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Chapter Text

Maybe things don’t have to be the way they are. Maybe tiny choices can have big impacts. Maybe a different childhood environment changes the outcomes for the adult. Maybe there is more than one route to power, more than one source of knowledge, more than one way to take revenge. 

Maybe we never get to know the paths our lives could have taken, except, once in a blue moon, when we dream of a woman with hair as dark as the birds who flock to her. A War-Lady, a Dream-Lady, a Lady of Faerie. She offers a choice, between struggle and complacency. She shows us what might have been and what could yet be. 

Sometimes, for a very lucky – or unlucky, perhaps – chosen few, she calls to them directly. She intervenes to make a mess of the neatly organised pieces that the fates have placed upon the game board. After all, she sees her own futures, as she washes linen at every ford and lies wounded at every crossroads. Sometimes, she offers those who find her there the wisdom of her sight, if only that she may make a sport of their subsequent battles. 

Somewhere, maybe, a raven flaps its wings...  

Second-Year Boys’ Dormitory, Gryffindor Tower, Hogwarts – October 1990  

George Weasley grins to himself as he raises his wand. Beside him, Fred chuckles as he makes some hasty last-second revisions to the wording of the spell they have been developing for a month. The bones of a year spent mucking about with experimental charms is hopefully about to pay off. This will be the proof of concept for their dream of making it as pranksters and showing Zonko’s how it’s done. Plus, it would be nice to have something cool to give Ron, especially with Mum getting a bit... irate... about their incredibly thoughtful and hilarious tradition of sending him ‘borrowed’ Hogwarts toilet seats whenever he missed them. Apparently, Ginny had been getting a little jealous and had started demanding souvenirs of her own, and Mum simply couldn’t take the prospect of twice the havoc. 

Ignoring the snores of his slumbering dorm-mates, George points his wand at the shadowy lump on his bedside table that indicates the presence of a sleeping Scabbers, squinting as he concentrates on trying to cast an advanced fourth-year spell. 

‘Stupefy’ he whispers.  

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding as a jet of red light leaves his wand and hits the furry ball. Better safe than sorry, they can’t afford to have him panic and wake the whole dorm. It’s hard to tell if the Stunner has actually worked though, given how bloody useless the rat is at the best of times, so George reaches out experimentally and pokes Scabbers with the tip of his wand. No reaction. Perfect. 

Now for step two. 

The Hog’s Head, Hogsmeade – January 1980  

Albus Dumbledore wraps his cloak around him and steps out into the biting cold of a winter’s night in the Scottish Highlands. He has much to consider on the walk back to Hogwarts. Sybill Trelawney, obviously a fraud coasting on her family name, had somehow made what appears to be a true prophecy. A prophecy that might show a path towards the defeat of Voldemort, after all these decades of shadowboxing and more recently open conflict. A prophecy that, with a depressing kind of inevitability, had been overheard by a Death Eater. And not just any Death Eater, but – because the universe is clearly playing some kind of elaborate, drawn-out cosmic joke at his expense – Severus Snape. Given the incredibly strict limitations of the prophesised child being born of parents who had thrice-defied Voldemort – which meant either the Longbottoms or the Potters – it would be incredibly easy for Voldemort to work out the potential targets once the summer came. And with Snape’s history with the Potters... well, Albus can already see the potential for this to become a very dangerous situation. 

In a brief moment of madness he considers Flooing both couples and telling them what he had just witnessed, but then he realises that sharing the details of the prophecy would likely increase the danger. Better to bide his time and come up with some excuse or faked intelligence to protect whichever couple had a child. He would just have to hope that it took until after July for Voldemort to figure out who his target might be. 

In the meantime, he realises with a sinking feeling, he was going to have to abandon his plans to remove Divination from the curriculum. Sybill Trelawney was now a target for Voldemort’s wrath, and a potential source of useful information. He was going to have to hire her just to keep her alive. 

Verdant Pastures Potions & Herbology Supplies, Appleby – August 1980  

Cyrus Greengrass wakes with a start, jerking to attention at the desk in his office above the shop. Next to him, his wife Jeanne withdraws her hand from his shoulder. 

“It’s time,” she gasps. 

Cyrus springs to his feet, all traces of sleep falling away from him as he grabs the overnight bag stashed under his desk and then spins on his heels and makes it to the fireplace in a single stride, grabbing a pinch of Floo Powder from the jar on the mantlepiece with practiced ease and throwing it on the smouldering embers of the evening’s fire, which springs back to life on contact with the powder. 

“St. Mungo’s Maternity Wing!” he yelps, as he pulls Jeanne into the emerald flames. 

Godric’s Hollow, Somerset – Halloween 1981  

Dust, ash, smoke. 

Chunks of plaster falling from the ceiling into Sirus Black’s hair. 

The killing curse is supposed to be clean. The house looks like a warzone. 

He bends down and gently closes his best friend’s eyes before he leaves. 

“Take the bike,” he tells Hagrid, who Dumbledore had sent to retrieve his precious godson. 

The half-giant looks like he is about to argue, but Sirius forestalls him. 

“I won’t need it anymore,” he says, rueful but determined. 

There is concern in the older man’s eyes, but he nods his thanks and jumps on the modified Triumph. 

Sirius knows there is probably no coming back from what he is about to do, but that doesn’t matter. He has to get Pettigrew. Bring him to justice before he disappears into the gutter to avoid the consequences the Death Eaters will inevitably face after tonight. 

Sirius knows there will be no peace for him until Pettigrew is dealt with, and no peace for Britain until all of the remaining Death Eaters are dead or in Azkaban. 

James is dead. Lily is dead. Remus is at risk of arrest for being a dark creature. He is all that is left. 

And if he runs into Bella, or Cissy, or Snivellus along the way, so much the better. 

Second-Year Boys’ Dormitory, Gryffindor Tower, Hogwarts – October 1990  

Fred watches as George raises his wand. This is a big moment for the twins. None of their simple little spells and charms – either learned from books or self-made – have worked on Scabbers. They couldn’t even turn him yellow. That had led them to a mad, wild conclusion: perhaps Scabbers was in some way special, and immune to their magic. Months of painstaking research and sneaking into the library’s notorious Restricted Section later, and here they were. The concept behind the charm they had developed is long-standing and well-known, and in the end the incantation they had come up with was absurdly simple. 

Fred fervently hopes they got it right. 

“Secreto revelio,” intones George, flicking his wand at the prone rat. 

Scabbers twists and blurs horribly, stretching and distorting like two things are trying to occupy the same space at once, and for a terrible, sickening second Fred fears that they have killed him. 

When the movement stops, he realises it’s much worse than that. 

“Get McGonagall,” gasps George, now standing over an unconscious man, while the twins’ dorm-mates wake with shocked cries. 

Fred sighs, wondering what they have got themselves into this time. 

“Somebody’s going to have to tell Mum that Scabbers is an Animagus,” he mutters, turning to his twin with a grin that he can’t quite suppress. 

At least the spell worked. 

Chapter Text

Mr and Mrs Greengrass of Verdant Pastures Potions & Herbology Supplies were proud to say that they were stubbornly abnormal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything conservative or blood-supremacist, because – as Mrs Greengrass was fond of saying after a couple of glasses of wine – they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.  

Mr Greengrass was the scion of a wealthy Pureblood family of the utmost respectability and conservatism, against whom he had been rebelling since his early teens. Graduating Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with Outstanding NEWTs in Potions and Herbology, he had followed his dream of establishing his own business selling potions, potions ingredients, and herbology supplies. This, and his decision to also follow his other dream of marrying Mrs Greengrass – a Beauxbatons graduate he had met through an exchange programme – had most definitely not endeared him to his parents. He was a once-fit man now grown slightly portly, with brown hair and a beard that wasn’t quite as impressive as he thought it was. Mrs Greengrass was thin and raven-haired, with green eyes and an almost overwhelming aura of poise and nobility, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time dealing with hagglers in the shop. The Greengrasses had a small daughter called Daphne who they loved dearly.  

The Greengrasses were happy with their lot in life, but they also had a secret, and they knew that the whole family – even baby Daphne – would be at risk if the wrong person discovered it. They didn’t know if they would survive certain interested parties finding out about their under-the-counter business dealings with the special discount. Certainly, Mr Greengrass’ family would not approve. As it was, they kept the details of their business to themselves and hoped that when Daphne was a little older and had to go off to school, none of her classmates would find out and make trouble for her.  

When Mr and Mrs Greengrass woke up in the flat above their shop on the dull, grey Tuesday that this story starts – well not quite starts, but maybe starts to come together – on, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Greengrass hummed as he picked out his most comfortable robes for work and Mrs Greengrass chattered away happily to Daphne in French as she strapped her into her high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window until it swooped in through the open door that led to their balcony and deposited a letter on the kitchen table. 

Baby Daphne saw it first. 

“Mama... choo-ee,” she burbled in a passable attempt at imitating her mother’s French, waving one slightly sticky hand (why was it, her mother often wondered, that she was always sticky?) towards the table. 

Jeanne Greengrass looked around in time to see the owl drop a letter and depart. A letter in a perfectly nondescript envelope with just one small idiosyncrasy. Whoever had written the address on the front had capitalised every single letter R, regardless of grammatical appropriacy. That could only mean one thing. 

“Cyrus, mon chéri,” she called, loud enough to be heard in the bedroom, “a letter... from Remus!” 

Her husband burst into the kitchen, still struggling into his robes, as she tore open the envelope and read the letter inside. Hastily-scrawled with a shaking hand, Remus Lupin had a stark but simple message for them. 

James + Lily dead. Location of safehouse betrayed, killed by You-Know-Who personally. Baby Harry alive, Y-K-W dead in attempt to kill him. No idea how. Harry rescued by Hagrid + Dumbledore, placed somewhere safe. Assume Sirius is traitor, do not assist or engage. Expecting reprisals against prominent members from surviving inner-circle DEs, you should be safe enough but watch your backs.  

Trying to get this message to you before you see it in the Prophet, looks like the war is as good as over.  

Be safe, be secret.  

R  

Mr and Mrs Greengrass looked at each other in stunned silence. Everything was about to change. Maybe here was the future that they had dreamed of and worked towards, but at the cost of another family destroyed by He Who Must Not Be Named and his fanatical Pureblood supremacist supporters. Joy and relief mingled with sadness and sheer emotional exhaustion in their expressions as they looked at one another and then slowly embraced, processing the news. 

Their moment of tenderness was interrupted by Daphne cooing in surprise as a second owl swooped in the balcony door and deposited the Daily Prophet on the table.  

Jeanne glanced at the front page and noted that it seemed as though the editorial team had struggled to decide what headline to choose and had eventually settled for all of them. 

HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED VANQUISHED  

Murder and Mayhem in Godric’s Hollow – Three Dead  

The Miracle of the ‘Boy Who Lived’ - Harry Potter (1) is Sole Survivor and Presumed Vanquisher of You-Know-Who  

It went on in this vein for three-quarters of the front page, with the remaining quarter being taken up by a photograph of the smoking ruins of the Potters’ home, which appeared to have suffered an explosion in one of the upstairs rooms that had blown a wall and part of the roof away. 

Cyrus Greengrass sighed deeply. 

“I’m going to shut the shop for the day,” he told his wife. “Everyone is going to be celebrating, running and hiding, or falsifying evidence to prove that they opposed You-Know-Who all along, so there’ll be no business done today anywhere in the country. We might as well have a quiet celebration of our own.” 

Jeanne nodded and was just returning her attention to the deceptively tricky task of getting Daphne to sit still in her high chair when something struck her. 

“Mon chéri?” she said hesitantly. 

“Yes, love?” 

“I must say, I hope Remus is wrong on one point. I do not see Sirius betraying Lily and James, not can I see him supporting Lord Vol –” 

“Please, dear,” said her husband with a shudder, “don’t say the name. But yes, I don’t like that one bit. Something feels off.” 

He sighed again, shrugged his shoulders, and as he left the room Jeanne could hear him muttering under his breath. 

“I suppose we’re going to find out a lot of dirty little high-society secrets in the next few weeks, one way or another.” 

Jeanne rather thought that he sounded somewhat gleeful at the prospect, and frankly she couldn’t blame him. 

Chapter Text

Very nearly nine years had passed since the Greengrasses – like so many other families across Wizarding Britain – had learned of Lord Voldemort’s downfall, but Verdant Pastures had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass plaque and the wooden sign – still the same sign, now a lot less shiny and clean than it had been in the late 70s when the shop was new – outside the shop; it crept across the balcony and into their kitchen, which was very similar to how it had been on the day when the Greengrasses had received that fateful letter from Remus Lupin. Only the absent high chair – replaced with a small scattering of toys and children’s books – and the photographs on the walls really showed how much time had passed. Nine years ago, there had been a handful of pictures of a very cherubic baby – but Daphne Greengrass was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a slender raven-haired girl riding a toy broom, planting herbs in the garden, playing chess with her father, reading a favourite book with her mother. The many photographs were also a sign that another girl lived in the house, too. Astoria Greengrass had been born in August – just like her sister, their birthdays were only a week apart – the year after Voldemort’s downfall. Where superficially Daphne looked like the girls’ mother, with dark tresses falling to her shoulders and green eyes, Astoria was their father in miniature; broader at the shoulders than her older sister, with brown hair that was permanently in a state of untameable chaos and Cyrus’ bright blue eyes, usually twinkling mischievously. Beyond this, little else had changed. There were some pieces of childish art, clearly drawn by the two girls, stuck to the cupboard doors, but the fittings and furniture were the same – if perhaps a little older and shabbier. 

Daphne was six years old when she realised that there was something wrong with Astoria. The sisters had been playing one of their favourite games, which Daphne had dubbed The-Girl-Who-Lived. The premise of the game was that instead of disappearing when Daphne was just a baby leaving behind the heroic Boy-Who-Lived Harry Potter as a tragic orphan, You-Know-Who had survived and was now hunting down one of the Greengrass sisters. Part-hide-and-seek, part-tag and part-epic-duel-with-twigs-for-wands, the game was always fun on a bright summer’s day when they could freely roam the big garden full of mysterious plants and interesting hiding-places, and the girls took turns as You-Know-Who – which occasionally caused arguments as sometimes Astoria would insist upon playing the heroic Astoria Greengrass and sometimes she would demand to play You-Know-Who. On this occasion, she had opted for the latter, and was hamming it up with deranged cackles and dramatic sweeps of her ‘wand’, showing a level of commitment to the work of an actor that belied her four years. 

Daphne rounded a corner and ducked behind a bush, hearing her sister in hot pursuit behind her. 

“IIIIIIIII’M coming to geeeeet you!” Astoria bellowed; her breathing audibly ragged. 

She came round the corner and ground to a halt, looking around to try to see where Daphne had gone, wheezing and panting with exertion. Daphne took her chance. 

Diving out from behind the bush, she pointed her twig at Astoria’s back. 

“I’ve got you now, Dark Lord!” she cried triumphantly. 

Astoria spun around, twig raised for the final duel. 

She laughed, an oddly constricted and high-pitched laugh. 

“Got me, Daph!” she grinned, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she fell limply to the ground. 

On the October morning in question, almost nine years after the defeat of Lord Voldemort, the sun’s pale rays reached through the window of Daphne Greengrass’ bedroom just as she woke with a start from a dream. It was a dream she was all too familiar with, having experience it many times throughout her young life, and it was always more frequent during the months of October and November. In it, a woman who looked a little like her mum – all pale skin and long jet-black hair, maybe it was an ancestor of theirs or something? – was beckoning and calling to her. She would chase after the mystery woman as the latter receded rapidly into the distance, but she always woke up before catching up to her. 

Daphne rolled out of bed and padded over to the small desk she had wedged in the corner of the room between her bed and the window. She pulled open a drawer that looked like it was filled to the brim with scraps of parchment covered in drawings and doodles, and after a moment’s rummaging pulled out a small leather-bound journal, which she opened and placed on the surface of the desk. 

Even if somebody else had found the journal in its hiding place, they would not have been able to read it. A year previously, Daphne had resolved to be a spy – could witches be spies? Was espionage a viable subject choice at Hogwarts? She wasn’t sure, but she was determined to achieve her dream – and had developed her own secret code for writing in. 

She made a note of the dream, and then closed the journal and secured it in its drawer, before wandering out of her room to brush her teeth before breakfast, almost bumping into her father on the landing. 

Daphne was seven years old when she realised that her family was different from other people’s. Her parents had encouraged her to read voraciously and had allowed her to read Muggle as well as Wizarding books, and she tended to devour every book that was put in front of her. She was reading a particularly exciting Muggle story about a little boy who was raised in poverty but won the right to inherit a chocolate factory (she quite liked that bit, she was very fond of chocolate) and got everything he ever wanted, when she realised that something was amiss. She carefully placed a bookmark that she had made herself – well, she had painted a strip of cardboard, but as a child Daphne was very proud of her arts and crafts – in the book to mark her spot and put the book down on the chair. While she did not as a general rule appreciate her reading time being interrupted, one of the few things that could drag her away from a good book was her own insatiable curiosity. 

She prowled around the flat’s small but cosy living room, her eyes raking across the photographs on the mantlepiece. No, nothing there. Into the kitchen she walked, meticulously checking each and every photograph on the walls. Still nothing. She frowned, puzzled. Luckily, she knew what to do next. Her parents had raised her with one simple rule: ask the right questions. Her father was downstairs in the shop and she knew better than to distract him, but her mother was in the small study working on something, so she knocked on the door and was swiftly invited in. 

“What is it, ma crevette?” asked Jeanne, returning to her seat at her old wooden writing desk. 

“I was reading my new book,” Daphne began, hopping up on the pouf next to her mother’s legs, “and I noticed something funny.” 

“Oh, and what was this?” replied her mother, with half her attention on the mound of parchment in front of her. 

(She might, perhaps, have muttered the phrase “impôts maudits,” just on the edge of hearing, but Daphne wasn’t sure). 

“Well...,” she hesitated, wondering if her question might perhaps be impolite. She steeled herself and continued. 

“In the book, Charlie has four grandparents, I suppose two for each of his mum and dad, but I only have two grandparents from you and none from dad and I know they’re not dead or something because we don’t even have any photos of them and dad never mentions them it’s like they don’t exist is everything alright, is dad an orphan or something?” she asked, the words tumbling out of her in a rush. 

Jeanne pushed the parchment stack aside and turned her full attention to Daphne, who couldn’t help but feel that her mother rather looked like she had been expecting this to come up at some point. The older woman took a deep breath, and began to speak. 

And thus Daphne learned that her father’s parents did not like their son at all. Before the war with You-Know-Who they had been rich, powerful and respectable – and from what Daphne understood, they had also been the type of people who feared You-Know-Who's violence but agreed with his views on Muggles and Muggleborns. Her father, she learned, had been very different. He had married her mother, who they disapproved of, and the young couple had helped in the fight against You-Know-Who. For this, her paternal grandparents had vowed to never speak to or acknowledge her father again, and had even gone so far as to disinherit him. 

Disinherit. That was a new word. Daphne repeated it a few times, getting used to the feel of it. She liked learning new words. This one was a cruel word. Her mother told her that it meant that her father would not get any of his parents’ riches when they did eventually die. He had been cast out into the world to fend for himself, and her French grandparents were – as she knew – not rich, so this was why her mother and father worked so hard to make the shop a success. 

It was, she reflected, an awfully cruel thing for a parent to do to a child, and it made her prouder of her parents’ hard work. 

This, of course, meant that her parents were heroes – like Harry Potter (wherever he was) and that Auror called Moody that got mentioned on the wireless sometimes, and Professor Dumbledore – and in Daphne’s view there was no finer thing. This was new and exciting information. However, this revelation also had a darker side: her grandparents – no, her other grandparents – were, like so many other wealthy Pureblood families, wicked. 

And if there was one thing that Daphne had learned from the many books she had read, it was that the wicked needed to be punished. 

Daphne finished her morning ablutions and sprinted down the landing to the kitchen, determined to get to her favourite seat at the table before Astoria. She made it just in time, sticking her tongue out at her younger sister and promptly digging in to the bacon and eggs that her father served her. As she wolfed her food down, already thinking of the pile of books that were waiting in the living room for her to read, movement outside the window caught her eye. A post-owl was swooping down towards Verdant Pastures, presumably carrying the morning’s Daily Prophet. Daphne longed for the day when an owl would bring her Hogwarts letter – she couldn’t wait to go to school and learn magic properly so she could follow her dreams, and her father had told her many times that the Hogwarts library contained thousands of new books for her to read – but she knew that she still had to wait another year. It was aggravating. 

Daphne was eight years old when she realised what she had to do. She was quite keen on being a spy when she grew up, based primarily on a newly-discovered love of Muggle stories about children who were secret agents or private detectives, and a book from the Muggle library that taught the basics of espionage to interested children. 

Espionage, even the word sounded mysterious as she rolled it across her tongue. She liked it. 

She wasn’t exactly certain if there were such things as magical spies. She had never heard of any on the WWN news, but she had learned from her reading that spies seemed to be awfully common during wartime, so surely there must have been some during the war against You-Know-Who. 

But if she was going to be a spy, she was going to have to be the most successful spy ever. In fact, regardless of what her future career was, Daphne had vowed to herself that she would make a success of it. She had spent a long time mulling over the revelation about her grandparents, and she had reached a decision. Or rather, several decisions. She had written them down in a little notebook that her mother had given her for her birthday in her neat, clear script. 

Learn everything I can.  

Develop secret code.  

Become successful and wealthy.  

Punish the wicked.  

She understood now that her parents had made sacrifices and worked incredibly hard to pay for all her books, and all the trips to St Mungo’s for Astoria, and that they would have to pay even more for her education. She knew that this was completely unfair and unreasonable, that there was family money out there that they were barred from accessing because her father had opposed You-Know-Who. She was starting to wonder whether it was a bit unfair that a family could get their hands on such riches and then leave it in their vault like a dragon in a Muggle story hoarding its gold, instead of sharing it with those who needed it. 

She was not, however, satisfied to sit back and think that these things were wrong. She wanted to do something about them. She knew that it would take time, that she would have to wait, but she was willing to be patient. Part of her even hoped that the Boy-Who-Lived himself would return and make things right, but even that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to do it herself. 

Daphne Greengrass wanted to be a hero like her parents. 

As Daphne dipped a particularly crispy piece of bacon in some runny egg yoke, the owl she had spotted flew in through the open balcony door and dropped the Prophet on the table right in front of her, then waited for her father to pay. The front page seemed to be positively covered in headlines, so she leaned in curiously to see what warranted such attention. 

HORROR AT HOGWARTS!  

Peter Pettigrew (30), Believed Dead Since 1981, Alive and in Hiding in School  

Secret Animagus Played the Loyal Family Pet, Uncovered by Talented Twins  

Sirius Black Innocent – Exonerated Overnight  

Before she could read any more, her mother, who had looked over to see what had caught her attention, had stanched up the paper with a gasp. 

“Cyrus!” she cried, gesturing at the front page. 

He frowned, then smiled. 

“Shall we be the first to congratulate him, dear?” he said, looking to Daphne’s eye oddly relieved. 

Sirius Black. She knew the name, she had heard her parents mention him once or twice during the late-night conversations they had when they thought they could speak freely as their daughters were asleep. She had gathered that he seemed to have done something awful during the war, but her parents weren’t convinced he had done it. 

She supposed, based on the headlines, that they must have been right. 

Chapter Text

Harry Potter stood alone on the hilltop, facing the setting sun. Ahead of him, lush green fields flowed downwards at a light incline as far as the eye could see, a landscape of rolling low hills undulating like waves westward into the golden sky. At his feet lay a rough track, winding off into the distance over hill and dale. 

Without really knowing why, but certain that it was what he was supposed to do, he set off walking along it. 

The soft crunch of the packed earth beneath his worn second-hand runners was very nearly the only sound that Harry could hear as he made his way forward, accompanied by the evening breeze rustling the grass on either side of the path. The air was filled with the scent of summer, warm and comforting, yet there was an underlying tension, a sense of anticipation that seemed to hum just below the surface. At the heart of the near-silence was a whispering susurration in the wind, like the earth itself was trying to sing him its secrets. As he walked on, he found himself straining to listen to the sound of the wind in the grass, and in the leaves of the occasional tree, trying to hear even the slightest indication of a message in the breeze. 

Harry was so focused on trying to parse the subtle whisperings in the air that his heart leapt into his mouth when a loud cawing sound broke the silence. He jerked his head upwards and saw an enormous black crow circling above him in a lazy glide. As he watched, the crow wheeled around in a wide arcing half-circle, beat its wings slowly and began flying westwards roughly along the line of the path. That felt like a sign to continue on his current route, and he did so, picking up his pace slightly in an attempt to keep up with the bird as it disappeared over a hillock. 

The path continued to wind as Harry progressed, sometimes narrowing into almost nothing, only to widen again as it snaked through the hills. The sun dipped lower, painting the sky in hues of orange and pink, the golden light casting long shadows. Harry glanced around, taking in the beauty of the landscape, feeling a small sense of peace settle within him. He took a deep breath and felt his shoulders loosen slightly, taking a moment just to bask in the beauty and serenity of the landscape. 

The rustling of the wind in the grasses intensified, and Harry felt a note of discord amidst the calm. A small tendril of worry snaked its way around his heart, as if if had just been waiting for him to relax and lower his guard. For just a moment, he thought he could finally make out the words in the air. 

...who will know me when you’re gone?  

...rise and join the fray...  

A third whisper caressed his ears with something that sounded like jewel-gis on sheel-tore-ah, which was just nonsense, but the whispers had started to overlap with each other and drown each other out in a discordant wash of wind and word. He shook his head to try and clear it, and the voices receded back to a faint rustling in the long grass and – in the distance – the faint babbling of running water. 

Unnerved, he pressed on, following the track over the crest of the next hill, where he found himself looking down into a shallow valley with a stream at the bottom. Directly ahead of him, the track became a crossing through the water, and standing there on the bank of the stream was the first person he had seen on his journey, a young woman who appeared to be washing her clothes in the watercourse like someone out of an illustration in his history textbook. 

He ambled gently down the track towards her, not particularly wishing to disturb her and feeling wary of deliberately attracting the attention of a stranger, but she looked up as he approached and smiled at him. 

“Ara,” she said, dropping the clothes she was carrying beside her, straightening her back and bringing her hands to her hips, “and what starveling hound finds its way to me today? ‘Tis none other than Harry Potter, the boy twice-blessed himself!” 

She chuckled gently to herself, as if she knew the punchline to a joke that Harry hadn’t heard yet. There was something off about her accent that Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on – an Irish lilt that he recognised from the TV which seemed slightly unreal – but he barely thought about it. He was too busy trying not to stare. 

The woman was tall, easily five foot ten or eleven without the advantage of boots or high heels. Harry could see the stream lapping at her bare feet, which were half-hidden beneath a faded woollen skirt. The skirt was black, with traces of a rusty red colour speckled through it, as was the shawl draped around her shoulders. That – aside from a strange heavy-looking gold necklace, and a pair similarly-bulky golden armlets – was all that she was wearing. Harry had never seen a naked woman before, although he knew that Dudley had, in those magazines that he and Piers smuggled between their houses, and while this woman’s toplessness was a surprising sight, her utter lack of self-consciousness and her non-acknowledgment of the situation meant that it barely registered in his mind. He was not surprising her changing or interrupting a private moment: this was just what she wore. Instead, Harry found his eyes drawn to the many tattoos that covered every inch of her exposed skin. Some were spirals and ovular whorls that he recognised from a picture in a schoolbook about the Iron Age. Some were abstract, just combinations of angular lines. One or two were familiar designs, like the tiny bird’s feather tattooed on her right cheek. 

Her hair was black as a raven’s wing, and fell to her waist in wavy tresses. On her brow was a thin circlet of gold, glinting beneath her fringe. Her lips were a bloody red smear across her otherwise pale face, which – with its high cheekbones and sharp jawline – gave an impression of severity. Her deep brown eyes, however, were warm and kind. She seemed to radiate a strange intensity that made her feel more real than her surroundings, and Harry felt like if he just reached out and touched her, he would also become more solid, more there. 

“Don’t just stand there gawpin’ at me, you gombeen!” she exclaimed with a laugh that made the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand up. “Our time here is short, and I have much work to do.” 

Here she glanced ruefully at the basket beside her, which Harry now saw had a round shield propped against it. She plucked another piece of clothing from within, and bent back down to begin scrubbing it in the flowing water. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled apologetically, “I don’t actually know what you want from me.” 

“Ah now that’d be telling, wouldn’t it, boyo?” she replied, and Harry realised what was wrong with her accent. It was too false, like the Irish accents in American films, almost as if she was putting it on for him. 

“You and I have a long road ahead of us. Call this a call to action, aye? I’m just popping in, checking up on you, giving you a bitta warning that we’ve got work to do. Together.” 

Ah, thought Harry, I’m dreaming, apparently. 

He couldn’t help but notice that the water around the garment that she was scrubbing was turning a dark, cloudy red. 

“I’m sorry,” he began politely, “but what work?” 

In the distance, there was a faint noise like thunder. The woman glanced at the sky and frowned. 

“Again, that’d be telling, wouldn’t it?” she sighed. 

“Look, if it was that simple, I’d just do it myself. But I can’t intervene directly, not now. And too many of my old associates are… indisposed.”  

Harry noticed that her voice had dropped in pitch slightly and she had assumed a more natural-sounding Irish accent. Presumably this was serious. 

She straightened up again and looked him directly in the eye. 

“I’ll be calling all my wee ravens to me,” she said softly. “There’s a storm rolling in from the east and there’s none of us can weather it alone.” 

She reached out and gently ruffled his hair. 

“Bloody days are on us, spear-days and crow-feasts. And you only a child. Will you let me help you?” 

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. Firstly, Harry was pretty sure he was dreaming, and as his Uncle Vernon regularly told him, dreams weren’t real. Secondly, on the off-chance that this was real, well, he didn’t really have anyone in his life who was interested in helping him, so what harm could it do? 

He nodded. 

Quick as a flash, the woman whipped a knife out of the folds of her skirt. Thunder rumbled again, closer this time, and with it came that note of wrongness that Harry had felt before. For the briefest of moments, he could see a shadowy figure behind each of her shoulders, both of them hooded and robed. Meanwhile, her left hand suddenly seemed to rest on the collar of a large, black, wolf-like dog. 

The whispers were audible again. 

…silver-hand and silver-tongue shall scoff the law…  

…the bloody hand must make a fist…  

…Harry…  

…twice-blessed…  

The knife was a shiny, polished black, with a blade that looked like it was made of carved stone rather than metal. It gleamed wickedly in the starlight. (Starlight? Hadn’t it been a beautiful golden sunset a second ago?). Harry shook his head, and the shadowy people and hound dissipated like smoke in the wind, leaving just him, the sunset, and the beautiful washerwoman.  

She raised the knife in her right hand and slashed it across her left palm, leaving a thin line of scarlet in its wake. 

“Now you,” she said, gesturing at his left hand. 

Without knowing why, he wordlessly held it out, palm up. 

Thunder rumbled overhead. 

His palm stung as she cut it, and he almost gasped in surprise when she reached out and grasped it with her bleeding hand. 

“There,” she said, “‘tis done. We are kin now. I have marked you as an equal.” 

The idea seemed to amuse her somewhat. 

“Blood of my blood, I’ll be watching over you.” 

“But I don’t even know who you are!” Harry protested. 

“Isn’t it obvious, Harry?” she grinned. The whispers were louder now, and they seemed to echo his name after her. “I’m your dream woman.” 

…Harry. Harry. HARRY…  

She winked at him. 

“Be seeing you, lad.” 

“HARRY!” 

He jerked awake to Aunt Petunia pounding on the door of the cupboard under the stairs, shouting for him to get up and make the breakfast. 

He groaned, yawning and stretching in the cramped space, and half-hopefully checked his left palm. It was disappointingly unblemished. 

All just a dream, he told himself sadly. It would have been nice to have someone out there who wanted to help him, even if she was some kind of strange Irish warrior lady. It would have been like having a slightly scary fairy godmother, and the scary part might have been helpful if he could get her to frighten the Dursleys for him. Harry was used to having strangely vivid dreams, however, so suspected he shouldn’t be particularly surprised. There were the recurring dreams, like the one with the flying motorbike or the one with the flash of green light, or, of course, the one where a mysterious friendly stranger took him away to a new home, but there were also lots of odd half-remembered dreams, like the one where he was flying or the one with the blonde girl who was showing him how to feed a horse. If he was honest with himself, he half-suspected he had seen the mystery woman’s face in a dream before. He never talked about any of these dreams, because Uncle Vernon got angry, but he was certain they were special. 

It was a Saturday, so naturally the day passed in a blur of chores. After making bacon and eggs for breakfast, Harry began work in the back garden while Aunt Petunia started on her daily obsessive cleaning of the kitchen. Gardening in the winter wasn’t too bad, with no grass to mow or flowers to prune and water, but he did have to wash all of the windows and the greenhouse, sweep up the last of the fallen autumn leaves, and trim the garden hedge. This time, while doing these fairly everyday tasks, things felt different. Harry couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched.  

It was a crisp, cold, dry day, and by the time he came in for lunch, carefully cleaning his runners on the mat, the chill had settled into his bones. Lunch was a ham sandwich and a glass of milk, eaten standing up at the kitchen counter, while Aunt Petunia finished cleaning up after the family lunch and Dudley and Uncle Vernon watched a football match in the living room. Harry wolfed his meal down hungrily and hurried back outside to clear up the front garden before November’s early nightfall brought the real cold. He swept the leaves and cleared the storm drain, still feeling like he was being observed, and then got a start on deadheading the rose bushes.  

He was halfway through the second bush when a prickling on the back of his neck made him look around. At first, he saw nothing, but then he realised that there was a dog staring at him from the top of Privet Drive. A large, black, wolf-like dog. Just like in his dream. He jumped with a start and then gasped in pain as an errant thorn dragged across his left hand.  

He swore to himself and glanced down at his bleeding palm, which had been cut open by a straight horizontal slash. It wasn’t bleeding too heavily, although some droplets were falling onto the soil at the base of the rose bush, so he instinctively clenched his fist and hoped he could last without the first aid kit until he’d thrown out the last of the cuttings. He didn’t want to get shouted at for coming inside without finishing up or for dripping blood on the clean kitchen floor. He glanced back up at the street, but the dog had vanished, if it had even been there and he hadn’t just imagined it. 

Returning to the kitchen a few minutes later, shivering as darkness fell, Harry immediately grabbed a plaster from the first aid kit and stuck it over the scratch. He had just turned to the kitchen counter and started eating his dinner – cold ham and potatoes – when he heard a car pulling up outside, followed by the doorbell ringing. In the living room, Uncle Vernon struggled to his feet, grumbling about who could be calling at this hour. 

Harry froze, plate in hand, half-wondering if he should sneak back to his cupboard in case it was someone that the Dursleys wouldn’t want him seeing. He decided that it was probably the best course of action, and began quietly treading from the kitchen towards the hall, knowing that as long as the caller was still at the front door, Vernon would block him from view as he got into the cupboard. 

He was just opening the hall door as Vernon opened the front door, and he heard a posh male voice say “where’s Tuney?” 

“Tuney?” blustered Vernon confusedly. 

“Yes, Tuney,” came the reply, “Petunia Evans. Your wife, I assume?” 

Evans, said Harry to himself, that means my mum’s surname was Evans. I never knew that. 

Whoever this was, he must have known Aunt Petunia a long time ago. 

“Umm... Petunia, dear?” Vernon called out hesitantly. “There’s someone here to see you.” 

Aunt Petunia came rushing out from the living room, only to come to a screeching halt, a look of anger and fear on her face, when she reached the door. 

“You,” she hissed, almost disbelieving. 

“Yes, me,” came the cheerful reply. “I’m here for my godson. I think you’ll find the paperwork is all in order.” 

Petunia stepped back from the doorway, dragging Vernon gently with her. She reached out to close the door, but the stranger stepped across the threshold and into the hallway. 

“I’ve been watching how you treat him. He’s not your own personal domestic servant. You two disgust me,” he growled, his voice no longer light and pleasant.  

“Now see here,” snarled Vernon, “you can’t just –” 

“Vernon,” whispered Petunia, “he’s one of them. He was Potter’s best friend.” 

The stranger gestured towards Vernon, holding out something long and thin that Harry couldn’t quite see – perhaps a pen? – and Vernon audibly gulped. Harry started backing slowly into the kitchen. While the prospect of meeting his father’s best friend was tempting, he did not see the Dursleys taking that interaction kindly. 

The movement attracted the stranger’s attention and he lowered his hand. 

“Harry?” he asked gently, “Harry Potter?” 

Harry nodded silently. 

The man crossed the hall in three strides and knelt down in front of Harry. He was about Aunt Pentunia’s age, with long, curly brown hair and eyes that looked tired but kind. He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, clothes that Harry’s Aunt and Uncle would have been disapproving of on any of their friends, and he was grinning. 

“Hi, um... fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be. My name is Sirius Black, I’m your godfather, and your parents had me down as your guardian in their will. Unfortunately, when they were murdered, I was... unavailable. My fault. I’m sorry. But I’m here now and I’m offering you a place to live where you don’t get treated like dirt.” 

That was an overwhelming introduction, but one thing stood out. 

“Murdered?” Harry queried, “My mum and dad died in a car crash.” 

Sirus Black sprang back to his feet and wheeled around to face Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, who were now trying to block off the door to the living room, where Dudley had become curious and was peering out. 

“A car crash?” he snapped incredulously. “You told him that James and Lils died in a fucking car crash? Arguably the most talented witch and wizard of their generation and they were driving a car, never mind crashing one?” 

Vernon opened his mouth, but nothing came out. 

“I’m sorry, the most talented what?” Harry interjected. 

Sirius looked at him, his eyes sad, before turning back to Petunia. 

“Are you telling me you didn’t fucking tell him anything?” he growled. 

“Oh, shut up!” Petunia snapped. “Shut up! Of course we didn’t tell him. We knew what he was going to be like, my precious sister being what she was. A freak! Filth! And her good-for-nothing layabout of a husband. Oh everything solved with just a flick of a wand, turning teacups into mice to amuse our parents! I saw it for what it was. Unnatural. Degenerate. Lazy. We swore when we took him in that we would stamp that nonsense out, and we’ve been succeeding! So of course you had to show up and ruin everything.” 

None of this was making any sense to Harry. 

“I’m sorry,” he said politely, with a sinking feeling that he was ruining his own chances of being taken away from Privet Drive, “but I can’t be a... a wizard. I’m just Harry.” 

Sirius looked around at him again and smiled kindly.  

“Have you ever done anything that you didn’t mean to and you couldn’t explain? Especially something that benefited you? Ever had any strange dreams? Ever known something you simply couldn’t have known?" 

Harry froze as a litany of incidents played out in front of his eyes. Jumping over the bins behind the school to get away from Dudley’s gang and ending up on the roof, his hair regrowing overnight from a horrible haircut, Dudley’s schoolbag ripping open so he had to stop and pick up his books rather than chase Harry, even last night’s dream... 

Sirius grinned at the expression on his face. 

“You’re a wizard, and if I have anything to do with it, you’ll be a decent one. You’ll get to go to Hogwarts, which is a school of magic, and –” 

Here, Uncle Vernon finally found his voice. 

“We are not paying for him to go to some loony bin that teaches freaks how to be more freakish!” he snapped. 

“You’re right,” Sirius replied. “The Potter inheritance will cover that. Coming, Harry?” 

Thinking that pretty much anything would be better than staying in Privet Drive with a now-furious Vernon and Petunia, Harry nodded. 

“Good stuff! Go to your room and get your things, I’ll wait here.” 

Harry dutifully opened up the cupboard door, and swept his handful of clothes and the broken toys he had rescued from Dudley into his schoolbag. Within seconds, he was ready to go, but when he came back out into the hallway, Sirius looked incandescent with rage. 

“Harry,” he said carefully, “do you sleep in the cupboard under the stairs?” 

He nodded wordlessly. 

Sirius raised his right hand, which was holding some kind of stick – could it be a magic wand? – and pointed it at the cowering figures of Petunia and Vernon. After a moment, he shook his head and lowered his hand again. 

“This isn’t over,” he growled, “Come on, Harry!” 

And Harry Potter followed his newfound godfather out of Privet Drive and into the rest of his life.