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Sirius’s house was only a quick walk from King’s Cross Station, and so they’d taken the opportunity to stretch their legs and get some fresh air rather than apparating the short distance. Harry was grateful for it. His déjà vu brain had let him know in no uncertain terms that apparation did not agree with him.

Puking on the doorstep isn’t exactly the impression you want to make, the déjà vu brain had said, just as a phantom wave of nausea washed over Harry.

No thank you, Harry thought. Normally he was eager to experience everything the magical world had to offer, but perhaps it would be no great loss to skip over some things.

Neither Harry nor Sirius really knew how to talk to each other—one heartfelt conversation at Hogwarts wasn’t enough to make up for over a decade of lost time, and relationships couldn’t be built in a day—but Sirius was giving it his best effort, and Harry was determined to, too.

“—and after that time with the exploding toilets, he always took points from me and your father every time he saw us, no matter what we were doing. Kensington knew how to hold a grudge. I’m glad the old bastard retired before you went Hogwarts, or he might have carried it over to you.”

“Yeah,” Harry commiserated, nodding along. “I understand what it’s like to have a teacher out to get you. Lockhart was so upset the Prophet was writing about me and not him that he tried to frame me for murder. As if that was my fault.” And he’d dragged Harry’s friends into the grudge match, too. Unacceptable. If he wasn’t already in prison… “So excessive.”

Sirius’s steps faltered for a moment. “They, uh, didn’t put all that in the papers.”

Harry scoffed. “It’s the Prophet. If they’re not exaggerating for the sake of driving sales via fear-mongering, then they’re helping to cover up a scandal by misrepresenting the details. Typical.”

Sirius couldn’t argue with that, and for the last block, they walked in companionable silence.

And then there it was, Grimmauld Place. Somewhere Harry had never personally visited before, but which instinctually brought out a blend of conflicting emotions in him: comfort and gloom, anger and joy. A sense of family. A sense of loss.

“I hate this house,” Sirius muttered even as he went to unlock the door. He turned back to Harry with a grimace. “Unfortunately, we’re stuck with it for now. The other properties I inherited are in even worse condition. I’d have just bought a new house altogether if it weren’t for the fact that the Black accounts are all tied up in red tape.” Sirius paused, frowning. “The Goblins have been very accommodating, all things considered. It’s the Ministry that’s dragging their asses on filing the paperwork. Fucking bureaucracy.”  

“You’d think they’d be a little more eager to put all this behind them,” Harry mused. “Considering how badly they’ve messed up.”

Politics, the déjà vu brain spat.

We should consider the likelihood that someone has purposefully slowed the process for the sake of making Fudge look worse, the horcrux brain said. If it were up to just him, I’m sure Black would have been paid in full, all paperwork sorted and filed and buried by now. The fact that it’s still an issue means someone’s making a play behind the scenes.

Your other self? Harry wondered. It seemed like the sort of sneaky, quiet disorder that Voldemort as Tomas Sayre would sow for his own benefit. What better way to work his way up to the top of the ladder than by showing just how incompetent the current leadership was?

Possibly, the horcrux brain said. Though my other self is not the only one who would benefit from such a scheme.

“Well, here we are.” Sirius pushed open the door with a grand sweep of his arms. “Home sweet Hell.”

Harry peered into the darkened entryway, cautious before stepping inside. The hall seemed dim by atmosphere alone rather than a lack of actual lighting, deep burgundy walls and heavy gilded portraits adding a serious gravity to the space. It was obviously old, but much better maintained than Harry expected. And clean, too, he realized, absently swiping his fingers across the door frame and marveling as they came away clean.

It actually looks…decent, the déjà vu brain said, not bothering to hide his surprise. He must have spent the past month getting this place ready to properly live in.

Bringing it up to par for the wizarding child protective services, was Harry’s guess. Peeling wallpaper and decapitated elf heads likely wouldn’t go over well with the authorities when it came time for a home visit.

Not that the renovations could do much for the house’s general aura. There was magic here, nearly palpable in the air and set deep into the foundation, and with the way the horcrux in Harry’s brain was all but basking in it, it had to be dark. It was lucky, then, that Harry didn’t mind it at all.

The same couldn’t be said for Sirius, who stood in his own entryway fidgeting and uncomfortable.

That may have less to do with the magic itself and more to do with the associations he has with this house, the déjà vu brain said. Not to mention, it’s the first time you’re seeing his home—your new home—and he’s probably not sure what you’ll think, if you’ll be happy here.

Harry opened his mouth, ready to assure Sirius that Grimmauld Place was perfect—that Sirius shouldn’t worry, because anywhere was better than the Dursleys and Harry would have been happy to live in a shack or a cave or a hole in the ground if it meant being with Sirius rather than them—but before he could speak, there was a loud crack, abrupt enough to make Harry startle.

And then there was an elf.

The meanest, rattiest looking elf that Harry had ever seen—not that he’d seen many, but still. Harry had thought Dobby’s pillowcase clothes were bad enough, but whatever thing this one was wearing was about ten times dingier and full of twice as many holes. His back was hunched, hands curled in and gnarled—whether from age or old injury, Harry couldn’t be sure—and his skin was wrinkled, ears wilting. The glare he leveled at Harry was nothing short of murderous.

“Master Blood-Traitor is bringing tainted filth into this great house,” the house elf spat, turning his glare on Sirius. “Ruining the Black family name. Bringing shame onto the family. Oh, Mistress would have skinned you, yes. Would have skinned you for bringing trash into the ancestral home.”

“Kreacher—” Sirius started, voice raised and temper flaring.

“Incredible,” Harry said, awed, the words slipping out without thought. Sirius’s head whipped towards Harry, and Kreacher’s followed at a much slower pace. “He’s like the exact opposite of Dobby. Like if Dobby had an older counterpart from a dark dimension.”

Sirius blinked at him. “What.”

Harry shook himself. “Sorry, just thinking about this other house elf I know. Very sweet. Well-intentioned. Did, accidentally, almost kill me once, but we’re good now.”

“What.”

“There will be no almost,” Kreacher said ominously, eyes glinting.

Sirius whipped back around to Kreacher, and Harry half worried the man would make himself dizzy at this rate. “You will not harm Harry. You can’t. He’s my heir, and you will listen to his orders the same as mine.”

Harry grimaced at that. He wasn’t really big on giving orders, and while he’d yet to dig into the history of house elves and their position in the magical world, from what he’d seen so far, the whole business stank a bit too much of slavery for Harry to be at all comfortable with it.

Yet another thing I’ll have to add to the list, Harry thought. Hermione, at the very least, would be on board. Probably Luna too—she seemed very invested in the welfare of magical creatures. 

And then the rest of what Sirius had said registered.

“Wait. Heir?”

Sirius flapped a hand dismissively. “Of course. It’s not like I have any other children.”

Now it was Harry’s turn to stand in the hallway, dumbstruck. There was a lot to unpack there.

The horcrux brain was laughing. Heir to the Potter and Black estates. Your luck truly is outrageous.

But neither Harry nor the déjà vu brain could be bothered to respond to him, both of them stuck on the same fragment of wording. It could be insignificant, of course, a slip of the tongue, a thoughtless phrase, but—

Sirius had said he didn’t have any other children. Not, “It’s not like I have any children.” He’d said any other children. Implying…well. Implying that Harry—that he thought of Harry like—

There was a soft hissing in his ear, the flicker of a thin tongue at his cheek, bringing Harry gently back into reality.

“Mother? We have stopped moving. Are we at the new nest?” Eden hissed, nudging her head along Harry’s jaw as she tasted the air of their new home. She had settled around his neck for the duration of the train ride from Hogwarts, insisting that he was much warmer than the charmed rock in her terrarium. She was long enough for it now, nearly 30 cm and still growing, and since she could hide easily enough under the collar of his robes, Harry had allowed it.

“Yes,” Harry responded. “I will find a good sunspot for you soon.”

“And a mouse?” she asked, ever hopeful.

Harry rolled his eyes. “You ate a mouse last night.”

“So long ago,” Eden mourned.

Harry snorted and shook his head. Everything he’d read about adders suggested that they digested food slowly and would only need to eat once every few weeks. But Eden had a voracious appetite, claiming starvation sometimes mere hours after a meal, and Harry was loathe to deny her. Besides, despite eating much more than the average adder was supposed to, Eden still looked healthy. Maybe she was eating so much because she was still growing.

As Eden settled back under the collar of Harry’s robes, he noticed how quiet it had gotten and looked up to find both Sirius and Kreacher staring at him.

Oops, Harry thought. He’d become so accustomed to speaking parseltongue freely in front of his friends that he hadn’t considered warning Sirius. Or Kreacher, for that matter. Sometimes Harry forgot that speaking to snakes wasn’t common in the wizarding world—that it was, in fact, a rare ability that only two people in Britain (and the various soul pieces of one said person) could lay claim to.

“Right,” Sirius said, sounding a bit strangled but doing a good job of pretending he wasn’t freaking out. “Your pet snake. Was she around your neck this whole time?”

“Eden,” Harry offered. “She’s really very polite. I promise she won’t cause you any trouble.”

“No, no, of course. Because you can just…tell her not to, I suppose.”

Harry nodded. “Yes. And she’d much rather sleep and eat most of the time. She’s still a baby.”

“A baby,” Sirius repeated. “Your foot-long snake is a baby. Right. Okay. Good. Yep.”

He’s processing, the déjà vu brain said. Give him a minute.

Kreacher, for his part, was just staring. But unlike before, the murderous hostility was all but gone.

Harry smiled at him. “Kreacher, Eden won’t bite you so long as you leave her alone. Deal?”

The house elf was silent for a moment longer, but then his mouth split into a truly terrifying grin. “Oh Mistress would be pleased, after all. Master Blood-Traitor did well to bring Young Master Snake-Tongue here. Yes he did. There is hope for Master Blood-Traitor yet.”

There was more mumbling, but Harry couldn’t make it out, given that Kreacher decided now was the moment to begin wandering off to…somewhere. Harry watched him go with no small amount of concern; if he’d thought Dobby had a screw loose, then Kreacher’s brain was like a whole drawer full of mismatched spare parts.

The Black insanity may be contagious, the horcrux brain offered. I would warn you to take precautions, but I’m actually not convinced you haven’t already been contaminated.

Thanks, Harry drawled.

“Well he seems…nice,” Harry said once Kreacher was gone. “Real sunny personality.”

Sirius grimaced. “He adored my mother. That should tell you all you need to know about her, really.” Then he clapped his hands. “Anyway. Let me show you around. You can pretty much have your pick of the rooms, though I’ll warn you I think some of them might be haunted.”

Then Sirius launched into a story about how some of the objects in the drawing room moved around when he was cleaning in there, and how every time he tried to throw out his uncle’s creepy butterfly collection, it ended up back on the wall above the fireplace anyway, so he eventually gave up. Harry wasn’t convinced it was ghosts—it seemed much more likely that Kreacher was the culprit, in his opinion—but Sirius was a good storyteller and he found himself laughing along.

Home, the lizard brain hummed happily. Home. Safe. Family.

No matter what happens from here, Harry thought, it’s shaping up to be an interesting summer at least.

Habit once again had Harry rising early, the sun barely peeking in through the window in his bedroom. His bedroom, which was not a spare room intended for his cousin’s toys. His bedroom, which had perhaps belonged to some distant relative at one point fifty years ago, but not in Harry’s lifetime. His bedroom, which Sirius had told him to redecorate as he liked, because it was his and Harry should make it to his liking.

“Paint it, rip up the floors, take out a bloody wall if you want,” Sirius had said with a grin. “I don’t plan for this to be our permanent home, but in the meantime, well. It’s your house, too.”

The room Harry had chosen was currently painted in a dark blue-gray color that he’d found soothing. The bed was both larger and softer than anywhere he’d ever slept, and there was a desk, some mostly empty bookshelves, and plenty of light from the windows. It was already pretty perfect on its own, and it would only become more so as Harry unpacked his things, filled up the space and left his mark on it.

Strange how life can change so much so quickly, he thought. This time last year, he’d been grieving the end of his year at Hogwarts, bracing himself to suffer through another miserable summer. The pain of going back to the Dursleys last year had been all the worse because he’d had a taste of what life was like without them, of what Harry could be without them. And now he was here with Sirius. Both of them free from their own prisons.

The house was quiet, no sign of anyone else awake, but for once, Harry would not be expected to wait for someone to unlock his cupboard door. He got out of bed at will, used the adjoining bathroom to wash up and get ready for the day, and crept out into the hallway, footsteps silent. He had to remind himself he would not be yelled at for moving about the house freely, that Sirius had specifically said to make himself at home, go anywhere he liked.

Despite himself, Harry found his way to the kitchen.

It was bigger than the one at Privet Drive, designed to feed a large family and therefore more spacious out of necessity.

And to show off what they can afford, the horcrux brain added. With the old pureblood families, wealth is something meant to be shown off. Even if it is ostentatious.

I’m surprised you don’t think it’s a waste of money, the déjà vu brain said. I’d have thought you’d rather spend money on bribes than flashy but ultimately useless displays.

The horcrux countered, Why waste money on bribes when blackmail and torture are more effective?

Harry rolled his eyes at the déjà vu brain’s spluttering indignation. As if they didn’t all know by now how flexible Voldemort’s morals were. It wasn’t that Harry approved, necessarily, it was just that there was little point in trying to change who the horcrux fundamentally was. And neither Harry nor the déjà vu brain could truly claim the moral high ground anyway, not when they were both plenty homicidal in their own right.

The kitchen, ostentatious or not, continued to loom in front of him.

He didn’t have to cook. Probably. He didn’t think Sirius would expect him to. Sirius didn’t seem like the type, though Harry could be wrong. And even if he did expect Harry to make breakfast, he probably wouldn’t yell like Vernon had or swat at him with the frying pan like Petunia.

And Sirius had been in prison for over a decade, so any food would do. He wouldn’t be picky, having been accustomed to much worse.

You don’t have to, the déjà vu brain assured him, and Harry believed him, he did, but—

Fifteen minutes later and Harry stood over the stove, poking delicately at the eggs frying in the pan. There were footsteps coming down the stairs, and Harry turned when he heard Sirius come in, smiling and offering a good morning before getting back to it. The eggs were almost done—perfect timing.

“What on earth—” Sirius started, voice sleep-roughened and confused. “Harry, why—you’re cooking? Where’s Kreacher?”

Harry, who hadn’t actually seen the house elf all morning, shrugged. “Don’t know. I’m making breakfast—I didn’t know how you liked your eggs. Is sunny-side up fine? Or I could do a scramble?”

There was a long silence, so Harry turned to look at Sirius again. Sirius was standing in the middle of the kitchen in red and black flannel pajama bottoms and a dark grey bathrobe, eyes bleary and squinted as he looked at Harry. He looked half asleep still. And confused. But not…not angry.

Something in Harry’s chest eased, a tension he hadn’t really been aware of until right that second.

Sirius shook himself. “Uh. No. No need to do a…a scramble. Whatever you’ve made is great, I’m sure.”

Another minute more and Harry was handing his godfather a plate and fork, which Sirius took and plopped down at the table. When Harry didn’t immediately sit across from him, though, he frowned.

“Come. Sit. Eat.”

“You don’t mind?” Harry asked. He had to be sure. He knew normal families ate together—like the Weasleys, like meals at school—but things had never been normal at the Dursley house. And yes, Grimmauld Place wasn’t Privet Drive, and Sirius wasn’t like Vernon or Petunia, but—

But this was still a new place, a new person, a new set of unspoken rules that might need to be followed, and Harry was willing to follow those rules if it meant he got to stay. He just needed to know where the lines were first.

“Mind? Why the fuck would I—” Sirius took a deep breath. “Sorry. Let me—ugh. Would you like to eat breakfast together?”

“Yes. I—yes.” Harry sat down with his own plate and took a tentative bite. Nothing bad happened—in fact, nothing happened at all aside from Sirius nodding quietly.

“So. Family meals. You didn’t do that with your aunt’s family?” Sirius asked after a few minutes.

Harry snorted involuntarily. “At the Dursleys? No way.”

“But you cooked,” Sirius inferred, lifting a piece of his egg on the fork. “It’s very good. Much better than Kreacher’s idea of breakfast. The toast was basically charcoal. I think he’s trying to find a loophole where he can kill me without it technically going against the family magic.”

“Well, I can make breakfast,” Harry offered. “I’ve got plenty of practice, so I don’t think I’ll burn the toast. And I’m definitely not trying to kill you.”

Sirius smiled, but it was a softer thing than Harry would have expected from him. “Maybe sometimes, when you want. I make a mean batch of pancakes you’ll have to try. And there’s a bakery down the street—best damn croissants I’ve ever had.”

So not cooking all the time, then, Harry thought, a touch relieved. Not that he wouldn’t have done it, if that’s what Sirius wanted, but it was nice to know the burden of feeding them wasn’t going to fall solely on Harry.

Something must have shown on Harry’s face, or maybe Sirius was psychic, because he asked, “Did you cook all the time at your aunt’s?”

Harry shrugged. It hadn’t been all the time. Harry had usually been in school during lunch, and he hadn’t cooked when he’d been ill, of course, in case it was contagious. There were dinners for Vernon’s colleagues that Petunia had done—things that were more complicated or fancier than Harry could be trusted to manage.

Sirius seemed to have taken the shrug as a yes. “So you did most of the cooking, but you didn’t eat together.” His brow furrowed. “You thought I’d mind if you sat with me—Harry. Did your aunt not let you sit at the table?”

Harry grimaced. This wasn’t something he particularly wanted to talk about. It had been hard enough telling even some of the details to his friends, and part of the reason he’d told Ron in the first place was because he’d seen the bars on Harry’s windows first-hand. Harry knew the way the Dursleys had treated him was wrong, but there was something about speaking it out loud that made it all feel so much more real. Like by acknowledging it, somehow all the slights and cruelties could hurt him all over again.

Telling Sirius was probably the right thing to do. That didn’t make it easy.

He will love you anyway, the déjà vu brain said, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. If anything, he will be angry for you.

Safe, the lizard brain murmured, a soft hiss.

As I told you before, the horcrux brain added. If he is deficient, you will still have us. And he will be dead.

Stop threatening my godfather, the déjà vu brain said. He hasn’t done anything yet.

It’s not a threat. It’s reassurance.

Of course offering to murder someone is your idea of reassurance. The déjà vu brain groaned. You goddamned psychopath.

Oddly enough, it was the bickering of his inner voices that calmed Harry the most. Calmed him enough, at least, to get the words out.

“No. Or, well, I could if it was after everyone was done.” Harry paused, fists clenching. “Things were…not great. The Dursleys were…not great. There were a lot of things that—it’s hard. To talk about, it’s…hard.” He took a deep breath, shaking his head to try to regain some clarity. “I lived in a cupboard under the stairs until I was eleven, and it locked from the outside. That’s…that should give you an idea, I think.”

It took Harry a long moment to be able to look up from the table, but eventually Sirius’s silence was too much to bear.

But whatever Harry had been expecting, it wasn’t this: Sirius sitting stone-faced, eyes squeezed shut as his hand clenched around the silverware in his fist, breathing raggedly through his nose.

Just when Harry was wondering if he should try to reach out, or if that would be unwise, some of the tension uncoiled from his godfather’s shoulders, and with one more shuddering breath, he opened his eyes. Which were both damp and furious.

“I’m going to kill them,” he said with a remarkable amount of calm that only leant credence to his threat.

(Harry knew that sometimes when people got angry, they said things they didn’t mean.

He didn’t think that was the case here.)

The rational part of him thought that the proper response to that should be No, don’t, it’s not worth it.

He found that he did not want to say that, and thought that even if he did, he wouldn’t have meant it.

What he said instead was, “Probably should hold off on the murder for now, seeing as you just got out of prison.”

Sirius jolted a bit, startled, and then he barked out a laugh, effectively cutting through the tense atmosphere. Harry smiled in response, and it felt real.

“Yeah,” Sirius agreed, once he’d calmed down. “Probably a good idea. But I can still think it, can’t I?”

“Of course,” Harry assured him cheerfully. “I certainly do.”

After the not-totally-disastrous breakfast, the underlying worries that Harry had subconsciously had about living with Sirius seemed to dissolve with very little effort. It was still an adjustment, of course, to share a house with someone new and to learn the other person’s habits and quirks. But Harry did not feel like he had to tip-toe around Sirius, and Sirius seemed to go out of his way to make sure Harry knew that.

And with every soft assurance from his déjà vu brain, every whispered encouragement from his lizard brain, every threat of retribution from the horcrux, Harry settled incrementally into the house and into the life he was building here.

Which meant, on his third morning at Grimmauld Place, while eating a delicious chocolate chip muffin from Sirius’s favorite bakery, he felt comfortable enough to pick up the copy of the Daily Prophet that was sitting on the table between them and give it a quick scan the same way he would have at breakfast at Hogwarts. Sirius, who was still waking up and really only had eyes for his coffee, didn’t even blink.

(He was not a morning person, Harry had learned, but he still made the effort to get up and have breakfast together. Maybe he knew it meant something to Harry, or maybe it was that he was just as desperate for company after all those years isolated in Azkaban.

Maybe, in some ways, he and Harry were exactly the same.)

The front page of the Prophet was detailing some sex scandal of a Swiss diplomat that Harry had no interest in, and so he flipped through idly. On the second page, there was a somewhat fascinating article on collaborative dragon preservation efforts among twenty-three countries, and right under that sat a comprehensively flattering profile piece on one Tomas Sayre.

It was an almost excessively kind article, something of a rarity for the Prophet. But Harry supposed it would be difficult to find fault with the image Voldemort was currently cultivating: the long lost heir to a famous noble house, an educated man with incredible talents and a sense of justice, the man who had revived all the students harmed by Lockhart’s fame-seeking behavior, and who was now beginning to work with the Hogwarts Board of Governors to bring the school into a new era of greatness.

It didn’t hurt that Sayre was outrageously handsome, outrageously charming, and outrageously clever. The journalist who had written the profile—not Skeeter, but some woman named Mathilda Verne—had obviously eaten it right up. And who could blame her?

Wizarding Britain really doesn’t stand a chance, Harry thought. He was still unsure about whether or not that was a good thing. Voldemort was still Voldemort, and therefore there was an element of unpredictability to him.

But in every interaction Harry had had with the man, he’d been a far cry from the monster that so many people painted him as. And the more Harry got to know him—and the more Harry learned of Dumbledore—the more Harry thought that perhaps Voldemort was the better option. Maybe. If certain things could be investigated, verified.

Harry’s musings were interrupted by a knock on the door. Slowly, he lowered the paper to find that Sirius was looking back at him, equally confused.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Harry asked.

“Could be the wellness visit,” Sirius said, though he didn’t look like he believed it. “Other than that—no.”

Still in his pajamas, Sirius stood and went to the door, wand held comfortably at his side but ready. Harry waited behind, lingering in the hallway but largely out of the way.

(Maybe both of them were too paranoid for their own good. It could be anyone: a friendly neighbor, a ministry official here with the paperwork to give Sirius his bank accounts back, someone from the DMLE checking in.

But Harry was half expecting it to be a fight, and if the way Sirius rolled his wand in his palm was any indicator, he did too.)

Only when Sirius did open the door, the man on the other side was exactly the opposite of antagonistic. He was a tall, lean guy with mussed hair, sad eyes and face scars, a rumpled sweater, and a nervous demeanor like he thought he was about to get shoved in front of a moving vehicle just for having the gall to be on their doorstep.

He was also unnervingly familiar. Not from anywhere in real life. No. From Harry’s dreams.

Remus Lupin, the déjà vu brain offered, voice fond.

Family, the lizard brain said.

Oh this should be good, the horcrux said, sounding entirely too entertained for his own good.

“Hello, Sirius,” Lupin said as he shifted nervously on the doorstep.

Sirius was quiet for a moment, and since Harry could only see his back from this angle, he wasn’t sure what sort of reaction his godfather was having until, “What. The. Fuck.”

Remus flinched. Harry winced. That was not a warm welcome.

“No, really, what the fuck,” Sirius repeated. “I sent you a dozen fucking letters a month ago. Nothing. Radio silence. Fine, whatever, you don’t want to see me. And now you show up on my doorstep out of the blue. What the fuck.”

Harry winced again. Damn. It seemed like Remus was an even worse emotional wreck than Harry was.

Remus at least had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn’t mean for it to come across like that. I didn’t—I never wanted you to think I didn’t want to see you. I wanted to. I thought—you were getting settled, and I’d only get in the way. Bad memories, or—”

“Did you read them?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“So you knew that I wanted to see you, and you decided anyway, for me, that it wasn’t a good idea,” Sirius said flatly. Remus flinched again, and Sirius sighed. “Merlin, you’re a fucking idiot sometimes. Acting like you know best, making that choice for me.”

At Sirius’s words, Remus looked stricken. “Sirius—”

“What if you are what’s good for me?”

“I thought you would blame me. Or hate me at least. I believed you had betrayed them, for years, even despite how that never would have aligned with who I knew you to be. How could I ever make that up to you?”

“By being here. By trying.” Sirius reached forward, clasping Remus’s arm, and Remus let him. “So be here. Try.”

It wasn’t his déjà vu brain or anything so concrete, but Harry had the sudden sense that there were about to be tears—a depth of feeling best suited for dear, close friends and not the recently procured godson who only barely knew of these men in fractured, dream-like memory. Harry slipped away from the scene silently, content to let them have a moment in privacy. There were dishes in the kitchen he could tend to if he wanted to keep his hands busy. Not to mention there were still rooms that Harry had only glimpsed, not fully explored. And the library alone was enough to keep him occupied for years to come.

Wait, the horcrux said sharply, and Harry paused in his tracks. Do you feel that?

 It took him a moment of absolute concentration, but eventually he felt the faintest tingle of dark magic—deeper and blacker than even that which saturated Grimmauld naturally. And more than that, it was familiar.

There’s a horcrux here, Harry realized, and the horcrux in his brain hummed its affirmation.

The Locket, the déjà vu brain confirmed, sounding less than pleased. But that was to be expected at this point. The Harry that existed in the déjà vu brain’s memories had very likely never had a good experience with a horcrux, especially if the memories in the Chamber of Secrets were anything to go by.

Allowing the sensation of the horcrux’s magic to guide him, Harry took a tentative step towards where he thought the horcrux might be.

This is a terrible idea, the déjà vu brain said. That thing is a menace.

It is no more dangerous to Harry than the diary, the horcrux dismissed. Perhaps even less so, for it contains a much smaller fragment of my soul.

It nearly drowned me!

Danger, the lizard brain hissed.

Harry paused. Just because he had thus far managed to deal with every iteration of Voldemort that he’d met did not mean that other fragments of him would pose no threat. A little caution was warranted.

How many times must I tell you, Harry? I will not let anything harm you, the horcrux brain said. And then, addressing the déjà vu brain, Besides, would you not prefer the locket in our care rather than floating about for anyone to stumble across?

I hate when you make sense. Fuck it. Fine. Let’s do this.

But as soon as his brains reached a consensus, Sirius called out from the hall.

“Harry? There’s someone you should meet.”

The horcrux brain cursed, but Harry didn’t mind. The opportune moment would come. He had all summer after all.

“This is Remus Lupin,” Sirius said, happier than he’d been when he first answered the door but clearly twice as nervous. “He—you see, when we were young, we called ourselves the Marauders. There were four of us. Wormtail—Pettigrew, that is—you’ve already met. Your father was Prongs. I was—”

“Padfoot,” Harry finished, the name coming to him as easy as breathing. And when he looked at Remus, his nickname fell into place just as easily. “And you’re Moony.”

And then, seeing their gobsmacked expressions, Harry realized he’d once again let on that he knew too much. His mind raced as he tried to figure out how he could backtrack, how he could possibly explain how he knew their super-secret codenames from their teenage years, but before he could even really begin to fumble through an excuse, Remus came up with one for him.

“You called us that when you were a baby,” he whispered, already getting teary-eyed. “Our names were too hard for you to say, and James called us by our nicknames anyway. You…you must have remembered.”

It was a nice thought. Harry wished it was true, but there was no harm in letting them think so. Even if it was making Sirius sniffle again.

(And if it ended in crying and hugs, well, that was nice too.)

The first time Sirius had to go to his therapy appointment, leaving Harry alone to his own devices after much persuading, Harry was privately relieved.

(“You’re sure you’ll be okay here, by yourself?” Sirius had asked, unsure.

Harry had nodded. “I’m used to it. And besides, I won’t really be alone. I’ve got Kreacher.”

That hadn’t done much to ease Sirius’s nerves, not even when the house elf in question had popped in out of nowhere to say, “I will take good care of Young Master Snake-Tongue,” with an unexpected amount of sincerity. Harry didn’t quite know what to make of it. Neither did Sirius.

But the appointments were mandatory, and it wasn’t like there was anyone else to watch Harry.

“Honestly, Sirius. I’ve been practically self-sufficient for the past eleven years or so. An hour or two alone isn’t going to kill me.”

That had been that.)

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Sirius, or that they weren’t getting along. They were. Astonishingly well, really.

The problem was almost entirely Harry. Specifically that he wasn’t used to the sort of attentive, parental care Sirius seemed determined to provide. At the Dursleys, Harry had been assigned chores and then more or less told to get out of sight. At Hogwarts, the teachers might have cared more, but they were nearly as negligent.

Every problem Harry had encountered in his life, he’d had to fix himself.

The fact that Sirius made him breakfast some mornings, and wanted to know about Harry’s adventures at school, and wanted to know about his friends, and wanted to spend time in the evenings together—well. Harry didn’t know what to do with it.

It was everything he’d dreamed of and more. It was also incredibly overwhelming.

He was glad for a break, for the chance to explore the house undisturbed. And for a chance to continue making good on a promise he’d made.

“This is not Hogwarts,” Tom Riddle said when he emerged from the Diary in the midst of Harry’s bedroom, looking around at the room that was so obviously dissimilar from the Gryffindor Boy’s Dormitory. “And it is too saturated in magic to belong to your muggle relatives. Where are we?”

“One of the Black family homes.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “You did not mention you were acquainted with the Blacks.”

There’s plenty about me I didn’t mention, Harry thought but didn’t say aloud. Instead, he merely offered a smile and let Tom stew in the irritation of not knowing everything for a few moments.

But however much he enjoyed getting one up on Tom, he had no interest in actually alienating the diary horcrux. They were not exactly friends, but due to the nature of the deal they’d struck last year, they had spent a fair amount of time together and would likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

“My godfather was recently acquitted of mass murder,” Harry explained. “He’s my guardian now. As long as you don’t cause me any problems, Tom, I don’t see why you can’t be free to move about while he’s out of the house.”

“How generous of you,” Tom said snidely, but Harry only hummed.

“I thought you might enjoy the Black library in particular. But if you’re not interested…”

Tom’s head jerked at that, and then, like he’d forgotten that Harry was practically immune to his bullshit, he tried to give Harry puppy-eyes: all soft and piteous and glimmering with buried emotion.

Or at least, that’s what someone who didn’t know Tom might have seen. Harry just saw his obvious greed.

Is he fucking stupid? the déjà vu brain asked incredulously. He can’t honestly believe that will work.

At this age, his manipulation tactics are suited to the dimwitted masses, not impossible teenage boys destined to be his equal, the horcrux brain said, though he was no less derisive. But he’s known Harry for months now. He should know better.

“Harry,” Tom started, voice coaxing and laden with false remorse. “Forgive me if I seemed ungrateful. It’s all this being cooped up that has me so snappish, and of course you don’t deserve to be the target of my ire. Really—”

“Dear god, just stop.”

You’ve always liked hearing yourself talk, the déjà vu brain commented, poking at the horcrux brain. Should have called yourself Lord Monologue.

You have no appreciation for the power of a good speech, the horcrux brain sniffed.

Blah. Blah. Blah, the lizard brain hissed, setting the déjà vu brain off into a fit of laughter than nearly caught Harry up in it as well.

“You don’t want my apologies, Harry?” Tom asked softly, as if wounded, still feigning the innocent act.

Harry snorted. “Not if you don’t mean them, no. We both know what you’re trying to do. So cut the shit. I told you, you can browse the library as long as you don’t stir up trouble. Deal?”

Tom stepped closer, leaning into Harry’s space as he dropped the pretense of nicety. Harry didn’t flinch back; he’d already put Tom in his place once, the first time the diary had tried to possess him, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat if needed.

But instead of aggression or even anger—the expected response, because no version of Voldemort liked not having the upper hand—Tom looked…almost pleased. Harry frowned.

You are the one who vanquished his elder self, the one everyone proclaims as the only true match to Voldemort’s power, the horcrux brain explained. If you were ordinary—if you were like everyone else, taken in by his charm and unable or unwilling to push back—he would be disappointed.

There was a warm feeling in Harry’s chest as there always was any time Voldemort—or the various pieces of him, horcrux brain included—found him worthy, whether as a student or an opponent or an ally. Maybe it was because Voldemort was a difficult man to impress. Acknowledgment from him meant something different than it did from nearly anyone else.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” Tom said.

“Good,” Harry said. “Then shall we?”

Harry did not consider himself a bookworm, an academic. He liked reading well enough, and he’d certainly spent plenty of time researching in the Hogwarts library last year. But learning for the sake of learning was not his passion—the hat hadn’t been lying when it said that Ravenclaw was ill-suited to Harry.

His research had purpose: a desire to find ways to protect himself against both physical attacks and political ones, a burning need to secure his independence by making sure that no one could use his ignorance against him. He wanted knowledge because knowledge was power.

And maybe that was part of what Tom wanted, too. But Tom was also a massive fucking nerd.

“Incredible,” he muttered for what must have been the seventh time in the past ten minutes alone, eyes wide and reverent as he scanned the packed bookshelves of the library. “And is that—Harry. You have a book on Scandinavian skin-rune casting. That was illegal in Britain even in my time. Do you have any idea how priceless this is?”

The horcrux brain was wistful. At 16, I had not yet secured an invite to any of my housemates’ private libraries. It was only after I proved myself with the Chamber of Secrets that they took me seriously.

You’re trying to tell me you weren’t going around cursing people and subduing them with your ‘sheer magical superiority’ from the moment you entered Hogwarts? the déjà vu brain scoffed.

Of course they knew of my magic long before then, the horcrux sneered. My followers respected my power. It was their families who were not persuaded so easily.

Harry had entered the wizarding world and encountered few obstacles. Sure, there were Dumbledore’s schemes to take into account, and the looming threat of death that seemed to hang around every corner. But he’d had money enough to buy anything he needed ten times over, and he’d made loyal friends within the first week of school, and he had a family name to recommend him.

(For all that he did not buy into the pureblood supremacy horse-shit, he would be naïve to think being a Potter was irrelevant in the world they lived in.)

Tom had had none of that.

It made the way he browsed the Black library—slowly, thoroughly, looking for all the world like he belonged there, and simultaneously looking as though he himself couldn’t quite believe it—all the more endearing.

Kind of in the same way that Theo’s bewilderment at being wrapped in Harry’s scarf was endearing. Or how Ron’s brilliant grin at being given a good chess opponent was endearing, or Hermione’s outraged rants about Rita Skeeter, or Luna’s cryptic and vaguely unsettling-but-well-meaning remarks, or Blaise’s insistence that yes, Harry, I know several really good lawyers, please for the love of Merlin, let me put you in contact with one of them just in case.

Well fuck, Harry thought, blinking at the sudden realization. Maybe Tom kind of actually is my friend. At the very least, Harry was treating him like one.

A snide, sharp, asshole of a friend who Harry couldn’t trust farther than he could throw him, but a friend still.

You’re just now realizing this? the déjà vu brain drawled, somehow both amused and long-suffering. Harry, the moment you decided not to take him down into the Chamber and stab him through with a basilisk fang, you basically adopted him.

You do become attached far too easily, the horcrux brain said, a familiar refrain at this point. But it wasn’t chiding. There was the same amused exasperation from him as there had been from the déjà vu brain.

“No,” Tom all but gasped from across the room. From anyone else at any other time, it might have been quiet enough to go unnoticed. But the house was empty, the library silent, and Tom was nothing short of awe-struck. “A hand-written journal on Byzantine ritual circles? From 437 A.D.? Incredible.”

Cute, the lizard brain hissed.

Harry shook his head. Tom would be kept busy for a while, and Sirius wasn’t due back from his therapy appointment for at least another hour. Which meant this was the perfect opportunity.

It was time to find the Locket.

Chapter Text

The good news? The locket was easy to find. All Harry had to do was follow the faint thread of familiar dark magic that reminded him of the shadowy swirl lurking in his own brain.

The bad news?

“What is Young Master Snake-Tongue wanting with Master Regulus’s locket?” Kreacher hissed, eyes narrowed and wary as he glared at Harry.

Ah, shit, the déjà vu brain said.

Regulus’s locket? That locket is mine, the horcrux brain spat, affronted.

Shiny, shiny, the lizard brain hummed.

Harry eyed the batty house elf that stood between him and another of Voldemort’s horcruxes and considered his options. He could try to order Kreacher to hand over the locket and hope that it would override whatever orders his previous master had given.

But the thought of forcing the elf rankled, too similar to his childhood at the Dursleys where nothing was a choice and Harry was at their non-existent mercy. The last thing he wanted was to be like the Dursleys. Besides, Harry had a feeling getting on Kreacher’s bad side would be a fatal mistake.

Which meant a defter touch would be required.

“Regulus,” Harry mused. “That was Sirius’s brother, right?”

He’d looked at the family tapestry within his first few days at the house, curious to see if there were any other relations he could expect to meet soon. It was disappointing to realize just how many of the Blacks were dead, and of those still potentially living, Bellatrix—who’s very name initiated a deep searing hatred not unlike Wormtail—was in prison, Narcissa Harry already knew, and Andromeda had been blasted from the tapestry much like Sirius had. There was no telling if she even was still alive, disconnected as she was from the tapestry’s magic.

Kreacher tsked. “Master Regulus was a great wizard. Master Regulus saved Kreacher’s life.”

He was mediocre at best, the horcrux brain argued.

But the déjà vu brain wasn’t having it. You’re just pissed he outplayed you, stole your locket out of your overcomplicated little cave trap, and then successfully hid it away from everyone for years with no one the wiser.

“He must have cared about you very much,” Harry said, ignoring the bickering in his head. “Not only to save your life, but to entrust something so precious into your care.”

Kreacher clutched the locket against his chest for a moment, hands trembling. “Master Regulus was a great wizard.”

Harry nodded along. “But that locket is very dangerous. I’m sure he never meant to make you hold onto it for so long, not when it’s hurting you so much.”

Kreacher frowned. “Master Regulus’s locket is not hurting Kreacher.”

“But it is,” Harry insisted. “That locket contains a shard of the Dark Lord’s magic. And it sinks into you like a slow poison until you lose all sense of yourself. You’ve felt it, haven’t you, Kreacher?”

Harry wasn’t sure if it was true or not. Or rather, he knew that the locket as a horcrux was capable of such a thing, though whether it would have any effect on an elf was up in the air. What Harry did know was that Kreacher was a few pence short of a pound in the head, and whether that might have been a result of torture at the hands of the other Blacks years ago, or the loss of the family he was so clearly devoted to, or if it truly was the horcrux after all was irrelevant.

The only thing that mattered was what Harry convinced him of.

Slowly, cautiously, Kreacher nodded. “Since Master Regulus left.”

Grief or loneliness, then, was just as likely the culprit as the locket, but at least the timing made things simple for Harry.

“Regulus sounds like a great wizard,” Harry said, repeating Kreacher’s praise of the man back again and watching as the house elf nodded in agreement. “I wish I could have met him. You have carried the burden of his memory, and his death, for so long. Let me carry it with you. Let me help.”

Kreacher blinked, and his eyes were damp. “Young Master Harry would help Kreacher?”

Harry ignored the sudden change of address—he could analyze the significance of that later—and pushed on. “Isn’t that the best way to honor Regulus’s memory? He cared so much for you, Kreacher. He wanted you to live. He wouldn’t want you to be hurt by the locket, even if he told you to guard it.”

Kreacher stared down at the locket in his hands.

So close, Harry thought. Just another push.

“Let me guard the locket, Kreacher. Let me make sure it doesn’t hurt you, or anyone, ever again.”

Kreacher hesitated another moment. “Won’t the locket hurt Young Master Harry?”

“No. The magic that the Dark Lord put into the locket doesn’t work against me.” When Kreacher hesitated still, Harry reached out, clasped the house elf on his bony shoulder. “Kreacher, let me keep you safe. For Regulus.”

Kreacher’s eyes were wide and solemn, and he dropped the locket into Harry’s waiting hands. “For Master Regulus.”

Very nicely done Harry, the horcrux brain praised.

I can’t believe you’ve turned him into a conman, the déjà vu brain complained half-heartedly.

Of course you’d blame this on me, but the truth is the potential lay within him—and you—the whole time, the horcrux brain said with a sniff.

Harry hummed to himself as he slipped back down the hallway towards the library. Dubious methods aside, everything had worked out rather nicely. He’d gotten the locket without too much fuss, and he’d made a house elf feel loved along the way. What, really, was the harm in all that?

“That’s Slytherin’s locket,” Tom said with no small amount of awe, and more than a hint of covetous jealousy that he couldn’t quite manage to keep out of his voice.

“Mmhmm. And?” Harry prompted.

Tom leaned closer, finger reaching out to trace the outline of the snake on the locket’s surface. As soon as he touched the metal, Tom hissed through his teeth.

“It’s one of us. A horcrux.”

“Yes. I’m not sure if it will be able to create a physical manifestation like you can,” Harry said, head tilted in thought. “It’s a smaller piece of soul, after all.”

“Perhaps.” Tom eyed the locket again, this time with a more calculating, wary gaze. “Then again, it would be foolish to underestimate any fragment of myself. Even—” and his eyes darted over to Harry, a smirk pulling at his mouth “—the most miniscule of pieces.”

On a conceptual level, Harry understood the idea of family bonding. He’d witnessed it at the Dursleys: the trips they went on without Harry, the family meals he wasn’t a part of, the movie nights he’d listened to through the cupboard door. He’d experienced a taste of it when he was at the Weasleys last summer in the afternoon quidditch scrimmages and the warmth of Mrs. Weasley’s homemade rolls.

He thought he might even count all the time spent with his friends as a sort of family bonding—the closeness he had with Ron and Hermione, with Blaise and Theo, and even a bit with Luna, was of a depth he couldn’t claim to see in most teen friendships.

But with Sirius, everything felt so different.

With just the two of them, it wasn’t possible to play a true game of quidditch or even a backyard scrimmage, but they could fly in loops over the back garden, warded to keep muggles from seeing them. They had taken to tossing a quaffle around, and though there wasn’t a competitive edge to their little game of catch, it was still fun.

And peaceful. There was something about the freedom in this, the way he was allowed to be magical without it being a sin. The way he didn’t have a long list of chores for Aunt Petunia to scold him for. The way he had someone who cared for him, who chose him.

“I wish I’d grown up like this,” Harry said, tossing the quaffle back to Sirius. He could imagine a childhood of endless summers like this: days spent on the broom, quiet breakfasts, soft hugs and the constant flow of magic in the world.

Sirius caught the ball and held onto it. “I wish you had, too. I wish you’d had a chance to do this with your own father. James…James would have loved this.”

It was odd, Harry thought, to imagine his parents as real people. He’d spent his whole childhood thinking of them only as people who might have been, and the little information he had about them from Petunia ended up being wrong anyway. Then he’d gone to Hogwarts, and he’d seen them in flashes in the yearbook. But nothing concrete. No recounted memories from people who’d known them. Nothing to make them feel real.

Not until now. It made something twinge in his chest every time Sirius made an offhand comment about something James would have liked, or something Harry did that reminded him of Lily. He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it.

Rather, he wasn’t sure he wanted to feel anything about it. Wasn’t it easier if they stayed as vague shadows of people? Generic figures. Something Harry couldn’t be attached to.

(It wasn’t as though missing them more would bring them back. Maybe it was better this way.)

“Did you do this growing up?” Harry asked, shifting the subject for now. “With your father?”

Sirius barked a laugh, but it wasn’t a cheery one. “My father? No. He never had much time for any of his children unless it was to be disappointed in us.”

“Oh.”

“You’re surprised,” Sirius guessed, and he was right. While Harry had known things hadn’t been easy for Sirius—given his hatred of the house and the way his portrait was blasted off the family tapestry—somehow he’d imagined that there must have been a time where he’d been happy. A time before things fell apart.

“I guess I thought you must have had some good memories of them. Your family, I mean.” Harry shrugged. “I don’t know why. It’s not like I have any good memories from the Dursleys. I suppose it’s the same.”

Sirius hummed, thinking, and he was silent for a while. Long enough that Harry was rapidly trying to come up with a conversation topic that was less heavy.

“The thing you should know about my family is that they weren’t good people,” Sirius eventually said, and then huffed, shaking his head. “No. That’s an oversimplification. My therapist would say I’m being unfair.” Sirius rolled his eyes then, and Harry laughed.

“My family was complicated,” Sirius mused. “I think…I think my parents loved us as much as they were able. But we were an obligation, Regulus and I, not a choice. The Black family had a lot of expectations: to keep the blood pure, to marry well, to raise the next generation to follow that same code. Loyalty was to the family first and foremost. What you wanted as an individual didn’t matter.”

“That must have grated on you,” Harry guessed, and Sirius barked another laugh.

“I’ll admit I was a born rebel. Though I wasn’t alone in that. It’s a family trait to be strong-willed. The problem was that I wasn’t…strong-willed in the right direction.”

“The dark.” Based on the books in the library alone, the Black family had been very dark.

Sirius smiled knowingly. “Yes, and no. It might surprise you that I had no real qualms with dark magic. I grew up in it. It was second nature to me.”

That’s a relief, Harry thought. His own indifference towards dark vs. light magic was something he didn’t foresee himself budging on, and it would have been…frustrating if he had to deal with that sort of prejudice from Sirius.

“It was more the accompanying ideology,” Sirius explained. “My parents were blood purists, like their parents before them, and their parents, and so on. They believed in an inherent superiority—not just in those who possessed magic, but in the quality of one’s blood. As if that was something tangible. Something that could be measured. And with the prejudice came hate, and with the hate came violence. And Voldemort.”

Harry couldn’t help himself, sitting up straighter and leaning closer as if that would make everything clearer.

“My parents were never kind people, but following Voldemort gave them free reign to be cruel. They did not spare their children from their cruelty—and I grew to hate everything they stood for, first out of spite, and later…”

Sirius trailed off, but Harry wanted to know more. “Later?”

“Later, because I met your parents.”

Harry frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Hm. Let’s see, how do I explain?” Sirius spun his broom into a loop for a few moments as he thought, then stilled again. “My family’s loyalty to Voldemort dictated my life path before I was even born. Even before I left for Hogwarts, the constraints of those expectations were intolerable for me. I didn’t have the right sort of stubbornness that was useful, and I didn’t have the ingrained cunning or viciousness of my cousins. I didn’t fit the mold, but my rebellion was for myself. I didn’t want to become my parents.

“And then I went to Hogwarts, got sorted into Gryffindor and cemented my place as the family disappointment in one fell swoop. But…it was that that saved me, Harry. Because in Gryffindor everyone was so different from how I’d grown up. They all came from different lifestyles that I couldn’t have dreamed up, and I realized how much opportunity there was out in the world. How many choices there were that had nothing to do with my family or their plans.”

“And my parents?” Harry asked, still curious as to how they fit into this.

“I met your father and saw how kind he was—to me, to Remus, to Pettigrew, the rat bastard. He treated me like a person with my own thoughts and feelings and wants. He was a pureblood who was the opposite of everything my parents were. It seemed like a light was shining down on a path to something better, showing me the way out.” Sirius laughed, head shaking. “And your mother was a muggleborn, everything my family looked down on, but she was brilliant. Clever and strong and fearless in the face of adversity. I met her, and I realized that my family was wrong. Once I realized that, I never looked back.”

Harry looked down at his hands, wrapped around the handle of the broom. Hogwarts had done the same thing for him, in a way. Before he’d learned of magic, his biggest ambition had been to make to his 18^th birthday, get the fuck out of the Dursleys and see where life could take him from there.

And then magic had happened, quite literally, and a whole world had opened up to him. Without his sixth sense to guide him, it would have been easy to reach for the first hand that had lifted him up—Hagrid, and by extent, Dumbledore. Easy to hand over blind trust and faith, to never look deeper. And for Sirius, who had experienced hatred and pain and crushing expectations, well. Who wouldn’t have run as far as they could in the opposite direction?

Even if, beneath the surface, the Light side was just as flawed as the Dark.

“Thank you for telling me,” Harry said eventually, looking back up to see Sirius watching him carefully.

“Of course, Harry. Any time.”

The month of July slipped past in a blur, and Harry had never had more fun. Sirius and Harry must have tried half the restaurants on their side of London, not to mention the trips to the cinema, and a rock concert, and a quidditch match. Remus joined them some of the time, apparently eager to rebuild his friendship with Sirius and form a bond with Harry, and Harry decided that he liked the man even if he had a tendency to be a bit self-deprecating.

Before long, it was July 31^st, and Harry was getting the chance to experience what it was like to have a proper birthday party for the first time.

There were a lot of balloons.

There were also a lot of people. And what an interesting group it was. Sirius had made a pointed effort to invite all of Harry’s friends, even the Slytherin ones, and while there was no issue among the children, what neither Sirius nor Harry had accounted for was how the guardians of said children might not get on.

“Theodolpho, I didn’t realize you’d be here. I thought for sure you’d be in Azkaban by now.”

“How terrible that your memory is failing you in your old age, Dowager Longbottom. But it is my unfortunate son that is a criminal, not me.”

“So you are a liar as well as a terrorist. Unsurprising. Well you won’t be getting away with anything today. I’m watching you—”

“Oh, please. The only crime being committed here is your hat. Do be careful, dear lady, that the vultures do not mistake you for roadkill.”

“I’m so sorry about my Gran,” Neville muttered from where he stood by Harry, red-faced and head lowered in shame.

“My grandfather is just as bad,” Theo said, patting the other boy on the shoulder in commiseration. “I think he secretly enjoys the verbal sparring, but this really isn’t the place.”

“I suppose I should have expected this.” Harry grimaced. Perhaps he’d been overly optimistic, but he really hadn’t thought there would be a problem. After all, if a group of twelve-year-olds could set aside their prejudices and preconceptions to cross house lines and dismantle social constructs of right and wrong, why shouldn’t two fully grown adults in their sixties be able to manage civility for a few hours?

Neville’s gran is a stubborn old bat who’s convinced she knows best about everything, the déjà vu brain said tiredly.

And Theodolpho is unwavering in whatever he sets his mind to, the horcrux brain added. Not to mention, he’s not the sort to be pushed around.

“They’re not going to stop, are they?” Harry asked when the two kept sniping at each other with increasingly caustic insults, causing Neville’s face to turn as bright as a remembrall and Theo to bury his head in his hands.

Sirius, who had been watching Neville and Theo’s respective guardians interact with an ever-deepening grimace, sighed and clutched his chest like a swooning heroine. “My worst nightmare: I am forced to be the most mature adult here, entirely against my will. I’m supposed to be the fun uncle, Harry. I’m not built for this kind of responsibility.”

Still, despite his protests, Sirius rolled up his sleeves and marched over, clearly intent on telling them off. Harry watched for another moment, and then shrugged. His godfather could handle it.

Probably.

“Come on,” Harry said, looping an arm each through Neville and Theo’s. “I think the Weasleys just arrived. I’m sure we can get a game of exploding snap going.”

It was nice to spend an afternoon together with his friends without the pressure of schoolwork, a life-threatening mystery to solve, or worrying about the future of their country. After exploding snap, they’d split into groups: Luna and Neville running around the garden pointing out various plants and alleged twin-tailed salamander sightings, Hermione and Theo discussing the latest dissertation released on runic theory which they both hoped would be discussed in their upcoming runes class this year, the Weasleys starting a game of pickup quidditch.

Harry bounced around between the groups, happy to join in on whatever his friends were discussing and playing a few quick rounds of quidditch before dragging Sirius over to take his place—he had to make sure his godfather wasn’t stuck talking to Dowager Longbottom and Nott Sr. the whole time, after all.

After cake and candles—which Harry had made Neville blow out with him, seeing as their birthdays were so close together—there were presents to open: rare magical books from Theo, muggle books from Hermione, a low-maintenance aloe vera from Neville, every flavored beans from Ron and Ginny, and a questionable looking vial of something that the twins had handed him with a wink and a whisper of, “We’ll explain later.” Even Blaise, who was still in Italy and wouldn’t be back in Britain until the school year, had sent a magically sealed box of gelato, still frozen and perfectly preserved upon opening.

And atop Harry’s head sat a flower crown from Luna, woven from the delicate wildflowers from her yard. The sight of it had seemed to amuse her, sending her into a tiny fit of giggles, but she assured him in that airy, too-knowing way of hers, “You look very handsome. It’s just quite ironic. So contradictory to your nature, you know.”

Harry didn’t know, actually, but with Luna, it was often pointless to push for a more direct answer. Especially when she was in a mood like this. Besides, between Theo and Hermione good-naturedly arguing over who was going to claim Harry for a work partner in their upcoming shared classes, and Sirius showing the twins the glory of magical fireworks, Harry was too caught up in the joy of the moment to give Luna’s words much thought.

Just two short years ago, Harry had been lying on the floor of that dusty hut Vernon had dragged them to, blowing out fake candles drawn into the dirt floor. Just two years ago, none of this had been even remotely imaginable: to have a family, to have friends, to have a future and hope and so much love.

Happy Birthday, Harry, the déjà vu brain whispered, a soft echo in his mind.

“There’s one more gift,” Sirius said, and Harry looked up from the last bite of treacle tart on his plate. After the party ended and everyone had returned home, Remus joined them for dinner with just the three of them, and Kreacher had surprised everyone by making Harry’s favorite dessert.

Perhaps even more surprising was that the treacle tart was not only edible, but delicious. It seemed Kreacher’s inability to cook for Sirius was deliberate after all. Not that Harry could blame him. As much as he adored Sirius, the man wasn’t exactly pleasant when it came to the house elf. Harry wouldn’t begrudge Kreacher his petty vengeance.

“It’s not…much,” Remus said, and his smile was sad. “Not nearly enough, even. But—”

When Remus trailed off, Sirius picked up, “But we thought you should have something of them. It’s better than nothing.”

And then he slid a medium-sized leather-bound book across the table. Harry flipped it open curiously, only for his breath to catch.

Photographs. Each one of them of his parents, sometimes with Sirius and Remus and what must have been a younger, less crusty Wormtail.

In one, Lily sat upon a couch, book in hand, red hair spilling over her shoulders like a waterfall of fire. James was propped up at her side, head tipped back to rest against the sofa cushion, glasses half falling from his face. His eyes were closed, mouth hanging open, and Lily glanced over the book at him with immeasurable affection.

In another, the two of them were dancing, taking turns holding up an arm for the other to spin under, laughing and rosy-cheeked.

Another: the five of them in a line, decked out in Hogwarts robes, caps flung in the air. James and Lily stood at the center, Remus at Lily’s left, Sirius at James’s right, and Peter tucked in at the end. Their graduation, Harry guessed.

(So young, he thought with a familiar pang of sadness, the same kind he’d felt when he looked into the Mirror of Erised just to find an older version of himself looking back. They would have died only—what, 3 or 4 years after this photo was taken? Too young.)

A few pages later, wedding photos. Lily and James holding hands at an altar in the woods, eyes only for each other. One of Lily smashing a piece of cake into James’s unsuspecting face, her laughter and his stunned expression. Sirius and James on the dancefloor, engaged in some sort of dance-off while Lily and Remus stood at the side, clinking their champagne glasses in fond, exasperated commiseration.

More photos, and more people that Harry didn’t recognize. Someone else’s wedding that Lily had been a bridesmaid in. Lily with her arms hooked at the elbows with two other girls, one dark-haired and smug, the other fair in a way that reminded Harry strongly of Luna.

James standing next to a mounted deer head with an exaggerated look of horror. James sitting on Sirius’s shoulders despite both of them wobbling precariously.

James, beaming, arms around his wife, her belly round.

And then the baby photos.

Harry closed the book before he could look at anything more, his vision already blurring with tears, chest tight with an emotion he didn’t know how to name. It was too much all at once. For so long he’d known nothing of his parents. Nothing concrete, not even what they looked like. Aunt Petunia had only spoken their names with venom, slandered them as drunkards, fools, degenerates.

When he’d learned the truth of them later, even then they’d been cast in a near mythological light. More as parents of The Boy Who Lived than real people with their own lives and hopes and dreams. Heroic in their sacrifice. Valuable only in their deaths. Characters in a story that didn’t begin until after they were already gone.

But not in these photos. Not to Sirius and Remus, who had known them, loved them. Who remembered them not as the pillars of resistance who died, but as children, as teens, as young adults starting their lives. And for the first time, it was all laid out in front of Harry. Tangible. Undeniable.

Sirius’s hand landed gently on his back, comforting without being overbearing, and it had become familiar enough over these past few weeks that Harry didn’t flinch away from the touch.

“We have…so many stories to tell you,” Sirius rasped, sounding about as choked up as Harry felt. “When you’re ready. When you want to know. All you have to do is ask.”

Harry nodded. “Not…not tonight. I don’t think—”

He trailed off, unsure how to put into words the swirling mass of emotion jumbled in his chest. How could he ever explain the contradiction of gratitude for the gift and the fear that knowing his parents would only bring more pain? How could he ever confess to the bitterness he felt at having been abandoned and the guilt at being bitter for something that wasn’t their fault?

(And how could he dare to look at the photos of his parents, learn the shapes of their smiles, warm himself by the kindness in their eyes, when he was playing some sort of amicable mind game with the very man responsible for their deaths?

Fuck’s sake, Harry thought, a bit hysterically. I get Christmas gifts from my parents’ murderer.

There was a part of him that felt a little sick, but he couldn’t tell if it was guilt at having enjoyed the back-and-forth he had with Voldemort, or guilt that he still enjoyed it, still wanted it.)

I’m terribly selfish, Harry thought. A good son would care more.

No, the horcrux brain protested vehemently. You aren’t—

Oh, Harry, the déjà vu brain said, sad and stricken. No. They wouldn’t blame you. They wouldn’t want—

The lizard brain cooed a soft, low whine.

And Harry, who normally found reassurance in the voices in his head, tuned them out. He couldn’t handle that right now. Not…not when he felt so disjointed from himself that he didn’t know what to feel, or what feelings were his own.

“It’s okay,” Remus said, warm and smiling softly. Harry blinked up at him. “Take your time, Harry. I…I can only imagine how overwhelming this must be for you.”

“Thank you,” he said. Remus wasn’t always adept at handling his own emotions—more inclined to bury them under layers of guilt and insecurity, Harry had learned—but he always seemed very forgiving of Harry’s, and somehow that made it easier. “It’s…it’s a lot. I think, at some point, I resigned myself to never really knowing them. So to have this is…thank you. Thank you. I just need…time.”

“Of course.”

“Anything, Harry,” Sirius said. Then he clapped his hands. “Now. I think we should have seconds of dessert.”

Remus looked a second away from protesting, but Kreacher had already snapped his own bony fingers, a fresh slice of treacle tart appearing on each of their plates.

Harry bit down on his own smile as he gave Remus his most serious I promise I’m not up to anything look. “It would be wasteful not to eat it at this point.”

Sirius grinned, but matched Harry’s puppy eyes, and eventually Remus sighed in defeat, picking up his own fork. “Fine. But only because it’s your birthday.”

TOMAS SAYRE TO TAKE ANCESTRAL SEAT IN HOUSE OF LORDS

[cont. from page 1]

When asked to give a statement about his decision to reclaim the long-neglected Slytherin seat, especially given the political climate associated with the Slytherin name, Sayre explained that the negative image attached to his ancestry is half the reason he chose to make the claim.

“For generations, Salazar Slytherin’s legacy has been tarnished and misrepresented by those seeking to make a name for themselves under a famous banner. Those who used the weight of my ancestor’s name and accomplishments to lend credence to their own agendas. It is my duty, and my honor, to restore the reputation of my family name, and to use that influence for a truer purpose: to protect the magic that my ancestor so loved that he joined with others to create a school where magic could be freely taught, where the wizards and witches of our country could exist, safe and protected.”

Harry smiled into his cup of tea. Voldemort was at it again, pulling the strings to make the media dance effortlessly to his whims. It was another supremely flattering article. Sure, there were a few pointed questions posed by the author, a few minor critiques, but Harry had been reading the Daily Prophet consistently for almost a year now, and he would be hard pressed to find any other politician being written about so favorably.

Whether it was greased pockets or pure charm that had earned Tomas Sayre the good opinion of the Prophet, Harry couldn’t say for sure.

Whatever it is, we could sure as hell use some of that, the déjà vu brain said.

While Rita Skeeter hadn’t written so much as a peep about Harry since the whole debacle with Sirius Black’s trial, he figured it was only a matter of time before that wretched, meddling, dumpster-fire of a woman started poking around at his life again. If anything, the quiet was making him nervous, though that wasn’t exactly rational.

Equally irrational were the warring emotions he felt reading Voldemort’s words. On the one hand, a part of him was amused at the man’s careful political maneuvering. Impressed by the ease with which he could say so much while saying so little all at once, leaving a good impression without every having truly committed to anything. Sayre was charismatic, a good speaker, intelligent, clever. Everything Harry had admired in the man when he was pretending to be Quirrell had been multiplied tenfold.

On the other hand, the part of him that was still raw from the photo album of his parents he’d been gifted last night—and the part of him that was always at least a little wary of Voldemort’s intentions—couldn’t help but wonder just where, exactly, Voldemort’s schemes were headed.

The political route was by far preferable to a violent one—and Harry wasn’t so stupid as to think Voldemort would ever stop trying to put himself at the very top of the hierarchy—but in this past year of research, Harry had also seen the rippling impact even the most minor of laws could have over the course of decades. A temporary protection against werewolf attacks had turned into multiple discriminatory practices that barred werewolves from jobs, from education, from neighborhoods, from a normal life.

It was practically a blueprint for what could be done to muggleborns, if someone in power was crafty enough.

Harry had promised Hermione that he would never support a world in which she wasn’t welcome, that he’d put an end to Voldemort himself if the end goal was bigotry and hatred and exclusion. And he meant it. But dear Merlin, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

(Maybe it was naïve to hope he didn’t have to choose between the love he had for his friends, and the bizarrely comforting acceptance he had felt from his interactions with Voldemort.

It wouldn’t be much of a choice, of course. Everything that happened with Lockhart had solidified, without a doubt, that there was nothing Harry would not do for those he considered his. Voldemort may be intriguing, amusing, even magnetic in a way, but he didn’t have Harry’s devotion the way Harry’s friends did. The way Sirius and Remus were starting to.

It didn’t change the fact that Harry would prefer they didn’t end up on opposing sides at all.)

Harry was pulled from his thoughts—gladly, as this sort of thinking was a bit heavy for breakfast—when Sirius and Remus plodded into the kitchen.

Together. That was new.

Harry’s brow rose of its own volition, and he struggled to bring his face back into a more neutral expression. Luckily, his two uncles were both still sleepy-eyed and slow to realize that Harry was already up, dressed, and had fed himself leftover treacle tart for breakfast. When Remus did finally notice him, he stopped abruptly, blinked a few times, and then busied himself with making a cup of tea, the tips of his ears red.

Did he think I didn’t know they’re in love with each other? Harry wondered. With the way Sirius and Remus had been dancing around each other and their obvious feelings these past weeks, Harry would have had to be both blind and deaf to miss it. But if he was being honest, given Remus’s tendency to martyr himself unnecessarily and Sirius’s reluctance to ruin their only-recently-reformed friendship, Harry had assumed they wouldn’t get their shit together until after he’d returned to Hogwarts in the fall.

My bet was on it taking at least another full year, the déjà vu brain said. If they ever got together at all.

What do you mean if they got together at all? Harry thought, incredulous. They’re halfway to being an old married couple already!

The déjà vu brain sighed. You’d be surprised.

Across the room, Remus gulped down his tea with concerning speed, despite the steam still lifting from the cup. It had to have burned, and Harry frowned. Was the man really so embarrassed at getting caught staying the night he felt the need to rush off?

“In a hurry, are we?” Sirius asked. He was watching Remus with a similarly befuddled look, a pinch in his brow.

“It’s later than I thought,” Remus said, setting his cup in the sink and washing it equally hurriedly. “I’ve got an interview in an hour, and I’d like to be there early.”

Sirius groaned. “Not this again. I thought we’d already discussed—”

“And I already told you no.”

“I have the money. What do you need a job for?”

“It’s the principle of the matter, Sirius. I want to work. I want to be able to support myself.”

“An interview?” Harry asked, ignoring the awkward not-quite-argument happening in front of him. “What happened with the bookshop?”

As far as he knew, Remus had been working at a muggle bookstore in London for about six months, now. It didn’t pay a lot—only seven pounds an hour—but it was steady, quiet work, and Remus had seemed to like it well enough. Harry and Sirius had dropped by a few times to bring him lunch, and it was the sort of place that had few enough customers, you could spend half your shift reading.

Remus floundered for a minute. “It didn’t work out. I…I had to take some time off for…an illness—”

Oh for fuck’s sake, Harry thought. This again?

He leveled Remus with an unimpressed stared. “You mean for the full moon.”

No one had outright addressed the werewolf issue with him yet, which he thought was rather stupid, all things considered. He might have only been 13, but he wasn’t an idiot. Even without his déjà vu brain to guide him, Harry liked to think he would have figured out what was going on after Remus had been “busy” or “ill” on the full moon twice in a row. And his nickname was Moony? Not subtle.

Sirius jerked in his seat, and Remus flinched, paling. “What?”

Just rip the bandaid off, the déjà vu brain suggested tiredly. They’re both panicking right now.

Do they really think I’d care? Harry wondered. He thought he seemed like a pretty accepting person. Just look at his friends. But he supposed after you’d faced discrimination all your life, you’d probably come to expect it. Even from people close to you.

“You’re a werewolf, which obviously puts some constraints on your work schedule,” Harry said, shrugging. “I’m guessing it’s tough to explain to muggles why you need to be off around the full moon every month.”

“You knew?” Remus said, then turned to Sirius. “Did you—”

“No.” Sirius shook his head. “I didn’t say anything. Harry—”

“Guys. Come on.” Harry couldn’t exactly say, I saw it once in a dream, no matter how true that was. Sweet Merlin, he was going to start sounding like Luna if he ever told the truth. Better to let them think they were just terrible at hiding it. Which, to be fair, they were. “Did you really think it would bother me?”

“It’s just that werewolves are dark creatures. There’s quite a bit of prejudice towards them—us.”

“Okay. And? I’m a parselmouth. That’s considered a dark ability. I’m not really in a position to judge, you know.”

Remus sighed. “That’s not the same. I—you might not realize Harry, but werewolves can be dangerous. Deadly, in the worst cases. Capable of infecting others—”

“And parselmouths are inherently evil because talking to snakes is unnatural even among wizards. Because Salazar Slytherin was one, and so was Voldemort, and everyone knows that being a parselmouth makes you bad—”

“It does not!” Sirius said. “And you’ll tell me the names of everyone who told you that right now.”

“—I’m obviously going to turn into a genocidal lunatic,” Harry continued. “Because I just can’t help myself—”

“Harry.”

“—and you had all better watch out, or else I’m going to sic my secret army of snakes on you in the middle of the night—”

“Okay, Harry, alright,” Remus said, mouth twitching. “I see your point.”

“If I’m not allowed to talk badly about myself, then you aren’t either.” Harry held out his hand, ready to shake on it. “Deal?”

“Deal.” Remus shook his hand, then tightened the grip when Harry went to pull back. “Who told you that? That being a parselmouth made you bad?”

And Harry had an idea. It would require a bit of delicacy, but if it worked…

The horcrux brain cackled.

Harry looked down at his lap, chewing on his lip, and mumbled.

“What was that?” Sirius prompted.

“Dumbledore,” Harry repeated, a bit louder. Then shot upright, eyes wide, and hurried to explain. “Not in so many words! He just…implied. That I might be like, you know, him. Voldemort. That my ability was…tainted, and if I was a good person, it would be in spite of being a parselmouth.”

An exaggeration, but not totally a lie. Truly, if Dumbledore had less of a filter, he might well have said all that aloud. Harry had seen it plainly enough on the man’s face. Had heard it in all the things the man didn’t say.

Remus’s eyes squeezed shut, and he breathed in heavily through his nose. “I hope you know that it’s not true. It’s just an ability, Harry. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“And Eden is delightful,” Sirius added. “Even if I was a bit…wary of her, at first. Seeing you with her—I don’t know how anyone could think it was a bad thing.”

“Oh.” Once again, Harry felt his eyes welling with real emotion. It wasn’t that he hadn’t known being a parselmouth was perfectly fine, but hearing it aloud, from his family—he hadn’t known he needed it. “I…thank you. Both. For…understanding.”

Sirius nodded tightly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I need a moment.”

Remus and Harry both watched him walk off.

“He’s going to go blow up the dueling room, isn’t he?” Harry wondered aloud. That was Sirius’s usual go-to whenever something upset him enough that he had to process it physically.

Remus hummed in agreement. “I can’t say I don’t understand the impulse.”

Harry couldn’t say for sure whether it was good luck or bad luck that Dumbledore chose that very afternoon to show up on Grimmauld Place’s doorstep, face grim and somehow expectant at the same time. In general, Harry tended to think Dumbledore appearing out of nowhere—especially after the man had disappeared partway through the schoolyear and Harry had heard little of him since—was bad luck. But the thing was…

The thing was, Sirius still hadn’t calmed down fully from this morning, and he was the least inclined to deal with Dumbledore that he’d ever been.

So when Dumbledore’s first words upon Sirius opening the door were, “Voldemort has returned. We need the Order now more than ever,” he probably expected to be ushered in, greeted with tea and promises to help no matter the cost.

And instead, Sirius only stared at him blankly and said, “Fuck off.”

Then he shut the door.

Right in Dumbledore’s face.

Harry might have found it funnier if he could breathe. As it was, his mind was spinning.

Fuck, the déjà vu brain said. He’s accelerating his plans.

Letting Voldemort go back in first year, practically sending him to the diadem, leading to his resurrection and the subsequent creation of his public persona—Harry hadn’t considered how it might push Dumbledore to react. In fact, Harry had been so focused on the petrifications at school all last year, that he’d barely had time to truly consider the ripple effect of what Voldemort might do.

It’s too early for him to be acting like this, the déjà vu brain said, voice strained. I thought we had years.

Bad, bad, bad, the lizard brain hissed.

What’s the Order? Harry asked, trying to sort out his thoughts.

The horcrux brain was the one to answer. The Order of the Phoenix was a vigilante group under Dumbledore’s command that he utilized against me in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Dread sat heavy in Harry’s gut. If Dumbledore became panicked over Voldemort, he might not bother waiting for a more advantageous time to attack. It was clear he already suspected the existence of the horcruxes at the very least. Suspected what Harry was. What if Dumbledore tried to kill him outright? Harry had been getting stronger, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think he could take on a wizard of Dumbledore’s caliber.

We don’t know what his plans are yet, the horcrux brain reminded Harry soothingly. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s possible he’ll choose to meet my other self on the same playing field, in politics.

Harry considered it, forcing himself to breathe through his nose. Dumbledore wasn’t one to take hasty action, that was for sure. In Harry’s experience, the old bastard preferred to set traps, then sit back and wait. He’d done it with the philosopher’s stone back in first year, and Harry suspected he’d done it again with Lockhart—hiring the incompetent man in a bid to out him as a fraud. There was no way he hadn’t known that Lockhart was a total hack when Harry had been able to clock him on day one.

So he had time. Whatever Dumbledore might do in response to Tomas Sayre’s public rise to fame, it was far more likely to be some obscure, round-about plan that would take months, if not years, to come to fruition. Restarting a vigilante group wasn’t the final nail in the coffin; if anything, Dumbledore was lagging behind in this fight.

“You really don’t like him much, do you?” Sirius said. His voice was quiet, but in the silence of the hallways, it echoed, and Harry was yanked from his own spiraling emotions unceremoniously. He looked up to find Sirius watching him, eyes narrowed and focused. It was moments like this that Harry remembered—despite the way Sirius could joke around, be silly, be soft and kind and good—he used to be an auror in war time. “Just now, you looked afraid.”

Harry flinched. He hadn’t thought he was that obvious, that his emotions were so easy to read. He’d learned early at the Dursleys how to put on whatever act he needed to in order to get by, learned how to play innocent, how to play confused, how to tamp down his anger and frustration and fear so that he didn’t make it worse for himself.

His friends could see through him well enough—Ron and Hermione through their sheer empathy, Theo and Blaise because neither of them ever really missed a trick, Luna probably by some preternatural ability—but adults had rarely, if ever, managed it. So few had watched closely enough, cared enough. Maybe Voldemort, though Harry couldn’t know for sure.

He definitely wasn’t used to Sirius being able to peel back the illusion so easily.

“Well he did say Voldemort had come back,” Harry offered, and if he hadn’t still been recovering from his near panic attack, he might have sounded more convincing. But Sirius was shaking his head.

“That would make sense, except for the fact that I don’t think Voldemort scares you in the slightest.” Sirius huffed, waving a hand to cut off Harry’s protests before he could get started. “A conversation for different time, when you don’t look ready to pass out in the hallway just because Dumbledore knocked on our door.”

There was another knock, and Harry flinched again at the noise, then internally cursed himself for it. He always felt so…raw whenever he had to deal with Dumbledore.

Knowing that he intends for you to die as a sacrifice to defeat Voldemort will do that to you, the déjà vu brain said.

“Sirius, this simply cannot wait,” Dumbledore’s voice came muffled through the doorway. “You must understand the gravity of the situation. Especially for young Harry.”

“I don’t trust him,” Harry said, voice as quiet as Sirius’s had been. “Whenever I speak to him, I always feel like he’s seeing a piece on the board he can move around, not a person. Like I’m just The Boy Who Lived, someone who can defeat Voldemort again. Not Harry. And—” Harry paused here, in part because it helped give emphasis to what he would say next, and in part because it was true and he needed Sirius to believe him. “—I don’t feel safe when he’s around. Please don’t let him in.”

Sirius froze. “What do you mean, you don’t feel safe?”

Harry shrugged. “He’s supposed to be a great wizard. And as the headmaster, he’s supposed to protect the school. But the past two years at Hogwarts, I’ve been in danger multiple times, and he’s done nothing. There was a troll loose in the school, and I took care of it. Voldemort was posing as my teacher all of first year, and I took care of it. Lockhart was petrifying students to make himself look good, and I took care of it. Where was Dumbledore? When students were terrified and hurting and being cursed by their teacher, where was he?”

“Oh, Harry—”

“I’ve just…why am I always cleaning up after other people’s messes?” Harry asked. “His messes, specifically. And why…why does it always feel like a test? Like he’s set me up to see if I can really do it.”

Sirius frowned. “You think Dumbledore is setting you up to do these things on purpose? You have to realize how that sounds.”

“Either it’s purposeful and he’s throwing me in deep water head first to train me for Voldemort’s supposed inevitable return. Or he’s a blind fool, too stupid to see what’s literally right in front of him, and so negligent to the health and well being of his charges that he shouldn’t be around children.” Harry threw his hands up. “I don’t know what’s worse.”

More knocking. Sirius closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. Then he nodded—seemingly to himself—and straightened, wrenching open the door.

“Sirius—”

“Listen here, Albus,” Sirius all but snarled. “I fought one war for you already. I lost my best friends. I lost over a decade of my life. Because of my time in Azkaban, I have lost some of my sanity. But I have not lost my common fucking sense. I am not a teenager willing to throw his life away in rebellion of his parents anymore. I have Harry to think of now.”

“And it is for Harry’s sake that I urge you to join the fight once more,” Dumbledore said, ever patient, and ever condescending. “Do you think Voldemort will leave him be? That Harry will remain safe simply because you wish it to be so?”

What a fucking hypocrite, the déjà vu brain snapped.

The horcrux brain sneered. To think, he has the audacity to claim he has your best interests at heart, after all he’s done.

The lizard brain hissed in agitation.

Sirius, luckily, seemed to be of the same mind. “That’s what got me in prison in the first place: running off to fight when I should have stayed to take care of Harry. So kindly, get the fuck off my property.”

And then he slammed the door shut. Again.

For a moment, it was quiet. Then Sirius said, “If he knocks again, I’m calling the muggle police.”

Harry snorted at the mental image of London cops trying to cart off Dumbledore, robes and all. He would pay good money to see that.

“There was a time when I would have trusted Dumbledore with everything,” Sirius admitted suddenly, and there was something wretched and broken in his voice. Grief, Harry thought. Because Sirius had trusted Dumbledore with everything, and what had it gotten him? “When I was a teen, I wouldn’t have stood for anyone to speak a word against him. He was the most powerful wizard I’d ever seen, stronger than my parents, stronger, probably, than Voldemort. But you’re right—even in the war, you know, he never went out to the battlefields himself. Never fought the Death Eaters, never risked his own neck. He always sent others out to die while he worked behind the scenes.”

“It’s kind of like a cult, isn’t it?” Harry mused. “Dumbledore poses as this unstoppable leader who is always right, always knows best. You can’t criticize him, and you can’t stand anyone else criticizing him. He commands tremendous loyalty, but he doesn’t truly offer anything in return. The people around him…they get hurt, and yet he never has any accountability for it.” Harry shrugged when he saw Sirius’s horrified expression. “We watched a documentary about it in muggle school once. I think it was meant for the older kids, but we had a substitute and she didn’t really know what she was doing.”

“Right,” Sirius croaked. “Well.” He shook his head. “That’s—the point is, things are different now. Prison gives you a lot of time to think. I’ve had years to count all my mistakes a hundred times over.”

Sirius strode forward until he could put his hands on Harry’s shoulders.

“What I’m trying to say, Harry, is that I’m on your side. Your side. Not Dumbledore’s, sure as fuck not the Ministry’s. Yours. It’s important to me that you know that. I’ll prove it to you as many times as you need to believe it.”

Tom’s insatiable nerdiness was apparently contagious through prolonged exposure, Harry thought with some resignation as he thumbed through one of the many texts in the Black library. His current read was a 17^th century account of Nordic Vampire Covens, and though Harry couldn’t see any immediate practical uses, he’d found himself wrapped up in the book anyway. Hermione and Theo would be proud.

“Do you suppose that ratty elf that’s always lurking about would fetch us books from here while we’re at Hogwarts?” Tom asked as he sprawled out on an unreasonably ornate chaise lounge in the corner, a book about Turkish blood rituals resting carelessly on his chest. “The Hogwarts library pales in comparison, what with all the purging Dumbledore’s done to remove anything of interest.” He looked up and grinned charmingly at Harry. “I fear you may have spoiled me.”

“Pretty sure you came like that,” Harry tossed back, and the diary horcrux laughed.

A sharp pecking at the window put a halt to whatever sickeningly clever thing Tom would have responded with, and Harry rose to let a large, dark-grey owl in. He recognized the bird as Theo’s, and after feeding him an owl treat he had tucked away in his pocket, Harry retrieved the letter attached at the foot, curious. Theo didn’t send many letters—usually only once every other week—as he claimed nothing of interest ever happened at home. Harry had received the usual letter only two days ago.

For Theo to send another so soon…

Either something really good or really bad is happening, Harry thought, unrolling the parchment.

H,

Yesterday, grandfather had visitors come to the house unexpectedly, and he sent me up to my room so he could meet with them in private. He never does that. Never. Unfortunately, I seem to have accidentally acquired your habit of reckless misadventure—I knew associating with Gryffindors couldn’t end well—and I snuck down to my grandfather’s office to listen in.

I didn’t recognize any of the voices, but from what I was able to gather, it seems there’s something stirring among some of the old Death Eater groups. The particulars are a mystery to me, and my grandfather seemed determined not to have any involvement, as he sent the visitors away soon after, and remained in quite the mood for some time. I think he’s concerned. He’s already talked of sending me off to visit Blaise in Italy for the rest of the summer.

Be careful. Despite a Certain Acquaintance you may have, there are many Death Eaters who will still seek to harm you. Many are oblivious to Certain Powers at work in the shadows, and those who are unaware of your Acquaintance may not realize the peculiar situation you are in. I don’t know what is being planned, or whether anything will come of it, but you need to be on your guard.

I’ll try to gather more information before we meet again.

Your friend,

T

Harry frowned down at the letter. For Theo not to sign either of their names, and to keep all references to Voldemort as discreet as possible—he must have heard something serious to make him so nervous. It was true that Theo could be over-cautious at times, and that he often lectured Harry on taking less risks, on protecting himself better. But he wasn’t some paranoid, delusional, over-the-top fanatic. He didn’t imagine threats where there were none.

Over Harry’s shoulder, where Tom had come to stand and read like the nosy bastard he was, Tom hummed. “What a loyal little dog you have. To betray his own flesh and blood for your sake. How sweet.”

“He’s not betraying his grandfather,” Harry protested, shooting Tom a strange look. “He’s just…warning me.”

“Warning you of the plans his grandfather is no doubt involved in.”

“He says his grandfather sent the visitors away and doesn’t want to be involved.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Or he’s involved already and doesn’t want your dear little pet to know. Theodolpho Nott was one of my schoolmates. One of my first followers, even, and by far one of the cleverer ones. I can’t imagine he would have fallen out of my inner circle, even fifty years later. Trust that Theodolpho knows more than he’s letting on. And your Theo is just playing fetch with the scraps he’s fed.”

“Alright, if you’re the expert,” Harry said snidely. “What do you really think is going on then?”

“Hm. Your little friend seems…fixated on the idea that Death Eaters may harm you without knowledge of your alliance with my other soul piece. Perhaps it has nothing to do with you at all, and rather to do with my other self’s political plans. Or perhaps Voldemort himself will make a move against you.” Tom shrugged one shoulder. “With so little detail, it’s impossible to say.”

“You really think Voldemort would target me? Now?” Harry shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. He’s had plenty of opportunity to get rid of me.”

“And he hasn’t, and you think that makes you safe.” Tom’s lip curled. “You’re interesting, I’ll grant you that. Interesting enough to tolerate and indulge. Interesting enough not to kill. For now. But should it come to a choice of something that will benefit Voldemort’s long-term goals at the cost of eliminating you, there’s no question of what he’d choose.”

He’s not wrong, the horcrux brain said. Your value lies primarily in your potential. One day, you may prove yourself to be irreplaceable, but until then…

Until then, anything is possible, Harry thought, and from a practical standpoint, he could understand. After all, didn’t he view Voldemort in the same way? That if it ever came down to a choice between Harry’s friends, his family and Voldemort, it would not even really be a choice at all. He knew who he would put first. Could he really blame Voldemort for doing the same?

No, he supposed he couldn’t. Not that it really helped anything.

“Aren’t you sort of…self-sabotaging? You know, warning me like this?” Harry asked.

“That soul piece and I are two separate entities,” Tom said with a sniff. “My interests do not necessarily align with his. For instance, he would likely be terrified if he knew you had three of his horcruxes, one of which he doesn’t even know exists. Whereas I, on the other hand, am of the opinion you should collect a few more.”

Harry blinked at the shift in conversation. “Why?”

“You already have me and the locket. And yourself, of course. Why not keep going? It’s not as though he’s using them. And one day, you may need to bargain for something important, something you can’t afford for him to refuse. You’ll want leverage then.”

A blur of images sprung forth from the déjà vu brain: Hermione, injured and bleeding, Ron’s face on a wanted poster, Hogwarts in ruins, the Burrow on fire. It all blurred together so quickly, but Harry understood well enough. Understood what was at risk, should everything turn sour. He might be able to protect those he loved most in the worst case scenario if he was prepared enough. And, if he couldn’t—

“Or mutually assured destruction,” Harry surmised. “Just in case he gets any ideas about finishing what he started when I was a baby.”

There was himself to consider, too. Survival. A life past eighteen. The vision of himself in the Mirror of Erised, older and alive and happy.

“Naturally, I’d prefer you didn’t,” Tom said with a grimace. “But yes, that’s the sort of bloodthirsty pragmatism you’ll need to survive.”

It’s not a bad idea, the horcrux brain mused.

The fuck are you talking about, the déjà vu brain said. It’s a terrible idea.

If we leave them lying around, Dumbledore could come pick them up at any moment, the horcrux argued. There’s no telling when he’ll figure out what and where they are. And would you rather Dumbledore had all the horcruxes, or us?

There was a pause. A sigh.

Have I mentioned how much I fucking hate it when you make sense?

So which one do I go after first? Harry asked. Can I even get to any of them right now?

The ring would be the easiest, the horcrux brain offered. It’s in a shack in a remote village. With enough preparation, we could get you there and back by bus before anyone noticed you were gone.

Harry frowned. That sounds…easy.

The déjà vu brain snorted. Yeah, well, it’s cursed to hell, so there’s that.

Cursed, the lizard brain hissed.

Right. Okay. Not easy.

Well, whatever.

Not easy was kind of Harry’s specialty.