mouth.” 

At this, Regulus Black likewise fell into a rare chuckle, but Dudley Dursley frowned further.

“So, I did read that right,” he murmured. “Go on then, what else does she say?” he pleaded.

The words hurt. Two months ago, the idea that he might not advance at the academy had not entered his active consciousness, regardless of statistics or of who was citing them in that vague but insistent way an innumerate population thought to argue subjects of which their understanding was purely opinion based. Hermione was smart, sure, but she also did not care much for sport and gave it little of her active mind. It was also true that she was having a harder time than she ever might have anticipated fitting in at Hogwarts, and, in her owls past, had developed a pattern of pleading company to what she refused to admit was misery.

Dudley had stopped trying to read them for the most part.

He would not have bothered with this one, either, had his cousin’s name not been so prominent throughout.

Dudley bit at his bottom lip. He had only made it to the second paragraph before being defeated by Hermione’s Latin. He was sure if he heard the word pronounced, he would recognise it, though these days such came as little comfort. Because something was wrong with his paperwork, Dudley was no longer permitted to attend training, and as such, he was spending more and more time learning magic in this borrowed bedroom from a pair of private and partially self-appointed tutors.

He hated it.

Learning magic was a deal he had made with his dads when he had been scouted and contracts had been signed.

Now, an ominous ‘They’ were saying that his dads had no legal right to make choices in his interests. ‘They’ had to seek permission from his ‘real’ parents for him to play or even practice, and because this was all being decided in court, Dudley was left waiting.

With ‘them’. His teachers. Wankers, both.

If he absolutely had to learn magic, he wished he could be learning it from Severus and Remus, but in a manner that Dudley did not recognise as ironic at eleven-and-a-half, he could not go to Hogwarts. Much though Hermione might want him to; much as he wanted to go himself given the alternative of this peculiar limbo.

Because for that to happen his now-divorced birthparents would have to sign another stupid registration form. And they would not do that, because Petunia hated magic and was trying to relocate him to her London flat, where Vernon, who made no such show of parental intent, wanted him to stay at the club, and wanted a substantial cut of the minor wages he earned playing in the Professional Development League.

It hurt, somehow, to hear it confirmed that Harry was having a hard time of it, too. The only thing Dudley could really remember about Surrey was that his cousin had been made to sleep in a closet under the stairs, and he only remembered this much because Harry still would not go down into their basement in Cokeworth because the door down to it was in the same relative spot.

Petunia and Vernon could sod it.

Dudley would sooner run away to stupid Hogwarts than live with his ‘mum’ or let his ‘dad’ profit from talents he had done nothing to promote.

But he would have to have their permission to go to boarding school, so if he went, he could not stay. He would have to find Harry and then find somewhere where they could both hide, or so a plan began to formulate. Tom probably knew of somewhere, and Harry probably knew a lot of what Tom was thinking these days, because he was probably as upset about all of this as Dudley himself was and Harry’s vulnerability was always increased when he was in high emotions.

For once, Dudley thought, that might work out in their benefit. Regulus Black, he considered, was a great wizard, at least, he was decent enough to cause people to be rather wary of his company, which Dudley took as a sign of respect. Regulus had been hunting horcruxes since he was eighteen, and by thirty still had not found the lot of them. If it came to it, Tom would help him and Harry hide, Dudley told himself. The former Dark Lord was good at precisely that kind of thing (if little else.)

“Last Friday in Potions, your stupid cousin and that awful Ron Weasley were talking in the back of the class as per usual, not paying Professor Snape any mind, and when they rather predictably messed up their Volubilis, Professor Snape made Harry take a swig to illustrate the effects of not waiting until the potion reached the appropriate temperature before adding the mint sprigs,” Higgs continued reading.

Volubilis! Dudley recognised in spite of himself. A potion that alters the sound of one’s voice. He sighed inwardly. Wizards were really such tossers to the last.

“Not that mine was better, she has written as an aside,” Higgs clarified, pointing to a part of the too long text Hermione had out into parentheses. Dudley nodded, though he did not really care for this to become a reading lesson. “Draco partners with Blaise and Pansy and I, of course, were not speaking, so I’ve been helping Neville because Mrs Malfoy said we were to be especially nice to him, and he is nice enough to be fair, I just think I would like him more if we were not so often paired up. Anyway, you would be a way better lab partner, but I suspect that is beside the point.

“Thinks highly of herself, does she?” Higgs, alias Barty Crouch Jr, commented.

Dudley had never actually seen his sort-of substitute-teacher’s true face, and therefore imagined him as looking precisely like that guy Draco’s mum and Sir Corban and a few of their other regular cohorts had put into Azkaban for something called ‘misappropriation’. Dudley did not know exactly what that meant, but he knew how to spell it, because Draco had written it down for him once and he had copied it until his hand hurt so he could sound smart in correspondence with Hermione, whose name he had learned how to write using the same method.

He knew that Barty Crouch Sr. had sentenced Sirius to prison without trial, that he had held a very public one for his son and namesake for show, that he had had his wife killed to then get Jr. out of Azkaban, only to imprison him in their house for the next decade.

To stop Barty Jr. from escaping, Sr. had given him enough opioids to now warrant a bi-weekly appointment at a London-based methadone clinic, which remained the only other thing on Barty Jr.’s itinerary, as he technically could not leave the city until a court date which Professor Dumbledore (who was called something else in court, though Dudley could never remember what) refused to set.

To get around this stipulation and the third prison it created for a crime which Barty had technically never been convicted of, Regulus had suggested that Barty share the burden of training up the brother-cousin of The Boy Who Lived in magic while disguising himself with Polyjuice.

The pair must have had brewed by the gallon back at Grimmauld for their supply seemed unceasing.

Once, Dudley had thought that Barty was really just Dora and that they were trying to play a prank on him, but eventually he had to concede that Dora was too clever to pick such noteworthy facades. Barty had an obnoxious habit of finding (and presumably fucking) London-based footballers whom he then disguised himself as to come to Leigh, laughing that ‘since no one watches girls’ sport, I’d have a better chance of being recognised if I was wearing an invisibility cloak!’

He said this often, and always as though he thought it to be funny. Dudley wondered how Barty Jr. managed to get a girl, any girl, to bring him home –  especially if he looked like his old man when he was not otherwise wearing a ponytail and sports bra.

“She just … she likes to be best in class,” Dudley explained of Hermione, who remained one of his oldest friends. “And because of that girl Pansy, she is under added pressure to prove herself.”

“And who is this Neville that she would rather pair up with a dyslexic Mudblood?” ‘Higgs’ frowned slightly before adjusting with a sympathetic, “No offence, Big D.”

“Longbottom,” Regulus answered.

“Oh,” Barty replied rather absently.

Dudley knew the name, at least, he recognised it to have some political significance amongst wizards with generational wealth. Barty was probably related to the kid or something. Dudley was not about to let him dwell. “I’m good at science and maths though,” he defended. “I’ll send him my notes. Maybe it will help.” He wrote simple sentences which would probably make more sense as the poetry Dad sometimes spouted when addressing chemical reactions to someone struggling with the source material. His notes would definitely be more of an assistance, at any rate, than a stressed and slightly vexed Hermione Granger in a class she shared with Pansy Parkinson and a bunch of people who presumably agreed with her.

“And Hermione?” Barty asked Regulus.

“Granger.”

“Granger,” Barty repeated, plainly amused as resumed his regular candour. “Of the Dagworth-Grangers?” he inquired, squeezing at his borrowed breasts slightly as he added a wistful, “I owe so much to that man.”

“No, she’s muggle born, comes from money though so it is possible her parents are beneficiaries of patent payouts,” Regulus shrugged. He clearly was not of much mind today to indulge his unwanted housemate’s antics, either.

“What?” Dudley frowned.

“Hector Dagworth-Granger created a love potion he claims comes as close as one might hope to the actualisation of true affection,” Barty explained whimsically before falling into a flat, “It’s a boner brew, Dudders. You’ll understand when your older, at least if you keep stringing quite so many birds along.”

Regulus buried his face in his palms. “We don’t slut shame in this perish, Barty,” he chastised.

Dudley knew they were having a private laugh, and at his expense, but he saw no reason to pursue it. He knew a lot of girls from ballet and did not find them particularly difficult to talk to, which for reasons beyond the scope of his understanding was amusing to people in their thirties who all seemed to lead fairly insular existences. There was a script where Dudley was meant to say something daft like ‘she is a girl, and she is my friend but she’s not my girlfriend’ as though the difference was significant to a preteen. But Dudley thought himself entitled to talk to whomever he pleased without defending any of it to grown-ups needing to mask misplaced envy.

“Well, you can’t as you are fucking your teenaged cousin,” Barty sneered at Regulus with his borrowed face. “I suppose shouldn’t because I’ve manged to get every semi-professional female footballer in London to take me home, but needs must. Although! Apropos slut-shaming, I found Kreacher wanking it in a closet to an IKEA catalogue last week and then forced him to continue and to let me watch as punishment and – ”

“You guys should get a television,” Dudley interrupted.

“No, Dudley, that shit will rot your mind,” Barty said, his voice chiming with the slightly patronising laughter common to adults who kept company with children. “Shall I keep reading or not?”

Dudley frowned. “Can you make a spell that would make reading easier, for me, I mean?”

Hermione had written a lot lately about Mudbloods like them having allegedly ‘stolen’ their magic. She said it was bullocks, even though it evidently bothered her enough to bring it up in most correspondence.

Dudley could not for the life of him reckon where Hermione might have come across hers, but he may well have taken Harry’s on accident, or Aunt Lily had given him hers on purpose – either way, he would happily give it back if he could not render something useful from all the bother. Dad might be able to ‘brew glory and bottle fame’, but Dudley could keep a clean sheet in a league match against kids old enough to shave – or at least he could have if not for the politics and bureaucracy that magic did not seem at all useful against.

But if he could read – properly! quickly! –  maybe he could help his dads figure out what to do about this whole mess. Maybe they could be a family again. Maybe he would not have to run away with his cousin and the guy whose magic Harry had accidently stolen.

“I’ve been working on it for a while now, being as I can’t get other work, but I’m not quite satisfied. Should have it by Christmas though,” Barty answered, nonchalant.

“Really?”

“You are surprised? Dudley, think! I care enough about your education that I regularly bed muggle athletes in order to blend in here to give Reggie a hand. And it is not even as though we go to get shitfaced on Dora’s spare change afterwards anymore now that he’s prepping to do the kid thing full-time, so you can’t accuse me of having ulterior motives.”

“You know you shouldn’t mix Polyjuice and alcohol. It will destroy your liver,” Dudley told him, accurately, as it happened. Higgs’ face hardened. Dudley suspected that Barty was not as ‘fun’ as he pretended to himself and to others. Dad and Sirius talked like this sometimes, too, imagining youth was not quite as distant as it was for them by talking about the consumption of controlled substances one had to be grown, anyway, to either brew or buy.

Dudley did not really get the appeal.

Moony still poured at the local pub at the weekend, and the patrons seemed downtrodden more than anything else. Cissy (in fact Dame Narcissa Malfoy, Order of Merlin, Second Class since the whole Barty Crouch Sr. thing, though she made little of the honours her lordly husband described as ‘quaint’) was the only person Dudley knew who was open about her drug use, which she defended as being ‘work related’, which did not seem ‘fun’ at all. And Barty, who was still struggling with the effects of effectively being in a chemical coma for a third of his life, had less reason than anyone to pretend about his consumption habits to a preteen with a Potions Master for a parent. Bloody nob!

“Maybe you really would be a better potions partner for Princess Viagra than Longbottom here,” Barty rolled his eyes. “Yeah, send him your notes. I’ll see if I can find anything to fuck with Snape in his defence. Every little bit helps as it has been said. Where were we? Ah!

“As I am certain you can predict,” he continued to read, now assuming a higher octane for Hermione, “this made Harry sound as though he had breathed in a decent amount of helium, and after being made the fool, he smarted your father by saying that he was trying to approximate how Voldemort – oh, bold that one – had sounded – ”

“He not wrong,” Regulus injected, again fighting to supress a smile.

“And that if his mother had not been a Mudblood, he, Harry, would have been in Slytherin, being its Heir and all,” Barty read over the interruption. “He. Actually. Used. The. Word. – she stresses without context. ‘Voldemort’ or ‘Mudblood’? What do you kids get worked up about these days?”

“Mudblood,” Dudley clarified. “Pansy called Hermione that and everyone at Hogwarts is in a fight about it.”

Pansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger had been friends – or as close to that state as girls given to arrogance and envy could approximate – since meeting at his birthday party three years prior. They had expected to wind up in the same House at Hogwarts. At the Sorting, however, this hope had been disappointed when Hermione’s innermost was presented to an old hat, who, after some struggle pronounced her a Gryffindor.

Dad, who knew Hermione and knew her well, had likewise been a little surprised that she was not, in fact, destined to become one of ‘his’. At least, he would have been if Pansy had not made the moment all about her. She had left her place in the line to declare Hermione a ‘Traitor!’ before the entire school body, and in the days to follow explained to herself and everyone willing to listen all that bullocks about Mudbloods and stolen magic to conceal a private hurt.

Dudley, having learned of the incident from multiple parties, was, for the most part, just glad it had not happened with Harry and himself.

As Dad had long predicted, Harry wound up in what he regarded, but would not directly name, a lesser House.

Gryffindor.

Like his father.

Like both his parents, really. But Dad never spoke about Aunt Lily, and the stuff he said about Uncle James seemed to Dudley to be an attempt at distraction more than honest criticism when compared to what Moony and Sirius recalled of the man.

Harry, Dad had taken to claiming, was the image of his birthfather, whom he otherwise described as being ‘an arrogant git.’ Giving the physical resemblance between Harry and his late father James, people seemed to accept this explanation of his oddities – at least, it seemed to stop them from thinking that Harry’s mind and soul was being corroded by the Dark Lord he was meant to have destroyed. (Although Dudley had to wonder if anyone would have come on that particular understanding otherwise.) At any rate, Harry viewed the forced comparison as disappointment that he had not been named a serpent, and Dad’s attempts at normalising Harry to his peers verged into abuse.

It would have been worse, way, way worse, if Dudley had been made to go to Hogwarts himself, if he had gotten into Slytherin to acclaim and esteem, but Harry did not properly appreciate the sacrifice. Officially, Harry was not a Hogwarts student himself owing to the same problems with paperwork. Fear over his future – academic and otherwise – paired with Dad’s seeming distain, was causing him to act out.

Often.

Harry had had as many detentions in his two months at Hogwarts as Dudley had managed to himself rank up in his first full year at St Gregory’s Primary, and Dudley was given to responding to the sort of comments around his two dads that came with attending Catholic school with his fists.

Harry was just having a hard time of it.

A big fight about blood purity was happening around him, and he was struggling with magic as it was, having adopted the hesitations Dudley had long voiced around magic upon being ‘chosen’ by a wand with some coincidental connection to the one Lord Voldemort had purchased half a century earlier. Hearing Pansy’s borrowed rhetoric, Harry probably thought that his magic was stolen, too.

At least, he knew for certain now that it was not his to keep.

Before parting ways, Dudley had promised him that he would take his own magical education with something approaching earnest, to keep an eye of Harry’s enemies if nothing else. For Dudley knew that Dora and Regulus were still at least looking for the remaining horcruxes, though he did not know why. If they remained hidden, they were not really harming anyone, and if they were located, they would inevitably hurt Harry, regardless of what was to be done with them.

Dudley did not understand why people who were old enough to really know better could not leave well enough alone.

At least the couple had the bother of Barty Crouch Jr. as a housemate to delay their plans if not entirely deter them.

Whatever Barty had been accused of, he must have truly been guilty, because Cissy who otherwise had no qualms about who she was representing had refused him as a client and she did not want Sir Corban to allow for Barty’s patronage, either. Dora openly hated him. And Regulus was in the difficult position of having a best friend and a girlfriend he would never be able to reconcile. Moony, who had managed to get around the same problem with Dad and Sirius, did not have any advice he was willing to share. He did not want Dora around Barty and would likely have borne his metaphoric fangs if ever he came to learn that Barty was contributing to his, Dudley’s, education.

“But it says here that even Pansy looked mortified,” Barty scoffed, skimming. “Then Snape kicked everyone out of class, presumably to scream at Harry. He tried to have him thrown off the Quidditch team – I thought you guys were the same age? Reg and I were not allowed to play until second year.”

“You don’t think Hogwarts makes ever possible exception for The Boy Who Lived?” Dudley snorted. Just enough, he thought. Just enough to keep him interested. To help him, Dudley, to come to understand the ideology of Voldemort’s true believes. To help figure out the whole Tom conundrum. To help Harry out of whatever dumb thing he would inevitably find himself in next.

“Fair,” Barty smirked.

“I doubt his classmates see it that way,” Dudley said flatly.

“Well, this Ron apparently punched him when he returned to their dorm after cleaning every cauldron in the Potions classroom. Hermione heard the commotion from where she had been studying in the commons, raced upstairs, and said that it would not do them any good to simply break bones, as Madame Pomfrey could repair such damage with ease. So, she cast a spell she had read about to remove them completely and Harry spent the next four days in hospital waiting for Skeligrow to render its effects. She lost Gryffindor fifty House Points and Gryffindor lost their opening match against Ravenclaw,” Barty continued to summarise until reaching this line. His borrowed brow furrowed. “Ouch.”

Regulus likewise grimaced. ‘Uncle’ Lucy had explained something to them once about no one exactly wanting to see their most bitter rival fail against plainly inferior opposition. He had been talking about politics, but in sporting terms from which the analogy had been drawn, it was funny when City lost against a side pitted for relegation, but it would not be funny if they were relegated themselves and the profitably Derby was not a feature of the regular league season. Teams could not be regulated at Hogwarts, exactly, but Dudley assumed the same was true. Slytherin wanted to beat a strong Gryffindor side, or it just was not worth the effort.

For his part, Dudley just wanted to punch Hermione and Ron for ganging up on Harry in what was plainly a domestic conflict, and one that Dad had brought upon himself. See how they liked having broken bones, even if these could be ‘mended with ease’!

“Ravenclaw,” Regulus winced. “It was never going to be easy to replace Charlie Weasley but goddamn.”

 “But then Pansy met Hermione on her way to apologise – to someone named Wood,” Barty squinted, “not to Harry. Pansy was on her way to tell the would-be Gryffindor Seeker that ‘snitches get stiches’ and proceeded to fill the sugar-free pralines that Hermione was bringing as a peace offering – which honestly sounds like it would start a fight unto itself,” Barty editorialised.

“Her parents are dentists,” Dudley injected.

“It is a muggle healer that specialise in teeth,” Regulus explained. Barty gave him a cold look, one that confessed that he had been made to take Muggle Studies and was a bit sour at having something of that ‘lesser’ culture explained to him by someone who had not suffered the same misfortune.

“They put a strong laxative in the chocolates, secretly removed Harry’s bedpan and left laughing. So now they are friends again, but they are both fighting with Draco who, to quote” Regulus paused, “thinks he should have been the one to handle the Dark Lord because he knows how to get through to Harry when he gets like that?” He read it as a question. Dudley doubted it had such had been said or relayed with such punctuation.

“Except sometimes it is Harry himself who is the problem,” Barty continued, now reading verbatim, “and you know that better than anyone, Big D. You know, at least, how to keep him in line. Can’t you come? Draco might have his methods of keeping Tom out of sight and mind, but Harry is legitimately afraid of you and probably wouldn’t say ridiculous things to get a rise out of your father if you were there to give him a smack. Ron, to be perfectly fair to him, fought the good fight best as he could, but you’ve a foot and a few stone on him, and physics just being what they are I think you’d have better luck with it.

Please consider it.

With warm regards,

Hermione – straight up – G.,” Barty again amended.

“Ps. Pansy still wants to snog you.

“Pps. If you ever have to play a match against West Ham let us know. Ron’s brothers have that map that lets you know where everyone is at all times, so the lads from Gryffindor 1. Year and Pansy and I will just sneak into Professor Snape’s office when he is not there, use the Floo Network and figure the rest out with public transit. We will probably be able to talk Draco into coming, too, what with his FOMO – whatever that means.

“Ppps. If we can arrange this, you should be able to find it in yourself to let them score at least once. It would break Dean’s heart otherwise (that is the West Ham fan. Literally the only thing I know about him. Still. In November. Rather sad, really.)

“Pppps. Everyone misses you. Even Harry. Probably.

“That bird never bloody stops chirping, does she?” Barty sneered.

“Not really,” Dudley tried to smile. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask, but most of these were better directed at Regulus alone if at all. He wanted to know how to get on with his kind-of brother in spite of their philosophical differences. How to run away. How to stay hidden. How to get his fractured family to more or less make up even if everyone recognised that the problems dividing the were never going to go away no matter what. And he spent a long time in silent contemplation before finally asking, “Can I give it back?”

“Give what back?” Barty wondered, retuning the nine-page letter he had half-read aloud. Dudley stuffed it under his mattress along with dozens of others and a hurt he could not quite name, which now unleashed threatened to overwhelm him.

“Magic,” he clarified. “What Pansy and Hermione were fighting about before they evidently conspired to poison my cousin. Pansy got into Slytherin. Hermione didn’t. Pansy screamed at her that she was a traitor at the Sorting since it was more or less agreed that they would try to get into the same house. Then she, Pansy, tried to explain the betrayal to herself by saying that Hermione was a Mudblood which is why Slytherin did not open its doors to her. Pansy said that Mudbloods stole their magic from Wizards, so can I give mine back?” Dudley demanded.

Barty looked intrigued; Regulus surprised.

“Hermione was really upset about the accusation, but I mean – she’s right. I wouldn’t have to curse Harry to get the better of him,” Dudley continued, “I could just get him with a left hook to the same effect, so if magic can’t fix my dyslexia, it is kind of useless to me, innit? I think I may have taken Harry’s magic which is why he’s become so reliant on Tom – he has his ‘twin wand’ and everything! – but if I just returned it, the magic, he could be a normal wizard and I could be a normal kid and you wouldn’t have to steal hair from female athletes to come up to Manchester and tell me a whole bunch of things I really don’t care to know.” He punched his pillow in frustration.

Regulus crossed the small dorm to put his arm around Dudley’s broad shoulders. “Dudley, that is an old-wives tale,” he explained in his quiet, patient fashion. “The Department of Mysteries has identified the ability to perform magic as owing to a gene sequence that is clearly latent in your mother’s line. Your Aunt Lily was a witch, and like it or not you are a wizard. You must have had a mage somewhere up your family tree to enable that.”

“Who the fuck is Tom?” Barty asked, disinterested in Dudley and the rest of it.

“You know who Tom is, don’t front,” Dudley spat, meeting his gaze with eyes reddened with unshed tears.

“Leave it, Barty,” Regulus warned.

Dudley was surprised that Barty let it go so quickly. But then he remembered. Regulus had a wand. Barty did not.

Maybe there was something worthwhile about being a wizard, after all.

“Who is the fourth horseman?” Corban Yaxley asked lazily without lifting his gaze from yesterday’s issue of The Daily Prophet.

“I think the critique is equally shared,” Narcissa Malfoy answered, “we are not being ranked against one another, though if we were Theodore would clearly be the forerunner.”

“Ballerina, I’m attempting to determine the nature of the offence. Forgive me, but you are clearly Famine. Theodore is Death, being that he is closer to that abstract than the rest of us.”

Narcissa momentarily stopped her relentless march to give her mentor an appraising look but offered not comment in contradiction. Nott, for his part, did not bother, continuing to look at the framed sketches adorning the tattoo parlour’s walls as though he was considering offering Sirius his patronage.

Offence noted but not taken, Remus thought. Narcissa resumed her back-and-forth, forcing Remus to wonder where she mentally retreated to when met with a conundrum, if it had some physical aspect to which the rest of them were blind. He privately wished for the same such escape, but the hour and the missive its predecessor brought made him lethargic. He sat with his misery and misgivings, surrounded but alone in this company.

“Death is an absolute and you are no longer young enough to offer such cheek,” Antonin Dolohov remarked while Sirius Black made a convincing show of thoughtful consideration with regard to the regrettable tattoo that had appeared on his forearm. Nott and Yaxley had experienced the same when summoned to Narcissa’s Cokeworth office across the village square, though neither seemed particularly interested in its emergence.

Remus, who had taken the morning off to sort out a court summons, wondered now if he ought to hand in his resignation. Of course, the horcruxes he had hidden in Narcissa’s safe would affect Voldemort’s former followers. As Hogwarts’ Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, he ought to have known that, at least, he had ought to have considered it before inviting in the cavalry.

But the horcruxes had affected him, too, and being the worst possible version of himself when Narcissa had told him ‘no’, he had demanded to speak with lead council, suspecting that Yaxley, who had represented lycanthropes previously, would prove more sympathetic to his pleas.

He could not have been more wrong.

“Cheek is as profitable in our profession at fifty as it was at twenty-five, Kurwa,” Yaxley dismissed with another of his pet-names, one Remus recognised as a Polish slur from the frequency that Dolohov himself employed it, though its meaning was often confused in context. “And being that among our lot you are the most likely to kill a man in a bar fight over Quidditch results, I’d imagine that Skeeter names you ‘War’, so who am I?”

“Pestilence,” Sirius Black answered flatly. “It suits. And for fuck’s sake, Cissy, if you are going to walk around like that, take your heels off. The noise is grating,” he complained, “and being that you have decidedly nowhere to go, do us all favour and prance along over to the coffee machine. I need to concentrate.”

Remus could not see Dolohov’s Dark Mark from the couch where he was seated, but he assumed it to be fading when his friend began tracing the would-be customer’s forearm with a fine liner. Dolohov winced. Even Nott betrayed apprehension with his deepening frown. Yaxley continued to read Skeeter’s latest derision with a smirk that told its own story of lines he must have seen ground to name ‘liable’, as if debating how best to proceed, if he would be better served by bringing a lawsuit or if the suggestion of such could be levied into ‘a mutually beneficial partnership’, or ‘blackmail’ as such was otherwise known to laymen. Remus hated that he knew these people quite as well as he had come to.

Again, without comment, Narcissa acquiesced to her cousin’s demands, dramatically removing her stilettos before walking to the filter coffee maker by the sink, fumbling around it the closest cabinets for an instruction manual that in all likelihood had been tossed out with the rest of the packaging years earlier. Sirius looked up from the assignment he had given himself to offer Remus a smile that spoke to a shared impression that such would keep her busy for some time. Remus did not have the energy to return it.

In August of that same year, he and Severus had been made to file a routine set of forms removing Harry from the local school system as his education was to be continued at Hogwarts. In the multitude of bureaucratic requirements that came with raising gifted children, Remus had given it no particular thought, until a few weeks into the school year Children’s Welfare had called to inquire as to Harry’s whereabouts.

The form, evidently, had been misfiled and Harry was thus expected at the muggle secondary assigned by virtue of home address.

It had taken Remus weeks of phone calls and long waits in stuffy rooms with paper numbers that never seemed to be called out to discover that the problem with Harry’s removal was that Remus had given his own relationship status as ‘married’. This discrepancy invalidated everything else that had been written or checked off on, and when Remus thought to clear up the issue on his own with the Adoption Order and his own Certificate of Marriage, these, too, were called into question.

The events that followed necessitated Remus to enlist the help of a solicitor.

Suddenly, he and Severus were being told that they needed to refile the past three years of taxes.

Dudley had effectively been given a training ban by The Professional Development League as his birthparents’ permission was sought. Petunia was now suing for custody, Vernon for some share of the miniscule salary Dudley had received standing between aluminium bars for a successful club’s junior team.

Because of Dumbledore’s positions as both the Head Warlock of the Wizengamot which operated under the authority of the Crown Courts and as the Headmaster of Hogwarts which existed by Royal Charter, Harry had been allowed to stay and attend classes at the private boarding school, but his teachers were not able to issue grades, and the longer this continued, the more likely it grew that Harry would need to repeat the year.

Matters were made more complicated by the fact that Theodore Nott, the solicitor who had filed their adoption request had since been appointed judge. Narcissa did not practice Family Law and did not rate anyone currently doing so; but Lucius and Yaxley sat together on the Board of Governors and finding a shared politic in what the concluded was ‘the large issue at play’, devised a plan when Nott asked his former partner to follow up in his stead.

“Can you explain it?” Dolohov asked Sirius of the Dark Mark. Where Yaxley was a trial lawyer and Narcissa was a tabloid fixture of equal acclaim, Dolohov worked for the Wizengamot in a coerced act of contrition, standing as representation for witches and wizards who had fallen foul of muggle laws and ordinances as a Public Defendant, which in practice meant he filed paperwork. For the other three to turn to his expertise in this regard, Remus reasoned that Dolohov must possess some skill, but all the same he was hesitant to have someone who had been less successful arguing his own innocence within a legal team that sought so much.

“No,” Sirius shrugged, “but if you decide on a motif, I can fix it as much as I might. It is what I did for Snape.”

“But why did Severus need his Dark Mark disguised?” Dolohov pressed. “Lord Voldemort is fallen; I’ve not seen nor felt his presence under my skin in unto a decade.”

“I’d venture that either our sweet Narcissa is concealing something untoward in her offices,” Theodore Nott observed, ironically however accurately, “or, perhaps, that we might instead take the alternate view Miss Skeeter presents and accept that we four are in the process of coming closer to actualising the Dark Lord’s vision than the great man himself ever might have had he survived his encounter with an infant.”

While Remus’ primary concern had been for his children, Nott and Yaxley saw the issue as an opportunity to dictate legislation to muggles. They wanted Class Action Marriage Equality. Many in the wizarding community had seen this in positive, progressive terms. And then Rita Skeeter had pointed out to her enormous audience that such was a furtherance of He Who Must Not Be Named’s agenda, both in terms of policy and practice.

Voldemort had wanted wizarding values and norms to supersede those of the muggle population. He had gathered a great number of followers by predicating positions that many if not most took for granted, politics Remus shared in a separate context. Naturally he himself was sympathetic towards social equality, animal rights and environmental causes, but he believed that that such changes had to come from the muggles themselves.

Voldemort, meanwhile, was or might have become an enlightened despot.

Instead, he was stuck sharing the mind and body of an eleven-year-old boy, frustrated by his absence of power and personal autonomy, fighting with his parental figures over completing coursework that ‘did not count, anyway’ whilst his far more capable and competent former followers pursued his vision to their own ends.

Narcissa, a natural occlumens, was not affected by the horcruxes. Nott, who had survived his bloody confirmation hearing plainly did not feel threatened by the reminder of his former master. Yaxley, Remus concluded, knew enough about the shattered soul from the Malfoys to have some manner of contingency arrangements and clandestine designs, which Remus was trying not to suspect Narcissa of sharing, though their private jokes and asides made such difficult.

He wondered why he was not able to shake the feeling that something was decidedly off.

“Doesn’t it concern you?” Dolohov asked. Unlike the others, he still had much to lose on count of his prior convictions. Yaxley had gotten himself acquitted; Nott had never been charged; and Narcissa had never been a Death Eater. Remus did not, could not like the man, but he shared his apprehension. If Dolohov went to work at the Ministry with the Dark Mark as his deferred sentence required, questions would be raised. Public panic could and most likely would follow.

Such sold a lot of papers, after all.

“Hardly,” Narcissa scoffed, returning to the fold with a tea tray that suggested the use of rudimentary magic over that of an appliance with which she was fully unfamiliar. “I’ve been Rita’s bête noire since my re-entry to the Bar, though this is the first time she’s gone biblical in her descriptions. My causes tend to profit from her press even if I’m personally vilified. You learn to ignore it.” Remus looked at the contents of the mug he was handed in haste. White hot chocolate with red chili flakes. It was awful, giving Sirius’ personal presence for soy milk, but he doubted very much that Narcissa let anything go ignored as suggested.

Despite her ability to deny her detractors the reactions they sought, she had seemed lately to physically manifest her often unvoiced offence, as though her excesses and denials had become echoes of past defeats. She had grown too thin for her figure to suggest the gender by which she likely felt betrayed, and while she continued to laugh along with the regular jokes around anorexia and the tropane alkaloids to which she was victim, she was openly succumbing to the suggestion of self-harm.

Despite this, Witch Weekly had again named her one of their most beautiful in the September issue, and Narcissa’s rare response had been scathing. What sort of example did it possibly set for young girls to be told the physical manifestations of her mental hangups were deserving of envy and emulation?! –  she had demanded in a public statement. Sir Corban was of the mind that for all of her like honours, the press was still wont to reduce her to a ‘trophy wife’ when she could not be otherwise maligned.

Remus thought she just could not take a compliment without suspicion.

Narcissa never let go of a slight; real or imagined. Nothing went unnoticed or ignored – except her heart, but this, too, Remus imagined to be by design. He looked at his hot chocolate, trying not to fall into a pity he knew Narcissa would not accept or pretend at a comradery that could never exist between them.

“You might be able to ignore it,” Nott said with something of concern. “I’m concerned my son Theo is going to have a harder time of it yet up at Hogwarts. In his letters it does not seem as though he’s found much company and I have to consent and conclude that my Confirmation Hearing to the Wizengamot plays a significant role in his social outcast status.”

“I wouldn’t … call him an outcast,” Remus tried to engage. “All of his teachers seem to like having him quite a lot from what has been said in the staff room. I can’t speak to this personally, but from what I’ve gathered, he’s too smart to fall in with any given clique. He’s just not loud enough to be heard through the echoes of his frightened peers. I’m sure it will calm down in due course.”

Narcissa threw up her arms after passing out the last of the beverages she had brewed to everyone’s individual palate to the best of her abilities, fighting with Sirus (who likewise took his coffee black) for a favoured mug. “Blame me for that, too, then,” she said, defeated. “But Remus is right, Pansy and Hermione are bound to sue for peace sooner than later, if for no other reason than to judge on all of our sons, eleven-year-old boys do not make for the best company. But to return to our order of business – ”

“What do you have concealed, Narcissa?” Dolohov interrupted, unwilling to let matters go. “If Corban, Theodore and I all felt the Dark Mark’s burn upon entry, if Severus evidently suffers from the same, one must conclude – ”

“That I spend far too much time colluding with the Auror Office who would end me otherwise,” Narcissa scoffed. “Shacklebolt come round three times a week at least within the scope of his varied investigations, mostly to question if evidence, testimony create a contradiction to Common Law.”

“For that he has my offices at his disposal,” Dolohov countered.

“But unlike yourself I routinely bring in Muggle experts to oral argument, and, unlike yourself, I’m usually favoured to win,” Narcissa smarted. “Naturally, Kingsley and I have a difference of opinion as to how the law applies and to who, and because I have the right of it, he tends to resort to obnoxious antics to underline whatever point he thinks himself to be making. He probably cast a charm at some point in order to illustrate to me just how many of my clients and contacts were at some point Voldemort’s confidants, as though that might serve as an argument in favour of the gross miscarriages of justice carried out by his office.”

Merlin, the woman was good at weaving lies into truth. Her closest friends seemed to believe her. Remus again found himself taking pause, and with it, offence. Why could she not just as easily get him out of answering a court summons that would come at great personal inconvenience?

“Really, Cissy? You would have defended me even if you thought me to be guilty?” Sirius baited, assisting her ploy.

“It is not for me to pronounce guilt, dear cousin. Mine is only to ensure that you, and everyone else, are given the right to a fair and free trial, independent of topical politics.”

“Then you also agree that it is not yours to legislate,” Remus challenged.

“Certainly not,” Narcissa shrugged. “But for the Muggles to suggest that your marriage is invalid runs contrary to the Civil Code and I have been engaged to assist my esteemed colleagues in pointing that out.”

“By way of using heightened tensions in Belfast and negative international perception of the British response to present Westminster with either openly contradicting an exception allowed for the Bishop of Rome, or extending the same to all of their citizens in a way contrary to shared values? There is going to be violence either way.”

Sirius having a tattoo parlour in town was a convenient way of ridding Narcissa’s office of Dark Marks and those who bore them, but frankly Remus had not been all too keen on seeing his bast mate that morning either. He had been awoken with a muggle court summons that required his signature, a demand that he appear as a witness of the prosecution. It was, in part, because of Sirius that the case had been taken up with its present scope, for when Remus and Severus had declined Zabini’s offer of cajoling a dispensation from the sitting pope, Sirius, who had been bedding her at the time, urged her to pursue it anyway, just in case.

He had meant well, which in a way made it worse.

The ‘Four Horsemen’, meanwhile, were likely sharing a private laugh over the prospect of muggle-on-muggle violence, be it from separatists, conservatives, or some other entity who opposition brought them out into the streets.

“First, marriage equality isn’t contrary to shared values as you put it when the Discrimination Act of 1975 clearly stipulates otherwise,” Yaxley answered, a little bored. “Suggesting that we have no business pointing out how current practices fall out of line with policy on count of our collective blood status or that an exception ought only to apply to you based on your connections is, you’ll pardon the comparison, Remus, more in line with the Dark Lord’s rhetoric than that which we are collectively trying to pursue.”

“You are using a host of Muggle fears to force your values upon them,” Remus parried. “I’m sorry, Sir Corban, I can’t be part of that.”

“I think you’ll find that you don’t have a choice,” Dolohov said. “You were issued a summons to appear in court. Failing to would put you in contempt and giving that Theo never did refile your adoption order, such could have personal consequences I suspect you are not keen to consider.”

“Remus, why are you being like this?” Sirius whined. “They are awful, I know, but we don’t always get to pick our allies.”

“It is not that … I, this, I can’t,” Remus did not know how else to say it. “Skeeter has heavily suggested my condition and if I show up in court the morning after a full moon, I could lose everything.”

“You suggested as much yourself in The Quibbler,” Sirius said.

“Which has nothing as compared to The Prophet’s circulation. The Mail will suggest it is AIDS with will hurt your case rather than, well, aid it and –”

“You are a coward,” Narcissa pronounced, marching right up to Remus, and stopping before him, her arms projecting from her slim hips as though she were attempting to make herself seem bigger and more physically imposing than nature allowed.

Remus rose to meet her. At five-eleven, Narcissa was as tall or taller than most men, but she had to tilt her chin upwards to meet and match Remus’ gaze. He did not like being a bully, but he did not exactly mind putting certain people in place.

The problem was, even as far as he could agree with the cause if not the methods, the morning after a full moon, he would not be able to stand up at all. “I’m a realist,” he corrected her. “Why did you not call Severus to testify instead?”

“Because Severus is scathing when put under pressure and the Defence would destroy him even without his criminal record coming up. You, on the other hand, are mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and of unimpeachable character,” she praised though her tone was biting. “A teacher who answered the call of civil service, who took his adoptive borough from destitution and despair to affluence without displacing the locals or disadvantaging them in any of the ways typically associated with gentrification. The Court is asking that you pretend to be that person you have otherwise convinced the world you are for twenty fucking minutes, and Cerce help me, Remus, you damn well will.”

His lip curled. She failed to flinch.

“With respect Narcissa,” Remus tried again with civility, “you have no idea what it is like to suffer the injuries of involuntary transfiguration.”

“Bullshit,” Narcissa countered. “When I ate enough for my reproductive system to sustain itself and I had a monthly period and that,” she rebuked herself for show, “I would want to lie in bed with a hot water bottle and an artificial spasmolytic and cry the curse of my gender, but I never did. I’d go and study and work and Play. Through. The. Pain., sometimes knowing that I was going to get hit with every Bludger the opposition got their hands on whilst the whole stadium laughed because Ted Tonks and his team didn’t like me all that much.

“I spent eighteen hours bringing my son into this world in a muggle hospital, refusing sedatives for the pain, even after my tailbone was shattered by his big Malfoy head, and to evade suspicion I had to contend that injury for weeks there before visiting St Mungo’s. Which I did, again, without a morphine drip, wanting to nurse Draco myself. Don’t pretend you have a monopoly on physical pain or social stigma, Remus. Just the rest of us find a way to work through it. You know, not all werewolves – ”

“Apologies, Narcissa but your period, childbirth, boarding school blood sport?” Remus gaped, slightly disbelieving. “It is not comparable to anything I am forced to endure.”

“No, you lack a basis for human empathy,” Narcissa countered.

“You are the one suggesting that I testify the day after a full moon! Cissy! You have seen me on those mornings, I can’t – ”

“To be fair the hearing is in January, giving you amble opportunity to make dietary and fitness adjustments which would aid in recovery,” Yaxley berated with a forced yawn. “Cissy is right, not all werewolves suffer as you do. And I’ve never met another to expect martyrdom for such efforts.”

“If I surrendered to my animal desires, I would risk becoming another Greyback,” Remus countered.

“At least the man has convictions,” Nott gave.

“I have convictions! Ones that extend my personal comfort. My family, this community, everything Narcissa cited that led you to issue this summons in the first place!”

“Your family?” Narcissa pressed her lips together, nodding. “I know you don’t teach One through Four anymore and it might have escaped your observation as a result, but your son is dating mine. Do you feel comfortable with the example you set saying ‘it is okay for me and your other father, but you’ll have to wait for someone else to fight for your basic rights?’”

Again, could not Severus be that person? Could the legal team not stake out a better position if they were so determined to give battle?

Remus wondered if he would not do better for himself to remind everyone of the reputation werewolves more regularly received.

“You bear the scars of our only encounter, Narcissa,” he whispered, looking down at her wrist. “You would not survive a fight against me.”

“I’m not looking for one, but if it came to it, you know I’d take that bet.” She did not take a step back the way he might have expected.

“Oh- Kaaay,” Sirius interrupted. Let’s uh, Moony toss me the keys to the pub? I’ll pop over and precure us all something stronger. Actually, let’s both go. I um. You are taller than me. And, we have to talk. Cissy … I’ll handle this. You just, why don’t you help Doll-Baby over there pick out a pretty design?”

But Dolohov did not seem concerned by his Dark Mark any longer.

Like Nott and Yaxley, he had reached for his wand and was readying himself to use it if need be.

Remus could not testify.

He had threatened someone powerful at the very suggestion, perhaps at his own peril. They were lawyers, they had to see that this would never work on a stand, and perhaps they would have, were they not blinded by the love they bore this woman who brought out the monster within him with such seeming ease.

Remus saw something of his old gang in their dynamic and that terrified him more than the prospect of any curses that might yet be cast. Voldemort had operated alone; his vision might be realised by those who worked together and with the idea that they were on the right side of history.

No one considered themselves the bad guy, Remus supposed. The single admirable thing about Yaxley was that he perhaps came as close as any man might to self-actualisation with his callous rejection of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as absolutes, but here, in this incidence, he likewise seemed to fall under the spell.   

And Remus could do nothing to stop the four of them from achieving Voldemort’s ends without betraying all of his personal values and putting his family at even greater peril.

These former Death Eaters set didn’t just have love figured out, they understood how to weaponize it against potential opposition.

It was terrifying.

“Ground Control to Major Tom,

Ground Control to Major Tom,

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on,” Barty Crouch Jr. began to sing as he walked with his oldest friend through the streets of Old Trafford, seeking the alley from and to which they ordinarily apparated when pretending to be qualified teachers.

“And hear I thought myself to be cursed to hear your particular rendition of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz for all my days,” Regulus said, unperturbed. “A welcome variation if ever there was one.”

“Fucking banger though,” Barty gave. “Wasted on your missus entirely.”

“I don’t know where else you would have heard either,” Regulus shrugged. “The only other people I know who listen to muggle music are Sirius and Sev, and it is not like they grace you with their company.”

Where Barty could not give a damn about Sirius Black, Severus’ hostile rejection had come as something of a shock, but one he felt himself beginning to understand. “Who is Tom?” he asked again.

“I told you to bloody leave it be,” Regulus snapped.

“I’m intrigued,” Barty pleaded.

“Dudley,” Regulus frowned, searching, “has a lot of impressions that will need to be corrected in time.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not expanding.”

“I can think of a few ways to make you talk,” Barty suggested with a cheeky grin, or what would have appeared as one, if he were he so privileged as to be wearing his own face.

“The Imperious won’t work on me, and that is besides, as you don’t even have a wand,” Regulus hissed, his own expression hardening, intent plainly mistaken.

For a moment, Barty simply studied him, amused. Regulus had always been wonting of stealing his female cousins’ cosmetics to escape his own comparatively ordinary visage with gothic drama. Now that the scars he bore made makeup necessary for ‘social’ outings, Barty had to wonder if Regulus still took any pleasure putting it on. Personally, he did not find it much helped. Regulus remained frightening behind waxlike layers of foundation, his scars plain behind the borrowed colour they bore, telling a story he would not relay and thereby inviting alternate narratives.

From a distance, Regulus resembled Lord Voldemort before the fall, and this suggestion was increased by the way his lover let him drape himself around her, as though to use his private vanities to accessorise her revenge. Tonks was a Metamorphmagus whose ‘ordinary’ appearance, or so she claimed, was dictated by innocent desire. That was bullocks. Tonks was a Black who looked like a Black with her slightly upturned nose, dimpled chin, and perfect cheekbones. Her hair was black, too, though she claimed to be a natural blonde and had worn it pink for the majority of her adolescence. She said that it contorted itself, often without her knowing, to mirror that of whomever she longed to be held by – Regulus, or so she would have everyone believe.

In reality she looked enough like Bellatrix whom she had come to idolise in her ignorance for everyone to take pause, imagining powers that Barty very much doubted Tonks had herself yet developed.

But why bother? Someone who could kill with a smile had no real need of the Avada.

In spite of appearances, opponents were disarmed by Tonks’ cheerful amicability paired with Regulus’ shy, people-pleasing nature that admitted a lack of personal confidence. And Tonks used the disinformation she invited to take whatever was not given.

Regulus deserved so much better than what he claimed to have chosen.

But that was a separate complaint.

Barty reached out and cupped his friend’s cheeks in his borrowed hands, removing as much makeup as he might. If he had a wand, if he could leave London with his own face, he would never disguise its disfigurements. Not that anything could be said in that regard save that he bore a resemblance to his father at the same age. Maybe he would piss off sweet Dora enough one day for her to endow him with a similar mutation to the one she had worked on her lover. Working on his atrocious singing in the wee hours when everyone else was getting ready for work would probably prove enough of an impulse given time. And Barty Crouch Jr. had time. Far too much of it.

“I was suggesting the original Veritaserum, a bottle of elvish red, the candlelit corner of an empty pub,” Barty mock flirted.

Regulus flinched. “I have ten pounds muggle in my pocket. Your accounts have been frozen so anything you have pocketed is mine, or Dora’s, or Sana’s, or Bill’s, and I am saying no. I’ll be a father come spring! I have concerns that extend your curiosity.”

“Precisely, my dear Regulus. Precisely,” Barty laughed. “When you are suffering through another sleepless night with a screaming infant and I come home wasted with a sex worker and the bill from a cab you’ll have to pay to have cleaned, you’ll envy my freedom and long for the sorts of nights we might yet enjoy in each other’s company. Alternatively,” he leaned in, lowering his voice to a whisper, “you could enlighten me as to what you and Tonks are up to when you are not bumping uglies and I could be of some, dare I say, considerable assistance.”

“In what possible way?” Regulus gaped, proceeding to overenunciate in high House of Black fashion, “You. Don’t. Have. A. Wand.”

“So it is that serious, is it?” Barty smiled, teasing. “Not something Dudley could defeat with a left hook?”

“Unfortunately, not,” Regulus sighed.

“Pray tell,” Barty encouraged, but no response was forthcoming. Regulus continued to walk in the direction of the appointed apparition spot.

Barty, jogging slightly to keep up, decided on a change of tactic. “What are you going to name the little one, anyway? Following Black family tradition, I’d assume after your father, but being as you are not yet married, it would be after hers, would it not? There a constellation called Edward I’ve not yet heard of?”

Regulus blushed, as Barty suspected he might. The pregnancy had come as a happy surprise. Personally, Barty would have harboured doubts that the kid was even Regulus’ were Tonks even a little less calculating.

The girl was clumsy, he could give her that. But she never did anything by accident.

She wanted to marry Regulus to gain the surname of the House for whom she spoke for to the Twenty-Eight. Lucius Malfoy was keeping her inheritance in holding to delay and perhaps dissuade her decision, but his politics leaned heavily into of public sentiment, and as a member of the landed aristocracy he did not want to scandal of his niece and protégée conceiving out of wedlock, especially with all of the offences being offered in the name of fallen gods and the institutions to have arisen from these legends. Lucius would avoid a scandal where he could. And Regulus, for his part, would leave his hated desk-job at the DMLE to take care of the little one, meaning there would be no conflict of interest in Tonks going into the Anti-Terror division directly after obtaining her qualifications, where she would be free to attack Narcissa for destroying Bellatrix in ways that were not purely suggestive or symbolic.

But the baby had been ‘an accident.’ A ‘happy one.’ Sure.

“Actually, she wants to name it after Remus Lupin, if it is a lad. He heard the baby’s heartbeat before she even thought she might be with child,” Regulus smiled, taken with his own romantic notions. Barty was a little bothered to learn that werewolves could hear heartbeats even in their ‘human’ form, but that was neither here nor there.

“Edward Remus then. And if it is a lass?”

“Delphini Bellatrix,” Regulus answered with less enthusiasm. “I hate it, but it is what has stuck. Lucius told her she would have a girl. Apparently, his tea told him, so Dora said she’d name a daughter in his honour. But I refused ‘Lucia’ outright, so she picked ‘Delphini’ in refences to the prophetesses of old, and Bellatrix just in case Narcissa did not immediately recognise the slight.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Barty feigned, privately grateful that his friend was not quite as naïve as he so often projected.

“She, Cissy, struggled so long to get pregnant, eventually having to rely on muggle science to achieve what her body could not, and still she could not give Lucius the heir he truly wanted. Dora went to live with them after I … after I sort of kidnapped her and thereby forced Lucius into an arms-deal with Thatcher and some Americans.”

Kinky. “Is this what they call ‘champagne problems’?” Barty baited.

“No, but Dora arriving at the Manor and taking it in a soft coup is. And then to get pregnant so quickly after, assuring her legacy has to come a blow to Narcissa. And by accident at that.”

Accident. Sure.

“We might agree to disagree on that count,” Barty said. “Tonks’ wants to marry you because she wants your name, Lucius gave her an incredible dowry from his wife’s holdings with the caveat that he’d essentially have a say in her consort, perhaps hoping to marry Draco to her, I suppose it is irrelevant now. But Lucius’ word is only an echo of whatever proves politically advantageous, which his ingénue having a child out of wedlock would not be. She’s forced him to renege, and he respects that. They are Breton pirates, the Malfoys,” Barty repeated, hating to hear his father’s phrasing from his own mouth and mind, however much it fit. “It is all they know, all they respect. I can’t imagine how that is lost on Narcissa.”

“I can’t imagine that it is,” Regulus gave, “but she herself has concerns that extend a parcel of land and the peasants bound to it by some long-dated charter.”

“Concerns involving this Tom?” Barty guessed. “Come on, Reg! I’m persona ingrata, who am I going to tell? No one talks to me full stop save you, Dudders, and my parole officer. Even my solicitor is slow responding to my owls and screamers these days.”

“Pub?” Regulus relented.

“Reg!” Barty scoffed. “It is four o’clock on a Tuesday and you’ve a pregnant insurgent at home counting the minutes until your return.”

“As you well know she’s at work until eight,” Regulus shrugged with something approaching envy. No one cared if he did not clock back in after his lunch hour. Barty privately wondered if even Mad Eye bothered himself to notice.

“That was merely my way of saying I thought you would never ask,” Barty laughed, extending his hand.

“Where to?” Regulus asked stopping shortly before taking it.

“I always wanted to see the place you killed that muggle,” Barty suggested.

This gave Regulus a renewed hesitation, which told enough in itself. Whatever they were hiding, whatever it had to do with Lord Voldemort, the answer lied somewhere in Cokeworth. Interesting.

“It burned down shortly after the wake,” Regulus answered awkwardly. “And Remus Lupin is effectively the Landlord of its successor. I think he was elected on that same criterion.”

“Bellatrix?” Barty guessed of the arson.

“Lily Evans, actually.”

“Oh right, yeah, I forget how bloody mental she was at times. Though I suppose that is how she managed to be friends with someone like Severus. Harry inherit some of that swag?” he tried, knowing he was pressing his luck.

“Not nearly enough,” Regulus answered. He extended his hand. Barty grabbed it.

Chapter Text

“This,” Narcissa Malfoy demonstrated, pointing to the ceiling with an excitement neither the revelation nor the wider conversation called for, “this is a lamp. It is an artificial light source which muggles normally use to imitate candles. But! Down the way, they have these – they call them ‘beds’, as you are meant to lay in them – and these beds, they are made entirely of lamps, as to recreate the sun. Rather inventive, is it not?”

Remus offered his fellow bartender an eyeroll, which she met with a supressed chuckle, both of their minds on tonight’s Town Hall.

The residents of Cokeworth local to the area were, by this point, inoculated to the idea of magic, ordinarily meeting it more with disinterest than with the fear and derision they reserved for the mundane:

The change machine at the local laundry had not worked for months and business owners nearby were annoyed over taking notes for coin without turning a profit.

Infrastructure projects that had been met with wide approval were causing some to be late to jobs they had not held prior to the borough’s expansion.

No one seemed to like the parish’s ‘new’ priest, who had brought a guitar to a Sunday service – attended by few but ridiculed by all.

Many argued that Cokeworth should submit for official town status giving its population increase, but this would mean arriving on alternatives the services they relied on Greater Manchester to provide, to which the only concessions thus far amounted to ‘sod ‘em’ – a tantalising if ill-defined solution.

But on top of everything, the night brought its first real challenge between the muggles and mages whom Lucius Malfoy had somehow gotten the House of Lords to cohabitate. The Ministry was concerned that products belonging to the wizarding world were winding up in ordinary rubbish collection and was imposing a fine for the inconvenience. The muggle residents felt that they should be excepted from payment, where the wizards argued that their no-maj neighbours likewise bought sweets from Honeydukes.

Remus was of little mind to keep the peace.

As he saw it, the formidable Ministry had no right to punish something for which they could provide no working solution. Chocolate Frog wrappers were not biodegradable and the Ministry with all of its arms did not seem to have one that could pick up trash.

Unhelpfully, Lucius (who would likely have been able to produce a series of numbers which the authorities would agree made sense as not to seem ignorant) was off in Odessa contributing to talks around nuclear disarmament. Narcissa would not be acting as a deputy in his absence, having been relieved of that responsibility by Sirius’ insistence. Rather, she would sit with her cousin and Cokeworth’s other local business owners to offer the room complaint rather than debate. Her presence here before proceedings was hardly aiding whatever cause her block might later champion.

But ultimately, as Mayor, it was Remus’ problem to sort. Not that he had any ideas as to how.

Antonin Dolohov, having learned of the matter in an offhand comment Remus had made at the tattoo parlour earlier that afternoon, had seen something akin to sport in the coming contest. He had called on his house elf to fetch a series of documents from his office within the same Ministry, assured Remus in handing them over of a simple, low-cost solution to the problem, and had then returned to his conversation with Sirius about disguising his bigotry with additional ink.

Remus had no idea what he was meant to do with the paperwork. It was all in Runes, which he could not read. Excusing himself from the debate his protest over a court summons had begun, he had gone to the local Flourish branch to purchase a bilingual dictionary and sat himself in the pub where tonight’s Town Hall would be held, trying to translate. Trying to care. But Sirius’ earlier echoes of ‘The Horsemen’s’ admonishments were ringing in his mind with the half-knowing cries and complaints of his boys, whose lives had been uprooted by what everyone seemed to name as his own cowardice. What Remus instead saw as Sir Corban’s simple unwillingness to refile an adoption order his former partner had messed up a few years prior.

Remus had finished the first paragraph by the time Halley, the afternoon barmaid,  had arrived back from university to open for the regular day drinkers. For a few minutes, he had listened to her concerns about the Butter Beer and Fire Whiskey they had stocked before general resentment lulled him into returning to the complex file.

At some point thereafter, Nott, Yaxley and Narcissa had arrived and taken a table in the corner. Nott had briskly informed Remus when he came to the bar to order that what he, Remus, was struggling with was a ‘simple’ cease and desist order, quickly translating a few choice clauses into to common tongue and assuring him that it would prove a small matter for Dolohov to dismiss the Ministry representatives at the meeting.

He then went back to his table. And then, annoyingly, elected to stay for a second glass of wine.

Remus wondered if it was entirely lost on the group that rubbish collection and fines were but one item on tonight’s agenda; That every moment they spent holding talks around subjects ordinarily of little interest to the muggle population, however mundane, they increased the possibility of open hostilities on behalf of Cokeworth’s home-grown.

Most of it was the fodder that had filled the wizarding world for the past few weeks.

The match between the Tornados and the Falcons had been going on for over a month, delaying competition on the continent, which all were of the mind had ought to continue as scheduled as neither English club would be in any condition to compete for another trophy when (and perhaps if) the snitch was ever caught.

Hagrid had found two baby unicorns dead in the Forbidden Forrest prior to the start of term. Nott was concerned about there being a possible health and safety issue. Yaxley, a spare-time school Governor, confirmed that there was. His name was Bane, and that Hagrid and Dumbledore were working to sort it.

Here, Narcissa was of the mind that whoever was killing unicorns was not doing so for economic gain, herself knowing precisely how much a millilitre of blood cost on the black market and inviting conversation and criticism unto her husband’s vanities.

Then they shared a laugh over Dolohov’s very grounded fears while contemplating their own ‘corrections.’ Narcissa had been doing her bit to promote her cousin and his business. Yaxley had questioned in his baiting manner why then she had not personally given Sirius her patronage to which, much to Remus’ genuine surprise, she claimed to have had a rather large piece, which they could not see. Not owing to the Dark Arts that defined their own ink, of course, but because she had alabaster skin and the art had been worked in white. She was not a Lady, not in the proper sense, but she still had events to attend at Lucius’ side and the proclivities of his ilk were rather restrictive. If either of them could come on a spell to make her look as though she were holidaying in the global south, they could know her secrets.

Yaxley had been personally affronted that there was something about his best friend of which he had been unaware, a statement that would have given Remus grounds for worry were he not so annoyed at Narcissa’s use of ‘alabaster’ – which was a dumb way to say ‘pale’.

Nott seemed to have been giving the proposition of a tanning charm genuine consideration, which worked to annoy the muggle Halley, who then asked Remus if he would not mind stepping behind the bar for a few minutes to cover for her whilst she taught a few wizards a ‘spell’ that she swore every middle-class muggle woman was more than familiar with.

Remus, realising that he was getting no where with his preparations, had agreed.

The two women had been gone for over an hour.

Halley had brought the alcohol from a suddenly undesirable distillery to Sirius, whom Remus suspected she had a crush on as most in the vicinity did, and to Dolohov, whom she had laughed had needed it.

Narcissa, Remus imagined, had probably visited Mick and Elliot at the apothecary in the meantime, bought a small bag under the counter and consumed the full of its contents in the privacy of the pub’s women’s bathroom (which had not worked for years) with the way her heart was beating.

Remus hated that he could hear such things. He hated that he could clearly make out conversations from across the room in spite of Halley using the blender, his own continued washing of a few pint glasses, and the wireless’ perpetual coverage of the damned Tornados v. Falcons match that seemed determined to last as long as western involvement in those near-eastern wars of grinding attrition.

He hated everything about being a werewolf. Including the benign. He hated that Narcissa Malfoy, whose conscious mind was likewise filled with every measure of information to which she should not be privy, who ought to have been able to relate as much as any human could, had named him a coward time and again.

He hated that she had a point.

“I fail to comprehend the appeal,” Theodore Nott gave of the tanning bed of which his friend and former colleague spoke. “Personally, I can’t sleep unless the room is in complete darkness.”

“You are not meant to sleep,” Narcissa explained briskly. “The name is misleading. You lay there, and a few minutes later your skin looks as though you have just returned from holiday. Mind that neither of you could come on a spell that could do the same.”

“Because magic is unto itself logical? Useful?” Corban Yaxley prodded, more amused than perplexed.

“Severus made up a curse to cause toenails to grow at an alarming rate,” Remus interjected from behind the bar where he continued to take refuge. He did not want to speak to this lot. But he likewise did not want to risk their conversation drifting into the dangerous territory of magical superiority, which a few of the locals, now well into their cups, would surely transcribe to their neighbours come tonight’s meeting.

Remus did not need another dumpster fire. He needed to be in bed by eleven, to get up, go to work, and teach three advanced classes. He needed to somehow navigate the town’s governance, Hagrid’s conflict with the Centaur heard, Harry’s frustrations around the Charms coursework which he would be failing if Flitwick were able to issue grades, Hermione and Pansy’s friendship (which was proving just as derisive as their prior conflict had), and the fact that Severus was developing a pattern of taking the whole of his own personal frustrations out on a pet toad named Trevor and the poor first year who could not keep him under control during a Potion’s double.

Halley was right. Magic was bullocks.

“Severus might benefit from a spell that causes one to look as though they had seen the light of day in the past quarter century,” Yaxley said in response to Remus’ example of just how ‘useful’ and ‘logical’ their abilities could prove. “Or a sleep in Cissy’s muggle torture chamber. Right love,” he shifted back to his friend, “let’s see it then.”

Narcissa removed her black wool blazer to reveal a skimpy white silk-and-lace undershirt with thin straps that seemed to take the place of a bra. In the newly tanned skin of her bony chest a number of intricate white lines were made viable, constellations and celestial bodies, all.

“This one is Sirius, Bellatrix, Cygnus, Orion, Regulus, Andromeda, Nymphadora, Pollux and Draco,” she indicated individually, “and here it says –”

“Always Pure,” Nott read in the Runic script.

“Well, yes. Also no,” Narcissa wriggled her upturned nose. “Originally, I wanted Sirius to write it correctly, ‘Toujours Pur’, but he refused and fair play. But he also can’t read Runes, so I gave this to him a few days later to incorporate into the design, telling him it meant ‘Habeas Corpus’ which is the first thing that came to mind when pressed. So lie, if it ever comes up.”

“It won’t,” Yaxley assured her. “I’d never confess to staring at your chest at such length to anyone, lest Rita got word of it.” His tone was bitter and biting, but to Remus’ mind entirely put on. In Narcissa’s extended absence, Yaxley had mentioned to Nott that he had some intent of courting Miss Seeker, concluding that a woman who could conjure such powerful symbolism within a restrictive word-count would prove an enticing conquest. Nott had half-heartily chastised his mate for being a creature of habit before conversation had returned to their shared dislike of the ‘prissy’ Lucius Malfoy, whom the locals all adored. It was as though they were trying to start a fight!

Remus wondered if any of this was actually lost on Narcissa.

“I wouldn’t worry,” she shrugged of Skeeter. “She’s not  good enough of a writer to pull of a proper Page Six. I can’t both ride a biblical Black Horse into a courtroom and have any sort of sexual identity, even if it is just to suggest the lustful yearnings of my fellow Horseman. Such would confess me as competition,” she rolled her eyes.

“Speaking of, I’m famished,” Nott gave. Calling over to the bar, he asked, “Is the kitchen open yet, or, alternatively, are either of you object to my ordering takeaway?”

“I’ll allow it,” Halley shouted back, scrambling for one of the pens that always went misplaced. “But only because I think Lady Wiltshire’s ink is dope as fuck.”

This phrasing seemed to return Narcissa to the person she pretended at when not laughing with her closest friends about the suspicions and suggestions that seemed to find their way into print. She hastily dropped the flimsy tank top which she had been holding up to allow Nott and Yaxley to read a line beneath her negligible breasts written in a secret, sacred language.

“I’m not – never mind,” Narcissa began to explain, somewhat flustered. Then, thinking better of inviting a more immediate scrutiny of her marriage, continued simply and sweetly, “Halley, please just call me Cissy.”

“What can I get you boys, then?” Halley asked, having given up on her search, resolving to rely on memory.

“Scotch Egg,” Yaxley indicated to Nott, “side salad,” he gave of Narcissa, “and I’ll just have chips, but – put enough on the plate that when this one inevitably gets jealous and decides to steal a few for herself, I’ll still have enough for myself to qualify a meal.”

“I’m not hungry, Halley,” Narcissa protested. “You can spare the salad.”

“Bring it,” Yaxley countered. “I’ll pay for it regardless of if she eats it or not.”

Narcissa moved to replace her blazer.

“Wait,” Remus said, approaching the table. “When did you have that done?”

“Around the same time that I relocated my office to Cokeworth,” she answered, her smile fading. “I needed some amusement during renovations and my cousin makes for decent company as I think even you would admit.”

“I’m … just surprised is all,” Remus said. “I thought you and Dora – ”

Something in Narcissa’s posture shifted, though she did not move. It was as though she were physically repulsed by his very gaze. “No, Remus, allow me to propose that you don’t ‘think’, as it were,” she snapped, draping her business wear over her shoulders without bothering with the arms, plainly wanting to be covered as quick as it was possible.  “You read profusely as to allow others to do so for you and because the individuals who encompass your periphery are of so little personal interest to you, you tend to accept Skeeter and her colleagues as modern gospel,” she rebuked. “I love my niece. I’m proud of her. Insofar as a conflict exists between us, it is only an extension of my objection to what the DMLE qualifies as evidence, but that is a fight I have been having for years. Certainly, it has nothing to do with Lucius or Wiltshire as the yellow papers have it.”

“Corban, this is never going to work on the stand,” Nott observed. Remus could not have agreed more.

Yaxley snored as he leaned back into his chair. “My good fellow, I’d never allow her to question him under oath. But agreed, Defence likely won’t prove so cuttingly hostile in cross examination, what I intend Cissy to prepare my client for.”

“If you could just get the date altered it would not be an issue. Mr Nott, you are a judge yourself, can’t you –”

Yaxley beckoned for Remus to take a seat, which he did. For a moment, Narcissa seemed to debate storming out, which she did not. Excepting perhaps Orion, who had known how to pick his fights, Regulus, who never waged war openly, and Dora, whom Remus still considered a surprise addition in spite of chastisement, the Nobel Blacks sketched in her chest would have likely been ashamed of the level of Malfoy diplomacy she confessed to in sitting down beside him.

“Remus, we were lucky to have been granted a hearing full stop,” Yaxley explained calmly. “If we asked for a delay, I can all but guarantee that Dolores would use such as an excuse to make your condition far more prevalent than need be within the scope of this case.”

“Dolores?” Remus inquired.

“Umbridge,” Yaxley clarified. “My ex.”

For a moment that seemed to extend time, Remus simply stared at the distinguished attorney, his jaw slack. Corban Yaxley had celebrated his fiftieth birthday the winter past, and he had the sort of face that had improved with the softening of age, though his gaze remained firm and fixed. Remus knew that he had been married five times, that three of his wives had given him four sons and that he had a fifth from a mistress he would not name. He knew that Yaxley had been successful in his various bids for sole custody.

Remus had just never considered that the alternative could have proven so much worse for the boy he gathered to be man’s eldest from the open laugher and contemptuous chatter Nott and Narcissa offered. No, the Toad had not processed any particular charms as a Tadpole, either.

Remus, realising he ought to say something, stammered, “I just thought, a man in your position, of your standing, would be more inclined to classical beauty.” This was the last thing he ought to have said. He knew as much immediately.

“He took up with one of Greyback’s ‘daughters’, too,” Nott gave. “Lovely lass, really, but a face only a pubescent boy trying to grow a beard for the first time might envy. Corban can’t even start with pretty. He far prefers to be the one everyone is staring at.”

“I’m really not his type,” Narcissa snorted.

“You dated a werewolf?” Remus summarised, still disbelieving.

“I prefer my domestics petty and passive aggressive,” Yaxley shrugged. “Cissy is too direct for my liking. Plus,” he mock-sneered, “I imagine she spends too much time in the WC with her unicorn blood and bovine – what was the other deplorable ingredient in Lucy’s Fountain of Youth?”

“Collagen,” Narcissa answered quickly, “but I was only saying with that, that whoever is killing those poor unicorns in the Forbidden Forest isn’t economising in their presumably criminal enterprise, for a single drop is enough for fifty millilitres, which itself suffices three months of use.”

“I don’t care,” Yaxley shook his head slowly.

Narcissa crossed her still-bare arms and stuck out her tongue. “You care enough to mock me for it.”

Nott frowned. “You really can’t consider any other possible usage for unicorn blood besides some overpriced face cream?” he asked Narcissa.

“I didn’t take Defence at the N.E.W.T. level,” she returned in a tone that told that she did not much care either. Nott looked to his once-junior partner who had since bought him out of their shared practice as though to beg assistance.

“Well, you are about to get a master course,” Yaxley announced, presumably at Nott’s silent impetus. “Cissy,” he shifted, “you ever read Lyall Lupin’s thesis on lycanthropy?”

Again, Remus found his jaw slacken at the discrepancy between expectation and conversation.

“You know full well the only literature I ever engaged on the subject was Gilderoy Lockheart’s young adult novel,” Narcissa chirped. “It was anything but academic. As you both know, the Dark Arts never held any personal appeal for me.”

“Unicorn blood,” Yaxley returned flatly.

“Bitch, look at this face,” Narcissa demanded, leaning slightly across Remus’ field of vision while indicating to her visage with a circular motion.

“It is the same one you’ve been wearing for these twenty years past. All I’ve ever found in it are the borrowed insecurities of a man for whom you know I bear no more love than you have ever deemed any of my wives or paramours personally worthy,” Yaxley said, dry and casually cruel. “But sure, Cissy, there is nothing inherently deranged about wanting to look like the target demographic of your preferred genre of fiction. That said, there was something in your dismissal far more worthy of examination. You refer to werewolves as ‘dark’. Can you expand on this choice?”

“I – it was thoughtless,” Narcissa confessed, arriving at nothing. “I didn’t realise this was a working lunch.”

“It isn’t, at least not so far as I intend to compensate your time, but this remains a conversation worth having,” Yaxley continued as he might for the benefit of a jury. “You call werewolves ‘dark’, thoughtlessly, for I imagine such is fixed in your subconscious as it is in that which our society collectively shares. That was not always the case. Now. Tell me why. DADA aside, you have a N.E.W.T. in Magical History and an undergraduate minor besides. Not to mention,” he grinned at his own self-aggrandisements, “a best friend who built and won a case around this same prejudice that has entrenched itself to the fears most confuse with morals.”

Before Remus could properly consider how their famous friendship possibly survived each other’s open disapprovals of chosen partners and personal lives, Nott continued the conversation Remus was personally doing his best to pretend was not being had.

“Back in the sixties, Lyall Lupin, Remus’ father, wrote a paper attacking werewolves as ‘soulless, evil creatures deserving nothing but death,’ a stance the Ministry was quick to adapt as its own,” the judge gave without inflection. “Corban can suggest you read the work in the interest of his case. I, however, can order it, and, in fact, I am.”

Narcissa opened her mouth as though she meant to offer a rebuke, but Nott raised his hand. Turning his gaze upon Remus, he continued, “This is not to say that I can condone the way in which your client speaks to or about you, nor, that with what little I know of him, that I don’t likewise subscribe to your critiques and complaints, but the self-loathing and ensuing cowardice in the face of his condition is easily understood if we are to take that Remus was raised the man single-handedly responsible for creating systemic bigotry against werewolves.”

“It was not like that,” Remus said reflexively, though his mind had transported him to a memory far removed form the isolation and yearning of youth. ‘I don’t have to like you,’ Yaxley had told him smoothly several weeks prior. ‘I only have to convince a jury of the lies you otherwise tell with such ease.’

Ease. As though Remus had ever been acquainted with the concept.

“I’d pose that giving his evident upbringing, Remus isn’t a werewolf, but simply someone afflicted with lycanthropy,” Narcissa argued. For a moment, Remus imagined her to be speaking to his defence. “Werewolves tend towards a pack-mentality insofar as I am given to understand,” she continued, returning to the chorus Remus knew all too well. “He left my cousin, his so-said best friend, to rot in Azkaban. He told Dora, a child at the time, his student besides, how to fight a basilisk rather than intervene in her interests or on her behalf. He’ll complain about back-taxes, but Godric forbid that he take the stand to defend his union to the man I fostered when I was barely out of adolescence myself,” she spat.

Remus hated the comparison, for such was hardly fair. Narcissa Malfoy had it far too easy. Forbes appraised Lucius’ wealth at 13.1 billion pounds. He personally owned a not insubstantial portion of the national debt. His dealings decided if budding democracies would fall to western-backed dictators. His wife could afford to work on a pro-bono basis. She could afford to foster orphans and force them upon individuals she deemed a safer option. She could ride a metaphoric black horse to the end of the world brought on by her actions, stave herself for the so-said male gaze and then condemn it, snort cocaine with the Prime Minister, regard everyone and everything with contempt, and still smile and enjoy the reputation the misplaced envies of other women had won her of being a republican heroine, a feminist icon, the people’s voice against the Ministry –

Because she herself was not a person at all.

That she had the nerve to pretend at real struggle should have been offensive to anyone to have ever genuinely suffered! It was too much.

“The man who, oh for fuck’s sake Remus – everything,” she barked. “Everything remotely redeemable about your character or at least that which you are wont to present reflects Severus’ generosity and yet! And yet you are unwilling to defend your relationship, to lend your voice to others in a similar predicament, because you are afraid you won’t feel good, and it would be easier to just lay in bed?” Narcissa sneered. “Because doing the basic ass shit that would enable you to live a fuller, heathier life would prove part of Daddy’s hypothesis? Grow. The. Fuck. Up.”

“You are going to read that book, Ballerina,” Yaxley said, still calm but cautioning. “And then, you are going to visit Lyall. And Greyback afterwards.”

“Fine,” Narcissa shrugged.

“No!” Remus exclaimed. There was so much that was objectively awful about Narcissa Malfoy that it was daunting to quantify. She was intrusive, blunt, entitled, and uncensored. She was often over-dressed, regardless of the occasion. She was the kind of person to celebrate Boxing Day by competing in a bi-or-triathlon when anyone of merit sat at home, hungover and full of the feast from the day before. She was victim to the sort of curse that should have encouraged her towards empathy, but she was too emotionally isolated by wealth and privilege to ever hope to relate.

But the worst thing about her, Remus considered, was that she was legitimately, inarguably brave.

Greyback would make easy prey of her if ever afforded the chance.

“No?” Yaxley ask, the corner of his mouth hinting at a smile.

“Sir Corban, she would be defenceless,” Remus said, horrified.

“Damn unicorn blood, innit?” Nott chortled in reference to how society’s obsession with youth manifested individually in a colleague and a former client. Narcissa was simply vain. Fenrir Greyback, by contrast, targeted small children in his attacks, hoping to raise his victims away from those who would come to loath and reject them regardless.

As a child, Remus had himself been kept in a cage.

Sometimes, he wondered if he would have been better off in the forest, far from his parents and their best intentions.

But rarely.

He looked down upon Greyback and those living in his pack, whom the Ministry deemed could not be integrated, who gave good people like himself a bad name, who had never stood a chance or been given one. He looked down on them, because he knew that they would kill Narcissa Malfoy or anyone to occupy the same platitudes in the collective conscience without hesitation or remorse.

But sometimes, in his darkest moments, he hated his own practiced restraint in that regard.

“It nothing to make light of,” he argued, as he knew he was meant to. “These is an extent to which you are right as it pertains to my lifestyle and its limitations. Greyback on the other hand … transformation affords the man no physical hardship because he is always a wolf to a not insignificant extent. Narcissa’s magic does not work on animals. She has no idea what I am thinking the morning after a full moon.”

“Oh, I always have a decent idea of what you think of me, Remus,” Narcissa sneered.

“You don’t though,” Remus answered, with some sick pleasure imagining her broken and bleeding the way she might if the cowardice she so often claimed in him had held his tongue in this moment. “You don’t,” he shifted, trying to resist the bloodlust she inspired with ease. She met him with a twisted smile that seemed to know his thoughts. He returned it for spite. “Sirius spends enough time in his Animagus form to conceal from you whatever he wishes,” Remus said. “It is the same way with Draco.”

This gave her pause. “But Draco isn’t an Animagus. Anyway, he’s eleven. The only eleven-year-old I know whose mind is quite that complicated is Harry and –”

“You sure about that?” Remus prodded. “Since Sirius will lie if you put the question to him, ask Regulus when next you are in London exactly how long it takes a son of House Black to learn the Scrofula spell. Quarter of an hour? If that? The point is your magic is ineffective on those not entirely human. I can’t let you go to Greyback, even if Sir Corban thinks that such would scare you into sympathy.” I know you better than that, after all.

“I never suggested I’d have her go alone,” Yaxley spoke up. “Greyback won’t attack me or anyone in my company. He would not get far if he tried.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Remus said, for the sake of civility if little else. Fuck. He thought. He truly had inherited his father’s prejudice.

“But if you are offering,” Yaxley seemed to invite.

“I’m not afraid of the big bad wolf. Or the man to coin the term, for that matter,” Narcissa snorted, shifted. “It would be cruel to suggest Remus ought –”

“You are not going alone, Narcissa,” Remus interrupted, nearly growling.

“So, to clarify,” Nott said after thanking Halley for her table-service. “Remus, you would be willing to confront these two manifestations of your internalised fears to protect a woman whose company you can barely tolerate, but you are not willing to brave the scrutiny of a grand jury for the man you profess to love and the children you are raising as your own?”

“Physical bravery and emotional integrity are separate things, Theo,” Yaxley shrugged.

“It is not that I don’t love my family,” Remus insisted, “it is that I do! Do you not think that we are individually suffering enough for you ambitions without my condition potentially becoming a weapon for mainstream conservatives – ”

“Speaking as a mainstream conservative,” Narcissa cut him off, reaching over him, as Yaxley had predicted, to take a few fries from her friend’s plate. “Remus, in a proper family no one ever suffers as an individual. Burdens are made bearable because they are shared. If such failed you in your youth, I’m deeply sorry for you, truly – I am. But equally, don’t you see it as your duty to advance your cause that these battles are not left for Harry and Dudley to fight?”

“They are children, Narcissa,” Remus countered. “I understand how that concept could be lost on you, and for that, you likewise have my pity. But to put it plain, if I don’t shield them from my personal darkness, the whole of their lives could be defined by a battle that was never theirs to give.”

“Whom among us has the privilege to set their own terms of engagement?” she paused, then shifted in both tone and tactic. “Did you know most babies are born with blue eyes?”

“What?” Remus blinked.

“At least, in northern Europe, it is very common. They often alter with light exposure within a few months. Mine didn’t, obviously. Maybe because I didn’t actually leave my house full stop until I was nearly twelve years old. Until I got on the Hogwarts Express. The first time I saw anyone outside of my immediate family, it was – there were literally a thousand people,” Narcissa twitched slightly. “My sisters, my parents, they tried to shield me, but at a certain point it is not possible, is it? Draco, Dudley, they were far younger than I was in finding how unlike the world is to the presentations in the stories we read at the fireside. Harry was younger still. And you, and Severus, you never had that luxury at all, did you?”

Remus had heard something akin to this from Sirius, about Narcissa being considered an embarrassment to the Black name for the limited way in which her magic manifested, about her finding company in fiction and confusing much of what she later found with the lies she told herself to ward off isolation when her sisters were not around. Remus did not really want to believe this, to think that there was any real, human level on which he should be able to relate, for he had therefore to contend the prospect that, perhaps, he was not any good at it, either.

Remus had grown up on government benefits, his father having resigned from his ministry post after Greyback’s retaliatory attack, his muggle mother unable to find work in the countryside where the family had relocated, never to long remain in any given abode. An odd glace or an offhand comment was enough to fill several suitcases and an old station wagon and the Lupins were on their way.

Before he was old enough to identify, or identify with, his condition, Remus used to imagine that he was a prince from a distant kingdom, that he had been stolen by these parents who could barely look at him, and that someday, his ‘real’ parents would steal him back.

When he had graduated from fairytales to the sort of popular fiction that sold well in transient places and which his mother thus indulged, he though his parents had witnessed a grievous crime, that they were in witness protection and that someday there would be a trial and the bad guys would be punished and they would get to go ‘home’ and live normal lives.

But there had been a trial. Corban Yaxley had headed the defence and been knighted for his efforts. Greyback had walked, the Werewolf Registry had been reinforced, and a clause had been added to counter it in legal if not practical terms, saying that in addition to sex, orientation, politics, religion, et cetera, disability – as lycanthropy was henceforth understood –  could not be cited as grounds for discrimination in terms of service or employment.

At least on paper.

Still, Yaxley was Sir Corban for his victory for equality. As a werewolf, Remus did not really have issue extending him the honour.

But public opinion was an entirely separate court.

When Dumbledore arrived to offer Remus Hogwarts placement, he calmed his father by saying that precautions had been taken to conceal his son’s condition. At school, likewise encountering other children for the first time at eleven, Remus understood how paramount it was that no one knew what he was –

A soulless, evil creature deserving nothing but death.

He was thirteen by the time he learned his own father had coined the phrase.

“Anyway, I have blue eyes,” Narcissa illustrated by fluttering her long eyelashes. “From the day I was born. That never changed. My sister Bella, though?” she asked rhetorically with a forced smile that felt like a sob. “She was absolutely terrified that they would. That the grown-ups would notice if they did despite my sex and birth order rendering me the least warranting of anyone’s interest or attention in that household.

“Because we had a cousin whose eyes did change, shortly after birth. Her hair, too. Bella thought that I simply couldn’t be a natural blonde,” Narcissa continued briskly. “She had reason for concern though which I’ll thankfully never fully appreciate. When she was three, Bella, they made her sit our cousin’s throat; Metamorphmagi being considered an abomination among the truly pure. Bella never let it go. I don’t think my Aunt Walburga did, either but … well you wouldn’t, would you?”

Remus did not know how to respond.

“Andy told me that when I was small, Bella would just scream whenever anyone else tried to get near to me,” Narcissa continued. “She would rage and accident into magic as children often do, but with such intent on destruction that by the time she got her own wand, no one even tried. My mother hugged me, or rather let me hug her but once, when Andy left home. I think I might have shaken hands with my father at some point. He died when I was still at school. I can’t entirely remember; I might have imagined the whole of it. Anyway. When Dora was born, a real Metamorphmagus, she, Bella, helped Andy and Ted to flee lest our niece be subjected to the same fate as a cousin to have been killed before baptism twenty years earlier.”

“Merlin. Cissy that … that is really awful.”

How much pain, Remus wondered was born of kindness and care?

After encountering his father’s earlier work, Remus’ relationship with his parents had deteriorated into apology which Remus could no more hear than he could accept.

They no longer spoke.

He fancied that his father knew he had since married the kid he had made sport of picking on back at school. He might even know that he was now teaching, same as Remus knew that his folks were living a quite life somewhere in Wales, somewhere closer to people than they had ever dared to be when they kept his company.

He did not possess the grace to hope they were happy.

When he left school and had been drifting though jobs Sir Corban’s amendment to an existing anti-discriminatory law did nothing to help him hold, they had offered their newfound home, but Remus had refused.

Actually, he had not even responded to the owl. The offer had made him feel like a burden, and he was so sure that was true that when he had gotten settled himself, he did not want to risk introductions lest Severus come to subscribe to the prejudice his father had once promulgated and preached.

He saw Narcissa take another few chips from Yaxley’s plate and might have returned the well-meaning, manipulative smile of the later were he not so preoccupied with the scars on Narcissa’s wrist, inflamed after all these years.

Something set.

She bore him no resentment on count of his condition, the animosity was entirely personal. She thought he was a coward. However one might seek to excuse it, he was apt to agree.

“It is Regulus, who would have had to have done it, by the way,” Narcissa continued after sating herself. “The family youngest. They pretend it has something to do with an untainted soul, but it is more the fact that one can’t stand trial as an adult until reaching maturity and children are not sentenced to Azkaban. Mm,” she paused. “I digress slightly. Regulus, who would have been forced to kill Nymphadora in a world where Bella didn’t fight to make sure no one was put to the sword for being born with an instable gene sequence, is now going to marry that girl. She is going to have his baby and in all likelihood that child is going to inherit her abilities.

“And you know what we do?” Narcissa posed with a forced, ironic laugh. “Like what everyone is doing, which is so awful but also so, so, wonderful? They are saying that Dora’s only with him for his surname. That the babe is Lucius’. Or Bill’s. Or bloody Madeye Moody’s. It bullocks,” she snorted, now genuinely amused. “The whole of it. Dora has no intention to take Reg’s name for her own. How on earth would that aid her political ambitions? Lucius would never endow a Black,” she explained. “But a Tonks? Why not. He knows he will be that last Malfoy to rule Wiltshire, he could do worse than to abdicate the seat his family held on to for a millennium to another half-blood to have forced the Scared Twenty-Eight to bend the knee. To a Chairwoman to have kept her maiden and muggle name. Regulus is ignorant to all of this, of course.”

“I fully subscribe to Severus’ view that you are all the same person,” Nott shook his head, interjecting to allow Narcissa more of a much-needed meal. “Regulus was a model son so long as he was only being kept as a spare, but the moment Sirius left and he had to contend with his own sudden significance, it is as though he came to the same conclusion as his brother before him, as darling Bellatrix and Andromeda and you yourself and resolved to burn it all to its very foundations.”

“Oh, I think that is to assign the boy far too much political savvy when he has neither interest in nor aptitude for it,” Yaxley replied, taking a single chip for himself before pushing the plate across the table to Narcissa. “Not that I blame him. Let him be besotted with the girl who bested the whole of a house that would not otherwise have her. It will keep him from worrying about whatever Cissy has hidden in her office, at any rate.”

Remus tensed.

“He knows nothing,” Narcissa swore, seemingly speaking in terms of her cousin. “Including the fact that she’s come to fancy him. And it is sweet, too, isn’t it? To say to someone ‘I love you so much that your name is irrelevant’? It is what Lucius said to me,” she said, smiling blithely at a memory on which she did not elect to expand.

“But now they are saying that ‘he’s the father of her baby!’ and ‘what of Draco?’ and ‘poor Narcissa’, even,” she scoffed, resuming her regular candour. “People actually pity me in this fictional scenario in which I play absolutely no role. It is ridiculous, and it’s horrible – for Dora especially, I mean. The rest of us are press-trained.

“But – and this is the wonderful part of it: no one, absolutely no one, is saying anything about that child’s right to life, and when it is born and its eyes change from blue to brown to indigo and back again, no one will say or even think of it as being an abomination. When it grows up, if Dora gets her way, no one is going to give a damn about its blood status, either. It won’t even be warranting of comment or consideration.

“We can’t protect our kids from everything, Remus,” Narcissa concluded. But we can fight the battles we are given with the hope that our children will never properly appreciate the privileges bought for them by our bloodshed. Is it truly so much to ask that you be a braver, better man than your father was? Is?”

“Was,” Remus clarified to a general look of surprise. “No, he’s alive, but my affliction altered his perspective.”

“And yet you don’t see him,” Narcissa observed.

“His perspective defined mine,” Remus admitted.

But it did not have to. How many people had he likewise hurt with his best intentions? How many might he yet stand to help?

“Mmmm,” Narcissa smiled to herself.

“Yeah,” Remus shrugged.

“Great.”

“Conditionally.”

Narcissa laughed. “Antonin has the Waste Management thing sorted. Town Hall will take no more than ten minutes of your night, I promise. Theo won the Karkaroff acquittal and defined jurisprudence in the process,” she indicated, “while Corban got Greyback off a double homicide charge after he had already confessed to the murders. I have the whole Crouch / Habeas Corpus thing going for me. But our mate Dolohov? Oh boy. He is a real necessary evil. His most famous work is and will likely ever remain getting the residents of Diagon Alley out of paying taxes for rubbish collection the City of London never undertook. Cokeworth will be fine.”

Brave, Remus thought. If he had to stand up for himself, he ought to at least try to stand up for and to other people.

“Uh. Not that. No, um. I care, too, Narcissa. More than you seem to think. I’ll come by for half and hour, hour a day, whatever you need, and you can do your worst. Do what you think Umbridge or whomever will think up to discredit me, but … you are going to eat something solid when I’m there. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Just … something.”

It was not nearly as eloquently delivered as Sir Corban’s ‘I don’t have to like you,’ but it was something. A start.

“Are you offering to cook, then?” Narcissa smarted.

“I’m offering to pick up takeaway which is about as close as I’ll ever come to cooking,” Remus quantified. “I’m kind of a bad housewife.”

“Fucking same,” Narcissa smiled.

“Cheers to that,” Yaxley proposed.

“To Rita Skeeter!”

“Wanderings with Werewolves!”

“To unicorn blood!”

“To … regrettable tattoos?”

“Right speaking of,” Nott said with an excitement foreign to his person. “Habeas Corpus. It is a pun, you realise, if you put it under your skin. Perhaps we should all get another tattoo that only appears in our offices.”

“I like the way you think,” Yaxley grinned.

Narcissa moaned a muted protest.

And Remus called to Halley for another round, hoping to speculate with her as to what Sirius was in the process of inking into Dolohov, hoping to forget in the course of conversation how very much he missed the Mauraders, his first real family.

Chapter Text

“Does it every get dull – knowing?” Corban Yaxley posed, observing his closest friend’s disgrace of a relation uncommittedly flirting with somepne whom whispers identified as a muggle athlete – and this as though Regulus Black suspected that anyone might believe that his highborn self would ever fuck anyone who was not a first or second cousin. Part of Yaxley hoped Cissy would feel obliged to continue the fiction however farfetched.

“I find my sport elsewhere,” Narcissa shrugged, “and I should rather doubt your client would hold any great intrigue for me where my abilities less particular. He makes his motives and intentions rather blatant. I am not sure I understand how you suffer him in conversation full stop.”

It was as Yaxley had rather suspected. “I try to avoid it where I can,” he sneered. Barty Crouch Jr was guilty as sin, and the crux of Yaxley’s defence rested on Narcissa pervious conviction of the man’s father, the fact that the Wizengamot continued to delay his appeals, and the fiction of ‘good behaviour’ being suggestive of repentance, the latter of which his client’s presence negated. Barty was allowed to leave his current residence twice weekly to obtain one-hundred-fifty grams of muggle chemistry to negate years of heroin abuse through imitating its effects, and he knew the boy’s parole office would not be best pleased to learn that Barty’s personal interpretation of ‘North London Methadone Clinic’ amounted to ‘muggle dive bar’. Outside of bloody Manchester. And therefore, nowhere in the relative vicinity of Grimmauld Place.

It would prove Barty’s second degression in the past six months alone. The first had been accompanying Regulus on a stakeout to observe his, Barty’s, godfather (and by some great ministerial oversight the SIO on the ongoing case against him) casting spells at wheely bins before arguing that the things were booby-trapped to various Aurors who, for their part, did not have the rank to issue a senior DCI an arrest warrant. That time, Barty (and Regulus, for that matter) had been let off with a warning, likely owing to the fact that no one wanted to find themselves citing the actions of one Alastor Moody in the accompanying paperwork. Probably the right call.

The lads would not be so lucky this time.

At least, Yaxley considered, Regulus had something of the humility to look like he knew this would end badly. Or maybe it was just his ruined face that allowed for that takeaway. Deciding that the two must have vats of Polyjuice stored up at Grimmauld, likely owing to Regulus’ former post as a UC, Yaxley wondered why the fallen princeling did not himself partake – hideous as he plainly recognised himself as being to judge on the cosmetic not so much disguising his facial scars as affording them as plastic, waxlike appearance which did nothing to help matters.

“Mayhap I ought to lend them my collagen and unicorn blood creams you were so quick to discount,” Narcissa returned, raising an eyebrow. “I wonder if the substance would do much to fix Barty’s teeth – if he would bother with the glamour if he could otherwise smile without admitting to bad habits.”

“I wish I could read your thoughts with such ease, Ballerina,” Yaxley smirked.

“Whatever for?” she winked. “I’m in the practice of saying that which you think yourself too polite to share.”

“One might be tempted to wish your alleged honesty extended to the actual targets of your derision,” Nott chided them lightly.

“I’ve not the jurisdiction to throw him in a holding cell until the Polyjuice wears off, your Honour,” Yaxley answered by way of hoping to deflect the responsibility.

“Would it be preferable to hold his conversation in an interrogation cell with an SIO and whatever DS unfortunates into that shift?” Nott countered.

“Quite possibly,” Yaxley shrugged. “Mad Eye is always good for a laugh and a self-reflective, midafternoon solitary drinking session to follow.”

“I’ve a mind to go over if neither of you are willing,” Narcissa smiled darkly.

“Oh? Have I failed to provide you with victim enough for your verbal vitriol, Ballerina?” Yaxley inquired, hoping this was just her way of naming Nott and himself ‘cowards’ without falling into the idiosyncratic speech patterns that made people wonder why she had not self-sorted into Gryffindor. Yaxley grinned in anticipation of an injured quip and two-fingered gesture that was not forthcoming.

“Something Remus said,” Narcissa muttered, breaking with his gaze. “I’m curious now how long it actually takes to master the King’s Touch.”

“Beg your pardon?” Yaxley blinked.

“The Scrofula spell,” Narcissa clarified. “If Sirius has, in fact, interpreted ‘instruct Draco in his Capetian inheritance’ as ‘teach a child dangerously advanced transfiguration that carries a mandatory sentence unto itself, plus about twelve statutory challenges Mummy could easily see tacked on to such a conviction.’ Any takers?” she threw up her arms, seemingly in defeat.

“Much as I’d love to see you acquitted of aggravated assault charges against the testimony of roughly forty witnesses, such is more of Theo’s specialty, and he’s left us for the other side of the bench,” Yaxley feigned empathy in hopes of avoid another haggard discussion of more of House Black’s bullshit. Narcissa knew well enough that he could no more suffer her blood relations than he could her martial ones, having met her when she had been sixteen and instantly forming the opinion that she had been ruined by impossible expectation in ways she did not fully recognise and which he could not hope to correct beyond offering her a better example, a way out if only she had been willing to take it. He had been twenty-nine at the time, expecting his first, and increasingly paranoid that his Selwyn wife would be as cold to their child as she had otherwise proven in their marital bed should it prove likewise ‘defect’ by her own standards of what qualified purity. They were divorced within a year.

“Aggravated assault? Darling, it would be murder in the first, I can all but promise,” Narcissa narrowed her eyes in Sirius’ direction.

“Giving that House Black has never done anything by the half,” Nott observed, “I am of the mind that Lupin spoke the truth.”

“It would underline all of my accusations for him to betray a friend’s confidence,” Narcissa smarted.

Nott frowned. “Can you not simply – ”

“Legilimency?” Narcissa shook her head. “Not this close to a full moon, not without straining myself and causing Remus injury I would not intend, at least. And Sirius would just turn into a dog if I pressed him.”

“And here we thought you were infallible,” Yaxley chided.

“Hardly,” Narcissa acknowledged with a rueful smile. “Regardless,” she shifted. “I think we are due another round.”

“I think it is high time Kurwa comes over to sponsor us one,” Yaxley agreed, wondering what, exactly Dolohov was lingering for, with a pint of lager of all things. Someone must have bought it for him, the wolf, probably. If nothing else could be said of the Blacks, they tended to have better taste. Antonin, who had no taste for beer whatsoever, usually elected a foreign IPA in a dark bottle which he would nurse throughout the night by way of disguising his lack of interest in English social rituals. What was he up to? Sirius was likely bored senseless by the minutia of the contracts negating the Ministy’s charge by this point, and Lupin lacked enough of a legal mind to follow.

“Leave him alone, he’s working,” Nott dismissed.

“He’s not,” Narcissa chirped. “He’s talking about us – at least, Remus and Sirius are. Antonin is wondering at the particular amusement you mentioned anticipating in watching Miss Skeeter reject Corban’s proposal should she show herself here … aaaand,” she squinted, “something in Polish that I believe simply amounts to him not comprehending anyone’s want of company or companionship after a twelve-hour workday.”

“Oh, but I could have gathered that simply from body language,” Nott goaded. “Try harder.”

“No, no,” Yaxley waved his hand in Narcissa’s field of vision before she could form a mind to needlessly show off when something of personal interest was otherwise at stake. Turning to Nott, he queried, “Why do you think Rita will say ‘no’?”

“She thinks as highly of herself as you do, my dear,” Narcissa slighted.

“Five kids, three of whom are still of school age,” Nott replied flatly.

“And that,” Narcissa shrugged.

“Rich,” Yaxley snorted, even while acknowledging that this might in part account for Dolohov’s own continued absence.

Theodore Nott had married late, the result of his elder brother succumbing to a long battle with Dragon Pox the same year man’s daughter and heir apparent was killed in an apparition gone wrong following a Quidditch match that had turned into an eight-hour drinking session. Theodore had been widowed himself following the premature birth of his son and namesake, parenting being another role he had had no intention of taking on and therefore no capacity to fulfil. Yaxley privately suspected young Theo of being ‘on the spectrum’ as they put it, which, if true, would render all of his well-meaning advice moot. His boys were all outgoing, generally well-adjusted, and apart from a bit of bog-standard inter-house banter, they all got on with each other, more or less.

Even still, Yaxley probably talked about them a fair amount, too, at least, as compared with Narcissa, who pressed her lips and spoke of Draco only in terms of ‘I’m … rather concerned, that he takes after me …’ – which could equally mean that the boy was a natural Legilimens, generally overlooked in the wider scope of the effective oligarchy Lucius Malfoy oversaw, or a heinous bitch by way of character – and probably all of the above. Dolohov was probably happier hanging out with people his own age with whom he could personally relate when their lot were too exhausted by profession to continue discussing it after-hours. Sirius did not have children, and Remus’ approach to parenting (and to everything else insofar as Yaxley could tell) amounted to ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away.

None of this, however, excused the seemingly unanimous opinion that Rita Skeeter would have some unconquerable objection to a middle aged, single father whose financial assets were tied up in alimony owed to five former wives, obligations to the werewolf pack of a former mistress, and the university tuitions and accompanying bar tabs of his two eldest children.

“I’m happily married,” Narcissa lied, “and Theo’s current courtship amounts to finding forced company for his first year with the grandmother of another quiet outcast during the Christmas break. You, by contrast, exclusively seek the companionship of women with such different life trajectories to your own that you can blame the inevitable split on ‘being at different stages’ as though such were not obvious from the outset.”

“You are seeing someone?” Yaxley tried to pivot, content not to acknowledge a pattern for what it was.

“Love how your tone went ‘jealous ex-girlfriend’ there, Corban,” Nott smirked. “Regardless of how it started, it is precisely as Cissy describes: nothing to interest you, and nothing I’d define as serious or long term.”

“Who, how and, excuse me – what?” Yaxley blinked. How had this never come up before? They might no longer share an office, but it was not as though he and Theodore Nott did not still meet up socially at least three times a week.

“Agusta Longbottom requested her son’s medical records only to find multiple redactions. She then motioned for a court order that landed on my desk and I, likewise, want to know what the fifth ward is withholding. Based on what little was released, I don’t think Bellatrix can rightly be blamed for what became of Frank and Alice. I don’t think Cissy should hold herself accountable for –”

Oh. Oh no.

“You do realise that Andromeda is my sister, too, right?” Narcissa spat.

“And I doubt I will uncover anything to discredit her reputation,” Nott continued, despite the risk. “All the same, the night Dora and Bill went missing, when you went to Azkaban and took to courting Kingsley when Andromeda refused you to enter Bellatrix’ cell with her,” he recalled for her, “have you any idea what happened? In there? Because in the Ministry’s latest internal review, something your own efforts forced into the public domain, something I am therefore almost certain you have read –”

“We’ll leave that to you and your Miss Marple,” Yaxley interrupted, shifting back to a conversation he had been avoiding but was now only too willing to undertake. “Speaking of the Ministry, I’m going to address my client before someone arrives willing to place a Lioness in a holding cell while seeking to determine if he broke the conditions of his parole. And perhaps to remind Regulus that desk duty or otherwise, he is still an Auror. Ballerina, should I ask about the Scrofula thing? Do you perhaps want to come. with. me. now.” It was not a question, however phrased.

“No,” Narcissa frowned, fishing for something in her oversized handbag cum briefcase. “I don’t want Reggie otherwise distracted. Here,” she continued, having produced a key, “tell them to hurry off to the local Apothecary before Mick and Elliot close early for this farce. Elliot sells Butterbeer under the counter and I’m sure Mick can still hook them up with anything else they might desire for an evening’s recreation. Tell them they can go hide out from the law in my office.  I find I’m curious as to what Barty might try to nick.”

“They have no case, which leads me to believe they are trying to build another altogether, and honestly, best of luck to them,” Antonin Dolohov said, his dark eyes drifting back to the pint Remus had poured in lieu of payment, wondering how much he would need to consume with respect to manner and custom.

Sirius Black was of half a mind to relieve the young solicitor of the obligation, having emptied his own glass a quarter hour prior. He did not particularly want to call the barmaid’s attention to this fact, partially because the local was filling as though the barely legible scrawl on the blackboard shield outside approximated ‘City v United’ or ‘Half Priced Lager’ as opposed to ‘Towne Hall Meeting’, partially because he expected her of fancying him in a way he was not up to reciprocating after ten hours of turning Dolohov’s fading Dark Mark into a homage of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

Sirius flexed his sore hand around a ‘stress relief ball’ that might have been a better sell if someone was up to playing fetch with him, but Harry and Dudley were both matriculated in far off (and for the moment, farfetched) institutions, Remus was preoccupied with his duties as First Citizen, and Narcissa and her lot seemed to be taking their preserve pleasures in watching Regulus struggle to enter whatever conversation a poorly disguised Barty Jr. was mistaking himself having with someone far more interested, cognitive and competent than Sirius’ little brother had even proven himself. The Parkinsons and Grangers had found a table together, and alone from posture Sirius could presume that The Sorting was still a topic between them with all of its trademark ‘most unfortunate’s and ‘Pansy was ever so devastated’ and ‘But is Hermione coping?’ and whatever other little slights Lucius’ vassals could present as heartfelt sympathy to Muggles struggling with their child’s sudden absence. Elliot Orchard was either still at work or, like his former Head of House, had the better sense not to show up for this nonsense, and no one else in this suddenly predominantly magical community knew that he was an illegal animagus.

Abandoning the ‘stress relief ball’ to the bar where he had found it, Sirius reached over to relieve Dolohov of his beer. The lawyer did not seem to mind.

“What sort of case, precisely?” Remus asked, leaning over from the task he had given himself of pulling pints for Halley to carry out to the complaining masses, hunched awkwardly between them as though discussing something more complicated and conspiratorial that Sirius personally thought the Ministry’s charge warranted.

“Statute of Secrecy,” Dolohov shrugged, suggesting that he was of the same mind.

“I thought you said this would be simple,” Remus hissed.

Dolohov came as close to a smile as Sirius imagined him capable. “Don’t worry,” he assured Remus, meeting his shift in posture as he likewise leaned over the bar, reaching for the house vodka hidden behind the counter. “You are not the target, and Lucius is too cunning to permit for any such findings. The matter is such, his effective landgrab embarrassed Westminster and Buckingham Palace, and someone is trying to unseat him on a technicality.”

“Chocolate Frog wrappers?” Sirius smirked while Dolohov frowned at the label and asked Remus what The Goose could offer by way of mixers.

“In place of a warrant the Wizengamot has otherwise put a block on,” Dolohov confirmed upon electing to worsen his stolen potato-syrup with cranberry juice. “Some bureaucrat from Muggle Affairs is going to attempt to argue that being that Cokeworth has no effective means of separating wizarding waste from other rubbish, that you, by which I mean the municipality, are guilty of breaching an international statute, which would in turn force the DMLE to pursue other lines of inquiry.

“However, as the Ministry of Magic has an ongoing traffic with Greater Manchester as well as every other district in the Home Nations regards rubbish collection, this point is moot. Should they try to push it at this Towne Hall, I’ll find no difficulty in reminding them that they, themselves, risk breeching the laws they are pretending to uphold via the self-same accusation. As stated, it should not take long. What concerns me more, to the extent that I’m concerned at all, is the question of whether they remain for the rest of the meeting – your road works, playground petition, and the odd degree to which everyone here seems to have strong opinions on Vatican Two, and I say that having spent my formative years in a rural village that attended mass en masse as a message to Moscow.”

Sirius did not know Dolohov well, despite having entered Hogwarts in the same year. He had roomed with Snape, Mulciber, Avery and the rest of that lot, had likely fallen in with, or at least fallen behind Crouch, the Roisers, Meadows, and fucking Regulus in the year under, and had once beaten Narcissa at poker, which seemed to suffice his only accomplishment in the entirety of their secondary education. Sirius did not know if he had ever spoken to the boy directly.

He had learned over the course of the afternoon that this owed, in part, to the fact that Dolohov had not much trusted himself to speak at Hogwarts. Stuck in a House filled with posh accents, or, at least, people attempting to properly affect them, ickle Antonin had still been struggling with definite articles and irregular verbs. Narcissa and Andromeda had playfully dubbed him ‘Iron Curtain’ and the name stuck, which Sirius supposed had particularly stung someone whose parents had fled to Britian as political dissidents, not that Dolohov had said much to this effect.

Dolohov did not seem to afford what substituted politics at Hogwarts much of his mind and was largely unsympathetic with wizards like Lucius who had been through actual partisan struggle and still found the energy to complain about the allotment of House Points at a school they no longer attended. He despised Remus and his pseudo-Marxist rhetoric, having joined up with Voldemort as a reaction to a Stalinist prosecution of witches, which Sirius had been willing to agree was ‘fair’, giving that in the best possible expression of converted capitalism, Dolohov had paid a thousand quid for a quirky tattoo. Sirius had wondered vaguely if Dolohov was conscious of John Lenon’s personal views on the subject, but this had not seemed with bring up with a needle already in the man’s arm.

“Was the liturgy Latin or Polish?” Sirius asked.

“Polish at nine, Latin at eleven thirty,” Dolohov answered. “There are ways of working around such things, though, in your position Remus, I’d avoid inserting the state into church affairs. Ministry might press the issue, though.”

“To what possible end?” Remus frowned.

“They will look into everything in hopes of finding evidence that the local, muggle residents have been exposed to the practice of magic in a way contrary to the Queen’s Peace,” Dolohov explained. “Let them. As stated, Lucius was cunning in his integration scheme. In addition to his Wiltshire refugees, he allocated a percentage of affordable housing to hedge-witches, wiccan types, you know? The sort of people who place great stock in crystals, newsprint horoscopes, incense sticks and the old gods. The locals, for the most part, think the more obvious among us are simply part of that set. As for the rest, they remember Severus referring to himself as a wizard as a little boy and refer to him as such as a term of affection. And those in the know have already been vetted, the spouses and civil partners of registered mages, or the parents of Mudbloods, the pair immediately coming to mind having assisted the DMLE in a major criminal investigation in the past,” he gestured towards the Grangers, who likely, had come in from the city proper in hopes of leaning more about the world to which Hermione was now privy.

“Nothing will come of it. Nothing can. Still,” Dolohov shifted, glancing back over his shoulder, “I’m surprised Lucius sent Tonks in his stead, although, the real joke her is, if Lucius is somehow forced to abdicate for achieving the only thing he ever meant to, his niece is just going to continue his agenda. He’s won however this otherwise ends.”

“That isn’t Dora,” Sirius said without looking.

“No?” Dolohov raised a thick, dark eyebrow.

“I’d venture it is my brother’s childhood best friend, testing just how quickly he can overstay his welcome,” Sirius answered.

“I suspect you are right. That lot seems animated, at any rate,” Dolohov gestured to his group of friends, rather bemused.

This time, Sirius did look. Nott had taken up the chair Remus had been sitting in prior to his own arrival affording his friend an excuse to vacate it. Sirius could assume this was a conscientious neglect judicial duty on Nott’s part, that listening to Narcissa and Yaxley argue about parole and procedure was somehow more interesting for the newly confirmed justice than whatever paperwork was involved – itself debatable. Sirius, personally, would have elected to spend an afternoon in his late mother’s splendid company than fifteen bloody minutes listening to Sir Corban wax poetic.

At the moment, much to his surprise, Narcissa seemed to be of the same mind to judge on her expression. He knew that the two were in opposite camps on the Barty Crouch Jr case. He just did not know what it had to do with him.

“Damn,” he frowned, “Any guesses as to why Cissy keeps shooting death glares in my direction?”

Remus choked. “I might have told her, well, I might have suggested, that you have not just been teaching Draco how to preform some obscure but ultimately simple bit of medieval magic specific to your sacred bloodline.”

Sirius felt his shoulders tense. “You know I did so for Harry’s sake, right?” he demanded of Remus.

“I – I assumed it was just part and parcel of your ongoing competition with Regulus,” Remus offered, as though the qualified an excuse.  

“It is simple group dynamics, nothing more,” Dolohov rather diplomatically cut Sirius off from offering a cutting retort. “You are just part of a pissing contest that has been going on between Corban and Cissy since we met in her office this morning. Remus,” he shifted, pressing his thin lips together, “you were there. Giving your area of expertise, can you perhaps enlighten to me why we were all reduced to the worst versions of ourselves?”

“Are there better versions of your lot?” Sirius countered. He wished Dolohov would simply let it go, but he supposed this was too much to expect of someone happiest when working out the minutia of complicated legal code against the political ambitions of his social betters.

“I failed to notice,” Remus sneered.

Dolohov straightened. “With Cissy it is easy to ignore owing to her history of mental illness, and I suppose you don’t know the rest of us well enough to make a judgement call, but it was more than just the Mark. There was something there that … look,” he winced. “She is one of my best friends. I’ve been worried, for a while, we all have, I mean – she’s plainly been using, and she was clean for so long,” he said of Narcissa, sounding perfectly hopeless. “The ED’s back, too – and I was willing to write it off as stress, but I now believe she’s inadvertently exposed herself to some dark object that is slowly taking its toll, corroding her resolve. I know Corban means to have you meet with her on the regular and between us, I heavily suspect his motivations there extend any civil action case you’ve been called to testify in.”

Sirius turned to Remus, hoping he had an answer. But either out of hatred or habit, Remus simply deflected.

“He and Nott gave her, us rather, a field assignment. How does he do it – Sir Corban? How does he get around her?” the last word was offered with enough scorn to cause Sirius a certain chill.

Thinking on Narcissa as neutrally as he might after thirty-one years of turbulent history, he held Remus’ gaze, finding the pair of unlikely allies in his cousin’s Cokeworth office, new paint smell mingling with that of still-filled cardboard boxes. Remus took something from his pocket, replaced it in a safe built into the wall behind a then empty bookcase before proceeding to cast a charm that Sirius knew Cissy did not have the requisite skill to break. He doubted, personally, that he himself could manage without months of study. And then Remus addressed Narcissa in awkwardly polite overtones which Sirius might have accepted as genuine had Moony been speaking to anyone else.

He was entrusting the remaining Horcruxes to her care, knowing full well that even giving her natural defences, they had the potential to kill, knowing that, like Regulus before her, she was too vain to register their corrosive effects.

She had missed it.

Somehow.

Sirius tried to turn his mind back to when, precisely, this meeting might have taken place, to what might have caused his cousin so much distraction. Lucius must have just accomplished his coup at her cost, Dora was living at the Manor at the time, and it’s Lord must have been at least in the process of naming her heir to his seat, replacing Draco in the line of succession. Andromeda had met her own parental failings by placing the blame for Bellatrix’ deeds and defeat on her younger sister, and Narcissa’s three best friends were ‘helping’ by returning to critiques of a decade prior – Cissy ought never to have married the man, and they could easily reclaim Cokeworth and the parts of her dowry that had since been gifted to Dora in any resulting divorce proceedings.

Remus, for his part, had always despised Narcissa. She was simply used to it. Little wonder, Sirius thought, that the danger he intended failed to truly register. The horcruxes were sure to kill her, at least, they would assist in a slow suicide of abuse and neglect, which Sirius realised with a pang of sorrow quick to ignite a familiar fury, was all Narcissa knew of love.

“Misdirection,” Dolohov answered of Yaxley. “It is not really that hard. The two are like enough to negate natural legilimency; when he speaks, she hears him, nothing else. I imagine it was the same for you and James, Sirius. Or for Regulus and Barty, or Tonks and Lucius. I think it is trust, more than anything else.”

“She doesn’t trust Lucius?”

“She loves him; she trusts that he loves Wiltshire and its people more. Everyone makes some sort of trade when they promise themselves to another. You didn’t want kids. I’d venture you still don’t, however much Severus has come to cherish the pair. Or maybe it is just whatever Cissy has in holding causing me to say such things?”

But Sirius was no longer listening. “Ten years,” he said to himself before meeting Remus’ empty gaze. “Ten years I spent thinking that Peter was the traitor among are ranks, but it was you all along, wasn’t it? Cissy was right – you are a fucking coward. She called you out and I suppose you’ve been seeking to prove her assessment by forcing her to slowly die at her own hand rather than commit to direct confrontation. You know – I’d still be in Azkaban were it not for her! And where were you – where the fuck were you when fucking Severus Snape of all people was helping my cousin to collect evidence of my wrongful conviction?”

“Pads, no you – I’d never!” Remus stammered, feigning bewilderment.

“I think Yaxley and I need to have a talk about that paperwork he failed to refile. I think –” he stopped, not finding the trial attorney he meant to talk into dropping a custody case at his cousin’s table.

“By the door,” Dolohov said, unphased.

Sirius turned, finding Yaxley engaged with Regulus and Barty’s approximation of whichever professional footballer he had last fucked. “Perfect,” he said half-meaning it despite personal distaste.

Chapter Text

Nymphadora Tonks awoke to a blood curdling scheme that quickly gave way to sobs of comparable magnitude. The mattress shifted slightly beneath her as her partner stretched, his sleep likewise undone by the nightmares of another.

Regulus, however, made no effort to rise as she would have rather expected of him.

Tonks, closing her eyes as tightly as she could, was more than ready to meet his unspoken challenge, but her resolve towards what she considered an amicable resolution of silently leaving her husband to deal with it waned with each wail.

She turned away from him towards the grandfather clock standing watch over all of the sleep she was not getting. It was against a backdrop of a particularly horrid floral wallpaper which itself never failed to make her regret taking up residence in the master bedroom. In every other decorative detail that she might count, Grimmauld Place was in competition with the Slytherin Commons with its dark palate and serpentine motifs; Tonks rather liked to imagine the tasteless, mid-century print as her great aunt’s way of reminding herself that she in fact had lived in London. She doubted the woman had seen much of the city outside of these hallowed walls.

“I have to work in the morning,” Tonks grumbled, her eyes now properly offended by pink blossoms that did not suit her present state of mind. Closing them again, she wondered if Uncle Lucy still had the contact information of the workmen whom he had used to renovate Aunt Cissy’s Cokeworth holdings, how much it cost to repaper, and if it would not simply be easier to move into more comfortable quarters. Bill, she considered, would likely be reluctant to surrender Sirius’ old room with its spellotaped Playboy centrefolds, pin ups of equally sexy old motorcycles, and moving graffiti of the friends ‘Padfoot’ no longer spoke to in any meaningful way. Regulus’ own old room had been converted into an office (or rather a storage unit he liked to pretend still held the distinction) and Tonks fancied she would have far less work correcting for Walburga’s taste than telling her son to come up with a system of organisation others could access. Barty would be vacating Bellatrix’ room soon enough, and that space might prove ideal, save that it would place Tonks in even closer proximity to the screaming toddler keeping her up at all hours.

She missed her pretty room at the Manor with its prism cut glass and the kaleidoscopes that came with every sunset. She missed Draco – particularly his measured response to nightmares, which had been to silently crawl into her bed or that of his parents. Delphi, by stark contrast, struggled to differentiate her prophetic dreams from what Tonks reasonably suspected was a far grimmer present of living in an old house with poor acoustics. And adults. Who had to work the next day.

“As do I,” Regulus answered her complaint by echoing it.

“Right, because sitting in a shop listing to the World Cup on the Wireless requires the same rigour as policing the event,” Tonks snapped.

Usually, Regulus rose without comment to coo and calm their child, allow Tonks to return to her rest without the increasing understanding of her own disinterested mother playing too heavily on her active mind. She had let herself pretend for the duration of her pregnancy that motherhood would come naturally, and it did – but her particular talents in that respect were such a near match to her own mum’s that Delphi’s cries made her at once feel like a bad daughter, a bad mother, and rather sorry excuse for a detective sergeant, for that matter. From the onset, Tonks could never figure out what the child wanted, and speech had made Delphi even more indiscernible.

Straining slightly, she could make out the bones of the conversation her toddler was having with an old tapestry – no one had done anything! Gabrielle was going to drown, and they were just going to allow it because Fleur had not gotten there in time! It was not fair! They had to save her from the mermaids! They could eat bone, you know – had Your Majesty ever chance seen their teeth?

Tonks looked at Regulus, wondering if he could make any sense of it, wondering if these girls were her daughter’s friends, wondering – suddenly – why for the life of her she could not name a single child enrolled at the same daycare, or, for that matter, the name of Delphi’s teacher.

Of course, she knew the reason. Regulus brought Delphi to daycare in the morning and picked her up in the afternoon. Andromeda, rather than Tonks herself, was listed on the girl’s Emergency Contact form they had had to fill out during enrolment – a form, like all of the others, that Regulus had filled out, that Tonks had simply signed.

It was only after midnight that she gave the discrepancies in their individual involvement much of her mind. Regulus had left his restrictive duties filling paperwork for Aurors shortly after finding out she was pregnant, had spent the first year of Delphi’s life at home changing diapers and presumably colluding with their strung-out house guest. Eventually, he came on the idea to continue what had been a field assignment by applying to the same quiet retail position that had filled Tom Riddle’s days before the Dark Lord had made his move for power. If Regulus had found anything useful or significant thus far, he had failed to share it, at least, with her. Tonks imagined this was with respect to her joint positions in the DMLE’s in elite anti-terror unit and as a speaker in the Twenty-Eight, in order to allow plausible deniability should anything come of his non-adventures.

Maybe.

Maybe, instead, it was the same stupid, unthinking impulse that caused people to stop talking and put down their Butterbeers when she entered a room. In some ways, the badge carried too much respect.

“Crowd control is way under your paygrade Detective Sergeant,” Regulus observed.

“It is overtime,” Tonks snorted. It also, strictly speaking, was not ‘optional’. When the World Cup had been awarded to England by the sport’s governing body, the DMLE had the arsenal and manpower of a standing army. They had suffered the literal casualties of war in the twenty years since.

“Is it necessary?” Regulus asked.

“It is England v Ireland, of course its fucking necessary,” Tonks replied.

“I meant,” he attempted to readjust, reaching for a hand she was not quick to extend, “must you be the one doing said policing? My income, however, comparatively meagre –”

It was not about his part-time placement at Borgin and Burkes. Or the debt he had accrued with English Heritage in destroying the last known artefact of Slazar Slytherin. It was about their daughter crying her eyes out about something she had seen in her slumber, about Tonks having no idea how to deal with it, and this feeling she was getting that Regulus was likewise at a loss.

It false to say that Delphi spoke in riddles for her vocabulary had normal limitations of age. It was that nothing she had ever said had addressed the immediate. Tonks did not know the names of her daughters friends, but she knew damn well she had never seen a mermaid outside of a Disney film, laughing when Ariel had gotten her legs from the Sea Witch and telling Tonks that it was just like her, when she tripped, which had forced Tonks to engage with her daughter’s franchise-based-phantasies for long enough to have no want of discouraging them. For Delphi, merfolk were a merry sort who spent their days singing about the anthropological research they were conducting at shipwrecks – nothing akin to the spear wielding belligerents who had mastered the fine art of offensive hand gestures to communicate with Slytherin first years. She, Tonks, certainly had not set her daughter straight in that respect, and very much doubted any of Grimmauld’s other residents had done, either. Draco, perhaps. She would have words with her cousin when their paths next crossed.

 “Are we really going to do this now?” Tonks asked, intending to end the discussion.

“Are we in the habit of otherwise making time for one another?” Regulus countered.

“Merlin, Reg! It is two in the morning; I have to be up by five. Can’t you just – look. I am sorry your career ended because of me, but I am not going to feign sorrow over having one of my own. We’ll go out for dinner or something when the Cup is over, or we’ll stay in and hire a sitter all the same so we can fight, or fuck, or whatever it is that you think is so important to have happen.”

“I don’t want you putting yourself in harm’s way in your condition.” It was an order. At least, it was spoken in a tone Regulus otherwise reserved for their House Elf.

Tonks bit her bottom lip. She had not lied, not exactly, but she had not expanded either. Weeks ago, she had come home to find Barty Crouch Jr misappropriating several bottles of ‘special occasion’ champagne after winning his acquittal – an accomplishment for him, surely, the whole matter of following his lawyer’s advice and saying nothing incriminating. But still, not an occasion warranting of a crate of Dom Perignon. Barty had asked Tonks to join him, Regulus, Bill, the entirety of what had been his defence team, and that uppity journalist whom Narcissa despised for a toast to his impending departure.

Tonks had declined. All she could think of was how much pressure she was going to be under at work for the next several weeks, Madeye doubtlessly furious over to ruling, and this on top of having to spare half of his bare-bones team to patrol the Cup. She considered going back to the office, considered owling her aunt to find out how one went about demanding a muggle autopsy, considered showing to her mother’s flat for an impromptu ‘Gilmore’-and-Home-Spa session. Anything. Anything else.

Barty was laughing about court corruption, how easy Dumbledore found it to set a date for the trial now that he needed a new DADA professor. Yaxley had tensed. Rather than hang around long enough to hear something disparaging about Remus Lupin, Tonks announced that she probably should not partake. She was two weeks late, and anyway, she felt a little nauseous and wanted to lay down.

Kreacher came up a few minutes later with a cup of the tea she had favoured when she had been pregnant with Delphini and some dry biscuits which she had never really liked but which were said to be good combatants for stomach issues. Regulus had followed a few minutes after. Tonks had dismissed him with a ‘we can worry about it later,’ and took his body into her in hopes he would forget.

Her period still had not come. Now it seemed that the conversation finally had.

“I don’t know that I am expecting, if anything I ‘expect’ it is stress more than anything else. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I don’t know why I did serve to save myself the chore of joining you and yours for drinks,” she told him honestly.

“You don’t want another child?” he read her meaning.

Tonks bit her lip. She loved her daughter. She was sure this was true because the alternative was awful. But search as she might, she could find no commonality with the child. Everyone had been so sure that Delphi would be a Metamorphmagus like her that Tonks had let herself feel slightly betrayed that her beautiful baby girl had been born blonde and felt no compulsion to alter that. Barty joked about the irony that of all the physical possibilities, Delphi had wound up looking rather like Narcissa, that Tonks met her expecting to be lectured on the excessive use of force and impermissible evidence and all the other shite a ‘disciple of Alastor’s’ had no capacity or patience for.

In truth, Tonks would have welcomed such conversations giving the alternative reality had since provided.

Mum’s answer had been a referral to a child psychologist. Uncle Lucy confessed that Delphi’s gifts exceeded his own. Severus had promised to inquire into Trelawny’s expertise, but had never fallen through – or at least, had not thought whatever had been spoken between them worthy of Tonks’ attention.

The best advice Tonks had gotten so far had come from that most unlikely source, the son of two of her mother’s long-term patients whose records had been released in redaction: Tonks would do best to talk to her daughter in the terms she set before trying to contradict them. Which she supposed meant going upstairs to ask why the merfolk wanted the feast on the bones of Fleur or Gabrielle or someone else she supposed she should know more about.

No. Tonks did not want another child. Clandestinely, she was not even sure she wanted the one she had.

“At two in the morning with the one I have screaming her head off, I could well and truly do without,” she answered, hoping Regulus would find some excuse, hoping that anything about this was excusable.

“Fine, I’ll spend the rest of the night upstairs, then,” he answered gruffly. “Glad we’ve that sorted. Go back to your beauty sleep, Dora.”

“Reg, I didn’t mean – ” she started.

“To speak a truth so concisely? Refreshing to know that you’re still capable if we are both to be honest. Good night, Dora.”

Her cheeks we wet before he even slammed the door.

‘You went to thirty-seven bakeries?’

Harry Potter paused the game to his cousin Dudley’s grumbling when he heard Narcissa Malfoy whispering in the atrium.

‘You told me to bring chocolate,’ another woman hissed in response.

Dudley shot Harry a looked that he assumed Dudley had intended to seem inquisitorial, but which in effect just made him looked dumber than usual. It mattered little. Harry could not meet it. Instead, he just raised a finger to his lips, cautioning silence.

‘I meant a few frogs or a Terry’s Orange,’ Narcissa seemed to chastise.

‘I’m multi-tasking.’

‘I’d say.’

Harry had not been able to identify what precisely it was until quite recently, but Narcissa Malfoy’s presence had the habit of awakening a primal fear in him that bordered panic.

It was not that she was beautiful, successful, and therefore intimidating. Nor was it that fact that she and Remus had the sort of friendship that sought to punish extended company – manifesting in petty arguments and empty insults as though they individually felt the need to negate the time they elected to spend in one another’s presence. It was not that she was his boyfriend’s mother, that Draco’s romantic inclinations contradicted her dynastic intentions. It was not even that she had physical possession of part of his soul and source of power, something she had shown herself willing to bring to merciless ruin in ages past.

It was that once, a very long time ago, she had been a brilliant Chaser cum Slytherin Quidditch Captain.

It was that she could no longer fly.

Harry attended Hogwarts with the knowledge that it was all for naught, that someday the people to whom these decisions were intrusted would destroy the remaining horcruxes Tom had made, and that after such time, he, Harry, would no longer be able to perform practical magic. He was behind his classmates as it was – a whole year behind, in fact. He had not officially been enrolled at the start of his first term, a bureaucratic error that had ultimately saved him from the embarrassment of not being able to keep up with the coursework. When he had been held back, he had been able to say to Ron and Hermione that it was because his teachers had not been able to issue him grades – rather than admit that these would have been dismal.

But for all that, he was brilliant on a broom. Gryffindor had taken the Cup three years in a row with him as Seeker – in his house colours and crest, he understood why Dudley had declined a magical education to develop his own sporting talent. But Harry’s, by contrast, had always had an expiry date. He had just thought it would come at some point in his mid-twenties when he was married with adoptive kids of his own, established in some field that did not require too much spell casting – maybe he could find work as a Parseltongue translator, or do data entry for the DMLE like Regulus had before essentially becoming a stay-at-home-dad. Or maybe he would just have done that. Become the trophy husband to a career politician. A famous name with a pretty face, however scarred.

And maybe he still would. But Harry was in the process of mourning a more immediate loss. He had found out that Quidditch was being cancelled for the duration of the school year in respect to some stupid inter-school tournament Hogwarts was due to host. He had spent a day sobbing in bed when he had been given the news. Severus had told him that life was not fair; Remus had attempted to explain something about soft diplomacy; and Dudley, who said he could imagine (even though he could not possibly imagine!) how he might feel if football were cancelled without reason or warning, at least tried to feign sympathy – but it was not just a game Harry was losing, it was a year of his limited life as a wizard.

And his life, he considered, might well be itself forfeit by the end of it.

In the darkness of a creeping depression, Harry wondered if death would be preferable to whatever Narcissa had, living in the wizarding world without being able to fully partake of its wonders. He supposed he would soon find out.

‘Corban has employed the same bakery to make five cakes for weddings prior. I fully mean to refuse them my patronage. Feels like the place is cursed at this point,’ the second speaker (whom context confessed as Rita Skeeter) observed.

‘I don’t understand how you mean to get an interview if his mouth is full the entire time,’ Narcissa smarted.

‘These are for Remus,’ Rita seemed to excuse. ‘I’ve no intention of speaking to him, though I’ll take his opinion on which selection he considers most palatable.’

‘Solidarity?’

‘Angle,’ Rita corrected. ‘And the fact that I cannot possibly suffer another conversation about how much he’s set civil liberties back by resigning due to public pressure. I took some creative liberties and attributed your wine-fuelled comments about the demands of local government to Hogwarts’ erstwhile professor. It will go out in the Sunday edition and I’m hoping that will be the end of it.’

The past three years in what seemed their entirety had been a series of adults saying that this was nothing Harry should have to worry about, so naturally it was at the forefront of his mind. It was also in the papers – muggle and mage, so it was not as though they could really prevent him from discovery. Dudley, Harry knew, got a lot of shit for it in the locker room – at least, once he had been allowed to resume training. There had been an instance of ‘accidental magic’, Dudley causing one of his tormentors to inflate and float away – but luckily no one at the Ministry seemed to want to pursue charges against him for fear of political backlash. Severus had been furious over the incident; Remus found it hilarious; and Harry had mistaken that this was an isolated incident, happy that it had occurred when he was far off at Hogwarts where collective punishment did not apply.

He had long considered the outcome of the case itself a foregone conclusion, mostly because Hermione said it was pretty straight forward and she could read runes and stuff like that. He did not have many memories of having lived with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, and so it seemed normal that the court would recognise Severus and Remus as his parents, would recognise their marriage as being legitimate – which, eventually, it had. And now he could marry Draco or whomever else he wanted someday, be that trophy husband when nothing else was viable, and he would have been happy about it, really – except that something had happened during cross examination that had ruined everything that might have led up to that point of resigned acceptance.

Dolores Umbridge had asked Remus Lupin about his lycanthropy on the stand in an attempt to discredit him. Remus had not had to answer the charge then and there. Narcissa had objected, approached the bench, turned in all the homework she had done visiting Lyall and Greyback, and had the question stricken from the record.

But it had been asked. And Remus answered for it. Eventually.

A total of two letters had arrived at Hogwarts at the end of that same term expressing a certain horror that Dumbledore would employ a ‘monster’. Two! Hardly a public outcry! And one was from Sirius, with whom Harry now refused to speak. The other was from Agusta Longbottom, in a misguided effort to force cooperation out of House Black, as though they ever turned on their own when it came down to it, as though Neville was not already bullied enough. Anyway, Remus had cowered to ‘public pressure’ and left his post –

That he had left it open for Barty Crouch Jr. to full was a separate issue, one Harry was sure he and his friends would suffer in the coming term.

In the immediate, however, Corban Yaxley was livid, saying the resignation had rendered their victory for civil equality Pyrrhic. He had done something years before that made it impossible for employers to ask about disability, under which lycanthropy was categorised, during the application process, or to use it as an excuse towards redundancy – but this was paper more than practice.

For Britian’s most famous werewolf to step down demand wands to be drawn. Yaxley had threatened Remus after one of his sons had been thrown out of university on the same grounds Remus had given for his resignation, and Dolohov had had it out with Sirius and Severus separately just for good measure. Nott and Yaxley were no longer on speaking terms after the former had laden Agusta with blame (rightly, Harry thought), and now it seemed that Narcissa was colluding with her best mate’s latest conquest to put an end to it all.

Frankly, Harry could have better dealt with ‘civil partnership’ and an absence of tax benefits. But Hermione had said he would have seen things differently if he was not planning to marry wealth. Maybe she was right. She usually was. It did not bare thinking through.

‘I was not speaking as Remus’ solicitor in that instance,’ Narcissa claimed.

‘You should have made that clear. Anyway, thanks for the in, give Severus my best and tell wolf-boy ‘Happy Man-struation’ or whatever it is you are celebrating,’ Rita seemed to sneer.

‘Excuse me?’

‘As stated, I’m far more interested in why Dumbledore has offered placement to a man no one doubts tortured a couple of coppers to madness. Dudley’s been Barty’s student for what – five years now? I want to know what is in store for the youth of the nation.’

‘He’s fourteen. You are not speaking to him without an appropriate adult present.’

‘This isn’t a police caution, Cissy, it is just a conversation.’

‘One that come into contradiction with IPSO regulations.’

“You think she can do magic?” Dudley asked.

“Who? Rita Skeeter? I mean probably,” Harry shrugged. “Yaxley’s like … he can be hired by special interest groups – interested, that is, in forcing wizarding norms on the wider muggle community in line with what Tom was after. It just seems to the rest of us like he’s on the right side of history because the press is mostly made up of liberals and it is them who get to write the first draft. I doubt he’d be marrying her if she wasn’t a pure blood.”

“You think she could get rid of this?” Dudley winced. It took all of Harry’s self-control not to laugh.

“You can ask.”

“I can’t get up,” Dudley hissed, then begged. “Can you ask for me?”

Harry smiled, crossed his arms, and made no effort to move, electing to instead bask in his sort-of-sibling’s suffering for a few moments longer.

“Look,” Dudley tried to reason. “Barty hates Dumbledore almost as much as he hates his father’s memory. He’s going to Hogwarts with an agenda, and I doubt it will much bode well for you. Remember Quirrell? Lockhart? Don’t you think it would play to your benefit to get a member of the press on your side before Barty shows up at your school at the same time that Karkaroff is going to be there?”

“I had nothing to do with Lockhart. Neither did Tom,” Harry frowned. “That was Ron’s contribution to the DADA curse.”

“Harry – please!” Dudley winced.

‘Love your consistency. Dame Narcissa,’ Rita shifted, ‘care to comment on how the jurisprudence you almost single handedly established allowed Barty Crouch Jr. to walk?’

‘Everyone is entitled to a free and fair trial,’ Narcissa answered dismissively.

‘Giving that his original conviction was read in conjuncture with your sister’s, do you seek to overturn – ’

Dudley’s body-image existing his mind, Harry rose. He, or Tom, remembered what Narcissa had done to Bellatrix. He did not want to have to witness the same firsthand.

“Hey,” Harry scruffling into the foyer. “Actually um, not to interrupt, but Miss Skeeter, you are like … you are a witch-witch, right?”

Rita blinked. “I’m lost for context. Do you have a stutter or was that meant as a pejorative?”

“The latter … maybe?” Harry attempted.

“Rita, he is inquiring as to your proficiency,” Narcissa interjected, explaining a word Harry did not understand with another of the same distinction.

“I’m offering a quid pro quo,” Harry adjusted, figuring that the Latin phrase would be met with approval from this particular audience, figuring that he may never otherwise have a chance to say it.

“I’m listening,” Rita bade.

“Were you outside last night? With the rest of the press core?” Harry attempted to build a narrative. Dudley was right. It was probably within his interests to make nice with the press.

His attempt, however, seemed a poor execution.

“Darling, I’m a staff writer at the most prestigious newspaper in the country. I don’t stand out in the rain. And frankly,” Rita shifted back to Narcissa, “I’m lost as to what that lot means to accomplish in doing so. Severus is demonstratively a gifted potioner. If I’m not mistaken, he was the youngest mage to achieve the Mastery in a century, and he was working under Belby while writing his thesis. During his tenure at Hogwarts, the number of students to receive a N.E.W.T. qualification in the subject has near unto doubled, and this with his famous refusal to admit anyone who failed to achieve an O on the O.W.L. into his advanced courses. Giving that this is all widely known and easily verifiable, I cannot for the life of me understand what my esteemed colleagues are hoping to see. Do they think – do they honestly think that a werewolf wed to a Potions Master isn’t on Wolfsbane?”

Narcissa wiggled her nose. “They have rents to make and editors who don’t credit their readership with a baseline of common logic,” she answered of the crowds. Harry wondered if she could read their minds of if she was just being smart.

“They are in the wrong field,” Rita snorted. “It is also commonly known that you visit the day after a full moon, that as the owner of their mortgage the wards in place cannot bar your entry. I arrived about twenty minutes before you did and sought refuge with the neighbours. Now there is an actual story! Several. One, they are drug dealers.”

“They own the local apothecary,” Harry tried to defend. For context.

“They have a meth lab in their basement,” Rita returned flatly. “The one is a wizard, and the other is a muggle and isn’t it sweet, that is how they met – trading lab equipment whilst they were both still studying. And from them, I learned that Severus has a large dog he takes on a walk every night after work, and that during the full moon when the family pet gets subbed out for Remus, no one in the area raises an eyebrow. Ergo, Wolfsbane renders a patient so docile that they can go out into a residential area on a full moon without disturbing the peace. Waste of fucking time, this.”

Harry found himself smiling. If this all went to rot, he could always go upstairs, wake up his dads and inform them that their efforts to wrench him from celebrity had proven effective. Rita Skeeter was acting as though he was the least interesting member of this household – maybe even resident of this street. Solid.

“Well, um – they got a moon, too, last night, so to speak, and that is what me and Dudley were wondering if you wouldn’t mind assisting with. Real quick, off record?”

“You are not on the record, Harry,” Narcissa seemed to warn, “not without your fathers’ expressed permission and your solicitor’s editorial consent.”

“Aren’t you my lawyer though?” Harry pressed.

“No. Corban took on all of Theo’s clients upon his affirmation. I don’t practice Family Law.”

“But, Miss Skeeter is engaged to Sir Corban, so – ”

“It is a conflict of interest however you look at it,” Narcissa proclaimed with a little wave. “I’m not letting her get away with it. You will thank me when you’re older.”

“But – ” Harry started.

“Off the record, Harry, what do you need?”

“You can’t tell my dads either, okay?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Rita smiled darkly.

“Moonmy gets really bored during a full moon,” Harry explained, “so Dad just lays in bed and reads to him, and me and Dudley, too, if we want to listen. Cissy forced The Accursed Kings on Moonmy a couple moons back, and with the academy and all, Dudley’s not been there from the beginning – and there was just the longest Guccio and Marie bit what he was reading last night that has nothing to do with history. I think Druon only put it in for the girls.”

“If I’m remembering correctly, they wind up having a baby whom Mahaut kills after it is swapped for King Louis’ posthumous son during the coronation,” Narcissa expanded, either out of spite that her warnings were not being headed or desperate to talk about the last generation of French Carpathian rule. House Black liked things like that. Even Draco had an O in History of Magic – which was an anomaly, because that course required a lot of reading and his boyfriend had even less interest in completing homework than Harry himself did.

“Spoiler much?” Harry frowned.

“Those books were popular in France when I was Delphi’s age and giving that they are based on people and events from the fourteenth century, I hardly think –”

“Okay, well Dudley though it was boring, so he offered to make tea and then just never came back. So, after a while, Dad was like ‘I hope he meant the kettle and not the cauldron’ and we’ve,” Harry paused. “Dudley and I – we’ve sort of a history of messing up the most medial tasks with magic we’ve been told not to meddle in. And well, Dad has been in such a good mood lately – see, Barty had a N.E.W.T. in Muggle Studies, too, and McGonagall said that if he was coming to teach at Hogwarts, he could take on that contingency role, and Dad could sub DADA instead where need be.

“And, well Ron’s dad got tickets for me and Dudley to join them at the World Cup finale, and I really, really want to see Krum fly, but Dad – who frankly I am shocked even said ‘yes’ in the first place – well, he does this collective punishment thing that is in no way fair and I just thought – right? To help Dudley fix whatever he had done before we both got grounded for no goddamn reason.”

“Harry!” Narcissa reprimanded.

“What? It is true! So, I said I would go check. But what Dudley did – it wasn’t something that I could fix. And it is not something I can ask my dads for help with either, for risk of ruining this beautiful summer we’ll have until such time as Sev invariably realises that he’s actually going to miss reading The Hobbit to Luna Lovegood in Muggle Studies.”

“And this is something that I can fix?” Rinta inquired.

“I hope so. Dudley said he’ll tell you whatever you want to know about Barty in exchange for your assistance. Providing. I doubt my dads will object because they were pissed at Regulus for bringing Barty along to Dudley’s lessons, and the only reason it continued thereafter is because Sir Alex insisted upon it after Barty called out one of the Beauxbatons lads to have landed an Arsenal contract for using magic to influence a match. It was a whole thing.”

“That ultimately resulted in a ten quid fine,” Narcissa shook her head. “What did Dudley do that he’s willing to sell out his former teacher to the fourth estate?” she asked, as though such were not a pillar of House Slytherin.

“He got really pissed off that those reporters were just hang out outside at the ward’s limits, hoping to see Moonmy in anguish, so he opened the curtains, pulled his shorts down and showed them his butt – and someone managed to get a hex through however many protective charms we have in place and now he has a pig’s tail. He’s sitting on the couch, trying to hide it between the cushions, but like, one can only play so much Mario Kart. He’ll have to pee eventually.”

Narcissa let out a small laugh, likely in spite of herself.

“Such falls into my skill set,” Rita grinned, “let’s see it then.”

Merlin, Harry thought. Dealing with her in the coming term might itself be worse than anything Barty might bring. He was kind of glad that the first impression she would be getting of Dudley would inevitably be his bare arse. Like the rest of the reporters. Whom she was too good to wait around with.

Chapter Text

Narcissa Malfoy had once sworn on the book on his bedside table that what he was experiencing was akin to the sort of hangover anyone might have in their thirties; romanticising an evening of putting away less than one would have expected or could respect, crawling into bed a little after midnight with a laugh over how old their friends were getting still lingering on their lips.

Remus Lupin had told her he would have to take her word for it.

This morning, for the first time, he truly was.

His empty, aching head recalled a few specifics that gave the argument weight. The book she had sworn on had been a loan from her own library, and she had used her wand to cast a spell to her otherwise as unconscious as breathing, the deliberation of the Legilimens letting her feel exactly as he did in that moment.

At the time, something of her own lived experience had entered into his being, allowing him to feel as though he had spent the night prior in the company of his three best friends, laughing over an actualised prank rather than – as Narcissa likely knew the same – the discovery of a sub-paragraph that played to some small advantage.

At the time, Remus had felt a pang of mourning for nights he would never know.

Apologising, Narcissa had broken with his gaze. She had spent a moment staring at hands folded in her lap, at the scars he had inflicted her wrist, inflamed by the recent wearing of a silver bracelet or by the sheer amount of black magic radiating within her Cokeworth office. Before Remus could desecrate shared insecurities with a surly comment (‘I’m far more tortured by the reality that your Horsemen still ride than I am over the Marauders’ disbanding,’ playing on his tongue) Narcissa had shifted to present him with something Dobby had baked or brewed on her order.

Remus could now sigh and smile wondering exactly how long he might have to himself before Narcissa came to force her friendship on him out of habit. Or inertia. Wondering what he might be ‘treated’ to this month. In June, she had managed to surprise him with a döner after he had introduced her to this particular facet of the local carryout culture, saying that it was probably to his benefit to consume greasy mystery meat and a curtesy sampling of salad as opposed to sweets after a full moon – that she would have gone ‘full English’, but that the local did not do breakfast to go, and anyway, it was already afternoon. Remus told her that whatever nutritional benefits she imagined Turkish takeaway to possess, chocolate remained his preferred comfort food. July had thus come with a crate of Terry’s Oranges and Narcissa’s bragging satisfaction that she could almost ‘open’ one with a simple charm. ‘Some of the pieces stick together when you whack it like a muggle, too,’ Remus had told her, not that his attempt to display this phenomenon was successful. Even weakened by transformation, his lycanthrope strength proved match enough for a corner kiosk staple.

Remus turned to watch raindrops race one another down the windowpane. It would be false to say that he was looking forward to his usual company, but, as he found with some satisfaction, it would also be wrong of him to meet the hollow ache in his head and bones with self-pity, with a longing for those nights he would never live with Padfoot, Wormtail, and Prongs, for the ‘hangover’ that normal blokes allowed for after a long week.

Last night, he realised, had been as close to prefect as any.

Absent the involuntary transformation, nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

Severus read to him as he always did. Their boys had wandered in at some point, demanding that their ‘Dad’ settle an argument of no significance, which Severus did by way of telling them to leave, knock, and attempt to refrain from speaking both at once when he bid them to re-enter so that he might have context for whatever expectation he was bound to disappoint.

Remus would have been surprised to learn that anything Severus was saying had registered – both because the boys were now teenagers, and because their eyes had been on the wolf lying a top their fathers’ four-poster the whole time. (‘The better to eat you with, my dears,’ Remus had thought and would have said to make them laugh had he been able.)

Both Harry and Dudley had known, of course, about his ‘furry little problem’, but Harry had heretofore only ever seen the wolf from a distance and Dudley not at all. The two whispered with one another for a minute or two before knocking. When they were given permission to enter, their conflict seemed less pressing against their curiosity; Dudley asking if ‘that’ was really ‘Mum’ in relation to Remus, Harry wondering if he could give him a pat. Severus had shrugged.

It had taken about twenty minutes for both boys to acclimate to his cursed form, and about an hour for them to lose interest altogether. Dudley complained about a plot involving characters he deemed insignificant and asking how long until they got to the Hundred Years War. ‘Two books’ not being at all to his liking, Dudley had offered to fetch Severus a cuppa and had never come back with it. Harry, too, eventually decided to see if his cousin had found something more to their shared interest on the telly. Severus sighed that there was no accounting for taste and continued his narrative, eventually breaking when Harry brought up a cup of camomile that had grown cold in Dudley’s distraction.

It was all perfectly ordinary, which made it exquisite. The same summer night might have transpired with Remus wearing boxers and an old band shirt rather than a tail and a snout.

He had managed to find a loving, supportive family that met his condition absent of the fear he had personally spent his life internalising.

A fear, he realised, that his recent actions caused to fester in the world outside these walls.

The door creaked open without Remus entirely being conscious of it, his gaze fixed on heavy beads of rain merging together as they made their decent as his self-satisfaction gave way to more familiar doubt.

“Remus,” came a whisper.

He turned, surprised at the quiet address where he had rather been expecting an energetic monologue over some reality with which he would never fully identify.

Sure enough, it was Severus standing in the doorway, rather than Narcissa with enough sweets to constitute tribal tribute to an imperial conqueror.

“Up already?” his husband asked, a smirk threatening on the corner of his lips.

“What time is it?” Remus asked, adjusting himself into a half-sitting position.

“3-ish,” Severus answered. “I come bearing … tea.” Sure enough, he was holding a tea tray, complete with two mugs and what looked to be several pieces of chocolate cake. Dobby had truly outdone himself this time.

“Mighty tea, that,” Remus remarked, patting at the space beside him in invitation. “Did I sleep through a child’s birthday party or is this part of something far more sinister?”

“As in ‘is Narcissa still here?’ or ‘are you trying to sabotage my weight loss efforts?’” Severus gleaned.

“And?”

“Yes.”

Remus pat at the belly had had put on in what he supposed might qualify remorse, showing up at Narcissa’s office with two portions of takeaway a few days a week after he had already lunched at Hogwarts. “At least I don’t look as though I suffer from lycanthropy,” he defended his physique. In truth, he found his waistline altogether more impressive than Narcissa’s efforts in almost achieving a healthy weight by eating exactly two bites of the food she otherwise pushed around her plate like the spoilt, wilful child she would always on some level be.

A few months into their lunching arrangement (after visiting Greyback’s caravan absent of the armed police escort a proper werewolf pack would have considered basic manners) Sir Corban commented that he thought Remus ‘wore depression better than Cissy’, that his physical presentation would be more sympathetic to a jury than the emaciated state of most lycanthropy sufferers. ‘Sly,’ Remus had conceded. Yaxley had afforded him something approaching a smile in response before addressing the concerns Narcissa would do better to present to Health and Human Services regarding the welfare of those exiled to camper vans in the woods.

When they had gone to meet with his father sometime after, Lyall asked if a cure had been found upon seeing Remus looking healthy and well contented. Before he might offer an answer of any kind, young Hermione Granger had demanded that Lyall apologise for the part he had played in making lycanthropy seem like a pandemic in the first place; with Pansy Parkinson adding that a retraction was the least of what he owed, and both insisting that the man was overstepping with questions around his ‘grandsons’. Remus had only then understood why Narcissa thought the task of tackling a retired right-wing fear-monger appropriate for a pair of then-twelve-year-olds. ‘They say you catch more flies with honey, but as I’ve tried to instil in the girls, you can attract a decent swarm with a hollowed-out corpse,’ Narcissa had smiled to Remus, watching her interns set to work. She might have been able to get Lyall to admit that publishing a paper absent of peer review was unscientific and unethical; Remus might have allowed the man to feel something of his failings as a father, but no one could have done a better job of inflicting existential doubt as a little girl with a large vocabulary. ‘These were facts’ – as Hermione might put it.

Remus truly did not look like a werewolf anymore. At least, not freshly shaven in a bespoke suit. All of the court-room psychology and student advocacy in the world likely did not do much to alter anyone’s perceptions of him waking up the morning after a full moon, however.

At least, not to judge on Severus’ present expression.

“You look like an out of work actor photographed while holidaying in Ibiza,” Severus snorted as he moved to comb through Remus’ greying chest hair with an affection that contradicted the put-on disgust of his tone.

“I should go outside then, maybe I’ll make the cover of The Quibbler,” Remus joked. He would not, of course, do any such thing. Not because he personally harboured any great insecurities extending the full moon, but Dudley suffered enough abuse on account of his own size that Remus did not want to risk his adopted son seeing the same words printed in a negative context. Which surely, he would, even if his reading comprehension did not extend much past the bold face. Severus still read every issue of the rag. While his own recent contact with Padfoot had been restricted to the neighbourly accusations of one’s ‘dog’ having done its business on the other’s front lawn, Remus was fairly sure Dudley’s ad hawk transfiguration teacher still amused himself with Lovegood’s lies as well. He would probably show Dudley with a barking laugh.

“I’m sure even that readership is uninterested in a werewolf’s dadbod,” Severus answered in a voice suggesting that he himself was very interested, or at least would be if Remus were up for it. “Not with a Cup on and the Muggle PM refusing a request to import dragons for that Tri-Wizard thing. Plus, Harry checked. Neither Luna nor her father were present in the masses this month. Shame, really. I’d have had her in for pudding. Merlin knows we have enough to share.”

Remus pressed his lips together, not trusting himself to inquire into the piece of the assessment in which he was truly invested.

Even ‘mean’ teachers had their favourites, he supposed, and Luna Lovegood had beaten out Harry and all of his other little friends for that distinction.

To be fair, Severus was doing Harry a favour by refusing to indulge him or acknowledge their parent-child bond during lecture. Harry’s facial scar and the mysticism his name evoked were as ostracising for the boy as they had always anticipated these would be, and besides ‘he is disruptive enough as is,’ – as Severus, (and exactly no one else on staff) was keen to put it.

Hermione, Lupin’s personal classroom favourite, had entered Hogwarts with a breadth of knowledge that she was keen to show off, and questions above the level of her peers – which rather than endear her to Professor Snape usually resulted in his offering to address her inquiries in detention where she would prove less of a disturbance.

Ron (and Harry, too, for that matter) were quick to point out how unfair this was, something that saw them scrubbing cauldrons with Neville Longbottom whilst Hermione brewed Polyjuice under the Potion Master’s caution, if for no other reason than to be able to rightly say in her next letter to Dudley that she was leaning just as much at Hogwarts as he was under the tutorage of Barty Crouch Jr and the Brothers Black – thank you very much! She still wished he would come, naturally, but accepting that he was not about to leave Leigh behind (‘Ppppps’) she would be thankful if he could keep a clean sheet against West Ham when next they met. Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan were talking the whole damn time during History, and she hated them now about as much as she hated having to ask ‘that prat’ Draco Malfoy for his notes.

Remus doubted Dudley was very much sympathetic to any of the Hogwarts’ goings on, though he might have agreed with the general assessment of the man whom the once sweet, empathetic Draco seemed to be growing into.

If something positive could be said about Lucius Malfoy, it was that he kept the monster Remus recognised he must be in meetings with Muggle leadership ‘at work’ as it were, presenting a loving and lenient husband and father at home. Lucius had learned with Narcissa to ask for nothing that could not be given; and in an effort to spare his son from suffering similar manic compulsions, Lucius was given to making few demands of a boy he did not recognise as fit to rule for reason he did not disclose (but which likely had to do with tea leaves, which were easier to look at than one’s own parenting.)

The problem with this approach was, as Remus saw it, that children of whom nothing was asked began to feel as though they had nothing to offer, and Draco thus spent much of his time in isolation until his need for attention became too much for the boy to bear. He acted out in ways that often put him at odds with Harry and the bulk of their friends.

During his first year, Severus had met Draco as his godson rather than his student, which led to Draco assuming that he could get away with that which alluded his classmates. There was an extent to which this had been true, but it no longer was. These days, Severus yelled at Draco to grow up, to stop crying, to accept the fact that life would not continue to favour him if he kept acting out. More often than not, this made matters worse. But Remus had grown exhausted in trying to initiate the sort of conversation none of the other adults in Draco’s life seemed to be ready to have.

Luna Lovegood was different – to put it kindly. She was odd, unshakably self-assured, and undaunted by the ridicule this won her. She was, in short, the sort of student Severus would have been drawn to absent of so many other obvious contenders, but Remus suspected that there was more to it. The more innocent explanation was that Luna lived comfortably enough within her own world that she had no interest in affecting the one everyone else seemed to occupy, much unlike her predecessor. Severus continued to view Tonks’ abrupt and dramatic departure as a betrayal; he was unable to forgive the fact that Harry had suffered for her misadventures in Tom’s shared memories.

The explanation Remus felt he was contending, however, was that Luna was Pandora’s daughter. That neither Regulus nor Barty had gotten to go to their friend’s funeral. That Barty would be at Hogwarts next year. That Luna would need a barrier Severus might hope to provide against her absentee godfather.  

Or perhaps, giving Severus’ absence of any real objection to Barty teaching Dudley Potions these five years past, it was all a simple misdirection – a precaution against Remus’ replacement affording Harry too much of his mind.

Even if Remus trusted himself to inquire deeper into the affection the Potions Master played at, he felt sure Severus would not afford him a meaningful answer. This was probably for the best. Remus had had well enough of the Twenty-Eight and their confusing, contradictory machinations; of haunting threats and hollow subterfuge.

And besides, he had Narcissa to figure out. That was well enough.

“Major’s really putting up a challenge?” he asked instead of the dragon-denying Prime Minister – probably a story Xeno was covering, far more interesting than the private life of a reluctantly public facing werewolf.

“The Malfoys are the only wizards he has ever had anything to do with and Lucius and Narcissa on separate initiatives have done everything within convention to piss off his base, what with land grabs and gay marriage,” Severus answered.

“Victims of their own success,” Remus shrugged.

“Aren’t we all?” Severus wondered, seriously enough in his tone to cause Remus to wonder if he was meant to answer.

Such happened to Remus enough in conversation these days. As a magical creature and the mayor of a small town, it was generally assumed that he had the pulse on wizarding politics.

This could not be further from the truth.

Remus was good at governance, but with his seat secure, he had no cause for the rest of it.

He knew little more than anyone else: Lucius Malfoy’s tenure as Chairman would end in October. No one announced their candidacy or officially campaigned for the role that essentially amounted the wizarding world’s Lord Speaker, elections being conducted by anonymous ballot in conclave until a majority could be reached.

Giving Lucius’ generally high approval rating, the public thought it likely that Tonks would succeed him. Here, Remus suspected he had a bit more insight – though not that which built to anything of value.

As he understood it through conversations with his common lunch-date, a sizeable faction was fundamentally opposed to the young Nymphadora – not owing to Blood Purity, but rather to matters far more banal. Houses Yaxley, Nott, Crouch, Prewett, Parkinson, Abbot and Slughorn were staunch opponents of the funding Tonks would have allocated from prevention programmes to policing, undoing a number of more recent reforms in extended measures. House Longbottom, by contrast, had simply taken a dislike to Tonks after her escapade in the Chamber of Secrets and could be counted to vote in opposition to House Black whatever the issue. Malfoy and Shacklebolt were expected to swing, and Remus did not know if Tonks’ remaining support was strong enough to withstand that betrayal.

Narcissa seemed to take offence that her name was associated with the suspected naysayers in publications that mistook statistics as belonging to maths rather than the social sciences. However, being that Narcissa genuinely believed that those exempt from income tax due to unemployment should not be afforded suffrage as a matter of principle, Remus made an active effort to avoid her opinions on such matters in his continued effort to keep from screaming. And she was the only real ‘insider’ he knew, or at least, was willing to listen to in any fleeting capacity. Yaxley, who knew more, cared less. He had said that it was never a matter of good versus evil as Remus and the rest liked to envision, but rather battles waged over budgets and infrastructure bills. Government was equally ineffective with or without the Dark Lord to serve as an enlightened despot. Even if there was admittedly truth to this, Remus hated centrists too much on principle to really consider the assessment's validity.

But then maybe Tonks would meet with the promises of her wider public perception and do a better job of it than Voldemort ever might have. And maybe she would not make it past an appropriations committee if appointed. Remus could not really say. His area of expertise dealt with local permits for church fundraisers, public works, and community initiatives. He still held Towne Hall at the local pub. He put his Chocolate Frog and Liquorice Wand wrappers in his neighbour’s rubbish bin, expecting no trouble from the Ministry whatever Sirius’ threats.

“So … what is the cake about?” Remus asked, having nothing to offer on Lucius, Narcissa or the new Prime Minister.

“Now that we’ve achieved marriage equality as a nation, Sir Corban is giving it another go,” Severus said dryly, doubtlessly hoping he had done nothing to warrant an invitation. “You are meant to rate these samples and give Rita a review.”

Remus blinked. “I don’t have a decerning pallet.”

“There is also thirty-seven of them, you would have your work cut out for you.”

“Thirty-seven!” Remus exclaimed. In truth, he felt ravenous, but such bordered on what even a werewolf would consider gluttony.

“My thought being to let the kids eat their fill and then have her babysit whilst conducting her interview,” Severus continued in a tone that told he had already put this plan to action.

“Wait, so she is here? Skeeter?” Remus asked, confused.

“Downstairs, interviewing Dudley about home schooling as part of a wider piece on BCJR.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Because I struggle to form my mouth to ‘Professor Crouch’ with his whole,” Severus sneered while considering exactly what he meant to say about his future colleague. “It is deliberate, this arrested development act. Maybe it is just a defence mechanism, part of me thinks it would be reasonable for anyone to have watched all of their friends die, be convicted without trial by a stroke of their father’s pen only to then be made complicit in their mother’s murder a month later, and be imprisoned for this within the family home via street drugs for a decade – it would be reasonable to actively revert to behavioural patterns present before any of that happened, would it not?”

“But you are not buying it,” Remus observed.

Severus frowned. “I knew him. I can’t tell. Legilimency serves a self-confirming bias in a situation like this. Like with you and Narcissa.”

Severus Snape had missed out on being part of Slytherin’s golden generation by a few months, landing him in a class full of fellow introverts like Dolohov rather than that pantheon of pretenders to the proverbial crown James Potter once wore to made up Slytherin’s following year. Severus had been as close to Regulus as either might have allowed in youth; their friendship born more out of a shared urge to please Narcissa in order to realise their individual ambitions of being named to the house Quidditch team than any true personal affiliation towards each other. Severus might have thus known Regulus’ best friend a bit better than ‘on reputation’, might have smoked a bowl with the kid or shared a few beers (… or shown up in a death mask at a fascist rally where the latter was speaking) but Remus doubted that Severus ‘knew’ Barty as he professed to.

Narcissa, however, well might. Remus often found himself thinking about what she had told him about spending the first eleven years of her life imprisoned in Grimmauld Place in atonement for her near absence of ability. Mostly, he thought about this in the context of her having led Barty and Regulus to her office the same night this narrative had been relayed, and this after a solid fifteen hours of watching one of her closest friends panic over the re-emergence of his Dark Mark whilst on premises. She had spent two years captaining a Quidditch team on which Barty had been a substitute chaser. She spent about as long ensuring that his appeal not make the Wizengamot’s docket. She knew his politics even if she did not openly share them, and she knew, perhaps better than anyone, what it was like to be jailed by someone’s lack of love.

Perhaps most telling of the understanding Remus had reason to suspect was the fact that Barty, for his part, had never once offered Narcissa criticism or direct offence. Perhaps this owed to the reality that she had exposed his father and had the man sentenced to seven lifetimes. But even so. She had passively ensured that Barty remain under house arrest – surely a reminder of his torment even if the house he was effectively stuck in had the fringe benefit of his best friend. For her part, Narcissa refused Barty her conversation outside of cross examination. Maybe she was mad that Sir Corban was bound to beat her in court under the jurisprudence she herself had established. Maybe it was that Barty had been with Bellatrix when she had driven the Longbottoms to madness. Maybe it was the creeping public suspicion that the eldest sister of House Black had done no such thing. Narcissa could not stand to have her own sense of guilt challenged by witness account.

But Remus could not make sense of any of it. Not yet, at least.

All the same, he found himself frowning at Severus’ cold assessment – the same that had cost him his friendship with Sirius, this idea that he meant Narcissa active harm by handing the remaining horcruxes to her care. He had not. Certainly, he had understood the risk, but of all the bad options that were once before him, influencing the manic behavioural patterns of a public figure who refused professional help for what everyone agreed was a bipolar disorder had seemed the least damning. Dumbledore would sacrifice a child to the greater good. Putting darkly magical objects next to a nuclear bomb would destroy the computers keeping it stable. There had been no choice.

“Severus, you can’t believe I ever meant –”

“Not that,” Severus dismissed, clarifying, “She completely bought your grounds for resignation.”

This gave Remus pause. “I don’t know that she did,” he confessed. “She alone has shown me sympathy. Even Harry’s been … I think we might have come one something else. Some other excuse for why I left Hogwarts.”

In truth he had done so to continue to spy on his enemy within, now that the trial had ended and he had no good reason to meet regularly with his defence team. Keeping himself to Cokeworth meant keeping an eye out. Someone as accustomed to inviting derision as Narcissa was would surely slip eventually, and Remus had to be present when she did.

It was not as though he could trust Sirius report back anymore.

“She was in a similar predicament when forced to surrender her titles because Sirius refused to take Yaxley’s counsel over that which she might otherwise offer. Before that she had to give up a promising career to serve as Lucius’ consort. It is the prefect cover. At least,” Severus paused, “she’s not calling you a coward in this instance.”

“No, she has her friends to do that for her,” Remus sighed, still thinking on her cousin.

“Yaxley was a fool raising his wand against you. I never expected his work had a personal element to it, that he had a care that extended his laurels. I don’t think it serves him for anyone in Twenty-Eight to think he can not be bought.”

“I ruined his son’s life,” Remus murmured, certain that both he and Severus would have made the same such threats against anyone whose actions came at the cost of one of their boys.

Severus rolled his eyes. “You held him back a semester and likely saved Yaxley Sr the remaining two years in university fees when the school settles against what might otherwise become a deformation case –  being that the boy is not, as far as we know, himself inflicted, even if his mother is part of Greyback’s pack. His classmates are protesting, your former students will likely follow suit as everyone under thirty loves a cause celeb, and Rita’s in the process of writing you off in all of this. Cissy gave her a quote about the demands of local governance for the Sunday edition. You have nothing to fear or fret over.”

“The Sunday edition,” Remus snorted. “High Arts and Sport Highlights then?”

“The Prophet still prints around four pages of general content,” Severus smirked. “Dare I hazard to tell you what Miss Skeeter’s weekend column is called?”

“Have at it,” Remus bade.

“Sunday Roast.”

“I want so much to hate that,” Remus chuckled as he complained.

“Knew you’d appreciate it,” Severus said before stealing a bite of the cake that was going ignored.

Remus, looking at the food he had been brought, found that his appetite had left him.

“Is Narcissa … is she serving censor over Dudley’s comments?” he asked.

“No, she made the mistake of asking Harry if he’d gotten his dress robes yet for the Yule Ball. Which led to him asking me why I ‘forgot’ to mention that most of his mates would be attending a fancy party prior to winter break. To which I in turn told him that the year above would be given dance lessons he won’t be subject to; Narcissa then making my point by trying to teach him to waltz in the kitchen.

“When I left to check on you, Harry was complaining loudly that you and I never made him take ballet with Dudley, perhaps because he’s finding that he can’t count to four, perhaps just that Rita overhear that such belongs to his cousin’s home-schooling curriculum,” Severus smiled darkly. “I knew this would pay off eventually.”

“Do you not think it prudent – ”

“I do not,” Severus interrupted before Remus could finish. “I’m interested to see the answers Dudley provides about Barty without my immediate presence serving censor. They were discussing his makeshift curriculum when I came up, the rest of it, I mean. The parts where Dudley presumably was not wearing tights and a leotard.

“I think it is just now dawning on our Diddy that he’s not just advanced when compared with Harry and his limitations, but when rated against most mages in their age group,” Severus stopped. When he resumed, his speech was slower, more considered. “I’m given serious consideration to pulling Harry from Hogwarts and setting him up with a similar scheme. Dudley has certainly benefited from individual attention. And you are out of work. Sort of. You could take him on.”

It was the single worst idea Remus had ever heard. “Right, because I have the organisational skills to spy on Narcissa, run a small town, and teach a headstrong teenager Potions when I can’t even tell you the difference between an acid and a base,” he gave sarcastically. In truth, he did not want to risk allowing Harry too much time with his own thoughts. The boy was poor at conflict resolution as it was, not that Remus could credit Dudley with being much better. But Dudley attended a sporting academy and he had to fight for his place within the squad. Harry, in contrast, would benefit from a few more years of being hexed in Hogwarts’ corridors. It was something Remus, a former bully, and Severus, his erstwhile victim, would never be able to agree on, so self-deprecating humour seemed the easiest way of acknowledging their differences.

“I’d still employ the Black brothers’ services,” Severus countered, clearly not yet ready to abandon this scheme to common logic. “Plus, if I had Regulus teaching the two of them, doubling his salary – as likely deserved from the charms I watched our eldest preform – would feel like less of a favour, which you know I am as loath to extend as Regulus is to accept.”

“Great, because working in conjunction with Sirius would work out,” Remus pouted. Finding no sympathy, he continued, “Harry has to stay at Hogwarts, Sev. Dudley’s success owes itself to the fact that he hates magic, that he’s dyslexic and that he’ll practice something to the point of exhaustion because he gains understanding through repetition. He’s figured out that after mastering something he won’t have to fuss with the particulars again. Harry, by contrast, meets anything he doesn’t immediately achieve with anger that boarders on the irrational. He’s better off moving at a steady pace set by his peers.”

“Hogwarts will miss you,” Severus said.

“Well, I’d never have quit if I knew Barty would be installed in my place.”

“I hope your fears are warranted.”

“That Narcissa told him, or rather set him up to know about the Horcruxes?” Remus raised an eyebrow. “I’m uneasy enough in the knowledge that she led Regulus to them, and he’s only bent on destruction.”

“I am not entirely sure that impulse isn’t shared,” Severus considered. “It is the only reason I can think of why Narcissa might have invited him to the temptation.”

“That does not come as much comfort.”

“It should,” Severus negated. “We know how to keep the horcruxes safe until we can figure out how to dispose of them without casualty. The alternative, that Barty somehow wants to fully resurrect the Dark Lord, creates complications I do not know that we are able to contend.”

“But would that not be for the best?” Remus wondered, not for the first time. “What if he could separate their souls? Voldemort’s and Harry’s?”

“What would it bring us if we could do it now, with pieces of the Dark Lord unaccounted for?” Severus countered. “And what makes you think that it would be safe, even if we could? Tom’s been half of Harry’s mind for so long – I sometimes find the two difficult to separate in the course of conversation. I am almost grateful that Harry can still get upset about the Quidditch and fight with his cousin over whose go it is on the PlayStation and … and fail to turn in his coursework because Hagrid won a dragon egg at poker and him and his two best friends just had to figure out how they might use this to lose Gryffindor 100 House Points right before the end of term.” Remus could not tell if that was a complaint.

“You did mention to Harry once that Slytherin taking the House Cup was how we were able to afford the sorts of birthday parties and give the sorts of presents he and Dudley are accustomed to. Maybe he is better at numbers than his Potions work might otherwise suggest,” Remus suggested smugly.

 “You know, you are right,” Severus consented. “Sod it. Harry stays at Hogwarts. I like the yearly bonus.”

Chapter Text

The overhead fluorescents of the borrowed muggle establishment flickered on, and Celestina Warbeck’s crooning flooded from the speakers, announcing to the night’s hangers-on that it was time to go.

Nymphadora Tonks had been waiting far too long at the crowed bar to afford any of her mind to the idea of escaping into the crisp October night, crossing the street and buying a litre of juice from a corner kiosk for a fraction of what a single cup might cost in here.

Not that she had much room to manoeuvre in the door’s direction.

The locale – a ‘historic’ Soho jazz venue (in the sense that it had been forgotten as soon as its doors closed due to Health and Safety violations) – was filled far past capacity. The Weird Sisters had finished their set half an hour ago. Tonks had not seen Bill since he had seen a bleach-blonde in fishnets and was beginning to doubt that she would catch back up with him before morning.

A large, bearded someone elbowed their way in front of her. Tonks, frowning, considered flashing her warrant card, but doubted that it would do much to catch the attention of the overworked bar staff. More likely, it would incur the abuse of her fellow club goes, for such was always on trend among the drunk and disorderly.

“Ducks and geese!” came a posh approximation of Cockney slang in greeting. Tonks squinted as she looked around attempting to source it, both because the stale tobacco hanging in the air was burning her eyes, and because she recognised the address as meaning ‘fuck the police.’

“Mm, you wish,” she answered as she felt a cold bottle pressed between her shoulder blades. Closing her eyes, she let herself enjoy the relief as it migrated up her spine to the nape of her neck, sore from what little headbanging she had attempted in such crowded quarters. Most of her outfit had would up elsewhere. It was so hot that she’d left her band hoodie folded behind the instruments and amps of the opening act. Likewise, she had cast off the plaid, pleated wool skirt (the same yellow-grey tartan that had afforded her the ever pleasant sounds of her mother’s Screamers when she first taken to shortening it back at school) on the line to the loo, as she had done with her stockings when these, too, became too warm in the course of dancing off a few hours of her accumulated overtime.

At two in the morning, miles from home, there was nothing much to differentiate her present get-up from her regular attire in accordance with the hour – aside from dried sweat, smudged eyeliner, and a pixie cut she did not imagine particularly suited her (but Cerce did it beat the long curls she had woken up with in this suffocating warmth!)

The bottle moved slowly down to her cleavage. Taking it in her hand and taking a breath, Tonks turned to find herself faced with Barty Crouch Jr, offering him a smile that might not have been possible without her natural shapeshifting abilities. He gave her a one over with his ever-shifting eyes and settled into an obnoxious smirk. Tonks very much doubted that Barty had any intention of mentioning to Regulus stuck at home with the babe that he had met his wife in a very public place wearing no more than a spaghetti strap tank and Soffe shorts with ‘Puff printed across the arse in gold, but Barty seemed to want to allow for that sort of ambiguity. Fucking nob.

Tonks lifted the bottle of Butterbeer she had been handed as though to offer a toast, and when Barty returned the gesture, she made a reach for his bottle of water, handing him the beer back as she drowned the remained of its contents in what she was sure was a perfectly ladylike fashion, extending her small finger as she finished on the off change that anyone else in (or related to the snobs) who sat with them in the Twenty-Eight was an avid fan of indie punk.

For a moment, this seemed to meet with Barty’s approval. Then, there was a marked shift.

“Oh – shit,” he blinked, taking a half-step back. “Are you working?”

“Not if I don’t need to be,” Tonks started. Stopped. Stammered. Why was she starting shit?

She and Barty had lived in the same house for near unto the entirety of her adult life and most of what she knew about him came from the parts of his criminal record not subjected to redactions and arguments with Regulus that resulted in agreeing to disagree.

She, in turn, had ever ben ‘Alastor’s apostle’ – Barty seemingly unable to recognise her in any context that extended her employment, including that of her being his best friend’s beloved wife.

But here he was giving her a beer. Being friendly, familiar even, in a way that seemed to negate their actual history of his being paroled to the address of his hated godfather's protégée because her celebrity solicitor aunt had colluded with the court to keep his appeal from the dockets. Like they could be mates now that that arrangement had ended.

And fuck. Tonks had been rather enjoying just being twenty-one, for the night neither ‘fuzz’ nor ‘filth’. Or she had been enjoying that fiction. “No, I’m,” she began to find the words failed her.

“Preggo?” Barty baited.

“I’m not sure.”

Barty seemed to consider the beer he had been traded, shrugged, and took a swig. “Really simple way to rid yourself of any uncertainty. Muggles have these wands that you piss on that can tell you in five minutes if you’re expecting. But I expect your having me on, Detective,” he claimed, leaning in slightly. “Over there,” he pointed, dropping his voice to a whisper, “the guy who spent the whole set in the same back corner, black hoodie, non-descript.”

Tonks rolled her eyes. If wands were drawn, she would of course be duty bound to break it up. If the guy in the corner was dealing, however, that was a problem for local. Even if on the off chance that the bloke intended to sell restricted magical potions or plants to the muggle population (and why would he? Business here must be banging!) the most Tonks might get in the way of chastisement would be a curt ‘always vigilant!’ from her governor as prelude or punctuation to a morning briefing.

And, she thought happily, she was not due back in the office for at least a week.

“I’m counter-terror, and yes, off duty,” Tonks dismissed. “His only crime as far as I’m willing to observe is a marked absence of tact. Which begs the question –”

“Actually, I came in a professional capacity, so to speak,” Barty smarted. “Dumbledore entrusted me to secure entertainment for this Christmas party Hogwarts is hosting.”

Tonks’ eyes widened with implication. “You are getting the Weird Sisters to play at Hogwarts?!” she squealed. “Shut. Up.”

“Between the two of us, Snape and I were able to talk the headmaster out of something tasteful. Separate efforts, of course,” he gave with a slight shake. “Alas, I’ve yet to be so much as accepted into that bloc of former Slytherins with maths-based majors. Snape, for his part, closes ranks with McGonagall whenever I walk by.”

“Glad to know some things never change,” Tonks smirked. She had not seen or spoken to Professor Snape since the night she broke into the Chamber of Secrets with the intent of forcing her mother the reveal where she had hidden the horcrux she and her sister and cousins had lifted off the Dark Lord in Albania. Now a parent herself, Tonks could understand the animosity Snape suddenly bore against her – for Tonks had, however inadvertently, put Harry at risk – but she still felt a kind of comradery with her former Potions Master, and wondered if he was not seething with envy in a cold castle that the new DADA teacher had been given this field assignment instead.

Barty, with his multiple piercings, ripped jeans and bad dye-job (an emerald green faded to ‘opposition leader yellow’ after multiple washes) looked perfectly at home at such a venue. Tonks considered if Snape, whose edge had since faded into dark elegance with age (though, she considered, he was only a few months older than the emotionally stunted Barty was), would still be able to fit in at such a gig. She babbled cheerfully about how she and Professor Snape had become ‘friends’ nine years prior, mostly in a conscious effort to ignore the reality that they no longer were.

Barty nodded along to the metre of the house music without much conviction.

“The students are going to bloody love this!” Tonks beamed at him, wondering what she had said to make him disengage. “Here I thought you were struggling to connect with them.”

Barty’s cheeky grin fell into a thin, flat line. “Draco, you mean?” he guessed.

Tonks stopped herself from nodding, realising that doing so could have unintended consequences for her kid-cousin who dutifully wrote her regarding all of Hogwarts goings on in his avid correspondence.

“Hm. No,” Barty again shifted. “No, Neville Longbottom mistook an illegal animagus for a teacher preforming involuntary transfiguration on a student by way of punishment when I found Draco trying to break into a locked drawer in my desk. Or, better put, Neville made like he did and then used it to blackmail me. I had not even realised he was there, Neville. I didn’t turn your cousin into a bloody ferret. You think I’d do anything to incur Dame Cissy’s wrath?”

Did he call all of his students by their first name? Did he invite the same familiarity out of a hatred for his now-accursed surname?

Tonks considered all what was being said, and what need not be. Draco had not written anything about ‘Barty’ or any member of staff discovering his secret, nor about his being in cahoots with the grandson of her most vocal opposition within the Twenty-Eight. Either nothing had come of it, or something had, and Draco was smart enough not to put it to writing, doubtlessly taught by his lord father to self-censor. Her cousin had, however inadvisably, written to her in coded language recently that ‘temporary tattoos’ were now a thing among certain members of Hogwarts staff, and then a few lines later in an unrelated passage about having to sneak into Gryffindor Tower to spend any time whatsoever with Harry, that he ‘hoped his new DADA teacher did not find a pattern in it.’

Tonks bit her bottom lip, praying to an indifferent god that Draco was not putting himself at any unnecessary risk, while knowing full well that she would be doing a version of whatever he was up to in his situation, likely louder and with far less tact.

But how close was Barty, exactly?

Regulus and Bill had individually found cause to include him in their hunt for horcruxes (Regulus attempting to walk back something Dudley had said out of hand; Bill acting on her tip about one perhaps being hidden in a Gringotts vault, wanting to talk potential break-in plans over with a hardened criminal who happened to be fluent in Gobbledegook.) Tonks considered both to have erred in this, especially as Barty had never broached the topic with her, the Auror in charge of this particular covert operation.

Remus Lupin believed that Narcissa Malfoy had lured Barty Crouch Jr to her office for a reason, and this after watching one of her best mates have a bad reaction to the Dark Mark appearing on his skin after a decade. Tonks was not sure how far Moony had gotten in his investigation, or if had been sanctioned by the Order, which unlike Lucius, Narcissa had declined to join.

It did not much matter.

Much as outside political observers were keen to warn Tonks that she was wrong to ‘underestimate’ her aunt, she was willing to leave the figuring out of Narcissa’s motivations to those who felt particularly threatened by imagined implication.

Tonks, for her part, was far more concerned that Nott and Yaxley seemed content to ignore the reminder than Dolohov’s fear and remorse or What Narcissa might have meant. But then, she, Tonks, had to sit with ‘Death’ and ‘Pestilence’ in the Twenty-Eight. ‘War’ did not rank; ‘Famine’ did not care.

That said, it was somewhat concerning to hear her aunt referred to conversationally as ‘Dame Cissy’, for unlike ‘Sir Corban’, Narcissa had no interest in this particular laurel, content simply with the ruling that had won the distinction. Barty Crouch Sr was serving seven lifetimes in Azkaban thanks to her efforts, something his equally wayward son doubtlessly appreciated, but how much did he really support Narcissa’s continued initiatives in kind? No one cited the knighthood outside of the foreign press except in familiarity and frustration, a gentle means of asking her to kindly drop a subject.

Tonks felt it reasonable to assume that already being in London, Barty intended to stay for the coming conclave, which giving his and the wider reputation of House Crouch would swing the vote in her, Tonks’, favour.

No, Tonks assessed. Barty was not politically inept. He knew exactly what he was doing. But, she considered, there was a chance that he considered that she did not.

“No, he’s been able to do that since he was like ten,” Tonks shrugged of Draco as though such were unimpressive. “I’m more interested in how his fellow fourth year is making you his bitch.” There would be enough time at the conclave to discuss crime and punishment. ‘Dame Cissy’ though! Tonks frowned, wonder why she let it rile her so.

“Exotic plants, mostly,” Barty coughed, chocking slightly on his Butterbeer at her choice language.

“Anything fun?”

“In a common recreational sense? Sadly not. It would probably save me money if it were that sort of illicit. Time, certainly. Anyway, I thought you were ‘off duty’.”

“So, are you so afraid of McGonagall that this Longbottom kid has your hunting down rare and hard to cultivate magical flora on the black market?” she prodded, partially from memories of how easily Snape would yield to the Deputy Head, missing Hogwarts and how small the world had seemed within its old stone walls.

“It is not McGonagall I am afraid of.”

“Who then?” Snape? Dumbledore? Surely not!

“You Know Who,” Barty answered in a whisper, extending his left forearm for her inspection. “It’s just scars and scabs from needles now but … sometimes, it comes back. There is a pattern I’ve not quite figured out. Curious,” he commented, frowning in consideration.

Tonks found herself staring, too.

If Barty did not know, then she had nothing to yet worry about, especially giving that he evidently had ample distraction in the form of Harry’s friends.

Still. The heroin scars, and the fact that Barty elected not to disguise their appearance with dittany, confessed something she was not certain he meant to with regard to the trauma he carried.

“No, Neville gave me something of an ultimatum,” Barty shifted with a forced laugh. “I told him that he did not witness what he thought he had, he told me to ‘tell him’, and before I could come on a convincing lie that would spare your little cousin his secret, Neville clarified beyond any doubt that he knew Draco was an illegal animagus, but that what he ‘saw’ was a teacher transfiguring a student. What he therefore wanted to know, he told me, was what happened to his parents. I didn’t want to have that conversation – not with,” he looked again at his arm and shook his head wearily. “Ergo,” he coughed. “I’m slowly turning Gryffindor Tower into a greenhouse.”

“Will you tell me?” Tonks bade in a tone of controlled sensitivity usually reserved for asking next of kin to accompany her to the morgue.

“Ask you governor,” Barty spat. Shifted. “No offence meant Dora, but for all the ill that can be said of me, I am not in the practice of disclosing difficult truths to those too young to contend the consequences. Knowledge isn’t always power. Sometimes it is just … shite. You’ll understand when you are older.”

“I read the case file,” she told him.

“Of course you did,” he answered flatly.

“Change my mind, then.”

“A paradox if ever I heard one! We lived together for years and the only thing to afford me humanity in your estimation was an offhand comment that I refused to give a fourteen-year-old explicit details on the night his parents were tortured to madness. I was your age when this all went down. Trust me, like Neville, you are simply too young.”

Bullocks! She was an Auror assigned to the force’s most elite unit. She was, against all odds, House Black’s representative within the Twenty-Eight. She had restored the body to power and prestige. She had ten N.E.W.T.s to her name, and this sitting her exams months before the rest of her class, all on self-study. She had been married long enough that sex often lacked passion. She had a three-year-old daughter and suspected that another one truly was on its merry way. If anything, Barty was the child here.

She would prove it if she had to. Even if he refused to speak.

As was the case with all addicts in recovery, it was difficult to get anything concrete from Barty through legilimency. Tonks tried to hold his shifting gaze all the same.

Ten points! Ten bloody points and James Potter was acting that their victory had been decisive, or a prepubescent Barty Crouch Jr was complaining to those around him as he watched the Quidditch Cup being passed around the Gryffindor table on the other side of the Great Hall.

Young Severus was receptive to this assessment; Regulus was too despondent to offer comment; and Narcissa spun on the three of them to admonish that it was now theirs to show more grace in defeat than their rivals might in victory. If such was more than they could manage, they were to sit quietly and bear witness.

But this order seemed needless, for when she rose and marched over to a tall Gryffindor with an easy smile, the entire Hall fell into silence.

A public ‘Congratulations, Frank,’ and ‘Well played, Cissy,’ was followed by something inaudible.

‘She’s telling him that she has only the best intentions, but that what is about to happen is really going to hurt,’ Regulus whispered with apprehension.

Barty smiled in dark anticipation, but nothing seemed to transpire. ‘Fucking Squib,’ he declared of his skipper after a few more minutes of what seemed to be continued pleasantries – Narcissa now joined by the respective Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw captains, addressing the whole winning squad in turn.

‘It did. It will,’ Regulus gave vaguely.

‘Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t she just leave?’ Bellatrix, looking wane and dishevelled asked hoarse whispers between sips of what Tonks inferred was a calming drought, being administered by a younger, classically handsome Barty Crouch Jr.

‘Cissy grew up on stories of queens holding castles through sieges. She’s not a coward, not like you!’ Barty reproved. ‘She probably leading a small negotiating party through the metaphoric dead zone to negotiate Wiltshire’s terms of surrender with whomever appears to meet her when the dust settles, offering herself as a hostage before she’d ever, ever –’

‘And who else is there? Who else is left?’ Bellatrix demanded. ‘He. Killed. Regulus.’

‘I know.’

‘Your father is holding Sirius of all people responsible for the Potters’ murder.’

‘I know.

‘The Dark Lord – ’

‘He knows!’ Barty exclaimed. ‘He knows you sought out Frank Longbottom! Twice! Do you think he’ll be forgiving? Do you really think he won’t find your niece and nephew? That he won’t force you to watch as he spills their impure blood … that he won’t make you wield the blade?’

Whatever that meant, it proved too much for Bellatrix, who was on Barty in a matter of seconds, pinning him down with her crooked wand pointed threateningly at his temple, daring him to say that again.

‘Thata girl,’ Barty gave instead with a crackling, manic laugh. ‘Now listen. This is what we are going to do about it.’

Nothing was supposed to have happened.

Barty knew that owing to some prophecy uttered by that hack Trelawny, the Longbottoms’ extensive property had been put under watch. There were, however, no wards in place, for it was known – frighteningly, Tonks gleaned, even within the Order – that Frank was the guy you talked to if you wanted to leave Voldemort’s service or have your family placed into Witness Protection at the price of your surrender. Barty was expecting an ambush. So was Bellatrix. Her husband and his brother were anyone’s guess, but their presence was necessary to create a certain ruse.

No one had their wand out. Bellatrix was speaking with Frank and Alice in hushed tones – cautioning, but not, strictly speaking, threatening. Barty (and therefore Tonks) could not hear anything, but she got the gist. Sirius was innocent. Frank took Bellatrix’ arm to demonstrate the problem with her cousin’s sole defence – she no longer bore the Dark Mark, either.

Without warning, Barty collapsed, writhing in the pain of a Cruciatus Curse.

Several things then happened to such quick succession that Tonks could not swear to a timeline, save to say it bore vast discrepancies to the report she had once read.

Mad Eye laughed and hit Barty again with the same curse, delighting in his capture. Alice screamed. Andromeda, Tonks’ own mother, ran out from the shadows in which the Order was evidently keeping guard, intent on assisting the victim of excessive force, hitting her brother-in-law with a stunning spell when he spun round at her, wand pulled and pointed.

The sisters eyes then met, and Bellatrix fell into a certain madness, shrieking that Frank had sworn to the safety of Andy and her family, furious that he had her employed on dangerous missions for the Order instead of sending her into hiding.

Tonks looked at her mother, who was too focused on preforming a counter curse to stop what happened next.

From within the manor house, a baby began to cry.

Bellatrix demanded to know what had happened to Dora and Draco, with something of an implication that the Longbottoms were holding them hostage ‘too’. Alice tried and failed to stun her sudden assailant as Bellatrix tried to enter the home and found herself victim to the same spell that had put Barty out of commission for her better efforts. Frank’s responding Stupefy was a direct hit but mistaking his intentions from where she had been administering emergency medical care, Andy had directed an Unforgiveable at him in the self-same moment.

So. That must have been why Aunt Bella had been so unrepetitive at sentencing. To spare her sister the same fate. To save her where the Order had let them both down. And the Longbottoms had been sentenced to her mother’s ward for their sins. That must explain why Mum could not cure them where she had success with everyone else whom she had seen in her storied career. She would not dare try.

Tonks’ whole house was as black as its name.

She did not know who deserved blame.

Barty’s hands were shaking. “Careful,” he whispered.

Memory, Tonks knew from Auror training, from countless court transcripts of cross examinations, was rarely reliable. One had to be very careful not to lead witness in questioning. The mention of shattered glass would compel most to swear to it, even if physical evidence served as a contradiction. Both sides used this as a tactic in any given case to make its way to adjudication. And addicts, she had been told, whatever their stage of recovery, could never be counted upon to be exact. Yaxley had not called Barty as a witness in his own trial for this reason and had been able to block Aunt Cissy from making Barty incriminate himself with muggle medical records and an unbroken chain of evidence supporting.

He was wrong, somewhere. He simply had to be!

Still. It was what Barty believed to be true and he wanted to keep little Neville from inferring any accountability on part of his parents. Tonks would have to ask her mother if Frank had been forced into helping the Order further after Bellatrix had evidently given him some key piece of evidence in exchange for her sister’s safety. She would have to ask if she had cast –

Tonks stopped. Swallowed. Whatever had or had not happened, Aunt Cissy plainly believed this version of events. And Barty knew it, though Narcissa refused to keep his company or even acknowledge him if it could be helped - little wonder, if being around him made her see her beloved sisters at their absolute worst.

What though had Narcissa given him in exchange or consolation for this knowledge, Tonks wondered, if Barty did not know about Harry’s connection to the horcruxes? How had she won his trust without a word? Regulus, she realised, had never told her exactly what had transpired that night in her office, save to say that Sirius had joined them to warn the pair about Remus. Tonks would have to press. Hard work and determination and all that.

Should she be worried about her aunt? Should she be worried for her?

And what did Mum remember having happened? What hells had she inflicted for her forced participation?

Barty through a glance over his shoulder, seeking the dealer who had since left the premises. Regardless of how he was being used and to what present ends, Tonks decided, it was plainly not his fault. She threw her arms around his thin waist, suddenly aware of how close they were standing, that crowding no longer served an excuse for it.

Barty did not return the gesture, but with the hand not holding the bottle of Butterbeer he seemed content to otherwise ignore, he ran his spidery fingers through her pixie cut, causing it to spike up in the back. Wicked, Tonks thought. She might have liked him in different circumstances.

“Hogwarts is lucky to have you,” Tonks murmured, not sure she had been heard through the Celestina Warbeck throwbacks that continued to blast through the club’s speakers.

“And how! Dumbledore wanted to book the London Goblin Philharmonic,” Barty gave self-congratulatorily. Helga have mercy, the man was such a tit!

“I mean ... that someone other than Snape to care about the wellbeing of its students,” Tonks said, trying to return their conversation to something of substance.

“I am always surprised when I hear him accessed in such terms, especially by former students,” Barty managed.

“I suppose you would if you are spending most of your time with Longbottom. Says enough that he evidently feels more comfortable with one of his parents’ alleged assailants than with the school Potions Master.”

“Yeah, well, dead boring subject, innit, Potions?” Barty winked. “Little wonder Snivy’s so bloody excited about taking my post for the duration of the conclave. As though he doesn’t have enough work as is with the sixty or so foreign exchange students whom we are playing host to this year. Shit year for his polyglot husband to have stepped down, really. Wankers, both.”

“I enjoyed it,” Tonks felt the need to defend of Snape’s class. “Brewed frame and bottled glory,” she paraphrased.

“You were also good at it by all accounts,” Barty shrugged, taking a step back. “Neville has some strange, one might say pathological compulsion to place everyone in mortal danger whenever confronted with a cauldron. I can understand Snape’s anger and appreciation whenever Neville sits in his class, but I can’t help but hand it to the kid. Respect,” he grinned, his ruined teeth on full display.

“You like him, don’t you, Longbottom?” Tonks inquired, a little surprised.

“I understand him. We’re from the same kind of home, a shame upon our respectable surnames,” Barty explained with another little twitch. “I don’t mind encouraging his interests and talents. He doesn’t really have friends his own age to teach him how to say, ‘fuck it’ like I had.”

“Harry? Pansy? Luna?” Tonks suggested, determined to keep Draco’s name from his consideration, whatever else.

“Doesn’t need any instruction in that respect,” Barty dismissed. It occurred vaguely to Tonks from her cousin’s constant complaints that Barty might have been speaking of any and all of the students she had named until he continued, “It’s for the best. I am shite as a godfather. Luna looks so much like Pandora that I find it difficult to so much as glance at her during lesson. I ought to call on her more, I know. Get to know her maybe. But ... can you see them? Thestrals?” His eyes continued to scan the room, either in a fruitless search for the peddler of the same poison his father had imprisoned him with for a decade, or simply determined not to again risk her gaze. Tonks could not be sure.

“I’m a copper, Barty. As you never tire of reminding me. I don’t think I was a week into training when I saw my first corpse.”

“With Regulus being alive and all, I thought, I hoped that the rest was all a horrible lie, too,” he said almost absently. “That Dorcas and Evan were just undercover somewhere, off having fun without us, Reg and me, I mean. But I, she wanted me to come. Luna, when she went with Theo Nott’s kid to feed them.

“I saw them, and I knew they were dead. I wept; I think. Luna took my hand and told me to keep my chin up. Evidently, she considers it very sensible not to believe anything unless there is absolutely no proof. I have no idea what the fuck that meant. I muttered that I missed her mum. She said nothing. Just nodded. Just … like that,” he observed of Tonks before she realised that she had again fallen into her training, a physical implication of empty to keep a suspect speaking.

“Sorry,” Barty said awkwardly, taking a step back. “We’ve never exactly gotten on, you and I, but I mean it when I say that I hope you never know what it is like, Dora. That you’re never left with a loss that nothing can compensate. I’m glad to see you, actually,” he shifted. “Otherwise, I might have enjoyed myself so much that I’d have not been able to later sleep from the sheer audacity of it all.”

“Glad to be of service,” Tonks scoffed. Why was he suddenly so hostile? Had they not just been having a moment?

“Narcissa told me that I should see her muggles about getting my teeth fixed. I don’t know why. She’s just a bitch, probably, but all the same. What the fuck do I have to smile about? Your governor murdered the love of my life whilst he was attempting surrender, unarmed and everything, and you are about to increase police funding, ye cunt. The Dark Lord personally did Dorcas in and would have gotten Reg too if he’d rated him more, and for the first time in something like a solid month it seems I can’t prove to you that he’s back –”

Tonks pressed her lips together. How much should she give? How much might Barty be willing to offer in exchange? Taking a deep breath, she decided to risk it. “I know. Is that why you are here then? To help me win on Sunday?”

Barty shook his head. “Nah. I’m here to see if the Weird Sisters might serve as adequate entertainment for a bunch of dumb kids. If I come to the conclave, and that remains an if, know that it will be with the hope of helping to ensure that your lot cannot continue to administer ‘justice’ with impunity. Because sometimes … sometimes we have to show more grace in defeat than our rivals are willing to in their victories, evidently.”

“You’d give Voldemort a fair trial? Knowing that he ordered the murder of two of your best friends?” Tonks frowned, crossing her arms.

“If Dame Cissy was arguing the prosecution’s case,” Barty shrugged. Tonks realised he had just quoted to her something Narcissa had said to him when he had been eleven or twelve.

No! He was wrong! Tonks decided. Wrong about absolutely everything.

Her mother would never have cast an Unforgivable Curse, regardless of the circumstance. And however idealistic Aunt Cissy could prove when it came to law and order, she was not above misusing the former to the advantage of her near and dear, or simply to ensure the latter. Narcissa had settled a dispute between Lucius and the Crown, for fuck’s sake, and she did not even care about Wiltshire or Cokeworth of the rights and privileges held over from medieval feudalism.

By contrast, Narcissa cared very much about Harry and Dudley, taking them from unfit parents after finding out the former had been kept in a broom closet. With her limited powers, she had discovered and destroyed a horcrux. She had spent years keeping Harry safe from suspicion. She supported Draco’s continued courtship of the boy, even with this risk this posed to any hope she might have of re-establishing her dynastic claims. She kept the horcruxes in her office at her own risk. To keep them safe. To keep Harry safe! She knew where Voldemort was – exactly where. She would not put Harry on trial for something he had no control over, and she would not throw her, Tonks, a hollow victory to ensure maximum sentencing at some later juncture. Never!

“That would,” Tonks shook her head, continuing with conviction. “Believe me, that would never happen.”

“Oh, my sweet, innocent child. It might not happen until Dudley can be legally tried as an adult,” he said almost pityingly. “But I can all but promise, she has had this planned since the day they met. I’ve known that girl my whole life. She’s consistent as they come. Never let me down. Rita Skeeter isn’t exaggerating in her articles, however verbose she can prove.”

“Dudley?” Tonks blinked. “Dud-ley?!” Wrong again, fucker.

“I thought it was odd for Severus to keep him from Hogwarts,” Barty answered calmly, “but I think I understand it now. Dudley was able to tell me a great deal about Tom Riddle, things no child would have cause to imagine about a name he should not know. And why else take them both? Harry and his cousin, who by all accounts was well cared for by biological parents who positively doted on him? To judge his progress under Regulus’ tutorage against that of his peers at Britan’s most esteemed magical institution, there can be little question of where the Dark Lord’s magic went. The part of him that we can view as physical, as strictly Dudley, is a gifted goal keeper, but ‘Tom’ seems to find his sport in tormenting Harry – ”

“The are practically brothers! Of course he does! Look at Regulus and Sirius!” Tonks found herself defending, not sure if such was wise.

“Oh, I am,” Barty said. “Dudley had the motive, means and opportunity to put Sirius in St Mungo’s. And how he delighted in his own fury afterwards. It was chilling in someone so young.”

Tonks took a deep breath. Dudley had been livid when Harry had tried to avenge himself against his godfather but thank Cerce he had censored his complaints! She felt her heart breaking for the boys, none of this was Harry’s fault, and Dudley should not be laden with the blame. But Tonks would risk more than she might yet hope to control if she pointed out that Dudley hated magic, that he only kept pace with things that Regulus had taught him far past his level to get it over with so he would have more time to play with an enchanted ball for his pony’s approval. No. she had to know what she might be up against before she could make an execute an escape plan.

“What are you planning to do? What do you think my aunt – ”

“I think she’s been in collusion with Dumbledore to keep the known horcruxes under lock and key until the lad comes of age, to go at him with the full weight of the law in its current state, have the Wizengamot send him to Azkaban and tempt the Dementors to extract a twisted, fractured soul – something I can likewise assure you from the limited time I spent in the place, they won’t be able to resist.

“Then, with the Dark Lord vanquished, Dumbledore can sign an order to remove the guards from their posts as it were, retiring on a win, with Dame Cissy rising to his seat. Sir Corban will doubtlessly pull Dudley’s case through appeals, arguing that the torture to which he was subjected to in situ was a violation of his human rights, the same theatre that lot went through using me as a test run. Everyone wins. Dudley gets mental and bodily autonomy, perhaps at the cost of a magic he’s loath to process, that remains to be seen. Dame Cissy gets the unblemished judiciary from her Year One textbook. And all of the Dark Lord’s living victims – your Aunt Bellatrix included – get tolerable living conditions.”

“That’s plausible.” And she could believe it. Same as she could believe that Yaxley had gotten Barty to make these threats knowing that their faction was bound to lose the election, hoping to stay her hand on budgetary reform. But would Yaxley know about Harry? Would Longbottom? Abbot? Prewett? Was Uncle Lucy really intending to vote in opposition to her appointment? Would he gamble on his own wife’s reputation just to caution her, Tonks, to continue his more moderate course?

Maybe she truly was too young for what she was taking on.

“What the fuck do you get out of it,” Tonks demanded, “giving that your hated father would likewise benefit a reform that would remove Dementors from Azkaban?”

“I get to watch as Alastor’s methods are discredited when a muggle kid suffers the Dementor’s kiss. As everything he believes turns to rot. We were close once, you know … closer than my father and I ever were, and I think … this time, I’ll get to watch his latest darling cast the first curse as that relationship crumbles, as you realise the folly of the hubris that he’s managed to cultivate within you. The fuck do you think I got it from?” he smirked.

“Then why are you telling me this?” Tonks wondered, biting her bottom lip. Barty was right about just enough of it to truly make her wonder.

“My best mate seems to fancy you,” Barty shrugged. “Believe it or not, I want to help you survive the fall out. Even though her own ambitions exist in a separate branch altogether, do you honestly think that Dame Cissy would let a viable threat to her son’s succession emerge from this unscathed? You were not raised in the world you seek to lead. Take heed.”

Chapter Text

The governing legislation totalled two-hundred-forty pages, which Percy Weasley personally considered precisely two-hundred-thirty-nine pages too long to describe a game that lasted ninety minutes and dealt in single digit scoring. Cursing his failure to continue Muggle Studies at N.E.W.T. level and swallowing a content-based complaint, Percy felt his eyes glaze at the encountered the same clause for the seventh time.

“Run downstairs and fetch Remus for me,” Narcissa Malfoy’s prim voice carried through the open door of her windowed-off corner office. Though half-suspecting the order had been addressed to one of the more senior members of staff, Percy looked up, hoping that Hamish and Poppy both had better errands to attend, that he had been given an excuse to skive off the supplemental reading he had been assigned.

“Ma’am?” Percy attempted upon discovering himself the small office’s sole staff member at hand, willing himself not to sound too hopeful.

“Don’t you have Ministerial aspirations?” Narcissa inquired with a raised eyebrow. “Consider, had you been assigned to Antonin’s office as was your wish, realistically you would have spent the majority of your working day running from one department to another, completing the most medial tasks for interns are generally cheaper than House Elves,” she continued sharply. “By way of comparison, I’m merely asking you to take a break from your studies and go downstairs. To go myself would seem a submission, as I am certain you can appreciate.”

Percy rose. “I intended neither complaint nor contradiction, Ma’am.”

Narcissa sighed and with a forced smile took a scroll from her desk and walked across the otherwise open office floor to meet him.

Percy swallowed.

Malfoy and Associates had not belonged to his post-Hogwarts ambitions.

He would not even have applied if he had been accepted as a clerk to public defendant, a post his failure to continue Muggle Studies had made impossible in the present climate. Antonin Dolohov, who had been assigned the task of turning him down, had tipped Percy off to a few firms within the private sector who would be able and willing to front the cost for his further study, speaking with the none-too-subtle implication that he detested the austerity under which his own department laboured far more than he regretted having to reject a former Hogwarts Head Boy out of hand.

Dreading the conversation with his father about having to sit Muggles Studies at night school quite nearly as much as he was the one which he would be damned to have with his mother over being passed over at the Ministry despite his otherwise shining credentials, Percy had neither been interested nor been doing a particularly convincing job of feigning gratitude.

Then he had been told rather dismissively to forget about sending his CV to Malfoy, which Percy interpreted as a slight on his own family name.

Dolohov, mistaking ‘excuse me’ as a question rather than an interjection, explained that Narcissa simply took it for granted that all of her applicants had worn Prefect badges, had played leadership or organisational roles in various student organisations, had achieved at least ten N.E.W.T.s and volunteered in their free time. Played and instrument or sport of something. She had no interest in standard, rehearsed answers to ‘and where do you see yourself in five years?’ preferring to discover if she would be able to set the applicant to work immediately.

Interested parties were thus given two days with a dossier and told to mount a viable defence against otherwise condemning witness testimony and physical evidence. As applications were anonymous at this stage, the fact that he was a Weasley would neither help nor hinder him in consideration. Dolohov, smiling, said that once he, Nott, and Yaxley had put a wager on ‘The Ordeal’ by submitting applications of their own. He had made it to the second round. The other two celebrated attorneys, Percy gleaned, had not.

Percy had heard of this sort of exam previously from his then-girlfriend Penelope after she had failed at the same, only to then be confirmed to the post he had himself been turned down for. He had thus gone for it in spite of his misgivings. And out of a general sense of spite.

A day later he received another assignment rather than an outright answer. He was made to compose a ten minute speech in ancient runes, which he was invited to deliver at the week’s end to test his fluency.

Though Narcissa had been seemingly satisfied with what he had written and subsequently read, the interview that followed had been an unmitigated disaster. Percy had come off as humourless, tactless, and rather pompous in his attempts to please. Narcissa had made as much clear with a vague, ‘You’d be better suited to a complex and redundant bureaucracy than to clients in the public sector.’   

Percy, thinking himself finished with this charade, freely agreed.

When he was then offered the position after being told in as many words that of those who had made it to interview, he was the worst candidate, Percy asked if she owed his father a favour, if her lord husband did. Something.

At this, Narcissa laughed. ‘No, as it happens, we now share a building with local government, by which I mean the mayor and a computer monitor with nothing to plug it into. And, well, you know the sort of well-intentioned liberals who dedicate their lives to public service, charging at windmills they name dragons.’ Percy, as it happened, had no idea what she was on about, but nodded rather than admit the reference had been wasted on him.

‘Evidently, I have won myself that distinction, and the man seeks to destroy me,’ Narcissa had continued, wrinkling her upturned nose as though it had encountered a particularly foul smell. ‘I thought he would eventually surrender against a lack of evidence, but alas. Remus has rebounded his efforts of late and I’ve since grown bored with his games. Someone such as yourself would be well suited to fielding him off for me. That is,’ she had shifted, ‘when you are not otherwise occupied with work-study, the cost of which I’ll of course front. You need a N.E.W.T. in Muggle Studies to apply for an equivalency to allow you into any prelaw programme, something I expect you to complete by December that you might begin university in the coming spring – ’ Narcissa had gone on. She tended to. It was best just to let her.

Now, she was standing before his desk, arms crossed, awaiting contradiction.

“I … I just thought, you wanted Professor Lupin to be kept away,” Percy answered awkwardly, still unable to call his former teacher by his given name. “I thought that was why, at least part of the reason, why I was hired.”

“Percy,” Narcissa smiled, producing a long scroll on which he could see his own letters. “This speech is heartfelt, sincere, and touching.” He squinted. It was what he had written in runes for his application.

“Thank you, Ma’am?” Percy tried, not entirely sure where this was heading. He looked over his left shoulder to where Poppy Parkinson and Hamish Yaxley had their desks, both to break eye contact with his boss and to make sure that the pair were not snuffling laughter at what Poppy dubbed his ‘conversational ineptitude.’

But no. It was a quarter past noon.

Poppy was still in lecture up in Manchester, or had just finished up, and Hamish was probably off to pick her up as he did most days. Percy had interpreted this friendly gesture as having romantic undertones until Poppy had gracelessly explained in the course of idle conversation that the only thing Hamish loved was the excuse to drive the boss’ Range Rover. The Muggle vehicle was so large that it required no enchantments to ride in comfortably, a task to which neither Narcissa nor Lucius was particularly suited.

Hamish had finished his studies last year which made him a junior associate; Poppy still had a year to go but held her seniority over Percy all the more for it.

Narcissa either did not notice the power dynamics of her staff or did not care to herself intrude.

Percy did not know if he appreciated that or not.

It still seemed strange, giving that prior to his interview, Narcissa had wanted him to prove he could cast a shield charm and had then given her two permanent staff members, plus Poppy’s kid sister Pansy and Ron’s friend Hermione who both took instruction in Ancient Runes and Occlumency in the summer months free range to test it. Percy had been able to deflect a sting of hexes from four wands with ease, though such seemed a rather curious requirement for a paralegal position.

Maybe Narcissa had just been trying to unnerve him.

Thankfully, curses were not nearly as frequent as unkind comments, though he still had to preform the charm each morning, and then again after lunch. Hamish claimed that his father said such was important, but that he could not expand. Percy expected it had something to do with Narcissa’s alleged natural legilimency, though he did not trust himself to ask. Maybe someday she would explain without him needing to.

“It is lovely, truly, and as such I cannot possibly deliver it at my best friend’s wedding. You understand, I’m sure,” she said briskly of the speech.

He had understood the task to be a test of his ability to write in a dead language as opposed to simply understand what he was being told to read, which was to say, at the moment, he understood nothing.

He thought the content he had been asked to produce a protection against possible plagiarism. And maybe it had been.

It now also seemed that Narcissa had want to delegate the task of finding something nice to say about the comically serial monogamist she was mates with to a mere clerk. One who barely corresponded with his own ‘friends’ of convenience from school, who doubted that he would ever have the honour of speaking at someone’s nuptials – better suited, as Percy recognised he was, to ‘redundant bureaucracy’.

“I’m flattered both by your appraisal of my work unto itself and this idea you seem to have of my social life,” Percy murmured, half to himself.

“You’ll get there,” Narcissa shrugged. “Hamish likes you, at least, and Poppy would not be half so cutting if she did not think you worth the effort. But right now, as I’ve something of a deadline, you are going to get me Remus. Tell him I’ve work for him – and then see if you can’t find a transcript of the impersonation Rita did of me during the Ministry Press Core Dinner in 1989,” she pouted, acknowledging, perhaps in spite of herself, “It was one of the most devastatingly funny things I’ve ever seen live.

“I also want everything she wrote about Corban while she was at Witch Weekly and he was young enough to get that kind of attention. You can just let it with Herr Burgermeister when you are through, and here, lest any confusion exist, put this on top,” she handed him a Post-it that read ‘To help me return a favour. XOXO Bl.#3’

Percy frowned. The plan was misguided, if, as he was being led to believe, the role he might play in it was of any significance.

Sometimes, it seemed as though his boss just wanted to have the office to herself.

He was not sure if this was such an occasion.

“Percy?” Narcissa invited.

Considering that that morning he had been handed a bit of ‘light reading’ to help build upon his understanding of Muggle pastimes (and half-terrified that he was otherwise going to be asked to be asked to go join in a five-a-side match) Percy decided to try his hand at playing the sorts of games Narcissa so loved to. Not that he considered it a particular forte of his.

“It is not that I doubt that Professor Lupin has it in him to be hilarious if that is what you are looking for, it is only … he is more subtle in his approach than, say, that of a gossip columnist turned political correspondent parodying her favourite regular feature for a group of her peers. I would rather suggest, if that is the tone you want to hit – perhaps Sirius would be better tasked?”

As he posed this, he considered that walking to the tattoo parlour would give him an excuse to pop his head into the pub, see if Halley was working that evening, to see if he might rely on her dry humour to make sense of his textbook and all of the additional reading he had been set for no foreseeable reason. He reflected lustfully on how she looked leaning over her own books during a quiet shift, imagining asking her what she was reading, hoping it was something his own upbringing would enable him to relate to.

“Oh, without a doubt, Sirius would make easy work or it,” Narcissa met him with a wicked grin. “And because Remus is a perfectionist, he’ll be bound to ask his advice. And the two can begin to repair their fractured bond and I can be left well out of it henceforth. You’ll thank me when we’re all in Istanbul midweek.”

“Where? What?” Percy frowned to himself.

“Turkey. For a host of convoluted reasons which I’m sure we’ll laugh at later, not the least of which is Dudley getting to go with the first team to play a game you don’t seem to enjoy,” she remarked with a glace at the manual that had been opened to page seventeen for the past hour. “Pity. But those efforts can be salvaged. You fancy the girl, do you? Well! Nothing makes for better conversational fodder than complaining about work. Or midweek results. Even with Muggles, you’ll see,” she gave encouragingly.

“I’d really wish you would stop doing that,” Percy tried to smile.

Narcissa blinked, as though it surprised her that Percy had not, in fact, waxed poetic over an undergrad’s cleavage in an office setting. He was socially awkward, but that was pushing it. Nothing would come of it, anyway. ‘Blood traitors’ though the Weasley’s famously were, his father still sat on the Twenty-Eight and a standard had to be upheld.

“Oh, me too. Trust,” Narcissa pouted. “Now go on. You need some fresh air. And I need to play my mind games with the mayor. Test myself against a worthy and willing adversary.”

The morning came with its regular reminder of Hogwarts’ absence of Health and Safety standards, a silence of owls flying and fluttering within the Great Hall, dropping post, parcel, and every matter of biological substance Harry did not necessarily want near his breakfast.

Hedwig pecked at him in greeting. Upon removing an envelope from her leg, he fed her a piece of black pudding from a plate newly laden with feathers and faecal droppings before pushing it away in disgust.

He opened a plain white envelope to several Polaroid photographs of Regulus Black wearing what Muggles might refer to as ‘Fancy Dress’, what wizards knew as ‘Dress Robes’, and what Regulus himself likely regarded as ‘ordinary attire’. Well, Harry tried to cheer himself, at least there was one net positive to his own magic having something of an expiry date, deciding that he would prefer to spend his own future unemployment in a soiled, cotton tee-shirt and flannel pyjama bottoms than in black brocade.

Ron nudged him, attempting to offer a piece of toast from the plate he had the better sense to preserve from owl droppings when the post arrived by hiding it beneath the table. Harry considered further supplementing his breakfast against his timetable. Before he could arrive on a decision however, something happened that caused him to lose his appetite completely.

“Oh, how wonderful!” Hermione exclaimed from the seat across the table. “Dudley sorted it! He’ll be here for the Yule Ball!”

“Brilliant,” Ron gave with a self-satisfied snort. “That who you are going with, then?”

Harry felt his heart sink deep into his stomach, causing him to feel slightly nauseous despite a relatively light breakfast. He imagined Dudley and Hermione doing a ballet routine together in the Great Hall, everyone stopping mid-waltz to stare in awe. The two had gone to Twinkle Toes together as little kids, which was the bloody last thing Harry felt he now needed.

On the seventh-floor corridor, across from the loo that was sometimes there and sometimes was not, hung a tapestry depicting trolls in tutus. Harry had compared on of the particularly ugly ones to Dudley, only to have Hermione snobbishly reprimand him that Dudley ‘was quite good, actually.’

Because her praise came seldom, Harry, who had never been to one of Dudley’s obligatory dance recitals with their adoptive parents, imagined cousin preforming with the grace featured on Nutcracker advertisements that took up billboard space at Muggle bus stops around Christmas – the sort of thing that Remus would jokingly mention as having the potential to be a fun family outing, with Severus countering that such would prove a fitting punishment if Harry and Dudley did not both bring their grades up.

Merlin! The Yule Ball was going to be so miserable!

He stole a glance at the Slytherin table but could not spot Draco holding court within the crowd. Harry was dreading their upcoming date, dreading disappointing his de facto boyfriend, dreading embarrassing himself by trying to dance, and dreading this all happening in front of Dudley, who, even if by some act of God did not use the event as an excuse to ridicule, would certainly prove himself a point of compassion, against whom Harry would invariably be found wanting.

As he felt he always was.

When he was not on a broom.

Which he would not be, for the remained of this stupid school year where everyone was having fun but him.

“No,” Hermione answered Ron with what Harry considered was the appropriate amount of disgust at the suggestion of Dudley standing as her date, “not that I see how it is any of your business, Ronald.”

“Not my business? Not my business? You’ve certainly made my dates your business,” Ron exclaimed in mock-indignation.

So, they were doing this again.

Harry was glad he had not really eaten. He looked down the table, hoping to see an empty spot amongst the students in Year Three, ‘his’ year after being held back, thinking maybe Colin would have an artistic opinion on the weird photographs of Regulus trying not to smile, but it was no good. Ginny had half the year plus Lee Jordan and the twins enthralled with one of her impressions. There was no seat to be had, and even Ginny herself had to double up with Luna. Harry doubted he would get much of a positive reception if he asked to sit on anyone’s lap like the little Ravenclaw was. Even Draco would likely complain.

That was it then. He was going to be humiliated at this stupid party and he was going to spend all of his time until then third wheeling it with Ron and Hermione, who were play-acting like they did not desperately want to go together.

“We don’t slut shame in this perish, ‘Mione. Speaking of, did ickle Diddykins write anything about why he sent me so many Polaroids of Regulus or am I just to chalk that up as one of life’s great mysteries?” Harry tried to interject as his two best friends stuck out their tongues at one another, content to continue pretending that they did not desperately want to stick them down one another’s throats. Maybe it was the fact that Harry shared a body and part of his consciousness with the greatest and most terrible wizard to have ever lived, that as such he had gone through puberty once and knew more of less what to expect, but he really wished Ron and Hermione would just grow the fuck up.

“Because it is my business, Ron!” Hermione complained placing a hand to her chest and waving the other about to convey to the dense Ron what words alone might not. “Parvati and Lavander are in a serious row over it. I throw up a bloody shield charm before entering out dorm. When Padma said ‘my sister doesn’t have a date’ she plainly meant for you to set her up with Neville or Dean, not to make a ménage à trois out of a backup plan. Parvati couldn’t give a toss about you, but Lavender is more than smitten and that you’d ask out her best friend –”

“As a friend? Lav can come too if she really wants to,” Ron began to blush, surprised at his popularity as Harry found he was. “And anyway, I asked you first. You’ve only yourself to blame.”

“Someone beat you to it,” Hermione reminded him, sounding rather snippy as she did.

“But who?” Ron again tried his luck.

“What is it to you anyway?”

“It’s a bird, innit?”

“Girl or guy, it would still be a secret,” Hermione snorted.

They kept at it. They were having more fun at this than they were bound to on their respective dates, which came as a small comfort. Harry reached the letter from atop Hermione’s pile, blandly curious to see what Dudley had to say for himself.

Hey Hermione,

Alright, you win. 5 years of telling me how great your closed crime scene of a school is and I’m giving in and giving it a go. Got my Yule Ball ticket this morning, thanks for filling out all the forms for me. I sent back all the permission slips you asked me to sign. Worrying. Why do you need to get into the restricted section anyway? Since it probably has to do with Harry or his slightly more damaged alter ego – tell him when you see him that I talked to Regulus, he’ll lend him a pair of dress robes or a suit, just let me know which ones he likes, and Reg’ll send them back up with BCJR when he comes down to London for the conclave. Hopefully that meeting will be over before the ball. If not, have fun with my dad in DADA. Don’t let him see that thing I sent.

Cheers,

Big D

Ps. Tell Harry to be quick about it, I’m going to Istanbul mid-week and might not otherwise get his owl in time.

Pps. Since we already beat Fenerbahçe at home and have LFC the following weekend I might get to start!!!!!!! Run tell that.

Harry read this several times to himself, never failing to find surprise in that Dudley had managed to spell ‘Fenerbahçe’ correctly, wondering if he had had to copy it from somewhere. The rest of it made his head hurt too much to properly take it.

He rubbed absently at his scar, half-hoping to hear Tom’s high pitch or Parseltongue, but the greatest and most terrible wizard to have ever lived tended to stay out of it when teenage romance was a topic of discussion.

Tom had learned that trying to take control caused him physical anguish when Harry and Draco were kissing or cuddling and tended not to take risks. Much though Harry appreciated the built in privacy the magic of his mother’s sacrifice gave him against the Dark Lord, like everything else this year it felt something of a waste.

Harry wondered if Tom could dance. If he could somehow teach him. He wondered what had become of Bellatrix. If Tom had ever gotten her to use her wand as a weapon against him in some deranged sex game that she had once sworn he would derive no pleasure from. If this had actually happened often enough to give Tom his disconcertingly high voice – Harry remembering how his own had sounded when Dudley had kneed him in the balls once during a fist fight over something too insignificant to now recall.

He looked down the table again at Neville, Luna and Ginny, recalling that the former had said something about Professor Crouch wanting to use the Ministry’s Underground Loo of an entrance as an excuse to buy and bust an eight-ball en route to an important meaning. He wondered if this was a problem common with Ministry officials, if he should bring it up with Rita Skeeter when she came next week after the contestants were drawn in hopes of getting her to go away again. He wondered if the Dark Lord had any sort of vetting process for his followers or if he had staffed his fascist regime with the same air of disregard which his hated foe Dumbledore brought to hiring teachers.

He wondered if it would be worth breaking another horcrux to find out.

Nothing.

Slightly disappointed that Tom was not going to grace him with any great insight, Harry reached for the pile of permission slips Dudley had sent back to Hermione to find these had nothing to do with the upcoming Yule Ball at all.

“You had Dudley forge my dad’s signature on a whole pile of library permission slips?” he asked rather awkwardly, supposing that his cousin’s imitation of ‘S. Snape’ was near enough to the original. Hermione seemed to have a whole notepad’s worth, which, recalling Dudley’s missive, indeed was ‘worrying.’ Harry tensed, wondering if whatever she was planning really did have to do with him and Tom.

Then, before he could properly examine the complex set of feelings that came with sharing the mind and magic of the man who had killed his biological parents, a more immediate sense of dread hit him like a bludger. Harry looked back at the pictures Dudley had sent without wasting any of his time with context, understanding the painful reality they posed.

“Hold up, you broke a rule in order to read more books?” Ron snorted. “I see it now, why we’d never work out romantically.”

“I’m keeping one,” Harry said quickly, tearing a page from the top of the pile.

“Whatever for?” Hermione frowned, retaking her hard-won fake permission slips for supplementary reading as though she imagined them in sudden demand.

“This,” Harry spat, forcing the photographs upon his two best friends. “These are my options for the Yule Ball. Regulus somehow has ‘fancy-do’ confused with ‘fancy-dress.’ I’m going with the hottest guy in your year, and I’m going to look like a nerdy vampire in an eighties b-movie, standing in the shadows and all because Merlin knows I’m not going to make even more of a tit of myself by dancing.”

“I feel so much better about my dress robes with that serving as a comparison,” Ron smirked.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause nothing gets a girl wet like a regency era period drama.”

“Hey, all things being equal, I’ve seen no evidence to contradict that statement,” Ron countered after considering what Hermione had said for a moment.

“Actually, that is true,” Hermione frowned to herself. “I need to work on my clapbacks. Sorry Harry,” she paused. “Why … why don’t you just ask Draco to lend you –”

“Money? Because nothing he owns is going to fit me,” Harry grumbled.

“He was twelve once,” Hermione said in a small voice. Harry glared at her. He was small for his age, sure, but he did not look like a damn Second Year, and people probably would not much notice at all if his stupid cousin was not twice his size. He debated supplementing his diet with Swelling Serum like Crabbe in Slytherin did, like he sometimes snuck into one of Dudley’s low fat snacks to fuck with his diet, but as he was at school, that would mean applying himself in Potions, and that was clearly out of the question.

With Quidditch off, the only thing keeping Harry from complete anonymity was his ability to waste time in Dad’s class when someone needed an extra fifteen minutes to scribble out the conclusion of an essay they had been set. He was not smart like Hermione or funny like Ron. He was not even in their year – not any more, and that, more likely, was the crux of Hermione’s slight.

Twelve! Is that what they thought of him? How they spoke of him behind his back? He searched his friends’ faces for any signs of his suspicions. Finding none, he tried to explain his predicament.

“Hermione can’t you understand? Much as I don’t want to go to this dance, I want my boyfriend to have a good time, not feel like he’s bloody babysitting. I can’t dance, it is not like I’m given the chance to properly learn, so I want to at least look good, but my dads were all like ‘we’re not spending six-hundred quid on something you are only going to wear once’” Harry tried to imitate their individual voices at once. He wound up affecting something closer to Karkaroff’s nondescript Slavic accent, which he spontaneously decided to roll with. “And ‘Dudley’s suits are technically the property of the club’ and ‘you and Regulus are about the same size, and I suppose everything he owns is … haute couture.’”

“Looks like,” Ron agreed, unhelpfully.

“I tried arguing that I helped Dad to get the end of term bonus which he could maybe spend on me, and he just took ten points from Gryffindor in agreement. It was summer! How does that even work?!” Harry demanded.

“Might have just been an automatic response amounting to nothing,” Ron shrugged. “Mum ends a lot of arguments telling me to do some chore she knows I’ve just done.”

“Then I asked if they would at least get me contacts, but I lost the ones I had playing Quidditch at the Burrow with you guys and so now it’s ‘not a good investment’ – and, I mean. As long as you have these, I might put one to use.”

Dudley used magic to help with his reading, and to avoid career ending injury before making his first team debut. He thought it good for little else, but then he could afford to hold those opinions, being generally good at the bits he considered a complete. Harry’s spellcasting was unstable. His magic had an expiration date which some faceless Ministry official who probably bought drugs in some underground station and did a line off a filthy public toilet every morning before flushing themselves off to the office would randomly be assigned to set. Before that though – should he, Harry, not also try to get the most he could from the powers bestowed upon him by the greatest wizard of the century the way his cousin was from whosever magic he had accidently stolen?

“How?” Ron wondered.

“To fix my eyes?” Harry answered, wondering how his friends were failing to follow.

“Harry, no!” Hermione exclaimed, rising in her seat. “Those spells are incredibly dangerous and relatively unstable. Why do you think even Dumbledore wears glasses? No. I won’t hear of it. Optometry, like dentistry I suppose, is something better left in the learned hands of muggles. They have lasers, they can –”

“I mean, how hard would it be to get a laser beam off the tip of my wand?” Harry smiled, his imagination again beginning to run away with him.

“Be pretty dope at parties,” Ron acknowledged. Rightly. “C’mon Mione, what are you after that you don’t trust the real Professor Snape to sign off on? Can’t be as cool as lasers.”

“I’ve heard that doesn’t happen if you install Linux on a Mac,” Arthur Wesley posed.

“I’m not sure I follow,” Lucius Malfoy gave wearily. The morning found him in Weasley’s cramped, windowless office, a room he knew from decades of departmental suspicion against his person, a room he despised, not affording any conscious thought to the fact that this morning he had come on his own accord.

The conclave was not set to start until ten, and Lucius, arriving early, found he had no desire for clipped conversation with his peers.

By contrast, he never seemed to run out of conversational topics with his ideological opposite, whom he found hiding in his office after an extended search, Weasley likewise loath to mingle with the twenty-six other representatives to their shared body.

“It is clever bit of open-source software that I’ve read doesn’t crash or cause the hosting device – here a Macintosh computer – to malfunction when in the presence of low-grade magic,” Weasley explained, shifting when he realised Lucius still could not follow. “I’ve not the foggiest idea of how the enchantment works, as such has never crossed my desk, as I suppose the statement in itself would negate the possibility of happening.”

Lucius nodded, his gaze shifting to the stack of plastic containers containing enough snacks to sustain a professional standing army though the first stages of invasion. Another muggle contraption, Lucius recognised with mild resentment. But he found he was of no more mind to mock than he was to exchange forced pleasantries with empty pretence.

“Do you ever wonder if we belong to the last generation of magic that matters?” he posed, still positioned as though he were addressing the Tupperware. “That technological advances in which we by our nature cannot take part will soon overtake our capabilities?”

“Would it be a bad thing for muggles to enjoy the same comforts, to increase our own?” Weasley countered.

“It would for the fact that they would only be enjoying them. It is a consumer experience rather than a creative, intellectual one. They are commoditising their capabilities in precisely the way we’ve been forbidden to. I don’t know that their lives are improved for it,” Lucius mused.

“I’m going to change yours,” Weasley laughed. “See this?” he gestured toward yet another contraption given pride of place atop a broken filing cabinet. Lucius wondered vaguely if Weasley had any intent of arguing for his own department’s budget at the next regular session of the Twenty-Eight. Giving the possibility information technology potentially opened for spreading knowledge of magic to Muggles, Lucius did not know if it was within his interest to put forth an argument on behalf of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department which his cherished rival headed. Even so, his House Elf kept better quarters than those afforded to poor Arthur Weasley, and it pained Lucius to sit with a recognised peer in such a place.

Lucius took a dimmer outlook on the possibilities computing posed, someone, either innocently or with mercantile intent, was bound to post something on a forum outside the scope of muggle policing that fell in conflict of the International Statute of Secrecy, which Lucius had long sought to see abolished. He knew enough of the games Narcissa and Kingsley liked to play in court that evidence could easily be dismissed as impermissible if it did not strictly fall into the Wizengamot’s dominion and had likewise been rejected in the Crown Courts. If he could just play this correctly, if he could just –

He looked at the clock. An hour still separated them from Judgement Day, from Lucius relinquishing his seat to a new chairman, to newsprint around the household budget his successor’s first act would be to reject or approve, framed as an ideological narrative of good and evil that entirely missed the point.

“It is a machine to brew coffee,” Weasley said of the device. “I picked it up on a raid – picked it out, rather – it was not enchanted until I brought it down here. Tagged it, bagged it and somehow never got around to filling out the corresponding paperwork.”

“That is a gross misuse of power,” Lucius found himself smiling. He suspected that Weasley was having him on, but that he was doing so to put him at ease. “I’ve never respected you more. Have at it then.”

Weasley pointed his wand at the coffee maker, causing it to grumble as a red light flicked on. “You want one?”

“Haven’t I just said?” Lucius squinted.

“The scotch eggs you keep eyeing,” Weasley clarified. “The issue, I imagine, that you have with my and Molly owning Tupperware is that I’ve not yet invited you to eat.”

The issue that Lucius had with Molly Weasley packing her husband’s lunch in hard plastic manufactured for Muggle ease at environmental and human costs no one had bothered to calculate was slightly more involved than whatever went into placing a hard-boiled egg in fried sausage – or perhaps it was not. Lucius had no idea how a House Elf or Hausfrau might accomplish such a culinary feat. Regardless. The fact that the containers had been purchased rather than confiscated presented a conundrum. Magic, and the ability to practice it, would cease to matter in a generation if something did not occur allowing muggles and mages to keep each other in check. Lucius did not want a war between dark wizards at the cost of muggle casualties, he wanted experts within their community to be consulted on ethics and environmental issues the muggles and their disposable culture posed.

But there would be time enough to discuss politics and policy behind closed doors.

“They are for the conclave, you said. I suppose you expect it to take a week at least. Molly realises, that we can order in, does she not?” Lucius could not help but to taunt, fearful as he otherwise was that his decedents would wind up in offices not unlike Weasley’s, contributing to an economy plagued by inflation and the petty grievances of muggles who mistook their own passive roles in increasing social inequalities – content to blame their shortcomings on people like him rather than to correct for them. Weasley was exactly that sort. Or would be if he were paid in pounds rather than galleons. “Are those meant to share or dose she suppose that no one would front the cost for takeaway?”

“Offering would be seen as bribery on both sides,” Arthur shrugged, opening the airlock with a tap on his wand against it. The room filled with the various intoxicating aromas of a bustling working-class kitchen, so much so that for the briefest of moments, Lucius could almost feel Molly batting his hand away.

He paused in his reach. “And am I to be bribed?”

“Milk? Sugar?” Weasley smiled, pouring the machine-made coffee into a faded Chudley Canons mug, as though he meant to make the beverage even less appealing.

“Both,” Lucius answered blandly.

Weasley handed it to him before pouring his own (in a mug proclaiming him ‘World’s Best Dad’), watching as Lucius took as hesitant sip. “Better than your tea leaves, is it not?”

Lucius considered this statement on its merits. “Giving that this came from a piece of muggle wrought machinery, I have the same sense of early morning existential dread that typically accompanies a reading. But it is lazy and less precise. In terms of taste though, I’ll hand it to you Atty, this is brilliant.”

Weasley lifted his own mug in a silent toast, letting the quiet settle into a disconcerting sense that they two might have unknowingly and against their own self-interest struck on something close to friendship in the last half-decade of intrigue and debate.

“How do you predict this will play out?” Weasley – Arthur? – asked when Lucius at last accepted the invitation of homemade comfort food.

“One hardly needs a N.E.W.T. in Divination,” Lucius frowned in consideration. “If Barty shows up there will be no true contest, for those who disagree with Dora’s thin blue line approach to crime and punishment will find cause to stand behind it. If he abstains, we will have a necessary debate – which would be to my niece’s benefit. Otherwise, she’ll find herself engaged with the same issue for the whole of her term.”

“So, you are certain she will win? With or without Crouch’s input?”

It took Lucius Malfoy a moment to compose his answer.

“I am afraid I never taught her how to lose,” he admitted of Dora, “that she doesn’t yet have the life experience to negotiate, that somehow despite my best efforts, I’ve set her up to fail. I want her to stand, yes. But I’d rather that she trip than fall.”

Rita Skeeter laid comfortably in a scented bath of swirling colours with a glass of Elfish Red and a bit of light reading before her, wearing a pore cleansing mask as she subjected her colour-damaged hair to deep conditioning. In an hour, she would have a pizza delivered in time for take off, having planned to spend the reason of her evening off listening to Harpies v Tornados on the Wireless, with Gwenog Jones’ reliably deranged post-match comments to follow.

It was a perfect evening off.

Or rather might have been, had she never given her fiancé a key to her London flat.

“Cost nearly two Galleons, this,” Rita interrupted Corban’s redacted tirade. He could not legally disclose what was discussed in a closed chamber. Had anything that he hinted at had the echoes of intrigue, she might have pursued and persuaded, but as it stood Nymphadora Tonks, speaker for House Black, had risen to the position of Chairwoman within the Twenty-Eight.

Rita had written the 800-word article she was contractually obligated to weeks ago for tomorrow’s edition. Half-Blooded Half-Breed Appointed Chairman in History-Making Decision, the headline would read, much to Rita’s chagrin. She preferred the one she had submitted: Highly Incestuous Oligarchy Appoints Yet Another Black in Hopes of Concealing Conservative Agenda from Discerning Public – but Rita had known her editor would reject it out of hand.

Regardless, Rita had played her part in this particular piece of community theatre. Corban had evidently played his, and she did not especially think the show was worthy of encore or acclaim.

“The bottle?” Corban asked, frowning. He reached for her floating wine glass to sample something he evidently mistook as coming from a corner store rather than a corporate partner.

“The bath,” Rita sneered. “Oh, sure, do help yourself,” she said, watching the lover she for the moment loathed take a sip.

“You’re beautiful,” Corban said quickly, handing the wine glass back to her. Rita, whose face was covered in mud marketing itself as coming from the Dead Sea (but which likely came from Cornwall), recognised this compliment as the sort of empty statement men offered when they first realised they had made a mistake. Rita gave a slight nod, hoping he would find a means of excusing himself without her starting a fight she did not otherwise want to have.

When he failed to move, she debated offering the sort of sorry, simpering contradiction that men on the whole seemed to think was meant in earnest: ‘No I’m not! I’m fat!’ knowing that Corban would not have the patience for such statements.

Before Rita could entirely decide if blessed solitude was truly worth the deceptive self-deprecation, Corban changed tactic. “What are you reading?” he asked of the paperback levitating before her.

“Well, it is the latest in a series set in the aftermath of the Conquest where a Norman Knight and a Bretton lawyer go about the country with two clerics trying to sort out discrepancies in the census and always seem to become embroiled in a murder inquiry seeped in local politics,” Rita answered flatly, not able to say much about the story unto itself as she had only gotten ten pages in when her intended had shown up, intent on reliving his woes.

“And that is how you wound rather spend your evening?”

“As it happens I didn’t expect your thing to let out so soon. And don’t judge! It is just about the only thing I can read without feeling like a critic or a copy editor,” Rita snorted.

“I thought you said the election was a forgone conclusion. I would have expected you to have been outside waiting to see yourself proven correct.”

“And I would have expected you to commiserate with Theo and Augusta if you are so put out,” ‘people positioned to care’, she meant.

“They left the chamber immediately,” Corban answered. “I didn’t fancy a trip back to Oxford so soon.”

“Antonin?” Rita suggested.

“In court. Besides, he is not involved in this, not yet.”

“Narcissa?” Rita heard the subtle pleading in her own voice.

“Istanbul,” Corban answered flatly.

“Gone abroad to escape the circus, has she?”

“Not as much as she yet realises. No, she’s off with Lupin, Black, and that Weasley she’s taken on to watch Dudley play some game that muggles play. Rita,” he came to it, “I need your advice on that front.”

“Advice or professional assistance?” Rita tried to clarify before said question came.

“I am not sure,” Corban answered, unhelpfully. “I had an interesting conversation with Dora prior to proceedings.”

Rita had reasons to doubt this on its premise. “About football?” she sneered.

“About Barty Crouch Jr. He’s evidently under the impression that Cissy and I are trying to force a motion to remove Dementors from the criminal justice system.”

“And?” Rita shrugged. “I figured that one out, too. The boy is not likewise trying to get into your sheets to confirm his suspicions, is he?” she smiled for the first time since her home spa session had been subject to interruption.

“He thinks Dudley is the Dark Lord’s host. Rather than Harry,” Corban explained. “Is Barty giving Voldemort too much credit, or have we underestimated him? Fallen for his ruse?”

“Okay,” Rita said to herself, thinking the suspicion worth looking into even if it should amount to nothing. “That is worth getting out of my two Galleon bath for.”

Corban raised his hand to his temples. “You want me to buy you another bath bomb?” he sighed. “Just say so.”

Rita shook her head. “I want you to pour me another glass of wine and stoke the fire. I want to be prepared before posing the question to Barty himself at Hogwarts next week.”

Harry Potter might have known that the wizarding world had a new lord speaker and a coalition set on his demise if he had bothered with The Daily Prophet’s cover story, but that morning his attention was fixed on the page sixteen ‘Sport’ headline, same everyone else.

“That is your brother?” Dean Thomas, whom Harry remembered having last spoken to three years ago shoved his way between the Creevy brothers to ask, his eyes filled with wonder.

“Cousin,” Harry corrected, seething.

“Yeah but – ”

At the long table at the front of the Great Hall, otherwise set so that Hogwarts teachers and staff would not be forced into conversing with their peers, Severus Snape looked to be basking in Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick’s heartfelt congratulations, whilst Hagrid pat at his bony, hunched shoulders whilst wiping away a tear of pride. “You would think Dudley had just been born and they were seeing the first photos of him with this sort of reception,” Harry frowned, resenting his cousins’ success.

“They could just as easily be talking about Tonks,” Ginny snorted, looking to the Slytherin table.

Harry turned in his seat to glimpse Draco Malfoy putting on regal airs the way he was wont when he had reason to hope the esteem of some familial connection might reflect on him. Harry supposed one was entitled to do so when their cousins did not completely suck. “What’s up with Tonks?” Harry inquired blandly, not hearing the answer and no longer intent on one as he watched Draco take the paper Hermione and Pansy had been hiding behind, showing something to Bulgaria Seeker and Durmstrang exchange student Viktor Krum before pointing him, Harry, out in the crowd, practically confirming the content. Krum gave an awkward wave. Harry did not return it.

“Harry, what the hell?” Ginny demanded as he grabbed his rucksack gracelessly from beneath the table and rose without a word. He felt his scar throbbing with his own anger and envy, and anticipating his timetable, decided to visit Madame Pomfrey about the old injury. Most likely, she would dismiss it as a sinus infection and send him to bed with a dosage of Pepper Up, which was just as well.

He was not looking for attention or acclaim, he told himself. He would just rather spend the day having a lie in than listening to Dad sneak in sly references to Dudley’s appearance in goal in both Potions and DADA, having Hagrid give him a bear-hug in front of everyone in Care of Magical Creatures, gushing over how fast he and Dudley were growing up while Ginny, Luna, and fifteen other kids a year younger and at least two inches taller than him sniggered. Harry figured could probably do with Divination though, reasoning that Trelawney might predict Dudley’s death for once – or tell the class that Manchester United would suffer a humiliating defeat to Rapid Wein in two weeks. Yeah. He would bother with lessons after lunch.

Harry stopped short before turning down another corridor on his way to the hospital wing, wanting to risk an encounter with Filch if it could at all be avoided, especially as he was not, strictly speaking, sick.

Well. Not physically, at any rate.

As Dudley had written to Hermione last Friday in fewer words, Sir Alex had reason to rest his starting line up in a cup match of no particular importance – his squad having already qualified for the next stage of the tournament. As such, he had brought Dudley along, affording him such a rancorous debut that both the Guardian and Mail’s write ups had been reprinted in the Prophet.

Dudley had made a save that by Harry’s estimation, would not have been particularly challenging for anyone regularly playing that position at any level.

The home fans revolted, pelting Dudley with whatever they had at hand – including a bottle of Raki, which Dudley caught, took a swig of, and choked on as he swallowed. He hurled the rest at the goal post by his water bottle to the begrudging applause of the otherwise put-out canary supporters, learning via loudspeaker that they had likely just offered the fourteen-year-old stand-in his first shot.

For this offence Dudley was carded, the Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium was fined, and some marketing executive at a majority Muslim country’s largest liqueur manufacturer got an earful from Percy Weasley when he had the nerve to enquire after an official sponsorship. The reprinted pictures did not move so Harry was not certain, but he imagined Percy had sounded rather like his mother in talking to the man, judging on Sirius’ suspended laughter, Moony’s stunned silence and Narcissa’s obvious pride.

That alone, Harry supposed, would have been headline worthy.

But half a minute after Dudley had picked up his first professional booking, he made another, more impressive save. Rather than passing the ball back to a defender, Dudley booted it into the opposition goal from within his own box, leaving the field after eighteen minutes of the twenty he was legally allowed to play under UEFA age restrictions to a standing ovation.

If it were not for the Quidditch season being cancelled, Harry might have been happy for him.

Instead, his scar burned with envy and ill-intent.

Harry found himself yearning for Tom’s company, but as was the case with sexual discovery, sport of any kind tended to keep the Dark Lord at bay. He had probably been the kind of kid who never got picked in gym. Probably why he had decided on becoming an evil warlock rather than a functional member of wizarding society. At present, Harry could understand the appeal.

“Oi,” Professor Crouch said, bumping into him as he turned the corner. “A’ight Harry?”

“Yeah, fine,” Harry stammered in surprise, shifting to save his relatively weak ruse. “No. No, my head hurts. I’ve to see Madam Pomfrey.”

Professor Crouch leaned over, taking a more considered look at his scar than Harry reasonably expected from the matron. It was not the first time he had used a mark left by infant trauma to skive off lessons.

“It looks inflamed,” Crouch commented.

“Yeah I um … my cousin,” Harry muttered, realising, perhaps too late that if Professor Crouch was here, he would likely be teaching the class Harry had every intention of skipping second block, wanting to avoid Hagrid in third. It was no good letting him know that the reason he was cutting class was to avoid the general consensus that Dudley was cooler than him by way of confirming it, seeking refuge behind his bed curtains for the rest of the morning.

“Your cousin,” Crouch repeated, unconsciously touching his left arm.

Several things occurred to Harry at once. Crouch looked, as Neville had claimed, like he had gone on a weekend bender. He was one of the less stable members of the teaching staff, which would be recommendation enough all on its own. Much unlike his closest contenders in that regard, however, Professor Crouch, who invited student to call him by his given name and addressed them in kind, seemed to genuinely care about putting outcasts at ease. He wanted students to like him. That he also wanted to demonstrate the effects of the Imperious Curse on them was a separate matter, probably. Harry would not know. His year was doing Boggarts.

Harry had left the Great Hall wishing that just once he could get just half of the attention and admiration Dudley won for himself by virtue of acting like any other Brit while abroad, drinking beyond his limit, provoking locals, picking up citations – Dudley had just happened to be standing between two significant aluminium posts whilst being a bog-standard arse. And he had probably used a silent Accio to save the two shots on target that had come down his end! Wanker!

If Harry could not compete on a broomstick, surely there had to be some other means. His magic was most reliable in high-stress situations, and if he was going to lose it eventually, should he not use it while he still could?

“Professor Crouch,” Harry blurted out before he could stop himself. “Barty. Can you put my name in the Goblet of Fire?”

Crouch blinked, considering. “Right. Neville implied you had a thing about getting DADA teachers the sack,” he dismissed.

“Is that a ‘no’?” Harry tried.

“It is certainly a ‘why’?” Crouch answered. Godric be damned. Maybe the bloke was coming down off the cigarettes and coffee they gave out at NA meetings instead of the eight-ball Harry had kind of been counting on.

“It is just … my cousin,” he stammered, caught off guard.

“Dudley told you to ask me to put your name in contention for the Tri-Wizard tournament?” Crouch repeated slowly, plainly concerned.

“Sure?” Harry answered, not knowing what else to say.

“Get yourself to the Hospital Wing, Harry,” Crouch said. “I need a word with your father and then I’ll be in to talk to you.”

“Forget I asked!” Harry pleaded, realising how dumb his idea had been. “Please don’t tell my dad I – ”

“I am just going to ask him to cover my classes another day,” Crouch assured him. “Twenty minutes.”

Chapter Text

There were certain amenities that came with working retail, amenities that allowed for forced smiles and honeyed tones while standing in the hangman’s noose that was regular contact with the general public.

Regulus Black referred to his route to work as ‘the pub crawl’, for to get to Borgin and Burkes, one needed to walk through The Leaky Cauldron where the occasional morning gin and tonic seemed basic manners, an apology for the proprietor’s inconvenience rather than a numbing of adult expectations. He could drop his daughter off at her Diagon Alley daycare where she would become someone else’s burden after a sugary breakfast. (Winky having introduced ‘Lucky Charms’ to Grimmauld’s kitchen in her brief stint of employ before being ceased along with all of Barty’s other assets to cover legal and court fees.) He could counteract his own sleepless night at Fortesque’s who had a purely decorative expresso machine for the seeming purpose of concealing that their ‘frappé’ was nothing more than a crushed ice, half-melted vanilla cream, and brown-sugar syrup concoction that had nothing to do with the coffee or caffeine demanded of a post-capitalist economy.

The musty stench of age and neglect the permeated the show and storeroom was enough to cover that of the Gauloises which Regulus kept in his desk to explain the semi-regular absences he allowed for – not that his bosses ever asked on the rare occasions they were around. Not that Dora even gave a damn if he was burning his lungs at regular intervals in response to basic frustrations. Likely everyone to have ever stood behind a till spent half their time and half their minimum wage income seeking an early death, with the notable exception of Tom Riddle, who had suffered as a salesclerk in search of immortality, and Regulus himself, who was plotting with a local banker to undue these efforts under the cover of smoke.

None of these small luxuries, however, were present or even apparent in the building’s small break room where Regulus Black spent the majority of his time.

At least, not usually.

Today, with Mr Borgin undergoing a regular check-up at St Mungo’s and Mr Burke attempting to separate a pensioner yet closer to death from certain artefacts of forgotten glory, Regulus had the amusement of watching one of his long-time lodgers testing the efficacy of Basilisk venom against the worn second-hand furniture which the clerk imagined had been precured on a curb at no cost to his employers.   

“Astounding,” Bill Weasley remarked when his third attempt at dismembering a Swedish flatpack by projecting the poison through a plastic water pistol resulted in a slightly damped stool, no damage past that which it had acquired after years of use. “Do you think it has gone off?” he asked with a hint of worry.

The Weasleys possessed a market controlling share of Basilisk Venom on account of three of Bill’s younger brothers having joined Dora in her idiot quest to kill Slytherin’s Monster prior to its heir attending Hogwarts for a second stint of sorts.

More precisely, the Weasleys possessed a market controlling share on account of Lucius Malfoy assuming (for once, correctly) that everyone had their price and that the cost of keeping his clear favourite out of the criminal justice system was signing over her rights to this impressive find to the mother of the boys whose lives Dora had endangered in precuring it.

The proceeds had thus far paid for the land the family had leased for decades. They were currently supporting Charlie’s study abroad and would presumably pay Percy’s tuition, and for whatever working-class dreams the younger children might one day pursue.  

Valuable though the substance inarguably was, the market for it was limited and heavily regulated, resulting in a structured settlement that helped ease the family’s financial hardships, but not in such a way that could be construed as life changing.

Still, they would likely want for the funds they had become reliant upon should the resource be lost to their projected annual income.

Regulus, in the process of considering if Lucius had known this when he struck the deal, if Molly’s own post-signature calculations had led to the resentment her brothers bore against Tonks in the Twenty-Eight or if the original injury was enough to suffice, had missed the question Bill posed for the plea it was.

He asked again. “Do you think it has gone off?”

“What?” Regulus blinked. “No. No, its properties are simply ineffective on the mundane,” he explained, trying to sound assuring. Regulus scanned the items that had yet to make their way to the sales floor for something that would not be missed. “Think you can hit that Snitch?” he indicated to a bobble resting limply on the top shelf of what Kreacher had informed him with a sneer was a ‘Billy’ bookcase. “Its from the quarter final from the World Cup before this last one, when the USA went out to Ghana after they had beat us in the knockouts. We couldn’t even get the thirty quid we were asking with the tournament on, so I doubt my bosses will notice if it disappears. Go on,” he encouraged.

Bill closed his right eye as he took aim. The trajectory of the blast fell about a foot short of its intended target.

“Maybe not from there,” Regulus adjusted. Bill, swallowing a snort of laughter at his own folly stood, approached the shelving, and shot the Snitch at point blank range to watch it dissolve in seconds.

“Is this what you do with your time? Pseudo-science experiments?”

“Have to run down the clock somehow,” Regulus shrugged. Bill, who had a far more respectable career at Gringotts Wizarding Bank had something called ‘overtime’ and Goblin employers who were keen to pay it in kind rather than in cash, hence the time Bill spent in suspicious backrooms with unsavoury characters such as Regulus himself.

For months, the two had been plotting the heist that would take place the following morning, unbeknownst to those who would soon be tasked with its execution.

They meant to rob Gringotts without actually removing a single item from the premises.

Between them laid open a copy of a ledger detailing the contents of Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault which Regulus had painstakingly written out over Christmas at the Manor, Lucius having financial power of attorney over his imprisoned sister-in-law’s assets, which was how oligarchs who otherwise hated each other said ‘real recognising real.’ Apparently.

The way such a colloquialism translated to the DMLE was in the form of a standard search warrant, which Bill, after a visit to Cokeworth to check in on his little brother had gotten Poppy Parkinson to lift pre-signed, stamped and undated warrant out of Kingsley Shacklebolt’s desk in the Auror Office when she went to return evidence Narcissa had been asked to translate in a case she otherwise had nothing to do with that same afternoon. The cheeky smile and all of its unspoken and unrealised promises Bill had had to pay in advance seemed a small price for Dora’s continued ignorance to the plan. They both agreed on that.

The rest of the setup, so far, had been relatively simple, involving seemingly low-stake interactions that seemed so common as to signify nothing.

Dora’s friend Sana Bashir owned the Falmouth Falcons, or rather managed the mid-tier club as a representative of her mogul father’s investment portfolio. Arthur Weasley had written the legislation to keep Bashir’s flying carpets out of British skies, and Lucius Malfoy was a major shareholder in the attempt to expand the market to the Home Nations. Bill had surprised his parents with World Cup tickets he had purchased off a work connection. Regulus had asked Sana over a small plates double-date with Dora and Sana’s suitor de jour (whose name failed recollection, common as they came) if she planned to invite her father to the cup, an idea that had not occurred to her, but which Dora had innocently championed until owls were sent.

Predictably, prior to the final, Arthur Weasley and Ali Bashir had thus crossed paths and given each other a very public telling off, with Arthur continuing the argument with Lucius in the VIP Box in which Bill’s influence in the financial sector had him placed – presumably whilst the two men’s long-suffering wives begged them to be silent and bear witness to blood sport and sponsorship-related minority oppression to no great success.

It would therefore come at no particular surprise that, weeks later, Arthur would seek to raid an asset Lucius held guardianship over expressly to obtain a carpet listed on the lifted ledger. The real goal was a golden cup of the sipping as opposed to sporting sort, which Regulus believed to have passed through Borgin’s during Riddle’s employment, have been made into a horcrux and hidden in the impenetrable vault of a witch with the sort of assets a developing nation state might envy.

Arthur would not be able to secure the item as evidence without questions being asked, as it had nothing to do with his drawn-out dispute with a political rival around personal transportation.

There were security measures to prevent anything being taken without being tagged, which Bill, himself a former tomb raider of repute, had determined were beyond his skill, and certainly, that of his father.

Therefore, once enlightened to the plan and his part in it, Arthur Weasley would be tasked to destroy a horcrux on premises, in the open, without warranting anyone’s notice.

It would have been impossible, but the Weasleys had Basilisk Venom, and Bill had contrived a way of sneaking enough around Gringotts without detection. In fact, he reported having done so for the better part of the past week without once having to answer to Building Security or Human Resources.

“Anyway, you were the one to come up with concealing the venom in an American wand … or a colourful Chinese approximation of one manufactured for child’s play,” Regulus reminded him, joining him before the shattered remnants of a short-lived American Dream of bringing the Quidditch Cup to the Land of the Free. “Delphi found it on my desk, picked it up and wanted to play with it – ”

“Fuck,” Bill swallowed, stepping back, and presenting Regulus with the acid pink water pistol, guilty at the appeal he now recognised it holding for a toddler whose only real playmate was a sodding old House Elf who spent half his time throwing doubt on her parentage. “Reg, mate, I wasn’t thinking –”

“No, no nothing happened,” Regulus assured him, wondering if he had sounded unduly accusatory. Of all the illicit items Grimmauld Place housed, a self-made weapon born out of something bought out of the corner kiosk in a pack of three for ninety-nine pence was low on the eternal list of things they would have done better to have child proofed. “Nothing save the standard ‘but why?’ and ‘because I said so’ and ‘but why-eeee?’” he mimicked, “culminating in her wondering that the poison did not corrode its container. It was a good question, so I tested it on a couple of things in the house and likewise brought mine to work afterwards, determining that in its pure state, Basilisk venom is only corrosive on biological substances, or items otherwise bestowed with magic. Works great on stains, at least, on artificial fabrics. Cleaned the sink with it, too.”

“This is my trust fund, you realise. That and the single weapon we have against He Who Must Not Be Named. Not like we can easily sneak Lucius’ golf clubs into Gringotts giving Goblin perceptions of ownership,” Bill shook his head.

“You know how we have that weird mirror in the water closet?” Regulus posed. “After I’d shot up a few dark objects and decent fakes for testing purposes – ”

Bill blinked. “Wait sorry, Borgin stocks replicas? You jest.”

“For display purposes only. Well. That and as a cover for other sorts of illicit ‘we did not sell a cursed necklace for five sickles, it was a costume copy like those on display Guv’na, I swear!’” Regulus imitated, poorly, giving that neither of his employers had a north London accent. “FIU will have their work cut out for them if ever they elect to follow up on my leads. Dora is not interested,” he shrugged, “but it is also possible she is not listening.”

He had meant it as a joke, but Bill’s face twisted in a telling discomfort.

“Anyway,” Regulus continued hastily. “I wondered if our mirror might be magic, giving its absence of sharp detail, but turns out it is just cheap like everything else in the Employees Only area. I watched the venom drip down my seemingly unmarred face onto the sink where it promptly did what standard household cleaners and spells have long failed to and vanished the calk. Kreacher scrubbed up the rest. If we’ve any left after the heist we might test how much we can delude it, and if it is safe for everyday use, you can market it to hedge witches and double your return on investment.”

“Retail is truly rotting your mind,” Bill frowned, still stuck on an offhand comment he had interpreted as a critique on his best friend – one that he could neither condone nor deny.

“Do you want to see? The faucet is shining.” The toilette was still gross but giving that everyone who worked at this establishment frequented Fortesque’s for their Starbucks approximating ‘frappé’, Regulus was writing that one off as a lost cause, something for the next generation of Dark Wizards or licenced plumbers to contend.

“I mean … it is a gig mirror, a plastic thing put up in places where things are expected to get rowdy. It is not bloody Erised, lad.”

Regulus bit at the inside of his lip. “That is not what I’d see,” he answered awkwardly, wondering why it was that Bill seemed intent on having a conversation that their own friendship had been built around avoiding.

Regulus could contend with the reality that his wife did not love him well as any man of some lingering status might, but Dora’s lack of interest in their daughter was shattering, especially now that Delphi was old enough to recognise and internalise it. He wished the girl warranted some measure of motherly affection or at least attention, same as he wished that Dora had accepted desk duty as opposed to a sojourn at Hogwarts for the Tri-Wizard Tournament before inevitably being forced out for six weeks on maternity leave at the end of April, something she would no doubt protest postpartum if the pregnancy again failed to result in a Metamorphmagus. No point in playing happy family with those who disappointed expectation. Their shared forefathers of House Black would have been so proud.

“It is what Delphi thought too, though. I’m probably sending my daughter the wrong message with my reliance on cosmetic,” Regulus agreed for want of ignoring the half-said, gesturing to his once doll-like face, the porcelain of his skin etched with risen scar tissue. Given that the wound itself was magical, no potion could do more than return the full of his face to its former colouring, not even Maybelline 48-Hour Matte Finish, wonder that is otherwise was. Whatever. He was well past imagining that physical beauty could counter the curse of unrequited love.

“You might be,” Bill agreed. “How’d that even come up? ‘You know that toy I told you not to play with? It contained a Class A restricted substance Uncle Bill and I wanted to rob a bank with until Kreacher discovered that it could be employed into making the back office look slightly less derelict after I took aim at my reflection’,” he shifted to tease, “emotional drama still somehow preferable to an emo combover. We realised we were already sitting on a gold mine’?” he affected his easy laugh. “Might be effective against wrinkles, too. Ohh,” his eyes went wide. “Should we spray some on your mum’s portrait when we get home in a test run?”

That got a rare smile out of Regulus, whose mother had been in fits since Barty had vacated Bellatrix’ old room to pursue gainful employment. ‘And why aren’t you also a Hogwarts Professor?’ she would demand when Regulus had to remind her where Barty was. ‘I don’t have the requisite criminal record,’ he might answer. ‘Have you no shame! If nothing else can be said of him, Sirius would have …’ – ‘What, Mother? What would Sirius have done?’ – ‘Why did you not kill Barty Senior the way you did that filthy muggle Tobias Snape? Saved my son a stint in Azkaban! Saved Bellatrix from the same fate! Saved Barty from a worse imprisonment still! Saved Narcissa from having to kneel before that German pretender to our Crown, for a courtesy title that Berton pirate can sneer at!’ – ‘I DIDN’T KNOW!’

‘Didn’t you!?’ Her voice seemed to ask at inconvenient intervals, even with the curtains closed and Regulus well outside of shouting distance.

He did not have an answer. The guilt of it made it even harder to face himself in the mirror, even the Erised ersatz that disguised his physical disfigurement.

“Doesn’t work on enchanted objects in the same way. Cursed ones even less so,” he smirked, a silent commiseration with his absent brother. “No um … she, Delphi, had a dream about it, same night. Help me work out the logistics that had not already sorted themselves around the conclave.”

“How? What did she see?” Bill slept on the ground floor; in a converted receiving room which he could enter without having to sneak past the late Mrs Black when he came in wasted at two in the morning with another leggy blonde whom he would have Kreacher dismiss before breakfast. As such, Bill heard of (rather than heard and unwilling participated in) Delphi’s prophetic dreams cum tantrums, allowing him to take more interest in Fleur, Gabrielle and all of the other figures Delphi named who of yet only existed in their widest periphery. (Barty having confirmed the weekend past that Fleur, at least, was a French exchange student, and, as it happened, a leggy blonde of legal age, explaining at least half of the recent intrigue on Bill’s part.)

Bill was good at the parts of collective parenting that evaded Regulus and Barty due to familiarity and exhaustion, and evaded Dora due to baseline indifference. Bill asked questions to say, ‘I take you seriously’ and ‘you are special’ and ‘I want to help’ and everything else so fundamental that words too often failed.

It had never occurred to Regulus that Bill might mean any of this in earnest.

“I’m not sure,” Regulus admitted. “I never am. What she said though when she crawled into my bed like she had just had a nightmare, she touched my face and told me with all the sympathy a three-year-old is capable of extending that it is just because I try to hide it that others can hurt me, continuing that ‘when they take Aunt Cissy’s face and eyes and teeth and bones she’ll still cause a thousand ships to sail.’

“She did a kind of impression, wrinkling her nose and narrowing he eyes like Cissy does when she is about to say something particularly cutting and told me that maybe instead of worrying about the mirror, I should just do that, what she does and will continue to do and people would marvel at me, too.”

“But for the fact that you’ve never been particularly skilled at oration,” Bill teased before drawing himself back into his considerations. “A lot of water in her recent dreams, huh? Drownings, ships. What do you make of it?”

“I know my oral histories though even if the rest of rest of the prophecy was wasted on me. I was thinking about what face and eyes and teeth and bones might mean, if it was related to something she should not know about mermaids just yet, if I dared ask Lucius’ interpretation being that it pertained to his wife when it occurred to me that if I could get Dudley over to Anatolia with the first team – the ‘thousand ships’ bit –  that the rest of Harry’s staunch if fractured defenders would likewise vacate the country for a few days around the conclave.”

“You are having second thoughts then about getting Lucius and my dad to carry it out,” Bill observed. “I am, too, but I don’t see that there is another way. I don’t think it matters, when Narcissa comes back, if she finds out what they did … she’ll be too late to stop it. So will Remus. And Sirius. Dudley, too, for that matter.”

In less than an hour, Bill was due to meet his father for a few drinks at a pub on Knockturn Alley whose prices would not embarrass the fugal Arthur. Lucius would keep his company at least as far as the door, the side street’s shadows hiding their sparing friendship, and would take the opportunity of physical approximation to visit Regulus at work, to purchase an obscure and expensive gift for Dora by way of saying ‘you can’t afford to keep my niece’, which Regulus would counter at long last by explaining why he was working so far beneath respectability.

He would take Lucius into the back office with the copied ledger and office logs detailing Helga Hufflepuff’s cup. He would show him the stolen warrant slip and the makeshift weapon and the shining sink if he wanted, all while appealing to Lucius’ desire to protect his family from a past confederacy of expedience with the Dark Lord.

Bill and Arthur would join them once Bill explained that the ethical problem was not that they did not know how such would affect Harry Potter, but rather that they knew exactly how the Boy Who Lived would react to a perceived attack on his sovereignty, attempting to respond in kind.

Except that Harry would not dare reveal himself at Hogwarts before Crouch and Krakoff, who both had the sorts of solicitors on retainer who could use such information to press for better plea deals, who might themselves be able to beg concessions from Voldemort’s would-be prosecutor if public knowledge threatened their careful timeline.

This was the concern which Regulus had found the most difficult to contend. From what little he spoke with Dora on these (or any) matters, he understood that Narcissa and Yaxley shared everything, and that Nott was clever enough to connect the parts he had not been made expressly privy to on his own. If Dolohov knew he could not act on his own, but the few relatives he had to have survived a Stalinist purge belonged to Krakoff’s contingent, a complication Tom might prey upon where he not reduced by Harry’s ignorance of Cold War partisanism. There was only a brief window where he and Bill could attack with absolute impunity, when everyone was otherwise occupied, and lingering reservations had to be ignored.

“She won’t find out, not from Lucius,” Regulus answered of Narcissa, wondering if Bill was anticipating his father’s moral hangups or if he in fact shared them.

“How can she not?” Bill asked gesturing vaguely to his temples, admitting in doing so that he had only the vaguest notion of how natural legilimency worked.

“Malfoy a career politician. He can hide whatever he chooses. My sweet cousin has the same capacity we all do to dismiss – or at least be dismissive about – the temptations one would be ill advised to acknowledge. If she discovers this betrayal in his absent mind, she will bury it with all of the other offences which cannot injure without acknowledgement.”

“Such as?”

Regulus sighed. He could not pity his cousin any more than Sirius could truly act to save her. She had chosen to play this game. “There are too many Mudbloods born in Wiltshire for her to honestly believe that her lord husband is not still practicing the primae noctis of his forefathers. Hogwarts has seventy students without known magical parentage, twelve of whom went to the same primary school.

“Even to the extent that Lucius recognises his probable bastards, having the ‘magic is real’ conversation in the place of a Hogwarts teacher and sponsoring their educational and extracurricular needs, Narcissa doesn’t because doing so would make her position as spouse absent noble status more precarious.”  Lucius denied this casually, conversationally even, claiming that Narcissa was the only woman he had ever lain with. Regulus considered it probable that he simply did not count muggles as bed mates whatever physical evidence of himself he left within. Regulus forced himself not to think about the rumours surrounding Dora’s first pregnancy, rumours Lucius had either the takt or lack of decency to ignore rather than deny outright. He forced himself not to think about his daughter’s white-blonde hair and storm-coloured eyes brimming with tears from the visions she had, the sort that Lucius sought in tea leaves.

No. He would take his cue from Narcissa, such did not bear acknowledging. Lucius could have all of Dora’s private jokes and longing stares and whatever else he felt he might take. He could have his snide comments and power plays and choice picks of warlords to fiscally back where socialism threatened western economic expansion in the global south.

The children, Regulus thought, were his though. They had his name. It was his bed Delphi crawled into with her teeth and bones and thousand ships, weapons that would cause Lucius to suffer every slight he had afforded Regulus since sitting at his bedside so many years before.

In order for this plan to work, Arthur Weasley would have to publicly betray him, hurt and humiliate his interests with an asset he likely did not ever realise he presently possessed, at least on paper. And there was nothing Lucius could say or do to counter the repercussions without alerting his wife to his complacency in destroying a horcrux against the cause she championed.

“Doing something that might hinder the ambitions she surrendered her crown to pursue might well shatter that pragmatism,” Bill cautioned as though this were truly a concern they could equally share. Regulus hoped Lucius would slip up eventually. Until then it was enough to know he would have to suffer in silence.

“I’d be more concerned that Draco will make more out of things than need be, with nothing to inherit he has nothing to lose,” Regulus shrugged. “If he had half a mind for politics, he’d attempt to blackmail some kind of concession from his father, but more likely he’ll keep quiet for want of protecting Harry’s secret from Barty whom he sees as a more immediate threat.”

Bill seemed to consider this in earnest for a moment. “I don’t know if I envy or pity your lot. If my mum finds out there will be no byzantine intrigue. We’ll all just be dead. Sirius might not have killed thirteen people with a single Avada, but my mum could manage, believe it.”

“Word, that,” Regulus chuckled, though he did not doubt Molly Weasley’s capacity for wrath. “I’ll obliviate your dad to the act afterwards if you want, if you think he’d be fool enough to say anything to your mum. Lucius though … it is complicated, but it is the one thing he’d never forgive. He likes to know the details, however bloody or incriminating. It lets him feel like he is in charge. I’d respect him for it if he were not such a cunt.”

“Can you block Tonks from your thoughts, do you think?” Bill questioned.

Regulus shrugged again. “I could. I won’t need to. I don’t think she’ll much hang out here once the town has finished toasting her name. Anyway, it was her plan, originally. I just don’t want to have to place her in a situation where she might have to lie about her complicity. It is sorted. Everyone in the know is accounted for: your mother, Severus, Dumbledore, and Hagrid are with Harry and the few of his friends who know about Tom Riddle up at Hogwarts. Remus, Sirius, Narcissa and Dudley are in Istanbul. Dora is toasting with her acolytes from the Order, and being that Barty came down for the conclave and has witnesses beyond reproach to his whereabouts, no one will suspect him of having a hand in whatever is about to happen to Harry.”

“But Barty does not know?”

“I imagine he soon might. Unfortunately, we know how Harry tends to respond to the destruction of a horcrux,” Regulus answered, saying nothing. If one instructed Barty to make a scene, he would give Shakespeare. He had come down to London as Regulus bade him to, popped something prescription that caused him to twitch throughout proceedings while wearing the same clothes he had picked out for a Weird Sisters concert a few nights prior. A perfect argument against equality under the law. The Twenty-Eight in the collective snobbery believing that they were better judges of what constituted fair that the Wizengamot and elected leadership.

Regulus had spun something for Barty about giving Dora this win when she was still too young to have acquired the experience requisite to contending the emergency powers she proposed. As it was the normal course of politics to punish miscalculations with harsh reversals, Yaxley or someone from his faction who cared more for public conception would rise to replace her, and Narcissa, the heroine who had seen Barty’s hated namesake sentenced to seven lifetimes, would be given all she sought in her continued efforts.

Regulus was not certain how much of this Barty had believed on its face, but he certainly did not believe or even expect that he, Regulus, had engineered that Dark Lord’s downfall out of everyone else’s commonplace peculiarities, including Barty’s own. Now, back at Hogwarts, Severus would be hard pressed to come up with an explanation for how Barty had been involved in igniting Harry’s latest migraine with his whereabouts both inconspicuous and accounted for during the period in question. As the Potions Master would otherwise be wont.

“Tom,” Bill tried to correct. “It not Harry hurting people.”

“Harry,” Regulus insisted. “At least to hear Dudley tell it, and there we are of one mind. Death was impersonal to the Dark Lord – he used a purportedly painless curse to kill. Harry prefers to punish with potions that play at personal weakness. Sirius with the Wolfsbane, Dora with the Basilisk Venom, Dudley, repeatedly, with Swelling Serum – he’s even asked Barty about whether he missed the real thing or not when he met him in the hospital wing when our former housemate was getting his 100 mil of Methadone. Salazar only knows how many times Severus has been able to counter or cover for his ward’s misdeeds with his deeper knowledge of subject and substance.”

“He Who Must Not Be Named nearly got you with Emerald Drink,” Bill remined in a hapless defence of his little brother’s best mate. Again, Regulus wondered if he was merely anticipating his father’s objections or if he was sympathetic to them.

“Because he did not know who might come to prove his undoing,” Regulus explained. “It was not personal even if it felt so at the time. Harry is decisive where Tom was – is? – indiscriminate. It does not bear asking which is worse. If we are successful, neither will be able to do magic in due course.”

“I still don’t –”

“Shacklebolt and Dora are together. No one is going to be surprised if Lucius is called away from a party he is hosting to contend with a long-term rival’s petty grievance. You have been able to sneak your venom filled pistol through Goblin defences for the past week. Your dad will be able to do the same. While Lucius is fetching the carpet your dad’s purporting to confiscate – the reason we had to arrange that public confrontation with Sana’s father a few weeks ago at the Cup – all he has to do is angle himself to clandestinely shoot Helga’s golden chalice whilst the bankers are distracted with the dragon.

“No one knows about this particular horcrux save you, me, and Dora – and you’ll be upstairs in your cubicle, Dora will be smiling at camera, and I’ve at least got a punch card even if it should happen that I’ve no customers to vouch for me. I’ll make a point of taking more cigarette breaks than I otherwise might so there will be witnesses on the street to my whereabouts.

“As soon as this happens, Narcissa’s office is going to be overturned and they will find everything intact. The items will likely be removed, ending whatever feud presently exists between my brother and Remus Lupin, or Remus and Narcissa for that matter.”

“And the others who have had access to that office?” Bill pressed. Regulus felt a pang of longing for the days when he only had to contend with the assistance of his elf. Kreacher talked to himself but at least he did not talk back.

“Narcissa never lets her staff alone in there, never without a shield charm and never in for longer than two hours without a break. Anyway, Percy is with her in Turkey, Poppy has midterms this week, so she’ll have plenty of witnesses to her being in a classroom, library, or pub for the duration, and Hamish has an unimpeachable alibi; Narcissa has tasked him in her absence with getting an unredacted record form a former evil stepmother within the Ministry.”

It was his cousin’s thirty-ninth birthday. Her son was at Hogwarts, her husband was pursuing his own politics, and her only real friend who likewise was not taking place in the Conclave did not drink during the week as a rule.

When Regulus had learned of the midweek Champions League match from his pupil, he had left the afternoon’s instruction with Sirius, sought out the first team trainer and argued for Dudley’s inclusion in the squad by way of an Imperious cast with Bellatrix’ wand, confiscated and returned to the family after her sentencing. Because it made some loose tactical sense to play a substitute and rest the recently injured Number One before Saturday’s clash at Anfield, no one would have a mind to question the attachment, and even if they should, a wand’s lingering vestigium could tell only which spell had been cast, not when or by whom.

Sirius had told Narcissa about this inclusion by way of invitation. ‘Want to celebrate your birthday on the Bosphorus with your second favourite cousin being that everyone you actually like is busy?’ by which was meant ‘Can you sponsor me a ticket since Sir Alex won’t let me on the bus even as Snuffles?’ For his part, Regulus had backed out with commitments to his child and employer before Narcissa could introduce the caveat of including Remus, ‘for should he not likewise get to see his son play?’ (by which she likely meant ‘How dare you presume I am being generous?’) That thought playing at his mind, Regulus left them to their afternoon mocktails and mockery, knowing Narcissa would sort the rest without his having to risk further suggestion.

“I meant the Death Eaters,” Bill clarified.

Regulus shook his head. “I don’t need to alibi Dolohov. He works for the DMLE as a public defender, his whereabout are always accounted for. Yaxley and Nott were in the conclave, and while they might not be celebrating the result, Nott is up in Scotland with Longbottom and assorted members of the yellow press for want of a greater scandal, and Yaxley, presumably – giving Skeeter’s absence outside the Ministry this morning – is commiserating with the high-minded variation of the same.”

Bill frowned. “I meant … Narcissa has defended other former supporters of You Know Who. What about them? Surely, they had to have noticed the Mark, same as Barty and Dolohov did.”

“You imagine that Kingsley whose desk this will eventually land on, giving that it is his signature and stamp on the warrant, isn’t going to do everything in his considerable power to keep that form the public? That Fudge and Scrimgeour and everyone else up the chain doesn’t have a vested interest in silence? The Death Eaters will be T.I.E.’d and honestly? I’m not too fussed. What is important is that Remus will have cause to want to remove the horcruxes from Cissy’s office, perhaps to somewhere we might have a better shot at them than behind his unbreakable charm.”

“You’ve really everything considered, don’t you?” Bill posed after a long pause, sounding relaxed for the first time that morning.

“I think you forget I used to do this for a living,” Regulus observed with another shrug of feigned indifference. “People tend to. Forget me. Generally. Worked it into an asset.”

“When all this is over, you and I should have a go at actually robbing Gringotts,” Bill grinned.

“Won’t need to if you take up my tip on marketing Basilisk Venom as a basic household cleaner.”

“Just for fun then,” Bill laughed.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Weasley.”

Chapter Text

Neville Longbottom lied awake in bed, mundane concerns keeping him from rest though his eyes remained resolutely shut. He supposed that there was nothing remarkable about finding himself in the predicament of weighing up every daft thing he had ever done against exaggerated assumptions of what his formidable grandmother’s response might be to his latest faux pas –

Nothing, that was, save physical proximity to Hogwarts’ long serving Potions Master.

Neville felt an involuntary shiver run through his spine as he listened to the quiet recitation Snape spoke beneath his breath for the benefit of the boy between them. Something between a song and a nursery rhyme in a language Neville did not know, it sounded like a spell in Snape’s silky, melodic undertones.

It might have been a prayer. Neville did not know how he was meant to feel about that prospect.

Neville was worried for Harry, of course. Everyone was. But the idea that Professor Snape of all people could be reduced to whispered roseries proved nearly as unsettling as the esteem Neville was coming to that he otherwise held the man in. Professor Snape did not panic, and so it fell that he should not pray at his child’s bedside in the manner of the helplessly overwrought.

Neville could not truly fathom (even when faced with evidence to the contrary) that Snape ever met problems which he could not contend beyond containing. Neville had not trusted himself to inquire into specifics upon his own admission to the hospital wing. He had let himself become even more unnerved by Snape’s absence of anger at Hermione’s explanation of the chemical burns on his, Neville’s, hands, chin, and chest.

After allowing him a few hours of bedrest, Snape had asked almost casually if Neville understood why his cauldron had exploded. When he had responded with an incohesive mumble, Snape had shifted tactic, asking after the Latin names of the botanic components and what this implied about their properties, leading Neville to the answer across disciplines. No admonishment was offered all the while, beyond Snape stating that he wanted Neville to commit as much to paper when he could again hold a quill.

Snape had left at some point to confer with Dumbledore and Neville fell into a restless sleep. When the Potions Master returned, he handed Neville a book well outside of Neville’s interest and intellectual capacity, saying that it might knacker him out, being that there was nothing Madame Pomfrey could prescribe for the pain.

For what seemed a long while, Snape sat silent vigil at Harry’s bedside. Neville read until the text defeated him. Then, he turned and asked if Professor Lupin would be coming up by way of inquiring if Harry’s headache was really that serious, afraid to phrase the question as such.

Snape either missed his meaning or declined to comment.

Remus, or so he told, had indeed been notified, but being that he was abroad such had required the assistance of the Büyülü Memuru, Turkish Aurors who initially did not want to honour an extradition treaty with a port key. Remus was currently at the Ministry in London, likely not answering questions under the direction of Dolohov, a Public Defender in Narcissa Malfoy’s innermost circle, while she sat in a separate interrogation room allowing Yaxley to take the lead in her defence.

Neville understood none of this. Neither, it seemed, did Snape.

Snape explained that Narcissa kept something in a lockbox in her office that pertained to Harry’s condition, not an uncommon practice unto itself – entrusting one’s solicitor with vital records – except that in this case, what she had been tasked with keeping did not meet the legal requirements of such a charge. It was the DMLE’s opinion that giving alleged nature of the safe’s contents, it ought to have been surrendered to the Department of Mysteries or destroyed outright by Court Order. Such an order would have needed the signature of the Head Warlock, Dolohov had pointed out, as would a warrant allowing the six Aurors Mad Eye had sent to Cokeworth with hopes of seizing what Snape described as Harry’s personal artefacts.

A hint of a smile crossed the Potion Master’s face when he mentioned as an aside that not a single one of them had been able to break through Remus’ impenetrable charm.

But this posed a greater concern. No one else had either.

The whereabouts of everyone ‘in the know’ were well-accounted for. Snape was at a loss. Remus – ‘Professor Lupin’, Snape had self-corrected, was presently in limbo as Dolohov held the DMLE in contempt giving Mad Eye’s heavy-handed action (or attempt at the same.) Dumbledore had gone down to London to resolve the situation, but Snape – acknowledging with a sneer that the famed ‘Horsemen’ could hold up a legal dispute indefinitely if the mood struck them – did not expect to see his beloved tonight.

Professor Lupin may well not return to Hogwarts at all, for they had agreed to enrol Harry in a local secondary when he was well enough to be relocated.

‘That bad?’

It had not been Neville who had asked.

It had been Ron Weasley, who had come with Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, and Luna Lovegood to check up on Neville during their lunch hour when word had spread of his accident.

Snape had explained at Hermione’s pressing that Harry had left the Great Hall at breakfast with a headache. Professor Crouch thought this enough of a concern that after meeting Harry in the corridors had sought Snape to inform him of the matter. which Snape had gone to hospital intent of telling Harry to get back to class when he found him in convulsions, screaming that his scar was burning until he lost the ability of speech. Harry had been given a calming drought. Inquiries had been made.

The bell rang. Hermione had left with the promise that she would be back at the day’s end with all of the coursework Neville had missed, Luna offering to do the same for Harry until Snape informed her that such would not be necessary, emotion hinting on his tongue.

Draco stayed behind, of course, crawling beneath Harry’s bedsheets in his animagus form. Neville had not noticed him do it, and had only clocked his presence at Harry’s side when a sob escaped from Snape, an address to absent friends he felt himself to have failed. ‘Lily, forgive me, heaven knows I tried.’

Snape did not seem like the sort of person who ought to believe in heaven or to whomever ordinary people turned in their distress. For a moment, Neville watched the vermin-shaped lump cuddle itself to Harry – Draco doubtlessly indignant at the suggestion that his intended be taken from this hallowed institution. He would get his way in the end. Once Snape had time to weigh his parental concerns against the ill-informed wishes of wealth and power. Things usually worked out that way, Gran said. It was why Doctor Tonks had a corner office as opposed to a cell in Azkaban. It was why her accursed daughter had a DS rank in an elite Auror unit as a reward for awakening Slytherin’s Monster, why she had emerged from the Conclave victorious –

But Neville’s present concerns for the conflicts of powerful families of which he was nominally part did not much extend a desire to capture his friend’s attention long enough to render Draco useful.

Partially to afford Snape and his ghosts and grief a measure of privacy, he had given the book he had been presented as a sleeping drought another go, only to recognise the names of rare magical flora he had lately become intimate with, saplings beginning to sprout at his bedside.

Hermione had to see this.

Professor Snape had inadvertently given him, Neville, exactly that which she likely did not yet know she was looking for in the library’s restricted section with the Potion Master’s own (forged) signature.

Neville had to let her know. He had to have her make sense of how he had ought to feel about it.

It did not sit right. Granted, nothing around ‘call me Barty’ Professor Crouch much did, but this existed well outside of the certain welcome discomfort Neville had come to associate with the man’s company.

Barty called it ‘blackmail’, but in truth Neville had long since ceased with extorted effort. More often, it was Barty asking Neville to stay after class that he might show him a species he had acquired at great cost, offering his botanicals to Neville’s skilled cultivation. It was not flirtation exactly, but for Neville, whose interests were fringe and whose talents were otherwise marginalised, the hours he got to spend indulging his passions with someone who appreciated him did not feel too far off.

Barty was a mess in the sort of fashion that Neville found himself more and more mistaking as cool. When he had mentioned this, Barty had asked what he was on about in self-deprecating language that few could so employ in the service of further extending their own sex appeal. He was confident enough to be open about his flaws, he was open about most things that adults had built iron gates around, and where he would not let Neville in, he offered reasonable alternatives – narratives about Neville’s parents as people to whom he could relate as opposed to the impenetrable iconography Gran had made of their memory.

Ginny said his crush on the new DADA Professor was obvious. Barty, however, seemed unaware. Or maybe he chose to ignore it on account of it being deeply indecorous.

Probably, Neville reasoned, the infatuation would saturate with time into the sort of friendship Neville publicly pretended at, for nothing else would ever be on offer. Not, at least, from someone whose left arm was covering in the scars of political affiliation and imprisonment, who claimed to muster nonchalance against the erosion of memory. Barty had crumbled when Luna had taken him to see the Thestrals, Theo had said.

Neville had mentioned that he could see them, too, the next time he had found himself alone in Barty’s sole company. Barty had embraced him tightly during this confession, muttering an apology for all he had endured. He had stepped back, tearfully urged Neville to seek out the company of friends his own age, apologised in more formal language for his momentary absence of judgement, and withdrawn his hand when Neville moved to retake it with an ‘I don’t intend such impressions.’

Intentions aside, Neville had indulged in the sensation of the embrace – however one-sided – for much of the rest of the evening until Seamus began pounding the door of their shared bathroom, wondering how much longer he would be, claiming that he had also eaten the steak and kidney pie and had the same need of the loo. Bless.

But now?

Knowing – presuming rather on count of the text he had been given – that Barty Crouch Jr was trying to kill Harry Potter (or, at least, trying to reembody the part of him that spoke to itself in Parseltongue) changed the context.

Slightly.

Harry was and would ever remain on the periphery of Neville’s Hogwarts experience. The friend of a friend whom he might share a Butterbeer with at two in the morning when everyone else was too chemically compromised to facilitate conversation. Neville neither liked Harry nor disliked him. He pitied him, but he pitied the people who loved him more. Draco, Hermione, Ron – Snape even, to watch him now. For her part, Ginny claimed that ‘Tom’ – the disembodied consciousness Harry shared and sometimes bade to write or copyedit his essays – was far easier to talk to. Neville would not know. He only talked to Harry and/or Tom in passing out of politeness, or at two AM after a Quidditch match, and usually over tactics and plays they had both already argued out with everyone else.

The whole Second Coming of the Dark Lord thing tended to get in the way of a meaningful friendship. Few knew the details which Neville himself had merely accidented upon after asking Hermione if she had injured herself when she suddenly hissed in Potions, attempting to give Ron an answer which he ought to have known from last night’s reading before Snape could make sport of his ignorance. Several of the students who had been raised in Harry’s regular company were conversive in Parseltongue – a necessity, Draco had explained in their first year for reasons of his own self-importance. Or because he needed to talk to someone about it who would be lost for a response. Perhaps both.

Hermione would know what to do. Most likely, Neville thought, he had erred, mistaking both intentions and ingredients.

It certainly would not have been for the first time.

He heard is stomach snarl and he again wondered at Hermione’s delay. Had they been set so much coursework? Was she recopying her notes for his benefit? Neville, between wondering how he might alert her to the ingredients list whilst alluding Snape’s attention, began to fret that he would not be able to commit any of that which he had missed to memory if he did not copy the words out for himself. Then, his stomach growled again and an unanticipated problem presented.

“Just in time from the sounds of it,” he heard Professor Crouch laugh. Much though Neville liked the man (‘too much’, as Ginny often warned, and Neville well knew) he did not want to speak with his favourite professor without first determining how he was meant to feel about his creeping hypothesis. Riding Harry of his parasite would probably improve the kid’s quality of life, but was such worth the return of He Who Must Not Be Named (but whom everyone in the clique casually called ‘Tom’?) Hermione and Pansy were both of the mind that Professor Crouch acted with ill intent – but then they spent their summers interning for Narcissa Malfoy, who had made a thing about delaying his appeal since she knew she would not be able to win the case for reincarceration, an ironic twist to the jurisprudence she had helped reestablish. They were prejudiced, in plain English.

But where was Hermione now?

Nevillee wanted, he realised, for someone else to say it. That was all. He wanted some third party to be able to back claims around Professor Crouch’s maleficence with the evidence that Neville himself had accidented into. He wanted for someone to absolve him of the guilt he knew he logically should not feel around his sudden potential to betray a loyalty he should not harbour towards a man who had been present the night his parents have been tortured into madness.

Except that Gran did not think Barty guilty of that which he had been accused.

And Barty made Neville feel like he mattered.

“Wotcher, Snivy. Harry, Nev,” Barty acknowledged in greeting as he took a seat on the end of Neville’s bed.

So much for pretending to sleep. Neville made a noise to suggest disturbed slumber, stretching as he rose into a half sitting position.

“’Wotcher’?” Snape repeated snidely, his blank expression regressing into a sneer.

Never, Neville thought, had he imagined that he might be grateful for Snape’s presence.

“Am I to take from that that the Lannisters send their regards?” the Potions Master drolled.

“Who?” Barty frowned, missing a refenced that alluded Neville as well.

“House Black,” Snape adjusted, plainly irked as he continued. “How is dear Tonks?”

Barty blinked erratically as he did sometimes, struggling with the general concept of eye contact. “Dunno,” he shrugged. “Didn’t stay at Grimmauld. Flippant, flirty, clumsy, and somehow slightly condescending?” he listed, considering with a slight frown. “Great taste in music though, so she gets a pass, or might were she not an Auror, and the dreadful, obsessive sort who met the wrong case before she met the right bloke at that. But that is as much on Reg as it is on her and I don’t fancy my opinion warrants much, especially giving that she might actually be pregnant again. Saw her at The Weird Sisters gig last Friday. Managed civility. Why do you ask?”

“Your adopted lexicon,” Snape answered, repeating ‘wotcher’ once more with impossible distain.

“No change then?” Barty asked with a nod towards Harry as he handed out refreshments from a crumpled, grease-stained bag.

“You went to Greggs?” Snape replied in lieu of answering.

“Bad form to reply to a question with another, you know. But yeah, I wanted to check up on Dudley’s pony with all that has been happening and Luna suggested that we ought to bring him something to eat. Hence the sausage rolls.”

“As a simple matter of curiosity, at what point did it occur to you that Pebbles is an herbivore?”  Snape posed with his habitual sneer, though, Neville noted, reasonable critique aside, this did not stop him from unwrapping the lukewarm pastry he had been handed.

Neville, taking this a permission, proceeded to do the same. It smelled good. Like all chemically rendered attempts at foodstuff tended to. Neville had no idea what he had just been handed. Gran’s liberal, muggle-loving rhetoric tended to relax around package labels with ingredients listed as complex Latin compounds where the Queen’s English had yet to decide upon a vernacular. ‘They are poisoning themselves,’ she would dismiss, and Neville would nod. Despite Snape’s best efforts to the contrary, Neville could not get his head around solvents enough to offer contradiction.

Snape took a bite. Neville copied him. Different, he thought, but delicious.

“A worthy question with an answer that qualifies human tragedy if ever there was one,” Barty answered with a twisted grin, his Jack-o-Lantern smile with its retreating gums and discoloured, cracked where not altogether absent teeth looking positively criminal. “Turns out part of that faction of Death Eaters who joined up in protest to the ills wrought by muggles to the environment have proven more successful in their ventures without central leadership,” he gave dramatically. “Greggs has a vegan sausage roll on the offer now. Possibly the worst civilian casualty of the war.”

At this, Snape quite nearly gagged. “Mr Longbottom, I would advise you not eat that.”

“Snivy, for shame!” Barty exclaimed. “I resent the insinuation. I would never poison a student. That is British pork in puff pastry. Look,” he demonstrated, taking a bite, continuing with his mouth full, “After class, I took my goddaughter to town to stock up on the sort of fast food that she thought a wee small horse might fancy, and bought proper meat versions for her and all her friends by way of bribing them into playing five-a-side for the amusement of your absent son’s sadly neglected pet. No need to thank me,” he added, making a point of sounding injured.

“So … my friends won’t be coming to see me and Harry in hospital because they are busied with playing muggle sport before a fairly indifferent spectator?” Neville surmised from the explanation on offer. Snape, too, looked as though he found this rather suspect on its premise. His hunched shoulders straightened slightly.

“I was not aware you had taken ill, was I? My thought being that poor Harry needed the rest, and that frankly Vince and Gerg – one G – could do with the exercise.” Two, Neville thought pedantically, though he kept this to himself. “Came as soon as Draco told me, did I not?” It was an odd lie to tell if Barty intended to make him feel isolated.

“But Draco,” Neville frowned, his eyes shifting to the vermin shaped lump resting on Harry’s chest. Snape’s black eyes followed Neville’s own. He reached beneath the comforter with a start, producing Ron’s pet rat, now squealing and scratching for its freedom.

“Scabbers?” Neville gaped. “I thought …” he stopped. Draco had done this before for want of misdirection. When he had to disappear for long enough that his whereabouts would be questioned. For Ron to have volunteered his pet as cover, something must serious be amiss. Neville tried to recall the last time the two had worked together in any capacity, to any end. When he came on nothing, he doubted this was a testament to his shoddy memory. Draco and Ron had never gotten on – so what the devil was happening outside of this wing? Snape, too, looked puzzled.

“That I used transfiguration as punishment and that your friend having come to hospital for assistance, found himself unable to communicate his needs and decided to sleep it off for want of an alternative?” Barty chided, patting Nevill’s knee before leaning over to take the pet from his colleague. “Lemme see. Hm,” he frowned, prodding Scabbers with the tip of his wand. “Not my work but could be an animagus. Seems pretty sentient for a student pet.” Though no spell was spoken, Barty’s wand began to glow as it forced the rat’s mouth open in examination. The rodent went completely limp.

“You hungry, Scabbers?” Neville asked nervously, distracting Barty from whatever he was attempting. He held up his sausage roll and Scabbers scampered over after trying to bite at Barty’s penetrating wand to secure his release.

“Good thinking, Longbottom. Employ a lab rat to determine if ‘British pork in puff pastry’ is intended to keep you here longer. To hear Professor Crouch tell it,” Snape snorted, “the Dark Lord was against animal testing, so win-win.”

This had the effect of robbing Barty’s attention from whatever act of animal cruelty he seemed of the mind to inflict. “You never read the manifesto, did you?” he asked, studying Snape as though appraising him anew.

“First five or so pages,” Snape shrugged, holding Crouch’s gaze as well as anyone might. “Self-radicalised terrorists tend towards unimaginative repetition.” Neville had seen Hermione and Pansy practicing this enough to understand what was going on. The two professors were attempting silent legilimency on one another. Neville looked on with interest. Draco did not need to practice legilimency or anything else from the way he behaved. He had done it to Neville a few times when he was bored in lecture. Neville knew therefore, that it did not hurt, unless whomever was preforming the spell really intended it to.

Barty Crouch Jr was the first to flinch. Severus Snape checked his discomfort with a hint of a smirk.

Barty nodded slowly. “A smart retort fails me, so I’ll settle for something dumb,” he said, pulling at the sleave of a black, hooded pullover with the name of a metal band in a scrawling font Neville could not decipher and would not be able to identify even if he could. Barty revelled his inked forearm for Snape’s inspection – a symbol, by contrast, which Neville knew all to well. “Show me yours,” Barty challenged Snape. “I showed you mine.”

“I can’t. Sirius Black reworked it into something … tasteful ages ago,” Snape sneered.

“I suppose he would rather have had to,” Barty answered with a measure of consideration. “Dudley returned to Britian this morning, did he not?”

This seemed to catch Snape off-guard.

“I – yes, but what has that to do with –”

“Karkaroff’s came back, too,” Barty interrupted. “It is why he couldn’t cover your classes when you – apropos,” shifting the subject again to disrupt Snape’s read, “how is it that Potions was overlook in the contingency plan?”

“In thirteen years of teaching, I’ve not missed a single lecture prior to being told my son was in hospital. This morning. By yourself,” Snape answered Barty, though his gaze shifted to Neville and remained fixed.

“That’s … impressive,” Barty consented.

“Who was made to suffer my students?”

“Mrs Weasley,” Neville answered, think perhaps Snape intended him to.

This however, had the effect of causing Snape to lean forward in his chair, burring his forehead in his palms. “Oh, for Salazar’s sake!” he complained. “Now they will rejoice at my return. Last of what I need.”

“Yeah,” Neville agreed, too readily in hindsight. “Few still think you are the embodiment of evil after being mollycoddled for fifteen minutes and properly chastised and cursed for the next seventy or so. I’m still terrified of you though, Sir,” he added quickly when Snape’s fingers parted to give him a cautioning look. “If nothing else, Mrs Weasley let off once my cauldron blew up. You followed up with the dialectic method as soon as I was halfway cognisant, and when we finished with that, you gave an advanced potions book with the intent of putting me to sleep since Madam Pomfrey does not have leave to issue me calming drought.”

Snape gave Neville the slightest of nods.

He knew.

At least, he had some suspicion and had set Neville up to arrive at the same conclusion he had.

But to what end?

Neville knew that, though Snape hated him, he would not knowingly expose him to harm, or to a situation that could regress into such. Was Snape trying to protect Harry? To hurt Barty? To avenge himself against a cruel childhood moniker that only Cokeworth’s local tattooist could employ with impunity? What?! Neville glared at Snape, demanding an answer, but not was forthcoming.

“He suffers asthma,” Snape explained, shifting back to Crouch, who responded with “Oh, and the properties of crocodile heart could adversely influence the efficacy of a standard antihistamine,” which won Neville’s confusion and Snape’s begrudging approval.

“It turned out to be pretty interesting, even if I did not understand most of it,” Neville continued, emboldened by feelings of betrayal he could not entirely place with either teacher. “It was all about theoretical brews, often owing to the scarcity of ingredients as the result of global climate change. Here,” he said, producing the book from under his pillow, turning to the page he had folded form Hermione’s more expert review. “Have a look.

“With the plants you’ve been adding to my dorm room greenhouse,” Neville continued as Barty’s eyes shifted over the text, “I’d be able to, in a few months, anticipating moderate yields, create the basis of that which could restore soul to body – to resurrect, in other words, provided the additional biological ingredients could be acquired. Provided, also, that I had some talent for the subject which has heretofore yet to manifest,” he said, nodding slightly in Snape’s direction, wondering when the Potions Master would deem it worth to offer interjection. “But Mrs Weasley has a N.E.W.T. in Potions, and she’s proven herself proper unhinged. You yourself are likely capable. Dudley said that you used to escape your house arrest by stealing the hairs of lady athletes and transforming yourself via Polyjuice to accompany Regulus to his tutoring.”

“Really, Severus?” Barty inquired, too deflated to qualify a demand.

“Ten points to Gryffindor,” Snape answered with an expression approaching genuine approval. Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair, feigning as much comfort as one might after nearly ten hours seated on cold steel.

“Look at him – Sev! Look at me!” Barty exclaimed, gesturing wildly at Harry and rising from his perch. “Look!” he presented the right-wing hate he had etched into his skin once more, trying to illicit a reaction from Snape. None was forthcoming. “For a few days when Dudley was out of the country, my Dark Mark had disappeared. Now that he’s back,” Barty paused, trying to regain his calm. “Harry found me this morning, started telling me about his cousin, stopped short, whined that his scar hurt and then in another abrupt shift asked me to put his name into the Goblet of Fire – a death sentence for a boy with his limitations. Before I could find you, Karkaroff found me, showed me his ink, and asked if I likewise had plans to flee.”

Correlation does not equal causation, Neville thought but did not say. In three and a half years, Severus Snape had never afforded him a single house point excepting this evening. Neville was not about the gamble this anomaly on an estimation that might increase whatever risk Harry and/or Tom was facing. Barty would get there quickly enough all on his own. It was how Snape taught, even when he did not mean to be teaching.

“And do you? Plan to flee?” Snape phrased, rather invitingly.

“Of course not!” Barty exclaimed, missing the cue he was being offered – generously, by Snape’s established standards. “Severus, I know this is not what you want to hear but please, please listen: I spent three years teaching Dudley. The kid has remarkable talent, but he hates it – he hates magic, and how could he not? Plainly, the Dark Lord is working through him to torment the boy who proved his downfall. If we don’t act to stop him, they may well both be lost – Harry and Dudley. If, however, we could restore Voldemort to a physical form he is not sharing with one of your kids, we could –”

“Kill him?” Neville asked before he could stop himself. He did not realise he had begun to cry until Barty turned to meet him, his face falling with the understanding of the expectation he was shattering.

“What?” he tried to smile. “No. C’mon, Kiddo. You know me. You know I’m not my father. We could subject Voldemort to the Crown Prosecution Services with all the powers of Tonks’ over-funded Auror Office and Dumbledore and the Four fucking Horsemen behind them for various and conflicting reasons. Tie up the trial indefinitely. There are fates worse than summary execution, believe it.”

“I … believe that correlation does not equal causation in this instance,” Snape interjected, appraising Barty in plain shock as though he likewise was struggling to believe that giving the sum of evidence, his fellow formerly dark wizard of a colleague had concluded that Voldemort resided in Dudley’s – rather than Harry’s – fractured soul.

“Harry suffered a closed head traumatic brain injury as an infant,” Snape explained slowly and with extreme caution as though he were presently more worried about Barty’s well-being than his boy’s. “He’s had migraines all his life. I have NHS records to back this up. He’s likewise been seen at St Mungo’s at various intervals, there is nothing mystical about his condition. Dudley has a history of behavioural problems, but these were manifest in bed wetting, temper tantrums, not … you’ll have to forgive me, attempted murder? Barty, perhaps you ought to consider taking a sabbatical, talking this out with Andromeda or someone on her staff.”

The suggestion was neither cruel nor mocking. The fear Neville therefore found in it clarified for him beyond doubt where his personal loyalties lied.

“No!” he exclaimed desperately. Scabbers, startled, awoke with a jolt and scurried from Neville’s lap, leaving a sting of crumbs in his wake.

“Mr Longbottom,” Snape raised a long finger in caution. “I suggest you refrain from such outbursts.” He did not want Neville to upset the situation beyond his ability to quickly bring it to resolution. Not like this, Neville thought as hard as he might, willing Snape to practice legilimency on him, wondering how he might otherwise convey his meaning. He was so clumsy with words. And some things should not be said aloud.

Snape’s thin face twisted for a moment with what Neville imagined to be concern before he turned back to Barty; his malice renewed and redoubled.

“Sir, my parents are the long-term patients of Dr Tonks. You can’t for a moment suggest –” Neville blurted out helplessly. He thought of his parents, uncommunicative and lost in their delusions, wondering that even Snape could in any earnest suggest subjecting another human being to the same, especially on to have suffered something so eerily similar and for so impossibly long.

“Of course, apologies,” Snape gave. His tone was relenting. His twisted expression did not match with his words.

“No … it isn’t that;” Neville swallowed. Had his father not likewise helped repentant Death Eater to reintegrate? Was that not why Narcissa Malfoy had ordered her various charges to be especially nice to him?

Pansy had accused Neville towards the end of their first semester of being a Squib, saying that was probably why Mrs Malfoy had demanded that they all be civil, because she could not preform most forms of magic either and had had to imperious the academy into awarding her with passing grades on the few N.E.W.T.s she took with practical exams. Hermione had stuttered something that sounded very much like she did not want to agree but did not see an alternative to blatant cruelty.

Draco had found him afterwards crying in one of the greenhouses and said that he and his cousin Dora would not have even lived to their first birthdays without Neville’s father’s intervention, that his mum owed him everything she had. A lot of people did. That was why they had been told to be nice. But, Draco tried, it is not like they would have been if they did not like him (‘look at the way Pansy talks to most people. No sense of diplomacy, that one.’)

Narcissa confirmed this, too, the summer following, picking him up from his Gran’s in a muggle vehicle she had not bothered or been able to convert, dismissing Pansy and Hermione in the back seat with a ‘Yeah, I am a Squib. I also happen to have an Order of Merlin, a CBE, and the sort of smile to have landed me atop Witch Weekly’s 50 Most Beautiful Mages List twice. I probably flirted my way through my N.E.W.T.s. That is way more impressive than weeks of all night cram sessions. But then, I had way more important things to worry about during my final year. Frank Longbottom had beaten Slytherin to the Quidditch Cup by thirty points the season prior and I was not about to let him have it again.’

But she did not win the Cup. She spent the next six hours on the drive to Wiltshire giving a rundown of every pass and play she had ever witnessed Frank expertly deliver in the six years they had each spent on their respective house teams. Pansy and Hermione were bored out of their minds before they had even reached the boarder. ‘Your father is a hero, Neville. Not because he was a brilliant captain, or even because of all the lives he saved and otherwise reformed. He believed – truly believed! – in a better world. One that unfortunately sometimes manifests in pampered pure blood princesses and muggle-born prodigies talking shit around stuff they’ve no idea about. Here’s a thought – don’t let them.’

Neville knew he could never talk like a lawyer, but right now he had to try. It was what his father would have expected, was it not?

“Thing is, even though he refuses to tell me what happened that night, I don’t think Barty had anything to do with reducing them to what they now are,” he told Snape with all of the bravery he could muster. “I think Dr Tonks did or is continuingly doing. So does my Gran. So does Theodore, um, not our Theo, I mean his dad, the right honourable Justice Nott,” Neville began to stammer. “But they can’t prove it. I thought I might have a go at it from another angle.

“So, Draco and me came up with this plan of breaking into Barty’s office, and then Draco transfigured himself into a ferret the way he can do – Harry said he thinks it is because the Blacks have that instable gene sequence that results in so many Metamorphmagi being born into that line making it easier, and maybe he is right and maybe he is just jealous.”

Snape gave him an inquiring look. Neville could not interpret if he found the theory intriguing, or if he simply wished him to get on with it. Neville wondered if Snape knew how hard he found talking about his parents. Maybe it was hard to hear about them. No one else ever seemed to want to.

“I guess it does not matter,” Neville said almost mutely, looking down at the crumbs in his lap, half wondering if something would be sent up from the kitchen or if Scabbers had devoured the entirety of supper’s offering. “I’ve known Draco could do that to himself from the day we met, but I pretended to Barty like I didn’t – trying to blackmail him into just telling me what happened to my mum and dad. But he doesn’t think I’m old enough and so I got to know him instead and I – he’s trying to do the right thing, even if he is going about it the wrong way. Same like the rest of us. Should that be punished?”

He looked up at Barty, who gave him a closed lip smile which did not extend to his eyes.

Snape spoke.

“His misconceptions surrounding my children should be corrected at the very least. I’ll be using my position as head of House Slytherin to ban him from the dungeons henceforth, Potions and otherwise. I’ll make a similar appeal to Professor Sprout with respect to the greenhouses now that you’ve been able to confirm my suspicions, and ‘Barty’ might well benefit from a pedagogic course emphasising professional distance. Professor Crouch, Mr Longbottom,” Snape sneered, gesturing in mock introduction.

“Severus,” Barty (Professor Crouch) twitched.

“Professor Snape,” the Potions Master corrected. “Even privately. We were never friends, Professor Crouch. I understand your haunting feelings of isolation, but I would appreciate you ceasing with this fiction. You were quite nearly as bad as the Marauders at school, and you have done nothing to redeem yourself since.”

“C’mon, we had our moments.”

“Regulus and I might have been friends once, but I’ve since learnt that he murdered my father in connection with the Dark Lord’s designs,” Snape answered flatly, never one to bother with niceties. “He seduced my former favourite student after holding her hostage, used her the open the Chamber of Secrets, married her when she was barely of age and likely tried to groom her into being whatever a decade in exile had him convinced that he wanted in a partner – and might have been successful if Lucius Malfoy had not gotten there first,” he paused and though Neville could tell he was fighting to keep his expression impassive, the corners of his mouth twisted with cold malice. “Don’t think I fail to see a certain parallel,” Snape continued, gesturing to Neville with a sweeping motion. “You will stay away from Mr Longbottom or suffer my wrath. The same goes for Miss Lovegood and Miss Weasley, being as she is always with the one or both of them.”

Neville felt his chest contract painfully. Had Snape used legilimency on him after all? Had he, Neville, invited it? He broke eye contact, remembering Pansy telling him and Hermione a rumour she had heard (or had chosen to start) about Professor Crouch’s piercings extending to –

But suddenly Neville felt very distant from phantasy and normal fear.

“Professor Snape!”

“You’ll thank me when you are a moderately well-adjusted thirty-something, Mr Longbottom. I can suffer your animosity until such point … I’m sure,” Snape answered silky.

“No, Sir, it is Harry – something is wrong.”

The boy in the bed beside him was opening his eyes. Rather, he was opening his eyelids. Something else entirely was staring back.

Chapter Text

Harry Potter had a headache which present company and conversation was doing naught to alleviate. He was only half listening to his companion, a python who seemed determined to exhaust the theme of the decolonisation, criticising the London Declaration as imperial rule with less regard to health and safety, capitalist arrangements enslaving former Crown subjects in all but name.

Having nothing to contribute, Harry did his best to nod the sympathies which he frankly was losing the energy to feign. He wished Draco were here to dismissively challenge the assessment with statistics; that Hermione, not to be outdone, would counter with something about cultural sensitivities around a topic she doubtlessly did not understand. His own role would be reduced to that of a translator, for though his friends were proficient enough Parseltongue (which lacked a standardised declension and plural forms) was a difficult language to communicate complex ideas in.

Tom thought so as well.

The self-declared Dark Lord, half conscious that somewhere within this back-office banter he was having a schizophrenic break wondered if he should make himself a cuppa. He wondered if Draco and Hermione were ‘the Boy’s’ friends, and if so, why they would know or care about Foreign Office policy. Tom Riddle was uncommonly good with names, mostly because he liked forging descriptive anagrams with the letters they contained, but he could not place a Draco or a Hermione within the scope of his own recollections.

Curious.

He had heretofore imagined the Boy a buried part of himself, ‘childhood innocence’ or some other such concept that could prove material only in white, comfortably middle-class suburbs. Something, in other words, that he had never actualised in his youth, that he subconsciously sought as a maladjusted young adult.

At least, that was what his psychologist had told him.

‘Do you have a name?’ he thought, uncertainly. Though no verbal answer came, a fact for which he was tremendously grateful, he gained a fractured understanding with the self-inquiry.

The Boy was called Harry.

He had two dads but called one ‘Moony’ for want of differentiation. The other was ‘Sev’ and he was a wizard, and when ‘Harry’ was younger he had run away from his aunt and uncle to look for the gingerbread house he had then assumed Sev to live in. Instead, he had met a beautiful witch by a river and explained his intent though he suspected she intended him harm. She took a silvery light from within him which had caused him to be sad and sick all over a picnic blanket that had materialised from naught.

Then he had gotten his wish. Or a cruel approximation of it.

Sharing a room with his cousin was quite nearly as bad as the cot he had slept on in a cupboard (spiders, at least, did not snore.) Both his dads were wizards, but they moderated their magic at home because it frightened stupid Dudley. Except Dudley was a wizard, too! But he did not go to Hogwarts, where both their dads had taught until recently. Now Moony was billeted in Cokeworth – yes, a predominantly white, recently gentrified suburb. He was doing penance for trying to kill Narcissa with Dark Magic.

Interesting.

Narcissa, from what Tom gathered, might have been a minor deity, a personification of the adjacent Eagley Brook on whose filthy banks the Boy had first encountered her. Tom was as familiar as he ever wanted to be with that particular branch of magic, with tributes that took more than any boon could ever provide in exchange.

Harry was losing his magic.

Narcissa had it locked up out of reach and someone, Moony perhaps, had tried to steal it back.

Now, on the edge of Harry’s consciousness, Sev was explaining to Ron, Neville, Luna, and Theo – names that meant nothing to Tom, and to Draco and Hermione – the two whom Harry thought might have a baseline understanding of foreign policy, that he, Harry, would have to leave Hogwarts.

Harry was screaming, begging Tom’s help. In words.

‘Narcissa has my magic, our magic, but she did not take it! You did! And now you have to help me get it back!’

‘How?’ Tom frowned to himself, looking around the over-crowded store- cum breakroom of Borgin and Burke's, wondering if his employer kept a stock of likely expired anti-psychotics in the Staff Only bathroom. Or a fast-acting painkiller. His head felt like it was going to burst.

‘And Narcissa isn’t some sort of genius loci, she is a just a lawyer, but maybe if you had tried to kill her in her crib, and not me in mine, no one would have found out about the horcruxes, and you and I would still be magic! Can’t you … can’t you?’

Perhaps even more worryingly, Tom doubted he could cast an Avada at an infant in his present state to any effect absent of an extended tantrum. His vision blurred. He rubbed his eyes to recover it. The unrealised ‘childhood innocence’ he allegedly sought through self-sabotaging underemployment was evidently a murderous squib. He wondered what his psychologist would make of that.

Looking at the calendar on the wall adjacent, he saw that it was 17^th December 1965. Would he chance see her again before she had to return to Hogwarts? His … oh for Salazar’s sake! He, Tom – did not have a bloody psychologist! He had disconcerting conversations with a Slytherin Princess who sometimes came round to drop thousands on stocking suffers. He had really ought to make an effort to better himself in the coming year. Join a gym. See if the local night school offered Albanian on the chance that the holiday that he had been saving up for would require him to converse with locals. Find someone more qualified than a third year to explain why the voice in his head was offering a number of useful travel phrases and translations: ‘Do you have a public toilet?’ – ‘How much does this cost?’ – ‘Does this particular local ghost tour address the legend of a young witch who stole her mother’s crown?’

Apparently, Harry had learned Albanian the last time this happened, whatever the devil ‘this’ was. He had not been actively conscious of his personified childhood innocence when he had made the diary. Or the ring.

Tom wondered if he would have done better to take a sick day.

“You look like shit,” Nagini informed him, a welcome break from her own elongated existential woes. At least, here Tom had something to say in response.

“Never felt better,” he lied unconvincingly.

“Really? I think you are losing your edge.” Snakes could not offer anything by way of facial expression, making the mocking smile another product of Tom’s overtaxed imagination. This, too, managed to annoy him.

“It is just a headache,” he shrugged.

“Hm. Let’s hope,” she hissed, pausing long enough for intrigue before continuing slyly, “You are doing it wrong; you know.”

“Requesting sick leave would have looked suspect.”

Hepzibah Smith, a wealthy hag of advanced age had perished the night prior, the result of a life of excesses and a little arsenic which Tom had left in the sugar bowl on his last visit.

Reflecting, Tom wondered if Nagini had a point.

Diabetic by his estimation, an extra lump or two of processed sugar might well have done Hepzibah in on its own. He could well simply have gone to take tea with her, bringing boxed chocolates instead of flowers and allowed self-indulgence to do the rest.

But was ‘accidental manslaughter’ the same as ‘murder’ where magic was concerned?

Should he have gone to an apothecary he had never before visited to buy the poison, or would that have looked even more suspicious than buying on Diagon Alley where he had a tab? He had paid in cash this time, Tom was reasonably sure, but was that, likewise, suspect?

He looked at the serpent as though she might provide some answer. She seemed to study him appraisingly. ‘You are getting very sleepy,’ he, or perhaps Harry thought. Tom smiled in spite of himself.

“You are fooling no one,” Nagini appraised.

The wall clock, disappointingly, told him it was just past eleven. Tom had estimated the time at three in the afternoon at least. Merlin! How the day was dragging. Immortality, suddenly, felt like a grievous mistake. “The two customers to have threatened their patronage on this too bight of a morning assumed me to be merely hungover,” he sneered in response.

Rising, he resolved to steal and swallow whatever he found left in the bathroom cupboard. Nagini began hissing incoherently, something Tom understood to be laugher when the cabinet revealed nought save a box of tampons and a solvent against dry skin, items she must have need of on the rare occasions she reverted to her human form. Frustrated, Tom took the facial cream, applying a liberal measure as though such had been his intent. Nagini hissed that he would do better to exfoliate.

Tom, not knowing what that word meant in context, agreed, at least, that he looked awful. His eyes were red. Not, he noted, the way they sometimes were after a night spent ignoring sleep for want of study, or even after the slightly more extreme weekend counter measures of wine and weed, for the sclera seemed unaffected by the darkest of arts. Rather, it was his irises that were bloodshot. He could do with a haircut, too, he frowned. Not that the greatest and most terrible wizard to have ever lived was quite so vain and shallow as his serpentine companion.

Not, at least, that he would have been if the voice in his head were not telling him that his, Harry’s, hair did the same after he, Tom, had tried to comb through it with his fingers to no viable effect. It would not do any good to shave it, either, or so he was informed. Aunt Petunia tried that once, but by morning it had grown back to its regular unruly mass.

“And is that the impression the greatest and most terrible wizard to have ever lived in London seeks to project? Merely hungover?” Nagini teased when he emerged. Tom frowned. He had wanted to ask what exfoliate meant and how he was meant to do it, for her likely overpriced facial cream had left him with a waxy sheen rather than the ‘natural glow’ promised on the packaging.

“Dare you to mock Lord Voldemort?” he snapped instead.

“Tell me Tom, did you even use your wand this time?” Nagini made a move to uncoil as though to suggest a shrug before proceeding to the percolator. Tom watched with the same wonder that had first taken him when Nagini had made him a pot of coffee without what his understanding of evolution considered the requisite of opposable thumbs. Best not let her know, for such would surely result in yet another long conversation he was of no present mind to have.

“You’ll address me as –” he began.

“Says ‘Tom’ on your nametag,” she interrupted. “But inferring your aggression as confirmation, I am telling you that you did it wrong.”

She might have a point. The headache was a side effect he had been expecting. The bloodstained irises, sallow skin, and second personality he could well do without.

“What would you know about the creation of a horcrux?” he asked, trying to phrase this more as an accusation than in inquiry. Having nothing that a minor deity might desire, he would otherwise have to buy on credit, and he did not fancy the rates the mercurial Nagini offered.

“That however ‘dark’ magic it still exists within the limitations of Newtonian physics. There is an exchange, or there is meant to be one. If you performed the ritual as you have before without first securing that requirement, as I know you to have done before, the spell will seek another source. Retribution, if you will, in its attempt to right itself. Took itself out on you personally from the looks of it.”

He did not understand exactly how her own magic worked, and his own education in the western traditions had heretofore proved a hinderance in discovery. Nagini, he knew, was as much her title as it had ever been her name. She had a temple on Sumatra where her adherents gave offerings in exchange for the privilege of doing so, which provided them with something substantiate if not tangible. She, too, was immortal, though not in the way Tom sought to be, for snakes could self-impregnate. While these offspring were considerably less viable than their two-parented counterparts, those that survived and flourished did so with the memories of their foremothers, and ‘his’ Nagini had so ‘lived’ for thousands of years. Personality, free will, and other such concepts were too culturally specific to Tom’s experience for Nagini to comprehend or counter in reasoned discussion. She was herself. And her mother. And her grandmother. And a hundred more still. But so far from her temple source, her own daughters had all died as soft-shelled egglings, and she could not assume a human form for the length of a return trip, even with modern means. She, too, would die someday on this godforsaken island if she could not find a way of returning to her place of worship.

Tom, personally, did not think she was making much of an effort to this end. At Borgin and Burkes, she was regularly presented with articles and artefacts that might make a week’s travel possible, but thus far these had only granted her a human appearance for long enough to remind Mr Borgin that she could just as easily take the life she had saved if he continued to fail to meet his end of their bargain. Long enough to go shopping. And, occasionally, to mind the shop.

She did not seem to use its resources to read or enrich her mind in any way that might assist with her predicament. It had occurred to Tom that, perhaps, written English defeated her. Not trusting himself to ask and knowing he would not have the patience to teach were she to affirm his suspicion, Tom had told her about his strategy, about horcruxes.

This had been an error.

Now she was acting as though she understood the science better than Lord Voldemort himself.

He supposed semi-divine serpents had to do something to sell their foreign mythology.

“I’ll have some orange juice and a lie down when my shift ends,” Tom scoffed. “Shower and strong coffee come morning. That will right me.”

“Is it magic?” Nagini challenged.

He supposed not. “Physiology. It is … effective.”

“Can you do magic still?”

“We are speaking,” Tom reminded her.

“That is linguistics,” she corrected. “So, talk to me, Tom – which unfortunate sod did you compel into killing Madame Smith on your behalf?”

“A House Elf. That is hardly –”

“Weighed against prior experience, how did you think that was going to work out for you? You used a Basilisk to provide the impetus for your first horcrux. Insecure in that only half-successful attempt, you had your maternal uncle Avada your father’s family. You confessed this all to me as a possible substitute for organised religion giving you an outlet for your … dare I say ‘remorse’? You made a mistake. You ought to have instead asked my intervention, for gods have no remorse. No regret. No mercy. My powers such as they are, might alone be define by that reality.”

“I have no remorse,” Tom insisted. “I’m immortal. Not like you. I’ve already taken magic further than any mage has heretofore dared.”

“And I suspect such is coming at the cost of your own.” How could she possibly know?

“At least I’m not damned to spend my days as –”

“A semi-divine serpent with only one adherent for company?” Snakes had no discernible facial expressions. He knew her to be smirking all the same.

“A demigoddess with a dead-end job,” Tom corrected, hoping with ‘adherent’ that she was referring to Mr Borgin (whose stomach cancer she kept at bay) rather than himself.

Not wanting to reflect too deeply on the specifics of his only true friendship, Tom settled into a familiar mindset of self-aggrandisement measured slightly by pedestrian complaint. Was there a point to being the Heir of Salazar Slytherin beyond having circular conversations with annoying coworkers in strange hisses? The greatest and most powerful wizard alive, who would never die would –

… occasionally use Parseltongue to talk in class when he had not done the reading or coursework, Harry’s memories intruded. Moony had written a phonetic dictionary when he had been little so a lot of his, Harry’s, friends could now speak it, too, and few of his teachers were any they wiser. McGonagall set lines though if she heard so much as a long intake of breath, and Snape, who could recognise the difference, was otherwise defeated by linguistics.

When he, Harry, cursed under his breath in his adoptive father’s presence, he would offer a translation in Mandarin, which Snape, likewise, had never been able to learn. Once, this had happened in the Great Hall and Cho Chang, the pretty Ravenclaw seeker had laughed, and she had spent their then shared detention trying to discover all she could about the part of the Potion Master’s heritage he willingly rejected. It was the closest Harry had ever come to talking to her.

A Half Blood, then? Tom surmised of Snape. Harry, at least, was. He did not know, or at least could not remember either of his actual parents though. He suspected that Snape’s father had instead been a squib, being that so much of their small Chinese library consisted of spell books, not that he would ever bring this up. He hoped Dudley might one day in his stead. Sev loved Dudley, so it would be different if his cousin gave the theory voice. He, Harry, was not even liked by comparison – merely tolerated because Sev had been friends with his late mother, and Moony, in turn, had been mates with his dad. Whose lives Tom had taken. Harry’s real mum. And real dad. Who would have loved him had they been around to do so. Who would have only made him see Dudley at Christmas and would, surely, have let him stay at Hogwarts, even if he had once been Lord Voldemort.

Tom could accept that he was being haunted, save for the fact that Nagini, rather than Harry, had the right of it.

Tom had never killed anyone directly.

Had his caution been in error? Was his inner child an expression of a remorse he could not otherwise identify within himself?

He did not have much time to dwell.

“Want to employ me in your next attempt at eternal life?” Nagini offered. “I haven’t eaten in a solid month; two customers are about to walk in and there is enough old shit in here for you to carelessly contaminate with your soul.”

The bell attached to the front door rang for attention before she had even finished.

“Sure enough,” Tom grumbled, getting up and putting on the best sales-smile he could force through his possible schizophrenic break with surrounding.

“Heat sensory,” Nagini explained as Tom half-tripped over her, emerging through a beaded door which Mr Burke had acquired at a boot sale depicting the Carpenter-God who likewise made false promises of eternal life to his followers. He made to greet a pair of girls whom he recognised until Harry’s unwelcome recollections caused him to do a double take.

“Hiya … Tom,” the brunette spoke. She stopped uncomfortably as he unwillingly studied her. For the briefest of moments, Harry’s heart had leapt, mistaking the young woman as his friend Hermione. But this was the sixties Harry though as though the present belonged to a distant past, and anyway, Hermione did not know how to care for her curl pattern.

“Um. Is Nagini around?” Not-Hermione asked. Her name is Andromeda Black, Tom tried to correct. She is a teenage Legilimens and if she sees you, she’ll want to talk. Fancies herself uniquely capable of diagnosis despite an absence of qualification. Though he ‘spoke’ to Harry he was attempting to reach his other possible intruder. The Dark Lord had never learned how to ask for help in direct language.

“Perhaps I could be of assistance?” he suggested, for this seemed more in line with a normal course of conversation (even on Knockturn Alley) than ‘I low-key lead to the accidental manslaughter of an old lady in ill health and now I’m having conversations with some solidly middle-class version of myself.’ (To be followed by ‘And how does that make you feel?’ in yet another conversation, Tom realised, he alone was participating in.)

“Do you speak Indonesian?” Andromeda narrowed her eyes, challengingly.

Turning to first hiss ‘come’ to Nagini, Tom informed smugly, “I’m a Parselmouth. I might be able to translate.”

As Nagini slithered under the disconcerting portrait of Jesus, Not-Pansy mockingly made the signs of the cross and muttered a Latin prayer as Andromeda (aka Not-Hermione) moaned that Nagini was a serpent again and they were wasting their time. Not-Pansy held up a finger, seemingly unconscious of the way she was mirroring their Lord and Saviour as depicted on the door-substitute.

“Translate … or negotiate,” Not-Pansy countered. “Can you lend us the snake? We can put down a deposit no-prob.”

“For how long and to what end?” Tom asked quickly without first looking to Nagini for confirmation, busied as he otherwise was thinking that the raven-haired vixen before him looked absolutely nothing like Pansy Parkinson, whilst wondering who Pansy was and how he possibly knew what she looked like, and being told by Harry that it was mostly a posture thing. Pansy, who was smaller and slighter, usually stood with her legs slightly spread and arms crossed as though to signal that Harry, at least, had absolutely no chance of entering into her almost exposed promise land, but he was damn well going to do anything she was about to suggest in that vain and vague hope.

Tom felt ill. Not-Pansy was of Hogwarts age, Harry’s frame of reference was likely no older, and Tom was too far on the wrong side of twenty for such thoughts to cross his mind, however involuntarily.

It was not as though he had ever dated at school, been with or so much as considered a woman since. ‘Bullocks, ‘innit?’ Harry attempted to sympathise. ‘I’m not even straight and I still let Pansy get to me. It is just her vibe. You won’t win. Even Draco doesn’t let it particularly bother him and, I mean, he gets jealous if I am called on in class.’ – ‘I’m celibate,’ Tom thought as hard as he could, watching Not-Hermione and Not-Pansy exchange a series of slight, non-verbal exchanges that might have signalled practiced telepathy, or might equally have belonged to the more common-place mysteries of the fairer sex Tom did not warrant enough to intellectually explore but respected enough not to discredit. The Dark Lord was a student of second wave feminism and intended to incorporate women’s equality into his eventual platform.

Not-Hermione and Not-Pansy, having concluded nonetheless that he was a creep, exchanged a nod.

“Two hours should do it. Ask her to name her price,” Not-Hermione answered.

“You have a figure?” Tom asked Nagini in Parseltongue.

“What does she want?” Nagini hissed back.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Used to be a hobby of yours Tom, perusing the minds of our clientele. Go home. Have a shower and some orange juice and whatever other muggle comforts cross your aching mind.”

Goaded by his serpentine companion, he met the smouldering gaze of Not-Pansy. Suddenly he was returned to the water closet, studying his bloodstained eyes only to find them emerald green and slightly enlarged by crooked spectacles. He had a cheery disposition, a gap-toothed smile, and a lightning shaped facial scar. ‘Harry?’ he asked. Then screamed. Audibly. Presently.

“Bella! Stop!” Andromeda scolded.

“Try it again and it is wands out,” Bella returned smugly. Sisters? Of course they were. He should have known. He would have, he told himself, were he not otherwise preoccupied with this odd existential crisis.

“State your purpose,” Tom gasped, blinking back tears. His head was bloody killing him! Any more of this and he would be on his knees begging the beaded Jesus for merciful death. Any more of this and he might try his luck with Nagini.

“Mind your tone,” Bella warned.

“Please?” Tom tried.

Nagini made more disconnected hisses to signal laughter. “This,” he told her in their shared language, “rather than your inability to return to your temple, is why your cult is dying.” In part he did this to give the illusion of conversation. For all the sisters knew he could be giving her permission to devour them, body and soul. He did not expect for his remark to warrant a response.

“Oh, my Lord, my Lord,” Nagini mocked, “but it seems you are not even the greatest and most terrible wizard to ever live in London. They are local, are they not?”

“They are from Belgravia. It is not real London, just old money and eastern oligarchs.”

It was admittedly not much by way of defence.

“Our cousin did something rather mean that has caused our elf to categorically refuse to touch our clothing,” Andromeda explained quickly, trying to keep the peace for the Parseltongue. “We needed some items laundered for a gathering this evening, and being that Bella was afforded responsibility for Sirius’ efforts she’s – well I’ve had to sort it. I’ve a friend from Muggle Studies who knows how to operate the machines muggles use for their washing and – ”

“He is not your friend, Andy, he’s Filth. So is this one. We are leaving,” Bella announced. Turning to Tom, she added curtly, “Tell your pet that there are three goats in it for her if she wants to come with.”

“We just want her to help us scare a six-year-old if she’s not in a state to help out with this wandless incantation,” Andromeda said, producing something scribbled in what Tom guessed was Indonesian from her pocket. “We are not allowed to use ours out of school and with our uncle being the Twenty Eight’s current Chair, we would be fools to take such a risk lest such make the papers.”

“You can’t scare a six-year-old without an elaborate prop?” Tom taunted, stalling for a counteroffer from his ‘pet’, expecting her to ask for a cow and a new wireless. He had told her where they lived. Surely, she knew she was being short-changed.

“You’ve never met the kid,” Bella shrugged. “Nagini won’t frighten him in the slightest. I’d rather hoped he’d ‘charm’ her into sneaking up on our esteemed guests and giggle himself into a proper grounding for the offence. Keep me company for the rest of the holiday now that Ted’s handled our washing, and I won’t be let out again for the sake of medial chores. Honestly!” she seemed to curse in that polite way of the well-bred who never let a dirty word slip in extended company. “If I thought I have cause to curse the help, I’d have done so directly, but Aunt Walburga blames me for everything that happens as though Sirius were this perfect angle who never –”

“Three goats?” Nagini considered.

“Come,” Bella repeated the word she had heard Tom speak earlier before turning on her heel to exit. Andromeda followed. Nagini slithered after the sisters. Tom felt painfully alone and not particularly useful.

When Nagini came back to the shop, he would clock out, go up to his studio flat, have a lie-in and reconsider his life’s ambitions. Tomorrow, he would give his two-week’s notice and abscond to Albania. Or sell what was left of his soul to a snake-goddess with a now-mortal lifespan. Or go up to Manchester to the banks of Eagley Brook and see if he could likewise summon Harry’s Narcissa to the same end. Or simply throw himself in and test if his great magic could contend the lingering pollutants of the Industrial Revolution.

It occurred to him that it hardly mattered.

This was not working. London and its encroaching apathy did not meet with the Dark Lord’s liking. He closed his eyes, rubbed them in his palms and emerged from his moment of self-loathing as far from Borgin and Burke's as his fractured imagination might take him.

From one of the uncomfortable cot beds in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, two teachers he did not recognise were engaged in what he might have called a ‘philosophical debate around the Dark Arts’ were he feeling generous, but what he wrote off as a ‘petty spat of little significance’ in his present state of mind. A round faced boy beside him addressed him by name.

No.

He addressed him as ‘Harry’. Tom had responded to the name without much thought.

Nagini had been right. He had done something terribly wrong in his construction of life eternal.

“Intolerable” – “Insubordinate!” – “Disrespectful!” the former headmasters and Mistresses adorning the walls of Dumbledore’s office chastised between whispers of greater bewilderment, wondering how he, Draco, came to enter this hallowed chamber unaccompanied by its current master.

“As though any door is closed to a progeny of House Black,” a familiar voice boomed from an empty brown frame. “Now be silent, you lot, I have need to speak with my worthless grandson.”

In truth, it had not been half so simple as his ancestor made it.

Draco, finding Phineas’ voice, swivelled in Dumbledore’s chair to face him, crossing his legs on the headmaster’s mahogany desk. Predictably, his forefather briefly joined his companion’s complaints. He, Draco, was not seeking advice or assistance, for such was beneath the arrogance of youth. No, Phineas Nigellus assessed. He wanted validation, a confirmation of his worst fears that he might wallow in them, same as every other student to mistake themselves as master.

Rolling his eyes, Draco allowed this to continue. Experience taught that interruption would only prolong the lecture, ‘validating’ Phineas’ astute observations that pubescent children were governed by emotion as opposed to the honour and duty that had led him, Phineas, to accepting a post he claimed to have despised. Reflecting on the day’s events, Draco attempted to contort his face into an expression appropriately contrite, failing spectacularly as his lips twisted into a familiar smirk.

Without Professor Snape present in the Potions classroom, Neville Longbottom had fulfilled what seemed his life’s ambition of exploding a cauldron with seemingly benign ingredients. Draco, who had for his part spent the entirety of lecture echoing the school secretary’s pronunciation of her youngest son’s name (‘RonALD … can you pass the nettles? RonALD … can I use your silver dagger for a moment? RonALD … can you read? You are meant to add an anti-clockwise stir. No, seriously, I’m actually trying to help this time, it increases the potency by improving the rate of distribution.’) had entirely missed Neville’s errors of inattention. He had only joined in the boisterous applause when Mrs Weasley had cluck-cluckingly hurried the inept Gryffindor from the dungeon, ending class before setting homework.

Neville had missed Care of Magical Creatures the following block (if ever there was a class to skip.) Draco, who would have gotten out of it, too, if he but could, had not thought much of the absence, expecting to see Neville again by lunch at the latest.

By the time the bell rang, however, all consideration of his fellow disappointment to a noble surname had dissipated in the face of Professor Hagrid’s essay. Fifteen inches on the protocol to observe when approaching a Hippogriff.

Draco, who for his part only felt comfortable around ‘animals’ he could invite round to tea (a list limited to Sirius, Remus, Professor McGonagall, and to a much lesser extent Fenrir Greyback whose caravan Mother had made him visit during a scrofula outbreak when Sirius and Regulus had the sense to flat out refuse) thought that best practice where it came to Hippogriffs was avoidance.  

He could not ask Hermione for help with the assignment, fearing her cat nearly as much as the high-minded and heavy-handed lecture his admittance would amount to. Pansy was likewise out (‘We have homework? I can never understand a word he is saying. Well, fuck!’). Draco could hardly approach Ron with humility after mocking him the block before, and Lavender, who fancied Ron, and Parvati, who fancied going to the Yule Ball with him, were likewise bound to cold shoulder him.

He needed to find Luna Lovegood.

As it worked out, she had found him instead. When he offered financial incentive for help with an assignment by way of greeting, she blinked twice, told him she would love to help, but she was otherwise engaged that evening. Her godfather had also asked her assistance with a curious animal, and she had to bring Barty to Gregg’s to buy dinner for Dudley’s pony Pebbles. She was not sure when she would return.

Draco, hearing this explanation, was caught between wondering if he truly understood nothing of Creatures, be they Magical or mundane, or if Luna was having him on, followed her away from the Great Hall. Could they do the essay now? He would double his offer.

‘It is not about the money,’ she had told him rather absently. He asked if he had offended her in some way. ‘How could I take offence where none was intended?’ she blinked. Draco shrugged. Most of the girls he knew had no trouble doing just that, which did not feel a wise thing to say. ‘I simply have not seen Neville since his accident this morning and wanted to bring him something to lighten, or enlighten, his hospital stay,’ Luna had explained, producing a few recent issues of The Quibbler from her shoulder-bag.

Resigning himself to an evening in the school’s library, he asked if Professor Trelawney was still writing the paper’s horoscopes, and upon confirming this, was told that he had delayed too long for his coup to be bloodless (something that meant nothing at the time it was relayed).

They met up with Theo, and then Hermione and Ron, and everyone seemed of the opinion that he, Draco, had been designated to procure a bouquet of flowers for a visit he had not even known he was expected to make until Luna refused him help with his Care of Magical Creatures paper on respectable grounds.

Hermione this began to rattle off the answer as she walked, her pace quickened by the airs of aggravation she put on around being the ‘brightest witch of her age’ (where she had acquired this title and why no one seemed willing to dispute it lost on Draco as he watch Ron scribble the answer in shorthand on the cover of a magazine he had nicked from Luna.) Ron would get the same grade for half the effort. At the door to the Hospital Wing Draco pointed this out as if to ask who the clever one truly was. Ron took the backhanded apology as intended. Hermione scoffed (‘Honestly!’) and that was the last moment, perhaps of Draco’s life, where anything would ever seem normal –

That, or Phineas had a point – adolescents were too dramatic in their phrasing. Either way, Harry was sleeping in the bed beside Neville and Professor Snape looked as though he had been weeping.

Draco and the others knew instantly what had happened, though Hermione demanded explanation. Now it was theirs to answer the question of ‘how’. At the time ‘who’ had seemed straightforward, at least to Draco Malfoy. This was Dora’s doing. That, Draco pointed out half an hour later, was what the coup in his horoscope had referred to.

Theo expressed some scepticism. He had Divination next and meant to ask Professor Trelawney to be more exact (‘A fool’s errand!’ Hermione scoffed, but one her precious Ron was keen to partake in, that particular Quibbler issue having his Magical Creates essay on its cover.)

Before they left, Hermione had the better sense to ask Ron where she might find the twins. Fred and George had, after all, acquired Dora’s magical map upon her expulsion.

Luna was tasked with gathering the others and arranging a meeting that evening before bothering her godfather for detail Snape might well have omitted during their planned excursion. Professor Crouch had been there, after all, when Harry had merely been faking it as he was so often wont, Hermione pointed out, echoing Snape’s disapproval though it was not clear if her critique was of Harry, Barty, or the special treatment Luna received in her position of sudden privilege.

It was agreed that they would all convene at six in front of Pebble’s pen.

Until then, Hermione and Draco would use the map to track Dumbledore, Draco transfiguring himself into a ferret and breaking into the Headmaster’s Office as soon as they were certain that Dumbledore had left school grounds and would not be returning.

The Marauder’s Map placed the headmaster in Hagrid’s Hut with the groundskeeper cum Magical Creatures professor and the Headmistress, evidence enough that bad omens always came in sets of three.

Draco and Hermione hid under the window attempting to eavesdrop, but their hearing was marred by a shared and sudden tinnitus. Hermione was able to identify the spell. Because of course she was.

Still, they might well have spent an eternity knelt in this discomfort had one of Hagrid’s accursed Hippogriffs not sniffed them out.

Draco let out a shout of horror at its approach. No. He reflected. Such was too dignified a description. Draco let out an ‘EEEEEEEeeeeeek!’ causing McGonagall to come to the window, observe that Draco’s cry of distress sounded suspiciously like the ferret he had been alleged of being able to transform into, a rumour she would have given more credence to if he averaged better marks in Transfiguration.

He returned that a 95% was still an ‘O’ and inquired if she struggled with maths or if he was being personally signalled out for unrealistic expectations. She asked what he was doing. Waiting, he had answered. He had been told Professor Dumbledore was visiting and he had need to speak to him but did not want to interrupt. McGonagall invited him in, explaining as she did that he, had been misinformed. The headmaster had left the grounds hours ago and was not expected to return tonight. Hermione, still hidden, pointed to Dumbledore’s name on the Map, communicating wordlessly that the headmaster had an invisibility cloak. Draco gave a quick nod of understanding.

Inside, he kept conversation as neutral as one might, a task Hagrid assisted in by announcing he was baking, and Draco was welcome to stay for tea if he were keen. Draco spent the next forty or so minutes helping Hagrid recalibrate his oven after attacking the great oaf that he needed to adjust for altitude if he expected to produce anything edible.

McGonagall, with barely concealed amusement, inquired what Draco was basing his calculations on when Hogwarts was unplotable –  ‘past experience’ requiring no explanation, ‘physical evidence’ forcing him to betray that Neville Longbottom had figured out where Hogwarts was to a tenth of a degree using his astronomy notes and observing the stunted growth of a common weed on the edge of the Forbidden Forrest.

An hour later, Hermione knocked and was served a mug of tea and a perfectly pleasant scone. Dumbledore, she seemed to be indicating, had left. Draco, however, could not without it seeming suspect, for now he was being asked how he learned how to rework electric circuits. Muggle Studies. He had no choice. Father had insisted. Draco did not know why a school governor might presume that nuclear physics was covered by the curriculum. Lucius Malfoy, no doubt, could not conceive that it would not be, Hagrid observed with a snort that made Draco smile.

He had this been thinking on his father when Luna returned with Barty a few minutes later. Having the excuse of the scones serving to allow him to avoid a sausage of the sort which a pony ate without protest, Draco took his leave while the others gathered for a bit of five-a-side. (Luna being of the opinion that Pebbles missed Dudley, who used to block a ball for its amusement. Apparently, Pebbles looked homesick. Draco, who had spent considerable time in Cokeworth, did not see how, but he kept this to himself. Everyone else seemed to have accepted Luna’s attempt at cover without question.)

Draco, however, was preoccupied with recollections of how Father used to take Dora out of class, too, for the political instruction which he considered more important than the core curriculum. Draco wondered how much Dora had taken from these lessons. If he might hope to teach them both one which they would not soon forget if his sudden suspicions panned out.

Upon explaining to Barty that Neville was in hospital on the walk back to the castle (and how had Luna possibly avoided the topic? Bloody legend, that girl!) he sent the DADA Professor up with well-wishes, making like he was headed for the Slytherin Common Room himself. In fact, he was, though he did not linger. Transfiguring himself into his animagus form, Draco crawled into a heat vent and navigated through trial an error to the Headmaster’s Office.

Draco scurried beneath the rug to the desk, seemingly without a single former master or mistress taking notice of him until he resumed his human form in the chair behind the desk as though he had apparated into it.

He met Phineas’ gaze. His grandfather mirrored his smirk. An invitation. Finally.

“If not Dora, then who?” Draco asked, trying to keep emotion from his voice.

“You would do better to ask how,” Phineas chided, not, Draco noted, unkindly.

“How then, as the actor is answered with the question of whom you would seek to protect. I can come on but one alternate name. R.A.B.”

“Then you are a fool,” the portrait scoffed.

“Oh, I am?” Draco invited. He would get nowhere with contradictions.

“I’m protecting you every bit as much, you ignorant boy,” Phineas claimed, “but I suppose you’ll know the whole of it soon enough for Winky the House Elf, Barty Crouch and his worthless son and namesake’s former servant, is a sloppy drunk. Bill Weasley did not grow up with staff and as such never quite acquired the subtle skill of censoring himself before servants. She knows all.

“Loyalties notwithstanding, they talk amongst themselves, the help. Being that Winky now serves a new master, I’d be interested to see how long it takes before the affairs of Grimmauld Place are printed in bold face.”

Draco connected loosely that Barty Crouch Jr had lost nearly the entirety of his inheritance to extended court and extensive legal fees, including the elf to have served as his jailer for a decade. Draco doubted very much she was missed, or that Sir Corban missed anything Winky had not meant to betray. Likely, the elf’s surrender to his service was in line with Mother’s designs.

Rita Skeeter, Sir Corban’s latest conquest, did not pose the threat Phineas implied. Even if she were privy to the specifics of Harry’s cursed existence, it was not as though she could put any of it to pen. Sir Corban had seen to that himself the last time Dora and Regulus had acted out of accordance with The Order of the Phoenix and destroyed a horcrux. Besides, Mother claimed to like her, at least, in comparison to her predecessors in the role of Sir Corban’s paramour. She, Rita, Mother claimed, liked a long game. So did Mother. They were not the enemies the public imagined, though, Draco realised, it might play to his personal benefit if the London faction of House Black believed this to be true.

“Rita as an assignment that should keep her out of Oxford for the foreseeable future,” Draco shrugged.

“Rita Skeeter has a convenient cover and a sizable budget to research a larger piece around your Defence professor. She may well bring Winky along as a character witness. From what I have heard, for portraits talk as elves do, Corban won’t much miss her services.” Sir Corban, Draco nearly corrected. The Crown and Church would have to recognise his own marriage as valid thanks to the solicitor’s efforts. But the Horseman had better defenders than Draco himself, and bigger enemies than Winky. Besides, this was not the issue at hand.

“Then what are you worried about the House Elf potentially disclosing? Who, Grandfather, dared compromise and assault my intended?” Draco demanded, no longer able to keep emotion from his tone, imaginings of his eventual nuptials fleeting as quickly as they filled his mind. Would Harry even want him without his wealth and courtesy titles? If he, Draco, was right about why his lover was unconscious in hospital, did his own potential for happiness even warrant consideration?

A darker truth threatened at his resolve as Phineas answered. It was, Draco realised, entirely possible that he hated Father and Dora more in this moment than he loved Harry. More than he might ever love anyone, including himself. Perhaps this was what it was to wield power. Perhaps Father deserved a measure of mercy.

“Regulus and Bill believed themselves to have discovered a potential horcrux within Bellatrix’ Gringotts vault. Knowing they could never themselves access it or hope to remove it, they made use of an ongoing debate pertaining to public transportation as a cover for Arthur Weasley and –”

“My father,” Draco completed.

“That Breton traitor, yes.” Here, ‘traitor’ was a false pronouncement. Traitors betrayed their beliefs. Father had always been consistent to a fault, putting the interests of Wiltshire above all other considerations. It did not do well to argue the choice of vocabulary. House Malfoy had returned to King John’s banners during Louis the Lion’s occupation of London and every Lord Wiltshire since was guilty of the same sin. High time to shatter tradition.

“My father is the reason my beloved is in hospital,” Draco explained, returning the conversation a conflict he cared about by way of clarifying, “fighting for his very existence against a force he cannot possibly hope to contend or even contain for much longer. Right. It seems I’ll have to return the offence, destroy that which Lucy loves most.”

Phineas, to Draco’s surprise, looked affronted by his nerve. “I’ll remind you that your right honourable mother is a daughter of my ancient and noble –”

“You think my father loves my mother?” Draco smirked. What a notion! “I thought you to be a better judge of character than that. No Phineas. When I speak of relieving my father from that which he holds dear, I don’t mean his wife. I mean his titles. His holdings. Wiltshire and all his bloody rights and obligations, the pomp and ceremony he confuses with purpose.”

“At whose expense?” Phineas challenged, his tone betraying his intrigue.

“Not my own, I assure you. Father was given a prophecy as a much younger man by one of Cassandra’s descendants. One he’s misinterpreted and at every opportunity tried to circumvent. Naming Dora his heir, perhaps fathering a child with her that his line might continue eo nomine. I’d have been happy to have let him. I love my father, in spite of everything – no, I do,” he held up a finger when Phineas looked as though he had something he wanted to inject.

“I think perhaps I would be doing him a yet greater injustice if I failed to bring the line he based the entirety of his reign on to a worthy final act. Maggie – the Muggle Thatcher – he misses her, I think. The power plays and international political intrigue and Merlin! The bloody collusion, all because she could not quite prove that the Malfoys acquired or extended their holdings through the use of magic contradictory to the Muggle Protection Act of 1190. But I can prove a series of illegal acquisitions that would see Wiltshire returned to the Crown. Probably get an OBE and a seat in Parliament out of it, not bad things to have, being that Father seeks to rob Harry of his magic, that I’ll be made to follow my betrothed into exile sooner than later.”

“You really are your mother’s son, Draco.”